Monthly Archives: May 2011

All Hail Aaron Miles & Jamey Carroll

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Hey, I have to reach for positives somewhere, right? The Dodgers had just six hits today, and five came from Aaron Miles (three) and Jamey Carroll (two). The duo also combined for the only Dodger run, with Miles singling in Carroll after the latter had doubled to lead off the third inning. Credit where credit is due: Miles has five multihit games in his last ten, and while he’s not drawing any walks or hitting for any power, his recent production is still about 10,000% more than we’d ever expected from him.

Of course, when you’re rolling out a lineup that features Dioner Navarro 6th (3 K!) and Juan Castro 7th, you’ve basically conceded the game anyway. As we’d worried all season, once Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier stopped being world-beaters, this team was going to be in massive trouble, and they’ve each been in mini-slumps, with today’s combined 0-7 dropping both of their May OPS lines down near .700. Factor in Ted Lilly‘s continued issues with keeping the ball in the park, and this was a game that was over pretty much right after it began, save for a brief spurt of life in the 9th that came up short.

The Dodgers have scored just seven runs in their last three games, and five or more just twice over their last sixteen. It might not get much easier this week, with Shaun Marcum, Randy Wolf, Madison Bumgarner, Gavin Floyd, and Mark Buehrle among the scheduled opposing pitchers.

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Let’s not overlook two brief bullpen positives from today’s game: Scott Elbert, making his season debut, struck out all three Diamondbacks he saw in the 8th inning. Javy Guerra, making his major league debut, followed by striking out one in a scoreless 9th inning. Elbert will have to prove it over much more than just one inning after how inconsistent he’s been over the last three seasons, but this is definitely a step in the right direction, and a glimpse into just how much talent he has if he can figure out how to harness it.

Tony Jackson Joins the Anti-Sacrifice Bunt Alliance

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Though we all groan every time “columnists” like Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers decide to focus their tired shtick on the Dodgers, I’ve always felt that beat writers Tony Jackson, Dylan Hernandez, and Ken Gurnick consistently produce solid work, often being the first to break news and generally providing an informed, balanced viewpoint to readers. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect – it was only a few months ago when I got on Jackson for employing “blown saves” when discussing Jonathan Broxton, for example – but even if the Dodgers don’t have the quantity of beat writers they once did, the quality is still there.

It’s with this in mind that Jackson deserves credit for putting pen to paper on a topic that’s long been known in the stats community, but which the casual fan has been slow to accept: sacrifice bunts are almost always the wrong choice.

Jackson:

The sacrifice bunt is the most counterproductive strategic ploy in the game.

And Mattingly, in apparent attempt to conform to conventional baseball wisdom, put it on twice in the final innings against the Diamondbacks, resulting in the Dodgers giving away at least one and possibly two outs at critical junctures of what became a one-run loss.

Yes. YES. A million times, yes. Jackson is referencing the final two innings of yesterday’s embarrassing loss to Arizona, a game in which Chad Billingsley and Kenley Jansen held the Diamondbacks to just one hit and an unearned run (partially due to a blown pickoff play which Jamey Carroll took blame for). The Dodgers, as has become an epidemic this season, managed just three hits from the regular lineup (Billingsley’s double was the fourth), dooming Billingsley to another undeserved loss on his way to a 10-13, 3.20 ERA season.

In the 8th, James Loney led off with a double (a momentous occurrence that probably deserved a post of its own), before being replaced on the bases by Tony Gwynn. Mattingly had Rod Barajas bunt him over to third, despite Gwynn being fast enough to score from second on most hits and despite Barajas being one of the only Dodgers showing any semblance of power.

Jackson summed up what happened next:

Except that the guy behind him, righty hitting rookie Jerry Sands, didn’t come up. Instead, Mattingly sent Dioner Navarro to pinch hit — now he takes the unconventional route, burning his backup catcher — to face the right-handed Hernandez because Navarro is a switch hitter, with all of his hits this season coming from the left side.

Only this time, Navarro didn’t get a hit. This time, he struck out on three pitches.

So much for giving yourself two chances to get the run in. Now, having chosen to simply give up one of your three outs, you are left with one.

Jay Gibbons popped out to left, and the threat was wasted. In the 9th, Carroll led off with a single, and Mattingly tried unsuccessfully to employ the sacrifice again, asking Aaron Miles to sacrifice Carroll to second. Miles couldn’t handle that task twice, and once he was finally allowed to swing away down 0-2, struck out. There’s a good chance Miles wouldn’t have grabbed a hit anyway, but two of the final six outs the Dodgers were given were simply thrown away by the employment of the sacrifice.

Here’s where I can help Jackson, though:

I have no data to support my case here, other than more than a decade of watching a big league baseball game almost every day and a long-building skepticism about the effectiveness of this age-old strategy. One of the arguments that could be made in Mattingly’s favor is that the Dodgers have such a weak offense that they have to try to create runs. I say the exact opposite, that their offense is so weak they simply can’t afford to be giving up outs when they have only three of them per inning to work with.

