Kuzul

This past Saturday was SABR Day, and Cleveland’s Jack Graney Chapter celebrated with a meeting in the press room of Progressive Field.

One of the star guest speakers was Mike Chernoff, the new Indians assistant general manager. Chernoff is a 2003 Princeton graduate, where he studied economics and played baseball.

Chernoff’s dad was in the back of the room; father and son have played a game of catch monthly for as long as the two remember.

The elder Chernoff works on the Mets radio team, and the younger’s career began as an intern with that very same team. Since then, Mike has worked his way up from Indians intern to Indians AGM.

Here are his thoughts on this year’s team.

• The front office expects to contend and surprise ahead of schedule, like it did in 2003 and 2004.
• Carlos Santana will start the season and in fact should be ready at the start of spring training.
• Chernoff compared Matt LaPorta to the Cliff Lee of 2007-2008—a player struggling with injuries and inconsistencies who spent some time in the minors and was poised for a breakout.
• Because of all the time Asdrubal Cabrera lost to injury last year, his return is like a “new acquisition” for the team.
• Other teams call all the time for Michael Brantley as their CF.
• Shin-Soo Choo is an elite RF, but “don’t tell his agent I said that.”
• Austin Kearns was re-signed as insurance in case Grady Sizemore can’t play every day at the start of the season. (Kearns would play left field with Brantley moving to center.)
• Jason Donald and Jayson Nix are in the mix at third, with Luis Valbuena at second.
• Second and third base are the biggest holes right now, but also the biggest positions of strength in the future.
• It would be unrealistic to start Lonnie Chisenhall in the majors without more time in AAA, but Chis may prove the team wrong in spring training.
• Understandably, the team gets a lot of calls about Chisenhall.
• Cord Phelps is ahead of Jason Kipnis right now, but both have similar star power.
• The second half of the season was much better than the first for the Indians, especially the pitching.
• Fausto Carmona, Justin Masterson, Mitch Talbot and Carlos Carrasco are set in the rotation. The fifth spot will go to one of the guys from last year or a free agent.
• The Indians have 10 to 12 available bullpen arms who are young but good.
• The front office, which has struggled putting together an effective bullpen in the past, has determined that it needs to get tons of guys with flexibility (options) so the team can swap parts in and out as needed.
• Bryce Stowell, Josh Judy and Zach Putnam are all candidates for a bullpen spot.
• Travis Hafner is still productive, but not a “seven-day” (everyday) player. He’s most effective against right-handers, so hopefully playing Pronk against righties and Kearns/Shelley Duncan against lefties will give the combined production of a top five DH.
• Mike Hargrove will have a variety of roles with the Tribe, on the field and off. For example, he will be an instructor at spring training. He also will serve as a liaison between the front office and fans, both by spreading the team’s message to the fans and by relaying fan feedback to the team.
• For what it’s worth, the business and baseball departments are now more closely tied to each other.

Chernoff also fielded a few questions:

• A SABR member asked why Manny Acta seemed so distant and reserved. Chernoff was a bit surprised, as he sees the manager as an open door guy with the team and the community. As an example, Chernoff noted that Acta is often out on the field with a fungo bat in his hands. Personally, I’d side with Chernoff on Acta—an aloof manager wouldn’t be out enjoying Snow Days.
• Another question was asked about Valbuena. Chernoff didn’t sugarcoat things, saying, “It’s not like you’re sitting there saying he’s terrible, and I’m sitting there saying, ‘Oh wow this is great!'” He said that the team sees a player that is still young and has tools, with a good minor league track record and one option left. If they get decent defense and good power out of him, he’ll stick around. If he plays like last year, he won’t just be off the field—he’ll be off the team.
• Someone asked about Hafner’s shoulder. Chernoff said that the shoulder is in the best condition it’s been in in three to four years, but Hafner still needs to work on it constantly.
• There was a very good question about psychological tools employed by the team. The Indians do have an on-staff psychologist that meets with the players regularly. Scouts notice players’ makeup on and off the field. All potential draftees are given a psychological test as well.
• One questioner mentioned the concerns about Drew Pomeranz‘s throwing motion. Chernoff said that because of the injury risks, the Indians may consider fast-tracking Pomeranz to maximize what they can get out of him.
• Alex White is the furthest along of any minor league pitcher. He’ll start in AAA but may reach the majors this season.

Chernoff kept referring to the Indians as a small market team, so there were a few questions about that.

