Monthly Archives: February 2010

A Final Word on The Offseason Infield Acquisitions

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It’s no secret around here that I think the Dodgers made a mistake by giving Jamey Carroll two guaranteed years; my post titled “So Everyone Agrees the Dodgers Moved Too Quickly on Jamey Carroll, Right?” saw one of the largest comment totals I’ve seen all season. It’s not that I have any particular problem with Carroll, it’s just that he seems like a poor fit for this club; if you wanted insurance for Blake DeWitt at second base, you could have signed a lefty hitter who can play shortstop as well.

I won’t continue harping on it, since what’s done is done and either way, this decision (hopefully) won’t be what makes or breaks the season. So to put a bow on this topic, let’s quickly discuss the two bits of news regarding this we’ve seen in the last two days…

Felipe Lopez signs with the Cardinals for 1 year, $1m. As I detailed extensively in the post about Carroll linked above, Lopez was a much better choice for this team. He’s a switch hitter; Carroll is righty. He can play shortstop; Carroll really can’t. He’s a far better hitter, and as far as fielding, well, just catch this tidbit from Buster Olney’s blog:

While Lopez likely will be an offensive upgrade over the Cardinals’ second basemen from 2009 — he had an .810 OPS last season versus a .747 OPS for Cardinals second basemen — he also should improve the infield defense. According to fangraphs.com, Lopez had the fifth-highest UZR among MLB second basemen, and he really excelled in his range, where he ranked second among second basemen.

In my earlier article, I said the only reason to not sign Lopez was if you weren’t sure that he’d be okay with possibly accepting a backup or utility role. Judging by his comments in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, it doesn’t sound like that’ll be an issue…

“I can play anywhere. That’s the right answer, right?” Lopez offered after completing a team physical. “I’ll play anywhere. I know this team … is a really good team, so wherever they need me.”

At the time of the Carroll article, we didn’t know how much Lopez would eventually sign for, but it seemed certain that the longer he was out there, the less he would get. In addition to his $1m guaranteed, he’s eligible for $1.2m in incentives, which he can’t fully max out unless he gets 600 plate appearances (which not even Albert Pujols did in St. Louis last year). Yet the Dodgers guaranteed Carroll nearly four times as much what Lopez is guaranteed, over an extra year, for a player who’s older, not as versatile, and a lesser player. Fantastic.

Was the Carroll deal the worst move of the offseason? I don’t think I would go quite that far – I’m still dying over the Brandon Lyon deal – but the fact is, MLBtraderumors asked the question, and he’s in the conversation. This is a deal that seemed okay at best at the time, and just keeps looking worse considering how the market (and the Dodger roster composition) has played out.

Anyway, I’ve said my piece on this more than once, so we’ll consider this case file closed and move on tomorrow.

I’d Rather Have a Good Team With No Ace Than the Inverse (Updated)

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Over at the Big Blue Wrecking Crew, there was a good discussion today about Jerry Crasnick’s ESPN.com piece on Pablo Sandoval and the Giants. Sandoval’s trying to keep off the weight (keep chasing that cake, Pablo!), while new batting coach Hensley Meulens is trying to help the horrific group of batters he’s been saddled with take a new, more patient approach. Which makes perfect sense, since we all remember “Bam Bam” as an entirely discriminating hitter, don’t we?

What really caught my eye on the Crasnick article is the sidebar graphic showing the projected Giant lineup and their OBPs. Now, I’m hardly the first to note that the Giant offense is terrible and that their moves this winter didn’t do much to help. But I don’t think I ever realized just how bad they are until I saw that chart. Aaron Rowand as the leadoff man? Aubrey Huff hitting cleanup? Bengie Molina being employed? Yikes. So is this a team we need to take seriously?

Let’s reproduce it here – the projected 2010 Giant lineup with 2009 OBP – but put the 2010 Dodgers alongside it.