Jackson’s completely correct, but even if he doesn’t know it, there is plenty of data to back him up. Let’s head over to the run expectancy charts over at tangotiger.net, which allow you to select a baserunner/outs situation and is defined as “presenting the average number of runs that scored, from that base/out state, to the end of that inning”, based on the results of all games played over a certain time period.

When Loney (replaced by Gwynn) doubled to lead off the 8th inning, the Dodgers had a man on second with no outs. After Barajas’ sacrifice, they had a man on third with one out. Which situation usually results in more runs, based on every time each has happened from 1993-2010?

Avg. number of runs scored, 1993-2010
Man on second, no outs: 1.170
Man on third, one out: 0.989

How about in the 9th inning, when after Carroll’s single, they had a man on first with no outs? Mattingly’s goal was to get Carroll to second with one out, but when Miles failed, the result was a man on first with one out.

Avg. number of runs scored, 1993-2010
Man on first, no outs: 0.941
Man on second, one out: 0.721
Man on first, one out: 0.562

As you can see, in each case, the highest likelihood of scoring a run was to allow the next batter to swing away, not to give away an out in the hopes of securing one more base. In the 9th inning situation, the damage was particularly severe, since the sacrifice wasn’t successful.

There are, as Jackson notes, some rare times when the sacrifice bunt is appropriate. If, for example, the pitcher had been batting in either of these situations, then you can certainly make the argument to try to get an extra base to go along with the out the pitcher is almost certain to make. But as ineffective as Barajas, Sands, and Miles have all been at times this year, the better choice was to let them hit – particularly in the 8th inning, when the fleet Gwynn was already in scoring position and likely able to score from second on most hits.

I don’t know if Mattingly knows those numbers, but he disappointingly said after the game that it was an easy decision, one he’d do again. I’ve been generally pleased with Mattingly’s performance so far this season, but if there’s one area he’s proven to be infuriating, it’s with his use of bunts. As we saw yesterday, such decisions can directly harm the run production of a team that’s already terribly struggling in that arena.

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No official decision has been announced yet, but it sounds more and more likely that Blake Hawksworth will be headed to the disabled list, and that his replacement will be Javy Guerra, who would be making his major league debut. As I said yesterday, there’s not much in the way of immediate reinforcements ready in ABQ, so it’s not a total surprise to see them dip down to AA Chattanooga instead.

The Dodger Bullpen Has Lost Control

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It’s no secret that the Dodger bullpen, once thought to be a strength, has dissolved into a nightmare. Just look at the nine pitchers they’ve had enter a game as a reliever this year. Two, Jonathan Broxton & Hong-Chih Kuo, were shadows of their former selves before hitting the disabled list. One is Ramon Troncoso, who was so ineffective (12 hits with just 17 batters faced) before he was shipped out that it was hard to believe, and he’s unlikely to be seen back with the team any time soon.

The remaining six – Vicente Padilla, Kenley Jansen, Mike MacDougal, Blake Hawksworth, Matt Guerrier and Lance Cormier – remain with the team. (Scott Elbert gets a pass for the moment since he’s not yet appeared in a game.) The results have been terrifying, particularly in the wake of Guerrier and Padilla nearly blowing an excellent Clayton Kershaw start last night by allowing three runs in relief. For Padilla, that makes five hits and seven baserunners over his last three appearances, though he’s generally escaped criticism because the Dodgers have won all three games and because he’s anatomically correct, or something.

Surprisingly, the problem isn’t that the group is striking out fewer batters even without the Broxton and Kuo of old, as the rate of 8.05/9 is 10th in the bigs and is actually slightly ahead of 2010′s rate of 7.97/9. Unfortunately, that doesn’t matter as much when the walk rate of the Dodger bullpen is the worst in baseball. No, really: the 4.76 BB/9 rate as of this morning is 30th in MLB. With the exception of Troncoso, who couldn’t avoid getting hit long enough to even issue four balls to a single batter, not one Dodger reliever is walking fewer than three per nine. Five of them – Padilla, MacDougal, Jansen, Broxton, & Kuo – have BB/9 rates north of five. Last year, of the relievers who saw more than a token appearance, only three – Broxton, Jansen, and George Sherrill – walked more than four per nine. On the whole, the walk rate has risen by nearly a full batter per game, from 3.90 last year to this year’s 4.76.

Worse, when the batters do put the balls in play, they’re not being converted into outs. We’ve been noting anecdotal examples all year where balls that weren’t hit all that hard have just barely eluded the collection of range-challenged defenders that are generally behind the pitchers, and the stats bare that out. The Dodgers are 26th in Baseball Prospectus‘ Defensive Efficiency, and it’s no surprise that the teams below them are struggling greatly in the standings as well. The combination of the two is in large part why the club ranks dead last in percentage of inherited runners stranded, at just 65.5%. By comparison, the Royals, who lead that category (!), strand 82.8% of such runners.