• He said that the mid ’90s were essentially a perfect storm of consequences (my words, not his) that allowed the team to have such a high payroll. The stadium was brand-new, the Browns were gone and Cleveland’s economy was doing well. Now, the stadium is one of the oldest in the league (there were cherry pickers parked outside the stadium in several locations for renovations), the Browns are once again the most popular team in Cleveland and the economy hasn’t been great for anyone in the area.
• The quote of the day from Chernoff: “Really? The Angels can just take on the entire Vernon Wells contract?”
• Someone asked how the Indians can go from small market to middle market. Chernoff really didn’t have an answer, except to say that if the Indians aren’t bringing in money in ticket sales, they can’t put that money into payroll. He did say the team was working to figure out why Cleveland finished behind teams like Pittsburgh and Kansas City last year when the Tribe has had more recent success than those two clubs.
• Chernoff said the best way to handle free agent attrition was to focus on trade returns and diversify the “portfolio” of players gotten back. He pointed out that Casey Blake was signed as a 29-year-old minor league free agent, and the Indians eventually got Carlos Santana back for him.

This article originally appeared on Kanka’s Sports Page.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Last year, Manny Acta made a splash by dropping Grady Sizemore to second in the batting order.  This year, he’s considering moving him back to leadoff.  Is either the right move?  And how should the rest of the lineup look?

The Book, one of the best sabermetric books you can find, did extensive work on lineup construction.  Their main conclusion was that lineup order didn’t matter too much, but it can be optimized for marginal gains.  The Book‘s findings are summarized very well in this Beyond the Boxscore post.

To get the stats for Cleveland’s upcoming season, I used the Cairo Projections, which are described (and available for download) here.  The nice thing about version 0.5 of this years Cairos is that they include lefty/righty splits.  It uses wOBA, which is described in detail in the new Frangraphs library. As you can see, wOBA is scaled to be comparable to batting average, with a .321 wOBA being the league average in 2010.

First, here’s how the Indians lineup should look against lefties.  I took the top nine players in terms of wOBA against lefties, and fortunately things worked out nicely in the field.

The glaring omission, of course, is Grady Sizemore.  Cairo projects Sizemore to have a wOBA of only .309 against lefties.  But if you insist on playing him (both in the name of fan interest, and so Kearns doesn’t have to play center), you can remove Hafner from the lineup, DH Duncan, and move Donald up to eighth with Grady batting ninth.

Some other items of note:

• Everyone in this lineup is projected to hit above a .321 wOBA.  That’s nice, but .321 was the average in 2010 against all pitchers.  The average against lefties in 2011 may be higher or lower.
• Indians fans should be especially pleased to see such a nice number for Matt LaPorta, especially after his struggles at the plate these past few years.
• LaPorta and Santana have very similar numbers, but Santana has a slight edge in power, giving him the fourth spot over LaPorta.  While Choo also has very good power, his on base percentage is just too good to put anywhere but first.

Now, the lineup against righthanders.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take just the best nine hitters this time.  Michael Brantley and Travis Buck both rated ahead of Jack Hannahan.  Brantley, Buck, and Duncan all rated ahead of Nix and Donald as well.  But somebody has to play second and third base.

If you don’t think Jack Hannahan is going to break camp with the Tribe, feel free to move Nix up a spot in the order and plug Jason Donald’s .303 wOBA into the nine hole.

Notes on this lineup:

• Choo blew everyone away in both on base percentage and slugging.  But I chose to hit him leadoff, just to give our best hitter as many at bats as possible.
• Believe it or not, Sizemore is expected to have better slugging numbers than Santana, and Santana better on base numbers than Sizemore.  That’s why Grady is hitting fourth and Carlos second.
• Cabrera, Nix, and Hannahan/Donald will need to be good with the glove to make up for their below-average projections.  Other than that, though, this isn’t too bad a lineup.

Finally, for those interested, here are the numbers for a few key players who failed to crack either lineup:

This article originally appeared on Kanka’s Sports Page

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

A (hopefully) monthly look at the Tribe’s performance from a variety of statistical angles. Suggestions for additional stats and categories are welcome – just let me know.

Overall

Pythagorean Record

One of the most popular judges of a team’s performance is their Pythagorean record. “Pythag” is so named because the formula used looks similar to the Pythagorean formula used on right triangles. Pythag uses runs scored and runs allowed to determine a predicted record. Generally, teams that overperform their Pythags are considered lucky and those that underperformed are considered unlucky. However, small ball teams like the Angels and Twins consistently overperform their Pythagorean records, for reasons saberists have trouble explaining.

So far, the Indians Pythagorean record (which can be found on MLB.com’s standings page by turning on the “X W-L” category) is exactly the same as their actual record, 21-34. Recently, Fangraphs suggested that using runs scored/runs against in-season isn’t the best for Pythag. Instead, Base Runs should be used. This blog quickly picked up that idea and ran with it.

