Kuzul

After the Boston Red Sox acquired Adrian Gonzalez from the San Diego Padres for prospects, anyone who does projections for the upcoming season has been salivating at the thought of what Gonzalez will do at Fenway Park.

Gonzalez has spent the last five seasons in the very pitcher-friendly PETCO Park, so a change to a much smaller park should give Gonzalez a big boost to his numbers this season.

He’s still recovering from offseason shoulder surgery and he has yet to begin swinging a bat, despite having already arrived at Spring Training. Gonzalez was expected to be handling a bat on March 1, but he claims he’s ahead of schedule.

So with all the projections for Gonzalez in 2011 being thrown around, I thought I’d throw one out there, more like a question really.

Can Adrian Gonzalez collect 100 extra-base hits?

In five seasons in the very spacious PETCO Park, Gonzalez averaged 32 home runs and 99 RBI each season. His average number of extra-base hits was 69.

So can a move to Fenway Park make 100 extra-base hits a realistic possibility for Gonzalez?

Last season, Gonzalez batted .298 with 31 home runs and 101 RBI. He collected 44 XBH, including 33 doubles, 12 at PETCO.

He sent 17 of his 33 doubles, more than half, and 13 of his home runs to the opposite field. Overall, 65 of his 176 hits (36.9 percent) went to left field.

So it’s safe to assume that once Gonzalez sets his eyes on the Green Monster, he’s going to look to bounce balls off of it all season long. Gonzalez had an estimated nine outs at PETCO last season which would have gone for extra bases or home runs at Fenway Park, according to Michael Hurley of NESN.com.

The most home runs Gonzalez has ever hit in a single season was 40 in 2009, and his highest total for both doubles (43) and triples (3) came in 2007. So that would be 86 extra base hits.

Let’s assume Gonzalez gets at least one triple. Last season he didn’t have any, but in each of the previous five season, he had at least one, so I think it’s a safe assumption.

If Gonzalez can improve his career highs in home runs by just six and doubles by just 10, and he gets that one triple, that’s 100 extra-base hits.

Is a projection of 46 home runs and 53 doubles out of the question for a hitter of Gonzalez’s ability, in a lineup like Boston’s? I don’t think so.

In case you’re curious, Babe Ruth holds the all-time, single season record for extra-base hits with 119 in 1921. The only active player to collect 100 or more extra-base hits in a season is Todd Helton, who actually did it twice—103 in 2000 and 105 in 2001.

So it’s clearly not impossible, though Helton’s feat needs to be kept in perspective for obvious reasons.

Overall, 12 different players have done it.

Will Gonzalez add his name to that list this season? Red Sox fans certainly hope so, and I’m sure Gonzalez himself wouldn’t mind either.

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With spring training just days away now, it’s getting awfully tough to generate interesting topics surrounding the Blue Jays. Luckily, an interesting player has reportedly become available in the last day or so that should interest the Blue Jays. It’s not Michael Young either, although the where, if and how of him coming to the Jays will be kicked around some more below.

The player the Jays should take a long look at acquiring is Justin Ruggiano from the Tampa Bay Rays. Ruggiano was designated for assignment by the Rays, who now have 10 days to either trade him or put him on waivers. This, according to MLB Trade Rumors site, was to make room for the recent additions of outfielders Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon.

Ruggiano is an outfielder himself with a grand total of 96 career plate appearances with the Rays, the last coming back in 2008.  He’ll turn 29 in April and has put together a solid enough career in the minors for the Jays to take some interest in him. It would be a similar move to the one Alex Anthopoulos made last offseason when he claimed another productive Triple-A player with little big league time, Jarrett Hoffpauir. That wasn’t a pennant winning move, but he had a solid season with Triple-A Las Vegas and was a good depth move.

The Jays aren’t exactly flush with major league ready outfield players, and Ruggiano could step in and provide immediate competition to Corey Patterson for a bench spot. Ruggiano has spent adequate time at all three outfield spots in the minors and posted plus defensive numbers across the outfield in recent seasons as well. That includes 106 career games in centerfield with a +10 TotalZone rating.

Ruggiano would also provide ample speed on the bases, swiping 47 bases between 2009 and 2010 with Triple-A Durham at an 83 percent success rate. In four seasons with Durham from 2007-2010, Ruggiano hit .288 with a solid nine percent walk rate. He has some pop too, averaging 19.5 homers and 34 doubles per 600 plate appearances. His .181 isolated power looks nice, too, and these numbers came in the International League, not the hitting happy PCL where the Jays Triple-A team resides.

His one major drawback is his staggering 30.2 percent strikeout rate, well above average in any league. That’s really his only significant drawback; otherwise, he actually looks pretty good for a guy who hasn’t seen the show in two years. Players that get DFA’d don’t typically come at a high cost in a trade, since the team has essentially announced they don’t want him around anymore. The Jays could try and grab him on waivers too, but if the price to get him isn’t much, and it shouldn’t be, they should jump on it.

In another much more heralded development Texas Rangers third baseman Michael Young has asked to be traded. He doesn’t seem too thrilled with being a part time player and sharing at-bats with Mike Napoli at the DH spot.

As covered here a little ways back, Young would be interesting to the Jays if his contractible obligations were halved and the Jays were left with a 24 million dollar commitment over three years. Even then it’s not a slam dunk, but he would take over third for 2011 and push Jose Bautista into right field and Edwin Encarnacion to the DH spot.

Honestly, going out and signing Russell Branyan to DH would be a better solution to resolve the Jays issue of where to play Bautista. That will be covered tomorrow.  The Michael Young issue is all over the place today, but as usual, the guys at FanGraphs have it covered for you with their own unique perspective.

