THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

i’m not sure who is worse, but how about clint barmes and angel berroa

Yeah, I was thinking about Berroa. 

Barmes receives decent (not great) reviews for his fielding from the Fans, and PBP metrics actually have him as an above average SS.

Antonio Perez: .244/.320/.347 in 495 career at-bats, and he’s horrible defensively.  Was probably the worst player in baseball this year, with his .102/.185/.204 performance. 

And to think, he was the key prospect in the Ken Griffey Jr trade. 

I’ll toss in Joel Pineiro as one of the worst pitchers, too.  His stuff is gone, and man, he’s terrible.  How do you post an ERA of 6.50 in Safeco Field?

Alright, I’m going to nominate someone who has slightly better stats than some other pitchers, but considering how many innings he’s “pitched” in a favorable environment, I think Runelvys Hernandez deserves serious consideration.  His career line of .284/.354/.454 against is pretty good… if you’re looking for a left-fielder(!) And he exceeded himself this year by allowing .327/.394/.526 against.

For a position player, I think I’d go with Andy Phillips, who so far in his brief MLB career hasn’t brought anything offensively or defensively to his team.  At least with Guzman, he’s making outs on defense as well. :>

Interesting…

If I scan my projection database going into 06, most of the worst guys (the guys with the worst position adjusted projections (value over replacement) are not playing and are old.

The first one on my sorted (or sordid) list who meets the criteria is Willie Bloomquist.  His position adjusted projection going into 06 was -25.  Replacement is around -18.  His projected offensive lwts was -24.  His actual in 06 was -21.

The next one is Jason Tyner.  His projection as a DH was -25 also.  His projection as a hitter was -20 and his actual in 06 was -18.  Min actually uses him as a DH, which is incredible!  Isn’t that the guy who has never hit a HR in professional baseball or am I thinking of someone else?

Guzman would be next on my list had he played and assuming he didn’t change his projection much by playing well.  He projected at -23 (position adjusted), which is pretty hard for a SS!

As a side note, the hero of last night’s game, Alexis Gomez, projected at -22 as a RF’er.

Lance Niekro is next on the list.  Amazingly, he got 204 PA as a 1B who can’t hit a lick!  His father must have some awesome juice!

I had him projected at -22 total.  His hitting was projected at -10, more from regressing than anything else, and he hit to the tune of -23 this year!  What a loser.

The last one is Borchard, who proected at -20 total (as a DH).  His hitting was projected at -15 and it actually was -13.  He also got an amazing 260 PA.  The guy has no real defensive position I don’t think, and can’t hit.  Duh!

Amazing that SEA had 2 of my top 4 and for over 500 PA!

All of the above guys play for non-sabermetric teams, as far as I can tell.

For pitchers, I’m going to do the same thing:  Look at my projection database and make sure that they meet Tango’s criteria in age and TBF, and also that they pitched badly this year, so that their projection remains terrible.  If a have a pitcher who projected horribly, but pitched well this year over a substantial number of innings, his projection might change a lot for the better, such that he might not be such a “bad pitcher” anymore (in the present and in the future).

Keep in mind the “metric” I am using for pitchers.  It is my normalized component ERA (NERC).  It is context-neutral, adjusted for park, opponent, and defense.  When used in a projection model, it presumably tells exactly how good a pitcher is, true-talent-wise, as compared to another pitcher (in the same role).  IOW, if we took two pitchers and pitched them in exactly the same role/situations on the same team, etc., in the future, the one with the better NERC projection would end up with the better ERA (on the average of course).

Also keep in mind that the average starter has an NERC of 4.20, the average reliever around 3.90 and the average closer around 3.30.

Again, most of the worst ones on my list are older pitchers.

Jason Marquis had an NERC projection of around 4.70.  It was 5.22 this year.

Kyle Snyder projected to around 4.70 and was 4.79.

I agree that Pineiro is up there.  He projected to around a 4.50 and pitched to a 5.53.  I probably overrated him in his projection because after his arm troubles a couple of years ago, he is nowhere near the pitcher he once was (which was very good).  He is terrible now.

I’ll have to spend more time to come up with more.

I can’t imagine he’ll get enough at-bats to qualify next year (good lord, I hope not), but if he does, may I suggest Reggie Abercrombie as a very serious contender to Guzman’s 2007 crown.

Here’s a few. I know OPS+ and ERA+ aren’t the best, but they are a quick and convenient sorting critera. Here’s a bunch of guys with career OPS+ under 80. I don’t have good information about their defense, so no judgement about whether it “helps” their case or not.