SFG OBP LAD OBP
Rowand .319 Furcal .335
Sanchez .326 Martin .352
Sandoval .387 Manny .418
Huff .310 Ethier .361
DeRosa .319 Kemp .352
Molina .285 Blake .363
Schierholtz .302 Loney .357
Renteria .307 DeWitt .245*

DeWitt, of course, got just 53 PA appearances last season, so ignore him for a second. If he doesn’t win the 2B job, then you have Belliard (.398 as a Dodger last year) or Carroll (.355 each of the last two years). So do you see what I see? Other than Sandoval, who I have a lot of respect for despite his unconventional body type, every single Dodger has a higher OBP than even the second-best Giant, Mark DeRosa. Their projected cleanup hitter, Huff, had an OBP 25 points lower than the Dodger leadoff man Rafael Furcal, who had a mediocre year last year – and that’s before considering that Huff is now a year older, has to come to a tougher hitter’s park, and no longer can sit and wait for his turn as DH since he now has to play the field.

It’s that last line which brings us to another issue – if you can’t hit, you sure as hell better be saving a ton of runs in the field. Yet the Giants actively made their team worse on defense. Huff’s a butcher no matter where he plays, clocking in at -25.4 on the UZR scale across all positions for his career. Renteria hasn’t even been average on that scale since 2004, and he’ll be 35 this year. He’s not getting better. Sandoval was at -6.4 runs UZR/150 last year alone; Sanchez may be decent but he’s also coming off knee surgery and may not be ready for Opening Day. In the outfield, DeRosa won’t kill you, but nor is he anywhere near as good as the stellar Randy Winn was with the glove. Meanwhile, the Dodgers were one of the top fielding teams in baseball last year.

So this is a team we’re supposed to be worried about? Yes, I know that Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain make for a fantastic top two (Lincecum’s diminishing velocity aside). But with that offense, that lousy defense, and a bullpen that doesn’t compare to the outstanding crew the Dodgers have, it seems that any prediction which has the Giants near to or above the Dodgers is focusing a bit too hard on the offseason drama we’ve all had to live through. The Giants are the clear leaders in the rotation, but that just can’t make up for the atrocious bats, deficient leather, or a bullpen that features Brian Wilson as the stopper.

Update. Joe Morgan was asked who he thought was the most improved team this offseason in a chat at ESPN yesterday:

I guess you would have to say the Giants in the National League because they have made the most moves. If their moves work out or not, we’ll have to wait and see.

So apparently, making moves = improvement. Regardless of whether those moves actually, you know, improve your team. Apparently it wouldn’t have mattered if the Giants had traded for Albert Pujols, Albert Einstein, or Fat Albert; simply making the move would have made them better. Brilliant.

Casey Blake, Backup Shortstop?

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Earlier today, Tony Jackson of ESPN LA participated in a live chat (count how many times Eric Stephen’s name shows up!), and about halfway through he dropped an interesting nugget regarding his thoughts on the backup shortstop competition:

I think barring an injury, Green, Berroa and Hu are probably all headed to Triple-A to start the season (assuming Green and Berroa are willing to go). The backup SS will be Jamey Carroll is the backup SS, with Casey Blake able to fill in there on occasion. Joe says if DeWitt is the regular 2B, he’ll play ONLY 2B because Joe doesn’t want him moving around. If somebody gets hurt, they can always bring one of those guys up from the minors when the need arises.

Backup shortstop has been a surprisingly common topic of conversation around here this offseason, no doubt due to the fact that 7 of the 8 lineup spots are sewn up and we have to talk about something. Whether it’s been bemoaning the signing of the old and busted Nick Green or Angel Berroa, wishing that Felipe Lopez had been signed (it’s not too late!), trying to talk ourselves into Alfredo Amezaga because he’s a lefty, or outright requesting Chin-Lung Hu, we’ve had no shortage of thoughts on it.

With all those options, one route I never considered they might go with is to not carry a backup shortstop at all. If Jackson’s feeling is correct (and you’d have to assume that Blake DeWitt wins the 2B job in this scenario, since otherwise DeWitt would be in the minors and Carroll would be needed at the keystone) then Jamey Carroll would step in to give Rafael Furcal a rest, with Casey Blake (hilariously!) being the emergency option.

