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Friday, May 22, 2009
Micah Owings
We have two recent articles on Micah Owings. One from Jeremy, and another by Colin. The question is what to do with Micah Owings: 100% nonpitcher, platoon between OF/pitcher, mostly pitcher + occaisional PH.
In 147 MLB PA, he has a slash line of .314/.345/.569. In 71 MiLB PA, he has a slash line of .354/ .368/ .492. He’s been used as a PH five times, which means the manager thinks he’s something other than your typical pitcher.
As a pitcher, he is basically a slightly below-average starter, with a “neutral” win % of around .465 in a “neutral” league (or +.085 wins above replacement). That makes him your standard #4 starter. Such a pitcher, if we give him 180 IP (20 full games) would be a 1.7 WAR pitcher. On top of that, he gets to bat, as a pitcher, and as a PH. If you give him 50 PA as a pitcher, and figure he’s +.015 wins per PA above the average pitcher-as-a-hitter, that’s another +0.75 wins… nothing to sneeze at, that’s for sure. If we give him 10 PH at bats, and presume, he’s +.001 wins per PA above the average PH, that’s another +.01 wins (essentially irrelevant). So, we’ve got ourselves a 2.46 WAR players, as a pitcher. That makes him an $11MM - $12MM player.
That’s quite a starting point to compare him against. If you make him a full-time hitter, let’s say he’d be a +1 win hitter per 162 games. Let’s figure he’d be an average-fielding corner outfielder. And, I presume, a below-average baserunner. That makes him a league average player. Add in the 2.25 WAR per 162 G, and give him 80% playing time, and you’ve got yourself a 1.8 WAR player. With a huge level of uncertainty.
So, no, it makes it virtually impossible to turn him into a hitter-only player.
But, what about a part-timer? I would suspect that he’d become both a worse hitter and worse pitcher if that were to happen. Let’s say that he goes from being a .465 pitcher to a .440 pitcher. Let’s also say that instead of 20 full games, he’ll only be able to pitch 15 full games (135 IP). That makes him a +0.9 WAR pitcher. He gets 40 PA as a pitcher, which means adding +0.6 wins. As a hitter, let’s say he’s now a +0.5 win hitter per 162 games. And we make him play half the time. That makes him a +0.9 WAR hitter. Add it up, and we have a 2.4 WAR hybrid. With a huge level of uncertainty.
So, this makes more sense, but it’s a break-even proposition, but with huge risks both ways.
As it stands, through simple intuition, wisdom, and experience, Micah Owings and MLB have found the optimal setting in how to use Micah Owings: as a starting pitcher.
Tango, your conclusion doesn’t follow your argument: with the uncertainties in your projections, especially the last one, your conclusion has to be one of ‘unknown’ and ‘unknowable’.
Perhaps it could be said that his current usage is optimal, but given the phenomenal uncertainty in the hybrid case in particular, as well as his defensive and base-running skills, it’s not at all clear that even that is true.
I’d like to think that he’s being underutilized as a pinch hitter at the present time: he gives you a league-average hitter* off the bench that doesn’t burn any of your positional flexibility or a roster spot.
* Pinch hitting is a complicated thing to analyse, of course, due to the small sample sizes and much-worse-than-league-average performance of pinch hitters in general.