It’s a pretty simple formula, then. A bullpen that issues far too many free passes in front of a defense that fails to convert enough balls into outs is doomed to failure. None of this is completely surprising, of course, for a bullpen that has lost two of the most effective relievers of the last four years and has had to patch with retreads like Cormier and MacDougal. It’s also not likely to get better soon, particularly with the erratic Elbert yet to contribute and with little help on the way from AAA Albuquerque. Should be good for TV ratings, though, because you can never turn away from a Dodger game before the last out is made, right?

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James Loney and Juan Uribe each went without hits, again. It’s not even really fun to point that out anymore. But at least Jamey Carroll continued his generally unrecognized excellence by getting on three times, and even Aaron Miles is contributing enough that I can’t even really make fun of him anymore, despite his .286 batting average being totally empty.

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I also don’t want to shortchange Kershaw, because his his 80 Game Score (thanks to 11 K, 3 H, 2 BB, over seven scoreless innings) ranks as the fifth best start of his entire career.

Rk Date Opp Rslt App,Dec IP H ER BB SO GSc BF
1 2010-05-09 COL W 2-0 GS-8 ,W 8.0 2 0 3 9 84 28
2 2010-09-14 SFG W 1-0 SHO9 ,W 9.0 4 0 0 4 83 30
3 2009-04-15 SFG W 5-4 GS-7 7.0 1 1 1 13 83 22
4 2009-08-08 ATL L 1-2 GS-7 7.0 2 0 1 10 82 23
5 2011-05-13 ARI W 4-3 GS-7 ,W 7.0 3 0 2 11 80 26
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/14/2011.

Sometimes I think we don’t fully recognize the maturation we’re seeing right before our very eyes, particularly in reining in the wildness and high pitch counts of previous years. Kershaw’s the best thing about the Dodgers right now.

Juan Castro Cannot Be Destroyed

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In “things Eric Stephen predicted a week ago” news, Juan Castro will be joining the Dodgers for what feels like the 78th time. (It’s the 4th.) If I cared enough about Juan Castro to actually turn my computer on, I’d find the story I posted in the spring showing that he and Aaron Miles were two of the least valuable players in recent history, and now they’re on the same team. But it’s Castro, and he’s really not worth the effort, so this quick post written from a phone will have to suffice for you all to make fun of him. With Russ Mitchell likely to be the one to lose his job when Rafael Furcal returns in a week or so, I suppose this means we ought to root for Casey Blake‘s return to health more than ever, since that’s the only way this will get fixed.

As for Ivan DeJesus, sent back down for Castro, we’d long since acknowledged that the team wouldn’t play him, so I’m glad he’ll at least get regular playing time rather than riding the bench.

Rained Out

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Two innings of baseball were followed by more than two hours of rain delay, before the umpires finally took mercy upon us all and called it a night. That’s too bad for the Dodgers, because it wiped out the unlikeliest run the team will score all season – a Jon Garland single driving in Dioner Navarro, who had doubled. No makeup date announced, though I looked at the upcoming schedule and there’s really no good choices since the Dodgers don’t go back to Pittsburgh.

It’s almost too bad, because I spent much of the rain delay wondering just how hilarious this game might end up being if Garland was unable to return. The Dodger bullpen is already down a man with Blake Hawksworth injured, and Matt Guerrier was likely unavailable after pitching three of the previous four nights. It’s uncertain whether Vicente Padilla would have been available for a back-to-back appearance, which would have left seven innings or more to be sucked up by Lance Cormier, Scott Elbert, Mike MacDougal, and Kenley Jansen. Which: yikes.

Dodger Talk “Rain Delay Theater” was not without its uses, however, and I’m not just talking about the guy who wanted to bring back Milton Bradley or the guy who claimed to be a fan since 1948 yet wanted to know why the club was wearing a black #4 memorial patch.

In response to a question about why Elbert was recalled over Rubby De La Rosa, co-host Josh Suchon passed along a note from Ned Colletti saying that de la Rosa would be the next man in line if a starter were to go down, but that he’d likely not be recalled to join the bullpen. de la Rosa has been very good in Chattanooga, with a 44/12 K/BB ratio in 34.1 innings, but I imagine this is not to be taken as a blanket statement that isn’t subject to change. We can’t yet know what the circumstances will be the next time an extra starter will be needed. It could be next week, or it could be late August. It could be a spot start, or it could be a long-term opening. The Dodgers could still be hanging in the race, or they could be dead and buried, 15 games out. The point is, while it’s great that Colletti thinks that highly of de la Rosa, it’s still just as likely that we’ll see John Ely or Tim Redding the next time a starter is needed, depending on how things have played out at that point.