Other than that, Blue Bird Banter’s Tom Dakers has got a pretty good debate going over on their site about where to play Jose Bautista. And lastly, check out the Hardball Times outstanding breakdown of all things Kyle Drabek. Less than a week now until it all gets started down in Dunedin.

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Unless the Blue Jays sign Jose Bautista to an extension or trade for Michael Young there doesn’t figure to be much Blue Jay related issues to discuss this week. There is also still the possibility the Jays could add another free agent on a minor league deal before spring training opens next week. Guys like Willy Aybar, Russell Branyan and Hank Blalock are still out there looking for work.

Branyan is of particular interest to the Jays with the way their roster is currently constructed. That will be touched on this week too. In the meantime, the Jays could have an issue to resolve this spring with a pair of guys already on the roster, John McDonald and Mike McCoy. Last season the two were both on the bench essentially filling the same role of utility infielder until the middle of June.

This season the Jays will have to skip on keeping a pair of light hitting, quality fielders on the bench if they do, as they have said they may, go with an eight man bullpen. They should skip the whole idea even if they go with a traditional seven man bullpen and bring on a corner infield or corner outfield type who can hit or keep Corey Patterson around as the fourth bench player instead.

That decision is a relatively easy one but deciding on which to keep around is a little trickier. Financially, the Jays owe McDonald 1.5 million dollars this season where as McCoy would likely cost them a half million or so. It’s possible McDonald could be traded and the Jays could avoid paying him if they decide they don’t need him. Even if they couldn’t eating that amount of money is insignificant enough to not be a worry. They could also get him through waivers and stash him at Triple-A, if McDonald was open to that sort of thing.

Whatever happens the amount of money being spent on the utility infield bench spot shouldn’t get in the way of which player to go with. The incumbent is McDonald who’s spent parts of six seasons with the Jays compiling a .242/.277/.339 batting line. He rarely walks, doesn’t hit for power and doesn’t hit for average either. His existence as a Major Leaguer has been completely justified solely by his glove work. His fielding around the infield has been worth 40 defensive runs saved above average and has UZR/150 marks of +18.9 at second base and +6.4 at shortstop in his career.

McCoy has had a solid minor league career at the plate but as he approaches thirty years of age, has logged only 96 MLB plate appearances. In 1465 career Triple-A plate appearances, almost all in the hitter happy Pacific Coast League, McCoy has hit .296/.391/.405. The PCL inflates power numbers so McCoy probably has just as little power as McDonald but it’s clear he should be capable of walking quite a bit more. Odds are he could probably out hit McDonald at this point too.

Defensively, the limited minor league fielding stats available suggest McCoy would be below average across the diamond. In terms of pure versatility though McCoy has spent ample time at second, third and short but also has 88 games amongst all three outfield positions in his career. That includes 24 in center, 7 in left and 10 in right with Colorado Springs in 2009. McDonald has only six games in the outfield in his career.

Up until now Bill James’ 2011 projections have been used in this space to look forward but we’ll take Tom Tango’s 2011 Marcel projections for a spin today. They came out last week and you can download them in spreadsheet form here. FanGraphs has them for every player on their player pages too and they went ahead and extrapolated out some stats not included with the downloadable sheets.  The one big benefit of the Marcel stuff is there’s projections for more players than James has, including, as luck would have it, Mike McCoy.

Marcel’s has McDonald down for a .242 batting average with an optimistic 5.1% walk rate and a .132 isolated power. The walk rate seems optimistic because McDonald hasn’t had a walk rate anywhere near that high since 2006. Of course, McDonald’s .204 ISO in 2010 was more than double his .089 career ISO, small sample sizes can be funny like that. Anyways, McDonald’s offensive projection boils down to a .287 wOBA.

McCoy’s outlook is a little better, mostly on the strength of his walk drawing abilities. Marcel’s pegs him for a .239 batting average, 8.5% walk rate and a .126 ISO good enough for a .302 wOBA. Not light years better than McDonald but with more reason for optimism as McCoy will be six years younger than McDonald on Opening Day, and has hit for almost a .310 average in the minors the last two seasons.

There’s no lefty/righty split data to speak of available for McCoy’s time in the minors but both him and McDonald are righties and McDonald isn’t exactly a lefty killer anyways. The offensive edge goes to McCoy, the defensive ability goes to McDonald and McCoy’s defensive versatility breaks the tie.

McCoy would be able to fill both the utility infield and fifth outfielder role, albeit with less quality infield defense, but coupled with his offensive upside he nudges ahead of the incumbent McDonald and should be on the bench if and when the Jays have to choose one or the other.

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Over the last week or so, various reputable baseball analysis sites have been digging into the relationship between infield fly ball rates (IFFB%) and home run per fly ball rates (HR/FB). The discussion was prompted by a blog post by Rory Paap at Paapfly.com called “Matt Cain ignores xFIP, again and again,” which generated a response from Dave Cameron at Fangraphs.

Paap suggested FIP and xFIP do Cain a disservice because they don’t give him his due credit for possessing the “unique skill” of inducing harmless fly ball contact, a theory that David Pinto at Baseball Musings attempted to quantify last October. Cameron’s response included some interesting analysis that looked at the best pitchers from 2002-2007 in terms of HR/FB rate and compared their IFFB% over that span to what they posted the next three seasons. His conclusion?

Is there some skill to allowing long fly outs? Maybe. But if you can identify which pitchers are likely to keep their home run rates low while giving up a lot of fly balls before they actually do it, then you could make a lot of money in player forecasting.

