Comments on: Top 41 Review: #16-20

By: Toby Hyde

Toby Hyde — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:36:59 +0000

Pick up the pieces. I expressed that poorly, but stand behind the main idea: pitchers aren’t scared of Tejada so they’re letting him make contact. Thus, he’s seeing lots of hittable fastballs. If pitchers were more scared of his power, they would nibble more, and throw him more breaking balls.

By: blooblud

blooblud — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:34:35 +0000

“As a result, he rarely strikes out because there are so many pitches in the strike zone.”

My head just exploded.

By: Toby Hyde

Toby Hyde — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:33:04 +0000

Meddler, yeah I was using go/ao rather than gb%. I suppose I should start using gb%.

BABIP in the minors is tricky. And I’d caution against relying too heavily on it.

I now can’t remember where I read it (likely BP or HBT), but it works differently in the minors. In the big leagues, as we know, BABIP really does oscillate around .300 and pitchers have relatively little control over it. (The exception is pitchers with an exceptional breaking ball can post repeatedly low BABIPs, but we digress). The point is that all MLB guys have reached a certain minimum level of competency having reached the bigs. This is not true in the minors where some of the guys move up, some move on from playing baseball and an even smaller number make the big leagues.

Anyway, the study I’m recalling found that at the minor league level, pitchers with lower BABIPs went on to be better MLBers than their minor league counterparts with higher BABIPs. The point is that PREVENTING HITS is an MLB SKILL, shared more or less evenly by MLB pitchers. I think that among MLB pitchers, their BABIPs rose through the minors from very low to near .300 as they approached the majors. This might have been a different study.

The other problem with using BABIP at the A-ball level is that A-ball glovework is vastly inferior to the stuff played on MLB diamonds.

It occurs to me that I haven’t read much on the subject this season, so if there is new, current research on the predictive power of minor league BABIP, please point it out to me. .

By: Meddler

Meddler — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:56:20 +0000

Agreed 100%, there’s nothing in Carson’s BABIP that suggests his results are out of whack with what should be expected of an average defense. The stranger part is that the Gnats have a poor defense, and it actually seems like they’ve played up for him a bit when you look at his BABIPs on different types of batted balls. If anything, they’re a bit high. The BABIPs on FBs, GBs, and LDs in the major leagues, according to fangraphs, is about .730, .240, and .150 respectively. Carsons are .778, .232, and .214. In this case, the high error and unearned run rate seems more likely to be statistical noise than his low overall BABIP, and though his ERA is low, its more likely a result of his 66.1 LOB%. Still, none of this should kill his neutralized run rates. This is all reflected in his FIP and tRA, the proclaimed defense independent run rates, which are 3.43 and 3.27, respectively, both agreeing that he’s been quite effective.

Here’s the fangraphs article that talks about eBABIP and the rates on different types of batted balls:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/expected-babip-for-pitchers

Also, Toby, when you say “His groundball rate of nearly two is still strong” are you talking about GO/AO? In this case, and in most, I think GB% is a much better indication of ability than GO/AO. The big reason for this is GOs and AOs are just outs, and don’t include hits. As far as the pitcher is concerned, the difference between many groundouts and groundball hits is fairly arbitrary (not always, but often), and is more a result of defense and defensive positioning than a flaw on the pitchers part. There are other reasons I prefer GB%, but in this case, as adropofvenom points out, his 60% GB% is much more outstanding looking than his GO/AO ~2.00.

By: Chip Armonaitis

Chip Armonaitis — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:13:18 +0000

Toby,

You are way too kind on the Mets handling of Doyle.

The only thing all year I have seen worse was Castillo’s handing of the pop fly against the Yankees.

By: big baby

big baby — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:54:23 +0000

ruben tejada is the man, fact.

they challenge him? blah blah, he’s the man.

he has always had ridiculous plate discipline, even when he was a 17 year old in st. lucie.

every coach loves him. tim teuffel spent like 15 minutes going ga-ga over this kid.

ruben tejada is the man. 4lyfe

By: NickM

NickM — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:12:37 +0000

re: Carson – I know high K-rate is a really eye opening thing with pitching prospects, but its not always right. If you look at somebody like Chris Volstad, he is/was one of Florida’s top prospects and never put together eye-opening numbers .. about 8-9 hits per 9 IP, very low K-rate ..

By: adropofvenom

adropofvenom — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:28:56 +0000

Very much disagree with you on Carson, you point to the unearned runs allowed, but consider that Marte has 32 Errors, Wilmer Flores has 10, Valdespin has 8 in limited playing time. It’s that sheer quantity of errors (Bordering on the ridiculous) that is inflating his RA more then anything else. There’s a reason they subtract errors (And the runs that come from errors) from a Pitchers stats.

I can understand some concern about the lack of a great SO rate, but when you’re inducing 60% groundballs, you’re doing something right.

By: NickM

NickM — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:10:23 +0000

off topic, but worth posting — brad holt: 7.0 IP, 4 hits, 0 runs, 1 BB, 7 K

….and somewhat on topic news, tejada had another great game: 3-4 with a BB and 3 RBI.. Ike Davis on the other hand was hitless in 5 at bats but did have a BB.