However, even using base runs, the Indians can’t shake their 21-34 record. Projecting that out over the course of the season, the Tribe is looking at a 62-100 record.

Playoff Odds

Several sites offer odds of a team making the playoffs. One such site is CoolStandings.com , which currently has the Indians at a 0.5% chance to win the division and less than a 0.1% chance to win the wildcard. Baseball Prospectus isn’t as optimisitic.

Their projections, explained at the bottom of the linked page, have the Indians at 0.14% to win the division and 0.006% to win the wildcard. However, their projected standings do have the Clevelanders finishing at 70-92.

“Wins in the Bank” and the Gambler’s Fallacy

Several sites also post preseason standings projections. This is where the “gambler’s fallacy” comes in. BaseballProjection.com has the Indians going 81-81 on the season, yet they have gone 21-34 so far. Someone following the gambler’s fallacy would think that the Tribe will go 60-47 the rest of the season to finish 81-81.

In fact, Chone’s projection should be thought of as a winning percentage, not a definite number of wins and losses. That is, we should accept the fact that the Indians are 21-34, and assume they will play .500 ball (81 wins/162 games) the rest of the way. That means the Indians should expect to win 53-54 of their remaining 107 games, for a final record of (at best) 75-87.

Pitching

BABIP

One of the most consistent statistics in baseball is a pitcher’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP). The more a pitcher throws, the more his BABIP will settle in the .290-.300 range. (Thank you to the commenter who corrected me last month. This is true for nearly all pitchers, with only rare exceptions like Jim Palmer , who had a great defense in Baltimore.

That being said, if you see a pitcher with a high BABIP early in the season, you can expect that BABIP – and his overall performance – to improve. Conversely, pitchers with a low BABIP can expect an increase. According to Fangraphs , Jake Westbrook and Chris Perez are already in the .290-.300 range. Those two have put up decent numbers and should expect to continue at the same pace.

That may be good news for the Indians front office, who could potentially swap Westbrook for some prospects within the next two months. Cleveland’s two best starters, Fausto Carmona and Mitch Talbot , have been beneficiaries of below-average BABIPs and can look forward to some minor regression. The same goes for relievers Tony Sipp , Joe Smith , and Frank Hermann .

In fact, Sipp may have already seen the start of that regression during Cleveland’s most recent road trip. Smith and his 7.71 ERA, meanwhile, won’t take kindly to the notion that he’s been lucky in a good sense. Hermann has been lights-out in a limited Major League debut, but he can’t keep up this level of talent forever.

Meanwhile, a majority of the Tribe’s staff should see their luck increase. David Huff and Aaron Laffey are due for some minor improvement, while the embattled Kerry Wood , Justin Masterson , Rafael Perez , and Hector Ambriz should see drastic drops in their BABIP as the season progresses.

Fielding Independent Pitching

While BABIP looks only at balls put into play, fielding independent pitching (FIP) does the opposite. FIP looks at walks, strikeouts, and home runs – the three things that are supposedly the pitcher’s responsibility.

In other words, FIP looks at those things that can’t be affected by the quality of the defense. FIP is calculated on the same scale as ERA, so the two can be compared easily. If a pitcher’s FIP is lower than his ERA, he can expect improvement, and vice-versa. Of course the major caveat here is that if a pitcher plays with the same defense all year, how much can it really improve?

Half of the Indians staff has a FIP within 1.00 of their ERA. Chris Perez, Frank Hermann, and Mitch Talbot are greatly outperforming their FIP, while Justin Masterson, Aaron Laffey, Rafael Perez, and Kerry Wood are greatly underperforming it.

Hitting

Lineup Analysis

BABIP can be used to study a hitter’s luck. But unlike pitchers BABIP, hitter’s BABIP normalizes to the hitter’s past performance, not an overall league average. I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

Instead, for hitters we’ll again refer to Dave Pinto’s lineup analysis tool . Plugging in the top nine Indians in terms of OPS, here are the results . How plausible is the lineup? Not very, unless you can convince one of the outfield/first base/DH-types to catch. This theoretical lineup would score 5.138 runs per game, much better than the 4.036 the team is currently scoring.

That’s an extra 178.5 runs for the year, or 18 wins. Of course, that’s based on some small sample sizes, and a less than stellar defense.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

A (hopefully) monthly look at the Tribe’s performance from a variety of statistical angles. Suggestions for additional stats and categories are welcome – just let me know.