Simply out of curiosity, I decided to throw my hat into the ring and see if I could find a trend between IFFB% and HR/FB rate. My theory was that if IFFB% and HR/FB rate showed some sort of correlation, then plotting HR/FB rate as a function of IFFB% would show a clear inverse trend (meaning that a higher IFFB% would more likely generate a lower HR/FB rate, and vice versa).

To do this, I looked at all pitchers from 2008 to 2010 who threw at least 162 innings and plotted their IFFB% and HR/FB rate as described above. This three-year range generated 257 such data points, and you can see the results in just to the right. 

Note: IFFB% is on the x-axis and HR/FB rate is on the y-axis.

Just by looking at the chart, it’s tough to visually decipher any sort of trend. If there actually is an inverse relationship between IFFB% and HR/FB rates, we would expect the data points to slope from the top-left (low IFFB%, high HR/FB rate) to the bottom-right (high IFFB%, low HR/FB rate).

By adding a best-fit trend line to the data set, we see that there is a very slight slope in the direction we anticipated, but to say it shows any sort of useful relationship is a stretch. The data has an R-Squared value of just 0.0126, which tells us there was very little correlation between IFFB% and HR/FB rate. If you don’t know what R-squared is, it’s simply a representation of one variable’s ability to forecast another. R-Squared values range from 0 to 1, and the closer they are to 1 the more of a correlation there is between the two sets of data. An R-Squared value of 0.0126 between IFFB% and HR/FB rate shows very little correlation.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Perhaps it is possible to tell if a pitcher like Cain is more prone to lower HR/FB rates by virtue of his ability to induce weaker contact, but IFFB% alone is not enough to draw any conclusions. More sophisticated analysis, like that provided by Pinto’s article at Baseball Musings, might unveil some usable relationships, but we cannot simply look at Clayton Kershaw’s 4.1 percent HR/FB rate in 2009 and say his 13.5 percent IFFB% explains it. For now, I’m still skeptical about pitchers like Cain, but there’s no doubt his performances these last few seasons have given us plenty to think about.

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Earlier in the week we took a look at ESPN’s Keith Law’s top five Blue Jays prospects. Today we’ll have a look at the second half of Law’s top 10 and what they need to do moving forward in 2011. As mentioned in the first half, this is purely a statistical analysis of each player and not a scouting/tools report. Again, that kind of information is essential to have, not knocking that type of analysis in the least, it’s just not being provided here.

Checking in at No. 6 on Law’s top 10 is the Jays’ top and most promising shortstop prospect, the Cuban born Adeiny Hechavarria. The Jays signed him last spring to a four-year, $10 million contract and immediately added him to the 40-man roster. Hechavarria will be 22 when the minor league season gets underway in mid April.

A good number of players start their minor league careers as shortstops before switching off to other positions for defensive reasons. Hechavarria is in no danger of falling into that category, it’s just the opposite with him in that his glove work will carry him up to the show. Law gives a glowing review of Hechavarria’s defense from his footwork, hands, range and arm. His only complaint is his low throwing angle can put a spin on the ball that could be difficult for first basemen to handle. He still has plenty of time to correct that one and only apparent defensive issue.

Hitting is what troubled Hechavarria last year in his first pro season. The Blue Jays don’t need him to turn into a force at the dish but another season or two in the minors is probably going to be needed for them to be comfortable with him hitting at the highest level. Hechavarria started off with high Single-A, Dunedin, where he had a .245 wOBA in just 41 games and 167 plate appearances.

That wound up being all the time he spent in Single-A as the Jays moved him up to Double-A at the end of June and left him there for the rest of the season. He hit quite a bit better after the move putting together a .300 wOBA in 61 games with the Fisher Cats.

Hechavarria didn’t show much power at either stop with isolated power marks of .099 with Dunedin and .087 with New Hampshire. He also didn’t walk much but didn’t strike out a ton either at both stops. And after hitting .193 with Dunedin he hit .273 in New Hampshire.

For 2011 it’s a safe bet that he’ll start in Double-A again. The Jays don’t need him to be a great hitter but something along the lines of hitting .280-.290 with a 6-8 percent walk rate and an ISO around .100 would be good enough improvement to send him off to Triple-A late in the year or the start of 2012.

Next up on the list is 18-year-old, Aaron Sanchez, a 6’4″, right-handed pitcher drafted by the Jays with the 34th overall pick in last year’s draft. There isn’t much to discuss statistically with Sanchez as he logged just six innings in low Single-A and 19 in rookie ball. There’s little to no use in looking over the numbers or trying to project anything for 2011. But if he’s on Keith Law’s radar, he should be on yours so keep an eye on what he does in 2011.

If the Jays system lacks one thing it is without a doubt legit center field prospects. Darin Mastroianni had a good season last year in Double-A but he’s already 25 with no Triple-A at-bats to his name. In a move aimed squarely at addressing this issue, Alex Anthopoulos dealt the Jays top first base prospect, Brett Wallace, straight up for Anthony Gose at last season’s trade deadline. The move was a surprise at the time—many thought Wallace was destined to replace Lyle Overbay at first for the Jays when the trade went down.

Anthopoulos considers Gose to be athletic enough to stick in center as he moves up the system and it might be another two or three years before he’ll make the show to try and prove that Anthopoulos’ move to get him was a good one. The first thing that jumps out statistically is his strikeout rate. He went down on strikes 25.7 percent of the time in 2010 between the Phillies and Jays’ high Single-A teams. He did show some patience too, walking in 7.8 percent of his plate appearances.