In some ways, it makes sense. Green, Berroa, and even Hu are all varying degrees of terrible. None will help you with the bat, Green won’t help you much with the leather, and Berroa is so bad that he might actually open a hole in the goddamn space-time continuum. If that’s the case, why bother? No need to add yet another righty to a righty-deep bench when that righty can’t hit and can only play shortstop in name only; much better to save that space for the lefty bat of someone like Doug Mientkiewicz, Xavier Paul, or even Brian Giles.

The only problem is, of course, that Carroll’s not much of a shortstop either. He hasn’t even played an inning there in either of the last two years, and considering that he was -6.7 on the UZR/150 scale before that, it’s hard to think he’s improved much headed into his age-36 season. Still, if he’s only starting once every ten games or so, you’d have to think he couldn’t kill you that much – and if anything happened to Furcal, well, Albuquerque’s not all that far away.

But man, Casey Blake at shortstop – imagine that? You’d have to think that would only happen in the sort of emergency situation that would require Blake’s left-side partner to be Russell Martin over at the hot corner. Fun fact, though: Blake has played two innings of shortstop in his career, back in 2008 for Cleveland (on the same day Eric Stults was shutting out the White Sox). Who was his middle infield partner for those two innings? Jamey Carroll. So you think it can’t happen? It’s already happened.

Are We Further Out of Touch Than I Thought?

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As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been pointing out how wins (among other stats, but mostly wins) are all but useless in evaluating a pitcher’s performance for nearly three years now. I didn’t come up with the idea, and I’m hardly the first to say it, but it’s been a pet conceit of mine. Recently, some commenters noted that they thought I’d been pointing it out too much – that it’s so obvious by this point that it’s not even worth mentioning. After all, you don’t point out how the sun rises every single day, do you?

Yet I wonder about the thought that advanced ideas, so well-known in the blogging and sabermetric community, no longer need to be discussed. Don’t we all know people who don’t put 1/100th of the thought into baseball as we do, and still think in that antiquated fashion? Sure, the ‘casual’ fan is never going to read this blog, or very likely any blog. Yet the casual fan outnumbers us in terms of attendance and merchandising power by a multiplier I can’t even imagine. It’s why guys like Joe Morgan can not only survive but thrive in the broadcast world, because they speak to the lowest common denominator. It’s refreshing to see guys like Jon Sciambi of ESPN speak about how they’re trying to bring advanced thinking to the masses, yet depressing to know that those same masses rejected a relatively simple stat like OPS as “too complicated“.

The reason this comes to mind today is because of the official Dodger Facebook page, when the topic turned to Manny’s “I probably won’t be back” comments. As I and other bloggers unanimously said on HotStove.com today, the story was a non-issue – Manny was almost certainly not coming back for 2011 regardless. Yet on the Facebook page – and remember, people commenting on the Facebook page are not the same kind of people who seek to comment on blogs – the sentiment was not only “we hate Manny”, but “we love Juan Pierre and the Dodgers made a huge mistake by trading him.”

I’m not going to tell anyone they should love Manny, after all he’s done. And I’m not going to tell anyone that Juan Pierre can’t be their favorite player, since that’s a matter of personal opinion. But to say that Pierre is simply a better player than Manny is really something that’s completely inarguable – it’s not close to true on this planet or any other, nor is it something we’d ever even consider.

Yet according to the overwhelming majority of the Facebook posts… well, here’s just a sample.

I mean, it goes on like that for pages. I absolutely get it if Manny lost the trust and faith that fans put into him, so I don’t mind that he’s not popular. But just look how many people are under the idea that Pierre is simply a better ballplayer, not just a better person.

It’s insane, and it shows that despite all the progress that’s been made, especially over the last 10 years, there’s still absolutely huge amounts of people out there who still just don’t get it. And that’s why I will always point out why wins are ridiculous.

