Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?

Every year, David Pinto at Baseball Musings releases the Probabilistic Model of Range , his very good defensive metric which measures batted ball characteristics like velocity and location in order to determine how many outs teams should have made on those batted balls relative to how many outs were actually made. This year, he also gave the PMR for defense behind pitchers , which Beyond the Boxscore translated into runs and ERA . If you doubt that defense can make much of a difference behind the pitchers, look at how the numbers ran for the Pirates. Ian Snell lost 0.63 of a run on his ERA, which would've brought his ugly 5.42 down to 4.79. Tom Gorzelanny adjustment is almost as big, while Zach Duke only lost about a tenth of a run to defense, according to this metric. Of course, looking at our pitchers' adjusted ERAs is still depressing because it really drives home just how poor our pitching staff was this year. The other interesting thing that leaps off the page at me is tha...

About a week ago, ACTA Sports and the Hardball Times were kind enough to send me a preview of this year's Hardball Times Annual . The topic of the preview that they sent me was an interesting one-- quantifying managerial performances. If making a good fielding metric is hard, finding a way to quantify managerial performance has to be nearly impossible. They designed a "Manager of the Year Tool" that compares the team's expected record based on preseason projections (revised for playing time, trades, injuries, etc.) with their actual Pythagorean record and their actual linear weight runs, then compares the team's actual record with their Pythagorean record, then considers the number of wins generated by stolen bases. As a result, Cecil Cooper and Mike Scioscia come up as the best managers in their respective leagues, with John McLaren/Jim Riggleman and Bud Black coming up as the worst. It's not a perfect tool as it relies fairly heavily on projections, which ar...

I've been waiting for someone to do something like this . John Dewan, author of the Fielding Bible and creator of baseball's version of the plus/minus system looked at the -40 his system gave McLouth and decided to break down his play in center to see if a.) he really was the worst fielder in baseball this year or b.) he was worthy of the Gold Glove. It's a really interesting read and Dewan's conclusion is close to the one I came to in August while trying to figure out how to quantify Nate's defense (though mine was mostly based in opinion and his is based on much harder data): All in all, I no longer think of McLouth as the worst center fielder in baseball. It means something that at least some of the managers and coaches think highly of him. And we see that two areas of his defense are above average: his ability to prevent baserunners from advancing on hits and his ability to make a play above and beyond the ordinary. But we also see that, despite this low error t...

Let me start this post off by offering this: I think Nate McLouth is awesome. I was pumped that he had such a great year this year. The Pirates need more players like Nate McLouth. I'm happy for him that he won a Gold Glove today. Too often, Pirate players are overlooked by the baseball writers when it comes to passing out the yearly awards (see: Jason Bay finishing 12th in the 2005 MVP ballotting) and to see one of them win an award like this is a nice recognition that from time to time, good baseball happens in Pittsburgh. On the other hand, McLouth winning a Gold Glove for his play in center this year is somewhat akin to WHYGAVS winning a Pulitzer Prize (someday, my friends ...). It's just not what we do here. McLouth is a great offensive center fielder who was qualified by almost every advanced fielding statistic as being wretched. I've already talked a lot about McLouth's defense this year , and my conclusion in August was this: It seems to me that McLouth is proba...

If you're a long-time WHYGAVS reader, you know that I love off-season player projections. No projection model is perfect, but I think that canvassing the best of them can give you a fairly good idea of what's going to happen next year. Accordingly, I was excited to get an e-mail from the publisher of the Bill James Handbook telling me that they would send me their projections early if I was willing to review them and write about them on my blog. I don't know how to "review" projections, exactly, but I suppose it's fair enough for me to say that James' projections are certainly not my favorite. That distinction goes to the system that I'm fairly certain is the best: BP's PECOTA. Still, I like the projection section of his book, even if the projections in it are a bit unadventurous (more on that later) and even if my favorite parts of the book are John Dewan's Fielding Bible Awards and Plus/Minus defensive ratings. Every year James takes a look a...

When I was digging through Craig Hansen's PitchFX last night, it dawned on me that maybe instead of doing that to be funny, I should use it to look at something that I find actually interesting. Accordingly, I thought I'd take a look at Ross Ohlendorf's start and see what some of the more objective data came up with. First we'll start with pitch types (you can find them in the table on the top of every Ohlendorf page). His fastball average 93.66 and toped out at 95.5, which is pretty much exactly what was to be expected. He threw 62 fastballs for 38 strikes. There were a few lower velocity fastballs, around 90-91 that Charlie thought might have been sinkers, which Ohlendorf threw in the minors, but the break charts don't really bear that out and Rocco DeMaro's radio profile of him more or less indicated that he dropped the sinker once he came to Pittsburgh He only threw seven changeups and they clocked in at 83.14. Of those seven, he threw four for strikes. The...

Seems like a pretty popular topic for debate all over the place recently is the slumping of Ryan Doumit and Nate McLouth. Since they're two of three best hitters left on the team (yes, I'm including Adam LaRoche), their slumping has a lot to do with the recent dearth of offense we've seen from the Pirates. They needed to step up in the absence of Bay and Nady and they really haven't. We all knew the schedule in August was going to be brutal and we've certainly faced a tough stretch of pitchers, but I think that the answer is a little easier. Ryan Doumit 2006: 235 total plate appearances, 21 total games caught Ryan Doumit 2007: 258 total plate appearances, 41 total games caught Ryan Doumit 2008: 354 total plate appearances, 81 total games caught Nate McLouth 2006: 297 plate appearances Nate McLouth 2007: 382 plate appearances Nate McLouth 2008: 549 plate appearances If you spend two seasons as a bit player, suddenly playing every day is something that's going to ...