Gose will be just 20 next year and he’d benefit from drawing the discrepancy in his walk and strikeout rates closer. He’d also benefit from improving his base-stealing ability. In 2009 he stole 76 bases with a 79 percent success rate. That dipped drastically in 2010, he still swiped 45 bases but with a greatly diminished 58 percent success rate.

He hasn’t hit for much of an average yet, but after putting up a below-league-average ISO of .094 in 2009 his ISO jumped to .131 last year, a good cut above the league’s average ISO of .109. The Jays could push him to Double-A to start 2011 but he’s still so young the Jays should let him have stronger success in high A first and then move him up.

The ninth spot is held by the third catcher in Law’s top 10, Carlos Perez, who impressed at the plate last season in his first season above rookie-level ball. Perez spent 2010 in low Single-A and only got to the plate 278 times but had some exciting results. He hit .298, walked 12.2 percent of the time and had a .140 ISO that all added up to a .390 wOBA. Not bad for a 19-year-old catcher.

Now, 278 plate appearances is still a small sample but it’s a start. Perez also has impressive numbers throwing out baserunners nailing 49 percent of would-be base stealers in 2009 and 36 percent this past season.

Total Zone for catchers, which evaluates catchers only on their ability to control the running game, had him at plus-six runs saved in 2009. Perez also stole seven bases in 10 tries last year. His numbers are solid all the way around at the plate, behind the plate and on the bases so far. If he keeps it all up at a higher level next season he’ll shoot up this list next offseason.

Law rounds out the top 10 with another 20-year-old, Henderson Alvarez, a right-handed starting pitcher. After skipping low A he had a successful 2009 in Single-A, and an equally impressive 2010 with high Single-A Dunedin. Alvarez displayed excellent control in both seasons walking only 1.38 batters per nine innings in ’09 and 2.16 per nine in 2010.

He has yet to strike out batters in bunches, getting only 6.25 strikeouts per nine innings with Dunedin. He copes with that quite well with, you guessed it, excellent ground-ball rates. Alvarez generated 50 percent ground-ball rates in both ’09 and ’10 and did an excellent job suppressing the long ball as well.

Alvarez has shown enough to warrant starting 2011 in Double-A. Expect him to hit some growing pains as his walk rate may spike with the increase in the opposition’s willingness to take a pitch or two at a higher level. The jump in talent from A ball to Double-A should also put a dent in his strikeout rates too. Naturally, he’ll progress too but he may need close to two full seasons with New Hampshire before he can start to be considered ready to make the jump to Triple-A or Toronto.

The top seven Jays prospects made Law’s top 100 prospect list—a number bested only by the Rays putting eight into the top 100. Having a player development system mentioned in the same breath as the Rays is no small achievement. The Rays have twice in three seasons propelled themselves past either the Yankees or Red Sox and into the playoffs on the strength of their player development. Alex Anthopoulos fully intends to do the same with Toronto but with a better chance to sustain what he builds because of the team’s ability to support a much higher payroll than Tampa.

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Keith Law of ESPN recently put out his yearly organization ratings based purely on Minor League talent alone. Law rated the Jays’ system as the fourth best in all of baseball. With those rankings also came his top 100 prospects list for all of baseball as well as each team’s top ten prospects.

We’ll take a look at what to expect and what needs to be seen from the top five of those prospects today and the next five at a later, yet to be determined date. Just to clarify, this isn’t going to be a scouting report with a focus on each player’s tools but rather an overview of where they’re at and where they need to be statistically. That’s not a knock on scouting/tools based articles, they’re great and essential reading; this just isn’t one of them.

Law’s number one prospect for the Jays is starting pitcher Kyle Drabek. Drabek is almost assuredly done with his days as a minor leaguer and more than likely to be the team’s fourth starter. If that turns out to be the case, he’ll wind up completely skipping Triple-A. That’s not a move most teams make but the Jays Triple-A team, the Las Vegas 51s, play in the hitter friendly Pacific Coast League in one of its most hitter-friendly parks.

Drabek didn’t look out of place in three starts for the Jays at the end of last season either, striking out 12 and walking five in 17 innings while generating a ton of groundballs as well. Before that though, his numbers in 162 innings spread out over 27 Double-A starts weren’t exactly eye popping. He did have a healthy 2.94 ERA but his FIP was almost a full run higher at 3.87. Statcorner gave him a 4.37 tRA compared to the Eastern League average of 5.00, leaving him with a tRA+ of 113.

The FIP and tRA takes a bit of the glow off the sub-3.00 ERA. Drabek looked to benefit from a .255 BABIP, some of which could be luck but some of it probably has to do with his above average 48.8 percent groundball rate too. His 7.3 strikeouts per nine innings was almost exactly league average and his 3.78 walks per nine was a little ways off the 3.4 league average.

Drabek is going to need something to help him out right away in 2011 and based on the above, his best bet is to keep generating groundballs. He might be hard pressed to keep his K/9 IN above seven and a walk rate below 4 BB/9 IN, but he’ll survive with a solid groundball rate. He also did a good job suppressing homers last season and getting grounders is conducive to not coughing up the long ball. If those trends continue he’ll be ok, but expecting him to show anything more than flashes of dominance in 2011 is wishful thinking.

Next up on Law’s list is the newly acquired Brett Lawrie who came over at the expense of Shaun Marcum when he was dealt to the Milwaukee Brewers this off-season. If Lawrie has one Major League ready tool, it would appear to be his confidence as he expressed that he no longer needed to play in the minors and was ready for the show after the trade. Alex Anthopoulos probably doesn’t agree with that but AA obviously believed in the kid enough to trade him straight up for the Jays’ second best starter from last season.