Hitters:
-Chris Woodward: 247/303/384 78 OPS+
-Miguel Olivo: 240/279/406 78 OPS+
-Nick Punto: 261/324/344 77 OPS+
-Alex Cora: 244/310/344 75 OPS+
-Pete Orr: 276/304/365 73 OPS+
-Aaron Miles: 280/322/360 70 OPS+
-Cezar Izturis: 259/295/336 68 OPS+
-Alfred Amezega: 240/306/325 67 OPS+
-Abraham Nunez: 243/313/318 64 OPS+
-Matt Treanor: 220/315/289 62 OPS+
-Choo Freeman: 225/296/333 55 OPS+

Bonus:
-Marlon Byrd: 263/327/373 85 OPS+ as OFer
-Eric Munson: 211/286/400 80 OPS+ as a corner guy

Pitchers:
-Sir Sydney Ponson: 6610 BFP in career, 92 ERA+, but last three years 90, 67, 70 in 431 innings.
-Chad Harville: 84 career ERA+ in 820 BFP
-Wandy Rodriguez: 78 ERA+ in 1171 BFP
-Brandon Duckworth: 76 career ERA+ in 1916 BFP
-Ryan Vogelson: 72 ERA+ in 1453 BFP

Bonus:
-Joe Mays hasn’t been worth a darn since his big year in 2001.

I’ll second Joe Mays.  No dobut about that.  You have to separate hitters by defensive position.  There should be almost no catchers on the list as you simply can’t find any who hit bad enough relative to the average catcher.  The average catcher is like -12 in lwts per 150.  I don’t know what that is in OPS or OPS+, but it is low, probably near 80 in OPS+.  Guys like Treanor and Olivo are nowhere near even replacement level, despite being poor hitters, relative to the average player at any position.

Juan Castro.

Ok, unless someone wants to put in his last cent, I will create a poll with the following candidates:

Non-pitchers:
Angel Berroa, 28
Willie Bloomquist, 28
Joe Borchard, 27
Choo Freeman, 26
Lance Niekro, 27
Andy Philips, 29

Pitchers:
Casey Fossum, 28
R. Hernandez, 28
Joe Mays, 30
Joel Pineiro, 28
Sidney Ponson, 29
Mike Wood, 26

Look for it in a few days.

If Pineiro--a guy once thought to have a future as a #1/#2--is up for consideration, then I also nominate Josh Towers & Bruce Chen.  Good enough in 05 to get *way too much* playing time in 06.

All-in-all, though, I’d vote for Bloomquist.  He’s never offered anything to the M’s, and it’s amazing he’s stuck around as long as he has.

Mike Wood, on the other hand, is a guy I hate to see picked on.  He’s had a bad defense behind him--see Angel Berroa--since he arrived in KC, and really, as a guy who induces a lot of grounders, could become a useful mopup/swing/#5 for some mid-tier team.

I was thinking about Chen too.  He played on 8 teams in a 5-yr period.  If he has another season like he had in 2006, I’d definitely nominate him for 2007.  He also had a very low LI, meaning he has no trust.  Maybe I’ll change my mind on him.

As for Towers, I’d like to see a horrible 2007 before nominating him.

As for Mike Wood, his K/BB in 05-06 was 89/85 (excluding IBB, including HBP), with 28 HR on 215 hits.  His career FIP was 5.48, all of which have nothing to do with his fielders, and all of which are horrible numbers.

Willie F. Bloomquist has only one skill - hitting the crap out of Jarrod Washburn.  Now that he’ll never get to face Wash outside of batting practice Bloomquist has no reason to be on a roster.

I wouldn’t vote for any of those pitchers - they have all been starters.  Not sure who to nominate but I’m sure there’s a several relievers who are not as good as those guys, and some of the pitchers above might be quite useful if used out of the bullpen.

JC Romero is pretty terrible.  Not sure if he meets the age requirement.

Rally, thanks for reminding me about the starter/relief issue.  There is a huge penalty for being a starter, and, I should definitely give it more weight. 

Of the 6, Mike Wood has split his time between starting/relief, while Joe Mays and Pineiro have also done that recently.

I think Retrosheet is the only site(*) with the intelligence to easily split the data of pitchers between starters/relievers, so let’s look at Mike Wood.  Through 2005, he faced 695 batters as a starter, and 329 as a reliever.  His performance as a reliever shows him as being serviceable as a #4/#5 reliever.  If we look at Mike Wood’s gamelogs for 2006:
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=1806&position=P&season=
he faced 147 batters, with 10 K, 8 NIBB, with only 56% of his pitches as strikes.  He allowed 24 runs (18 ER) in 30 IP. 

Mays has 400 career PA as a reliever, and he’s fairly terrible.

Pineiro faced 101 batters in relief this year:
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsd.aspx?playerid=1094&position=P&season=

20 K, and only 5 NIBB.  64% of his pitches were strikes.  13 R, all earned, in 24 IP.  So, maybe the jury is still out on him.

(*) Correct me if I’m wrong.

Well, due to the 40 IP minimum, you’re already self-selecting out the bad relievers.  Yes, there are crappy relievers worse than Pineiro or Wood or Chen, but no manager in the world gives 40 innings a year to a terrible reliever. 

The only way to include relievers in this discussion would be to lower the threshold for innings pitched. 

And, while I’m one of the leading anti-Willie Bloomquist proponants around, I should point out that he’s an excellent baserunner.  So, he does have one skill beyond hitting Jarrod Washburn.  It just doesn’t come close to making up for the fact that he hits like a girl.

I guess the title should be:
“Guys who are at their baseball peak and are playing in MLB but who have been given too much time in MLB”.

Abraham Nunez and
Brandon Duckworth

A couple of weeks ago I would’ve said Alexis Gomez. Now I think he’s Willie Mays.