We Don’t Want Your Braden Looper

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A few days ago, I read an interesting article over at FanGraphs by R.J. Anderson, in regards to Ned Colletti’s assertation that the Dodgers may still look outside the organization for a #5 starter. Anderson, citing other research, noted that there’s really no such thing as a “#5 starter” except in the rarest of instances – due to injuries and ineffectiveness, nearly every team will go through several arms at the back end of their rotation. What this means is that you better have at least a few guys who you can count on to get you through the season. While the Dodgers may not have been able to acquire an “ace” this offseason, they do have quite a decent collection of options for that back-end - young guns like James McDonald & Scott Elbert, fringy young veterans like Eric Stults & Charlie Haeger, not to mention a collection of thousands of mediocre over-30 guys.

As Anderson says, and as I think many of us would agree, McDonald would seem to be the ideal first choice:

McDonald has made nearly 90 starts in the minors, including 42 between Triple- and Double-A. At both destinations McDonald struck out at least nine per nine and walked between three and four batters per nine. He turned 25 in October and started last season in the Dodgers’ rotation. He would only make four starts, as he walked 14 in 13.1 innings and struck out only six. Upon a move to the bullpen, McDonald looked like his minor league self, posting a SO/BB of 2.4 and striking out roughly one batter pr inning.

His stuff doesn’t seem to stink, either: a low-90s fastball, curve, and change. Each pitch was whiffed on at least 8% of the time. His fastball shows great “rise” which makes up for some lackadaisical run. Those whiff rates will likely decrease upon a move back to the rotation, but McDonald’s body of work makes him more appealing than the Ortizes of the world. Plus, who knows, maybe he turns into more than a bona fide number five.

If McDonald falters, you still have Elbert. Or Stults. Or Haeger. Or so on. McDonald & Elbert both have big upside potential, Stults has shown competence, and if you’ve read this blog at all you know what a big fan of Haeger I am. Look, a number five starter doesn’t need to be the guy you look to in October.  He just needs to be the guy(s) who can keep you in the game every fifth day, and even less so if you consider off-days. The Dodgers have the guys right now who can fulfill that need, and some with the potential to be more than that.

It’s with this in mind that today’s news from Ken Gurnick is a little disturbing:

The Dodgers remain in contact with the agent for unsigned pitcher Braden Looper, but chances of a deal are slim because they can’t offer the Major League roster spot or the kind of salary the right-hander wants.

So… why?

Obviously, as Gurnick states, it’s unlikely because Looper’s salaries demands are seemingly unreasonable – so I won’t lose much sleep over it. Just saying… the fact that Looper is even on the radar is a little disturbing. I mean, what does he offer, at 35 and coming off a lousy year, that the young guys can’t? Looper was the worst in 2009…

2009 MLB FIP:
Stults: 4.36
McDonald: 4.48
Elbert: 4.67
Haeger: 5.68
Looper: 5.74

…and is projected to be the worst in 2010 by all three FanGraphs measurements:

2010 MLB FIP (projected ranges):
Elbert: 3.76 – 4.67
McDonald: 3.97 – 4.32
Stults: 4.52 – 4.57
Haeger: 4.81 – 5.20
Looper: 4.82 – 5.21

So what does Looper have going for him? That’s he’s a “name”? That he threw 194 innings last year, as though it doesn’t matter that he was hurting the Brewers by being that bad that often? Or is it – and I shudder to think it – because he somehow went 14-7, as though wins actually matter? The Brewers supported him with nearly nine runs a game in his starts, second among NL pitchers with over 180 IP.

The fact is, Braden Looper isn’t very good, coming off what is in many ways the worst season of his career despite the win total. At 35, he’s not likely to start improving, and with the group of other arms the Dodgers have collected, he’d be almost guaranteed to be taking away valuable innings from pitchers with more upside than him – not to mention how much more money he’s looking for.

As Gurnick said, it’s not likely that Looper lands in LA. It’s just the thought that the Dodgers might be interested at any price that is disconcerting.