Lawrie had an impressive 2010 with a safely above average .361 wOBA in his first full season of Double-A. That is of course even more impressive when you consider he was just 20-years-old and hit .285 with a .164 isolated power against older, more seasoned competition. He also walked in 7.7 percent of his plate appearances, which wasn’t far off the league average of 9.0.

His power did fall off a bit in 2010, he hit 13 homers in 423 Single-A plate appearances in ’09 but just eight homers in 609 trips to the plate in 2010. His work on the basepaths improved in 2010, stealing 30 bases with a 68 percent success rate after swiping 19 bags with a 63 percent success rate the year before; again, improvement against more experienced pitcher/catcher tandems.

All Lawrie needs to do is duplicate his Double-A success in Triple-A for 2011 to be a successful year in his development. Asking a 21-year-old to hit .285/.346/.449 in Triple-A isn’t usually a reasonable request, but he’s performed beyond his age group two years running now. The only problem will be evaluating his Triple-A numbers. He could see his numbers inflated from a change of environment to a hitter’s league in a hitter’s park and not his own skill development.

The key numbers for Lawrie will not be his isolated power, batting average or home run numbers in 2011 but rather his walk rate, strikeout rate, and his batted ball percentages. Those will need to be watched more closely if he plays in Las Vegas. If he continues to draw a solid amount of walks and hit the ball well in relation to his previous batted ball numbers, then we’ll be more sure of the progress he’s making.

Getting a read on his defense in the minors from a statistical standpoint is quite a challenge. Lawrie will be tasked with learning a new position in 2011 as the Jays have opted to move him to third base. That could be a reflection on his defensive skill, it could be the first step in moving him to the outfield, or it could reflect the Jays lack of depth at third. Whatever the reason, judgement should be withheld on him for now defensively as he is just 21 and moving to a new position.

In a bit of a surprise, Zach Stewart turned up third on the list ahead of both the Jays top two catching prospects and a few of their other top, up the middle, prospects. If Drabek’s secondary numbers weren’t overly impressive, neither were Stewart’s. He too spent all of 2010 with the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats and turned in 26 starts and 136 innings.

The best result from Stewart’s season might be that he finally spent some serious time at the same level in the same role for the first time in his pro career. In 2009, he spent time at three levels on four teams in both a starting role and out of the bullpen. He had never pitched more than 42 innings for any team previous to 2010. That at least gives a solid baseline to evaluate from.

That baseline included a less than impressive 4.18 FIP stemming from striking out seven batters per nine while walking 3.58 and yielding .86 homers per nine. All three of those numbers were on the wrong side of the Eastern League average. His pedestrian 4.93 tRA was much closer to the 5.00 league average than Drabek’s was. His one saving grace, which is becoming almost a given with young Jays pitchers, was his 46.8 percent groundball rate.

Stewart’s name has been kicked around as a potential number five starter for the Jays this season. That does not seem wise, he was hardly dominate at Double-A and at least some improvement should be seen before he moves up the ladder. He did pitch better after the All-Star break, upping his K/9 IN to 7.7, dropping his walks down to three per nine, and cutting his homers per nine to .64. Even buying the most recent 42 innings of work over the season as a whole wouldn’t leave you screaming for promotion.

Stewart needs to build off his 2010 numbers almost across the board to force the Jays’ hand. He’s flashed the ability in small samples to strike out better than a batter an inning in the past and in those same small samples shown good control too. He might not need another full season at Double-A but he needs to step forward with real, solid progress.

The Jays top five is rounded out by a pair of catchers with Travis d’Arnaud checking in ahead of the projected Opening Day starter for the big club, J.P. Arencibia. Like Drabek, d’Arnaud came over in the Roy Halladay trade and is at the top of an impressive group of catchers in the Jays’ minor league system.

Keith Law says he is a plus defender across the board in his write-up for his top 100 prospects. That is necessary praise for any young catching prospect set on remaining behind the plate when he reaches the Majors. D’Arnaud will be 22 to open next season and should start the year with Double-A New Hampshire as their primary catcher.

D’Arnaud has hit well too, posting wRC+ over 100 in each of his stops across all three levels of Single-A ball. His batting line of .259/.315/.411 isn’t terribly impressive taken out of context. Those stats came out of the hitter friendly, power suppressing, Florida State League that had a league average batting line of .255/.324/.364. A quick once over shows that d’Arnaud came up a little short getting on base but had solid power.

Law thinks d’Arnaud is ready to breakout with the bat in 2011, and with no good reason to disagree, you should look forward to the same thing from him with the Fisher Cats. The Jays might not be far off from the “problem” of having two quality, MLB ready, cost controlled, catchers. Too much up the middle talent is always a good problem to have.

J.P. Arencibia both rounds out the top five and figures to have a bigger impact at the big league level than the four guys in front of him in 2011. He has nothing left to prove in the minors after last season’s offensive display with Las Vegas in the Pacific Coast League. Even taking the context of the league and his home park into consideration, Arencibia was a force at the dish all season long.

Arencibia blasted 32 homers, second best in the league, hit .301, drew a walk in a career best 8.3 percent of his plate appearances and more than doubled the league average .155 ISO with a thunderous .325 mark. The power numbers were career bests but Arencibia has never lacked power.

However, he had lacked plate discipline, having never previously walked in more than 5.6 percent of his plate appearances at any minor league level. He also cut his strikeout rate from 24.5 in 2009(also at Triple-A) to a more reasonable 20.6 percent. That nearly doubled his walks per strikeout from .23 in 2009 to .45.