I will admit that I'm often baffled by what to do with columns like this one that ran in the Post-Gazette a couple of days ago. After doing this blogging thing for three years, I've learned that getting worked up by little thing that's written about the Pirates in the media only leads to high blood pressure. Still, I can tell that this particular column by Smizik has lead to a lot of consternation among fans and I feel like ignoring it gives the impression that I agree with it. I don't agree with it. Signing Xavier Nady to an extension is one of the five worst ideas I've heard this year, and that's not limiting things to the Pirates. If the Pirates sign Xavier Nady to an extension, I'll probably quit this blog entirely and I'm not even close to kidding. There's a number of reasons for that, but we can start at the top. Nady is 29 years old and having a career year. That's because that's what happens when players are 28 or 29; they peak. I...

At some point every summer, this happens. Some Pirate pitcher starts cruising through start after start and the fans get really excited about how well said pitcher is throwing the ball and he gets declared the Pirates "ace," then everyone gets all disappointed and angry when said pitcher stops living up to artificially raised expectations. Don't do this with Paul Maholm. He's recently been the only Pirate pitcher you can count on to go beyond the fifth inning regularly. Since May 31st , his shortest start was the six inning start he made against Baltimore on June 15th. He's got a 2.67 ERA in those games with a 1.03 WHIP. Most importantly, the Pirates are 5-3 in those eight starts (he's 4-0). Still, he's given up ten home runs in those eight starts, which is kind of high for a pitcher that's been on such a role. His strikeout rate isn't Zach Duke-bad, but it's not improved a whole lot over last year's. The same goes for his walk rate. The Ha...

If there's one thing that's really bugged me about the Pirates this year (OK, actually there's like 42 things, but this is #1), it's the way Ian Snell's pitched. He and Gorzo have been equally bad, but I kind of expected it out of Gorzo (mostly because I figured he'd be hurt this year). Snell's ugly start gnaws at me because I can't figure out why he's been so bad and there's no real obvious reason for his dropff. I'm not someone to sit around and let something bug me when I think I can figure out the answer, so I've been digging through Dan Brooks' fantastic PitchFX tool for Snell's starts to see if I can figure out what's different this year. This is the first year that the PitchFX data for every start are available to the public and the numbers I can find from last year are very incomplete. Instead, I'm going to compare the numbers from this year to what I found in the Bill James Handbook 2008 for Snell. He doesn'...

Today Zach Duke and Jair Jurjjens take the mound with the Pirates looking for their sixth straight win and second straight sweep, this time over a team much better than the lowly Giants. With Duke on the mound, this is as good a time as any to take some space and explain why I'm so worried about his ghastly low strikeout rates this year. The reason for my concern over Duke's strikeout rates is two-fold. First off, the Pirates' defense is bad. Their defensive efficiency, a raw measure of balls put into play that they turn into outs, is .680, second worst in the league . There's a drop-down menu to allow you to look at the efficiency ratings from the past and the Pirates are always towards the bottom of the league with a rating somewhere between .675 and .680. So we know that the Pirates are terrible at turning batted balls into outs. The more balls Duke allows in play, the more hits and runs he's going to allow. That's just how it goes with the Pirates. The main ...

As mentioned below, I'm going to take David Pinto's lineup analysis and run with it a bit in regards to the Pirates offense in 2008 (if you've been reading a while, you're probably realizing this is one of my favorite things to do in the off-season as I've done it each of the past two years ). As always, this comes with the disclaimer that we're working in hypotheticals here and nothing's set in stone. I'm just using this tool to try and guess at the answer to some questions we all have during the off-season. All of the projections I'm using are going to be Dan Szymborski's ZiPS , which I'll include the first time I name a player. Let's roll with this and see where we go. Lineup #1 Nate McLouth - CF (.259/.329/.415) Freddy Sanchez- 2B (.298/.340/.415) Jason Bay- LF (.265/.361/.478) Adam LaRoche- 1B (.272/.348/.492) Xavier Nady- RF (.258/.319/.449) Jose Bautista- 3B (.249/.329/.415) Ronny Paulino- C (.263/.321/.366) Jack Wilson- SS (.261...

Springing from the debate in the comments from my post yesterday about Steven Pearce starting the year in AAA, I dug around to see if anyone calculated the major league equivalency (MLE) numbers for his breakout 2007 in the minors. I remembered that I had seen Sean Smith's CHONE equivalencies on his blog, and I dug up the spreadsheet. This is how Pearce's minor league numbers might have translated if he spent his 2007 in Pittsburgh: .277/.327/.513 with 26 homers and 35 doubles in 551 PAs. You've probably noticed that that's better than the numbers that Nady (.278/.330/.476) and LaRoche (.272/.345/458) put up in 2007. You can debate the predictive values of MLEs if you like, but like all stats or projections that I use here, I'm just using them as a jumping off point. I'm not arguing that Pearce would've been better in right field than Nady last year or better at first base than LaRoche was last year or that he'll hit 30 homers in 2008. The point is that...

Lots of talk from the Pirates' front office lately has centered on making a deal to keep Adam LaRoche in black and gold for the foreseeable future. To that affect, Dejan ran this item in a PG story over the weekend: The Pirates initially made up their minds to approach Adam LaRoche about a long-term contract even before the Winter Meetings in early December. Part of the reasoning: Huntington values ballpark factor as a measuring tool, and LaRoche's left-handed power bat represents a terribly rare commodity all through the organization. On the surface it makes sense: lefty hitter, decent pop, good age (28 in 2008). If you're going to extend someone, it might as well be LaRoche, right? Actually, I'm not so sure. There's a couple factors involved here that people rarely talk about. Let's talk about them. The clip from the PG story clearly implies what the Pirates have mercilessly beaten into our heads the past few years: PNC Park is a stadium that favors left-hande...