Overall

Pythagorean Record

One of the most popular judges of a team’s performance is their Pythagorean record. “Pythag” is so named because the formula used looks similar to the Pythagorean formula used on right triangles. Pythag uses runs scored and runs allowed to determine a predicted record. Generally, teams that over perform their Pythags are considered lucky, and those that underperformed are considered unlucky. However, small-ball teams like the Angels and Twins consistently over perform their Pythagorean records for reasons saberists have trouble explaining. Likewise, Eric Wedge‘s teams traditionally underperformed their Pythagorean record. That may be because those teams sprinkled 15-run wins between seven-game losing streaks. So, it will be interesting to see how Manny Acta‘s teams perform against Pythag. So far, the Indians Pythagorean record (which can be found on MLB.com’s standings page by turning on the “X W-L” category) is exactly the same as their actual record, 11-18.

Playoff Odds

Several sites offer odds of a team making the playoffs. One such site is CoolStandings.com, which currently has the Indians at a 1.4 percent chance to win the division and a 0.5 percent chance to win the wild card. Baseball Prospectus is a little more optimistic. Their projections, explained at the bottom of the linked page, have the Indians at 3 percent to win the division and 0.9 percent to win the wild card.

“Wins in the Bank” and the Gambler’s Fallacy

Several sites also post pre-season standings projections. This is where the “gambler’s fallacy” comes in. BaseballProjection.com has the Indians going 81-81 on the season, yet they have gone 11-18 so far. Someone following the gambler’s fallacy would think that the Tribe will go 70-63 the rest of the season to finish 81-81. In fact, Chone’s projection should be thought of as a winning percentage, not a definite number of wins and losses. That is, we should accept the fact that the Indians are 11-18, and assume they will play .500 ball (81 wins/162 games) the rest of the way. That means the Indians should expect to win 66-67 of their remaining 133 games

Pitching

BABIP

One of the most consistent statistics in baseball is a pitcher’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP). The more a pitcher throws, the more his BABIP will settle in the .270-.290 range. This is true for nearly all pitchers, with only rare exceptions like knuckleballer Tim Wakefield and control specialist Greg Maddux. That being said, if you see a pitcher with a high BABIP early in the season, you can expect that BABIP – and his overall performance – to improve.

Conversely, pitchers with a low BABIP can expect an increase. According to Fangraphs, David Huff, Jensen Lewis, and Aaron Laffey are already in the .270-.290 range. That’s good news for all three, as they have pitched fairly well this season (outside of Huff’s win-loss record), and should expect that performance to continue. Cleveland’s two best starters, Fausto Carmona and Mitch Talbot, have been beneficiaries of BABIPs in the .250s, and can look forward to some minor regression. The same goes for relievers Chris Perez and Tony Sipp.

Meanwhile, Joe Smith and Jamey Wright should see their already high ERAs rise with their BABIPs. Jake Westbrook and Justin Masterson should see their traditional numbers improve as their BABIPs decrease; as should Rafael Perez and Kerry Wood, which is good news for their respective ERAs. Hector Ambriz, pitching well by traditional measures, should only get better as his BABIP lowers. Not bad for a Rule V pickup.

Fielding Independent Pitching

While BABIP looks only at balls put into play, fielding independent pitching (FIP) does the opposite. FIP looks at walks, strikeouts, and home runs – the three things that are supposedly the pitcher’s responsibility. In other words, FIP looks at those things that can’t be affected by the quality of the defense. FIP is calculated on the same scale as ERA, so the two can be compared easily. If a pitcher’s FIP is lower than his ERA, he can expect improvement, and vice-versa. Of course the major caveat here is that if a pitcher plays with the same defense all year, how much can it really improve? The bad news is that everyone except Wright, Masterson, Perez, and Wood are posting FIPs lower than their ERAs. The even worse news is that Wright’s FIP is only 0.40 points lower, and Wood’s is based on only one inning of work.

Hitting

Lineup Analysis

BABIP can be used to study a hitter’s luck. But unlike pitchers BABIP, hitter’s BABIP normalizes to the hitter’s past performance; not an overall league average. I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Instead, for hitters we’ll again refer to Dave Pinto’s lineup analysis tool. Plugging in the top nine Indians in terms of OPS, here are the results. The lineup is certainly plausible in terms of defensive alignment and batting order, assuming Russell Branyan can still play some outfield. This theoretical lineup would score 5.232 runs per game, much better than the 3.8 the team is currently scoring. That’s an extra 232 runs for the year, or 23 wins. Of course, that’s based on some small sample sizes, even for the regulars.

For more Indians statistical analysis, visit Kanka’s Sports Page.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com