Patience from the fans and the team will be paramount to Arencibia’s success next year. He can’t be expected to reproduce his .412 wOBA from 2010 in the show. Jays fans should expect to see something closer to his 2009 Triple-A numbers that saw him hit .236 with a 5.2 percent walk rate and .208 isolated power. That’s not going to win him Rookie of the Year honors, but it’s not about the final numbers in 2011.

It is all about giving him 500 plate appearances in 2011 and being prepared to hand him at least a couple hundred more in 2012 and see how much he improves. Not every catching prospect can be expected to burst into the spotlight like Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants, and that’s the case here.

Obviously, the Jays’ front office doesn’t need any advice on evaluating their catcher and how many at-bats to give him before thinking about moving on to other options. The typical fan though might be a different story and hopefully the team and writers around the team are ready to express that patience needs to be taken with the results of Arencibia’s 2011 campaign—good or bad.

Arencibia will also have his hands full working with the pitching staff and controlling the running game. But Law likes his arm and he’s caught several of the Jays’ starters in the past as they’ve moved up the system, so he won’t be completely unfamiliar with them. 

Check back late in the week for the second half of Law’s top ten.

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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

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With the off season of baseball, there is a lot of time for introspection, fact-finding and fooling around.

I chose the latter of these three and decided to delve into some of the more obscure MLB stats. Baseball is heavily centered around stats and so, without further ado, here they are:

Ounces of Coke per Nostril (OCN)

This stat first came to prevalence in the mid 1980′s. Legendary cocaine addict, Willie “Scarface” Jenkins still holds the all-time best with a whopping lifetime average of 2.31.

Cup Adjustments per Inning (CAPI)

This stat is nearly as old as the game itself. Bill “Fire Down Below” Barkins was the first, and currently only, player to lead this category in back-to-back years in 1996 and 1997.  This feat has yet to be topped.  Barkins, grabbing his package an astounding 6.24 times per inning, was such a prolific junk-grabber that his then-manager Jim Leyland once quipped, “He grabs his crotch more than that Michael Jackson fella.” Barkins’ cup is currently enshrined in Cooperstown in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Largest Wad of Chewing Tobacco (LWCT)

This statistic was put nearly out of reach by minor league outfielder Guthrow Cancerton.  He once famously held 4 bags of Redman in his lower lip while going 1-4 in a 1979 game. He lead the league in this statistic for 8 years straight, starting with that fabled night in 1979. He now tours the United States with the Ringling Bros. as “The Man Without a Lower Jaw.”

Rastafarians Bonged In (RBI)

Commonly mistaken for the more well known “Runs Batted In” statistic, this stat was far more commonly kept before the standardization of drug testing in the MLB. Bob “Marley” Gustafson, not-coincidentally, the league’s most stringent anti-drug-testing activist in league history. Gustafson lead the league in this category an unprecedented 11 years straight and gained a moderate level of fame after once having the munchies so bad that he stole home merely to hit up the hot dog stand.

‘Roid Rage Incidents Per Game (RRIG)

This stat, first unofficially kept in 1994, was only recognized by Baseball’s governing body for the first time in 2005.The career leader is Lloyd “The Incredible, pimply-backed, balding Hulk” Aaron, who controlled the statistic in 1995, 1998 and 1999. Many experts believe he would have won more individual titles in this category but he was summarily kicked out of the MLB after, when in a fit of violent rage, he chewed through 3 of his teammates bats, head-butted a hole in the side of the stadium and broke the team bus over his knee.

Times Defected from Cuba (TDC)

Originating in 1981, this stat is considered out of reach by many experts as the bar was, perhaps, set to an unreachable height by Phillies shortstop Alberto “Damn-I-Hate-Fidel” Castro.  Castro achieved a certain level of notoriety after defecting from Cuba a staggering 8 times in 1983 alone.  Famous for pulling his hamstring in an attempt to doggy-paddle to Miami Beach’s shore.

Sunflower Seeds Chewed while Pitching Left Handed Against the Phillies on a Tuesday in a Nationally Televised Game in June (SSCPLHAPTNTGJ)

This stat, only kept because baseball keeps stats on everything, is still pending MLB approval.  However, it appears that the league and the owners association will both approve it’s official recognition in the 2011 season.

(*Author’s Note: I really, really hope that I do not have to make sure you guys know this–but all of these are, of course, fake.)

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Luck.

Amongst the comments of an article I recently read, I encountered claims that Clay Buchholz’s 2010 season was a product of his burgeoning talent and completely luck-free. These claims were fueled by a belief that the sabermetric statistics that cause many to label Buchholz lucky are flawed and be extension useless.

I never was of the belief that Clay Buchholz is a bad pitcher. I think he’s actually quite good, but not as good as his 2.33 ERA from 2010 might lead one to believe. I sort of thought it was common knowledge that his 2010 season’s stats were luck-inflated. I’m finding, both among published baseball writings and my daily encounters with fellow fans of the game, that there is still a widespread resistance to sabermetrics. I constantly encounter an unwillingness to look past wins and ERAs to assess a pitcher’s performance. I encounter claims that these advanced metrics don’t really mean much, or that they don’t make it much easier to measure a player’s talent.

Often times, it is true that these stats don’t tell us everything we need to know. Often times, they are just indicators of future performance, rather than outright predictors. I agree that it is hard to quantify the effect of many sabermetrically-approved statistics, but there is compelling evidence that they are, in fact, valuable in understanding baseball statistics.

The arguments in favor indicators of Buchholz’s luck, as I see them are as follows.

1) A low K/BB rate

Clay Buchholz struck out 6.22 hitters per nine innings while walking 3.47 per nine for a K/BB ratio of 1.79. I have heard that a general rule of thumb is that you want pitchers to post a K/BB ratio of 2.00 or above. A pitcher certainly can be successful with a lower ratio, but the fact remains that the ratio tells us something about how much or little the pitcher helps himself with defense-free outs or harms himself by giving a free pass.

It’s a fair to point to make that pitchers in every group can be the product of luck, either good or bad. However, we can see the general trend clearly supports K/BB rates being linearly related to ERA. ERA is a perfect retrospective measure of how effective the pitcher was in the past, since the goal of the pitcher is always to allow as few runs as possible, whether by control, power, or luck. It can be a lousy predictor of how a pitcher will perform in the future and is often a lousy measure of how good a pitcher actually is, especially when you’re only looking at an ERA over a short period.

I am not denying Buchholz’s production in 2010. He gave up only 2.33 runs per nine innings, which is exceptional. There is no debate about his effectiveness in 2010. Without Buchholz, the Red Sox would have been much worse off, and they would be worse off if he weren’t returning in 2011. He was profoundly effective. I don’t think he has the ability to be that effective again (barring luck).

I looked at all 115 MLB pitchers who threw 130 or more innings in 2010. I divided them into three groups: those with K/BB rates below 2.00, those with rates ranging from 2.00 to 2.99, and those with rates of 3.00 or higher.

There are some cases of pitchers who seemed to defy the general trend. In these cases, the performance was influenced by other things.

For instance, James Shields is an exceptional control pitcher who posted a K/BB rate of 3.67, but he allowed a ton of home runs en route to a 5.18 ERA. The pitchers who seem to be exceptions to the rule can be viewed as outliers, but they do not disprove the general trend that more strikeouts per walk leads to fewer runs allowed.

Here’s what I noticed:

Pitchers with K/BB rates below 2.00 (37 pitchers, 6556.0 innings total):

Combined ERA: 4.32

ERA range: 2.33 to 5.94.

Median ERA: 4.47

Three of these pitchers wound up with an ERA below 3.00. Other than Buchholz, Tim Hudson spun a 2.83 ERA, owing a lot to his ability to generate ground balls. Trevor Cahill spun a 2.97 ERA, also showing himself to be a ground ball pitcher but pitching to a very low BABIP-against. Seven of these pitchers had ERAs in the threes. Some of these guys are great ground ball pitchers, some of them played in very favorable ballparks, and some were just lucky. The vast majority posted ERAs in the fours, with the median ERA being 4.47. Nine guys were above 5.00.

Pitchers with K/BB rates ranging from 2.00 to 2.99 (51 pitchers, 9691.33 innings total):

Combined ERA: 3.80

ERA range: 2.62 to 5.34.

Median ERA: 3.84

Of this group, seven pitchers had ERAs below 3.00. Brian Duensing led the pack with his 2.62 in 130.2 innings. He is a textbook case of lucky pitching, but I cannot argue with the seasons David Price and Ubaldo Jimenez put together. Three guys posted ERAs of 5.00 or above: Rodrigo Lopez, Kevin Millwood, and Tim Wakefield, a very homer-prone trio. 24 guys were in the threes, and 17 were in the fours.

Pitchers with K/BB rates of 3.00 and above (26 pitchers, 2060.0 innings total):

Combined ERA: 3.50

ERA range: 2.27 to 5.18

Median ERA: 3.53

This group was obviously the best, with their median ERA of 3.53 and combined ERA of 3.50. Only seven of these guys posted ERAs of 4.00 or higher, including James Shield’s 5.18. These included 12 pitchers below 3.40, half of whom were under 3.00.

2) The lower the strikeout rate, the more difficult it is to live with a K/BB rate under 2.00.

We’ve established that pitchers can be successful with a K/BB rate under 2.00, but the pitchers who do this tend to be the guys who strike out a lot of batters. That way, when they get themselves into jams, they are more likely to get out of it without having to involve the defense and the possibility of runners advancing or scoring.

50 pitchers threw 100 or more innings with a K/BB rate below 2.00. I used only unintentional walks to compute the group’s walk rate; however when I did this, seven pitchers then had a K/unintentional-BB rate of 2.00, but I still included this group with the understanding that an intentional walk still puts a hitter on base and there are never enough intentional walks to really distort our assessment of a pitcher’s control very much.

The group combined for a K/9 rate of 5.74 and a BB/9 rate of 3.20. Their collective ERA was 4.46. The median ERA was 4.56, showing that a comparable number of them were above and below the median.

Just looking at the guys with ERAs better than 4.56, they combined for a K/9 rate of 6.03 and a BB/9 rate of 3.30 (using only unintentional walks). The group with ERAs worse than 4.56 combined for a K/9 rate of 5.40 and a BB/9 rate of 3.07. Interestingly, the pitchers who gave up more runs allowed fewer walks, but the differences between the two groups strikeout rates are greater, which lends credence to the notion that if you strike out enough guys, you can get by with a low K/BB rate.

The pitchers with the 20 highest strikeout rates combined for an ERA of 4.14. This group had a K/9 of 6.83 to go with 3.45 walks per nine innings. The pitchers with the 20 lowest strikeout rates combined for an ERA of 4.71 to go with 4.70 K/9 and 2.95 BB/9.

Buchholz has thrown 364.1 innings in his career. Over the first 100 of them or so, he struck out over eight batters per nine innings. Since then, his strikeout rate fell to 6.65 in 2009 and 6.22 last year. During that time, his walk rate fell from about 4.7 per nine to somewhere near 3.5. I would interpret this as him learning to pitch in the big leagues and adapting as hitters got used to him.

Buchholz’s strikeout rate is towards the higher end of the group I was looking at (his was the 16^th best out of the 50 pitchers). I would argue that, at this point, he actually does get enough strikeouts to survive a low K/BB rate; however, unless he either precipitously raises the K’s or lowers the BB’s, he is very unlikely to repeat his exceptional 2010 season, because while he does strike out a fair amount, he doesn’t compliment that with a low enough walk rate to be a star.

3) A lucky home run rate.

Buchholz has done a tremendous job generating grounders in his career. His grounder per fly rate is 1.64 over parts of four seasons. This is the thing I like most about him; however, I don’t think this accounts for such a low percentage of fly balls leaving the yard. Even in Fenway Park, where many a righty batter sees his home runs turn into doubles. His line drive rate was 17.7 percent, tied for 58^th out of the 147 pitchers with 100 or more innings to their name in 2010.

Buchholz’s fly-ball rate was 31.5 percent, tied for 25^th out of the same group of pitchers. This doesn’t explain why so few of these flies left the yard though, especially since last year, when he generated even more grounders per fly, 15.7 percent of the flies left the park. Only 5.6 percent of fly balls left the ballpark, fewer than all but seven of his peers. This is significantly lower than the average, which tends to be somewhere between nine and 10 percent.

A low HR/FB rate can be taken as a tendency to generate “short fly-balls” as someone once said to me. However, his infield fly rate is not especially high at 8.1 percent (tied for 57^th). I could not find a hit chart for Buchholz, but I find it difficult to believe that a pitcher can control the depth of fly balls hit against him. This is a guy who, one year ago, saw three times as many of his fly balls go for home runs (an unlucky rate). Unless Buchholz completely reinvented himself, how does that change for any reason other than normal fluctuation? I don’t know.

4) A low BABIP-against

Sometimes the hits just fall in, and sometimes they don’t. The rate at which this happens can be alarming and can cause us to judge players more harshly or too generously. Buchholz’s .265 BABIP-against is not ridiculously low, but it does speak to a little bit of luck.

Out of the 25 pitchers who generate more grounders per fly than Buchholz, only Trevor Cahill and Tim Hudson showed lower BABIP-againsts. None showed lower HR/FB rates, so it seems clear to me that Clay Buchholz benefited from some luck. That said, ground ball pitchers tend to allow fewer hits anyway, simply because major league fielders can handle a higher proportion of grounders than flies.

I noticed that most of the ground ball pitchers I looked at tended to be somewhere around .280 or .290 in terms of BABIP-against. This often has a lot to do with defense as well, and the Red Sox played well in the field in 2010.

The conclusion I draw from all this is that Buchholz was lucky to have an ERA as low as 2.33, but he wasn’t that lucky. He looks to me like the sort of pitcher who should be capable of ERAs in the threes year in and year out. I think he’s going to continue to generate grounders and continue to strike out six to seven hitters per nine innings while walking 3.50 or so. This isn’t a recipe for brilliance, as we see guys like Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe who consistently posted decent to good seasons over the last decade.

Those two pitchers get more grounders though, and they walk fewer, strike out about as many, and face easier lineups these days. So, I consider Buchholz to be built from the same mold but a notch below talentwise. 2010 was to Buchholz what 2004 was to Jake Westbrook or what 2008 was to Paul Maholm (or what 2010 was to Jon Garland and Carl Pavano), an uncharacteristically good season that is unlikely to repeat.

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Late Thursday afternoon, after nearly an entire offseason of position-player inactivity, Yankee GM Brian Cashman inked the former Braves superstar to a one-year, $2 million contract, with another $1.2 million in additional performance-based incentives. After bolstering their bullpen with top-shelf relief arms, the Yankees’ acquisition of Andruw Jones fills the hole left by the late (not so) great Marcus Thames.

Jones, who turns 34 in April, is coming off a strong campaign in 2010 in which he hit .230/.341/.486 with 19 home runs in limited duty for the Chicago White Sox. A longtime fan favorite in Atlanta, Jones combined both power and speed to create one of the most dynamic players baseball had ever seen. After a somewhat disappointing (to say the absolute least) 2008 where he hit .158/.256/.249 for the L.A. Dodgers, Jones has resurrected his career as a fourth outfielder and designated hitter. His most notable achievement, however, is primarily defensive in nature.

Looking at Andruw’s Baseball-Reference.com page, the more casual fan might notice 10 consecutive Gold Gloves and consider him a very good outfielder—but even that’s selling him short. According to the advanced statistic known as defensive wins above replacement (dWAR), Jones is quite literally the greatest defensive center fielder in baseball history.  

If you’re like the majority of baseball fans, dWAR might be a little foreign to you. The statistic is based upon something called TotalZone—which is derived from detailed accounts of each and every game played since 1953. Over Andruw’s career, he has been worth over 240 runs above the replacement-level center fielder—replacement-level meaning a normal AAA player, or bench option. Those 240 runs put Andruw ahead of some of the most legendary defenders of all time—people like Ozzie Smith, Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. The only player who was worth more than the newest Yankee was former Baltimore Oriole Brooks Robinson, who is the consensus greatest third baseman ever.

The Yankees expect Jones to be their fourth outfielder, and the reserve designated hitter against left-handed pitching. 

Author’s Note: This was intended for my school newspaper—hence the rudimentary explanation of dWAR. 

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