Are long at-bats more productive than short ones?

It seems obvious. Work the count. Make the pitcher labor. Foul off those two-strike pitches. As you go deeper in the count, it’s going to work in the batter’s favor.

Or does it?

The numbers beg to differ. Here are the major league averages for long and short at-bats (Short defined as three pitches or less, long as four pitches or more):
Avg On-Base Slugging OPS
Short At-Bats .301 .317 .467 .784
Long At-Bats .223 .352 .348 .700

Surprisingly, the OPS for short at-bats is significantly higher than long at-bats. What’s clear is that there is an advantage to hitters when they put one of the first three pitches in play. They hit almost 80 points higher and slug over 100 points higher.

There are two things that work in favor of hitters who work the count for longer at-bats. OPS is a great stat but not perfect. One of it’s imperfections is that it undervalues on-base percentage. Hence, the 84 point difference suggested is really less. The second element is hard to measure. There is certainly value to making pitchers work harder (i.e. throw more pitches) over the course of the game that is not measured here.

What about the really short and long at-bats (one-pitch ABs and ABs with seven or more pitches)?
Avg On-Base Slugging OPS
One and done .344 .349 .543 .892
Seven-up (7+) .230 .406 .372 .778

In both cases, hitters get better. Hitters, in general, are more selective on that first pitch and look for something in their wheelhouse as the pitcher tries to get ahead in the count. Nevertheless, it also pays off to really work deep into the count.

This is a new profile that we just added to Bill James Online. For more in-depth information (including short and long at-bat performance for every player going back to 2002), check out www.billjamesonline.com . It’s a subscription service, $3/month.

“Used with permission from John Dewan’s Stat of the Week™, www.statoftheweek.com.”

I decided to use Baseball Reference’s tool Play Index to take a look at how our stars have faired with two outs and the bases loaded, regardless of inning, in their career. Here were my findings:

(Plate Appearances / HR / RBI / AVG / OBP / SLG)

Soriano: 45 / 3 / 28 / .262 / .311 / .500

Ramirez: 52 / 2 / 34 / .255 / .327 / .511

Lee: 51 / 2 / 24 / .152 / .235 / .326

Jones: 55 / 1 / 34 / .291 / .291 / .400

Ouch, if there is such a thing as being clutch, it doesn’t seem like we’ve got guys that fit the mold in that situation. Let’s compare them to someone widely considered to be clutch, David Ortiz. Here are his career numbers in that same situation:

Ortiz: 66 / 4 / 57 / .317 / .379 / .650

What does this mean for this season? I have no earthly idea. Draw from it any whatever conclusions you will. I just found it interesting and thought I’d share.

Carlos Zambrano
A lot have said that big Z has lost some velocity on his fastball, yet he maintains that he hasn’t. Let’s let the data do the talking here. The following are the average velocities of his fastball over the past three seasons.

2005 - 92.8 mph
2006 - 92.2 mph
2007 - 91.6 mph

On the whole it doesn’t look drastic, but there is no doubt that the fastball has, in fact, declined in velocity. Whether or not that indicates any type of dead arm or concealed injury is up to you to speculate. One thing I know is that it bears watching this year to see if the decline continues. If he averages in the range slightly below 91 this year, I’m going to be a little concerned.

As for pitch usage, I noticed something interesting about his pitch selection. In 2005, his usage of the slider was roughly 16% of the time and he used his cutter just 1%. Fast forward to last year and you see roughly the same fastball usage, but the slider use has declined to 13% with the cutter use increasing to 9%. That’s a significant change and I wonder if it’s the result of his feeling less confident in the slider or more confident in the cutter.

Ted Lilly
Lilly appears to provide absolutely nothing to discuss other than his consistency in approach. His pitch usage breaks down to 56% fastball, 15% slider, 17% curveball, and 12% changeup. His fastball averaged a velocity of 88.4 mph.

The only other thing worth noting about Lilly’s pitch usage is his increase in curveball usage from 2005 - 2007 as he’s gone from 13.6% to 16.9%.

Rich Hill
I was very excited to look up Hill’s numbers because I wanted to see if he had changed anything over the past two years as he begins the process of being a legit Major League starting pitcher. What I found was exactly that. Hill did make a change last year.

2006 Pitch Usage - Fastball (70%), Curveball (23.4%), Changeup (5.0%)
2007 Pitch Usage - Fastball (60.6%), Curveball (27.3%), Changeup (8.3%)

He threw some sliders in there as well, but not really worth mentioning. What I see is a pitcher who is beginning to trust his off speed and breaking stuff a little more and rely less on his fastball. It’s no secret that his curve is one of the best in the Majors and it’s good to see him begin to trust it more.

All stats and information provided by Fan Graphs. Go check them out. In addition, have you gotten your entry done for the 2008 Home Run Derby Contest? The prize this year is a copy of MLB 08: the show for PS3. Click Here to enter

Can we finally put away the debate about whether or not the Cubs needed to go out and get Bedard? I’m perfectly content with what we have in house going into this season.

Don’t forget that if you’re interested in competing in the 2008 VFTB vs. Rays of Light fantasy baseball challenge on MLB Fantasy Open, shoot me an e-mail:

We’ve got 3 spots left for our team. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here was the post about it.

Let’s break down the main tools Roberts brings to the table and compare them with what Patterson brings.

1. Speed
There is no question that Roberts has tremendous speed and, as a veteran, has earned the green light on the base paths. Last year, he stole 50 bases with a success rate of 88%. That is above the 75% rate recommended by sabermetricians for there to be any sort of benefit to the team as a whole. Those 50 SB’s were a career high for Roberts, so it’s not necessarily the norm. Looking at his career 162 game average of 37, a 40 SB year is about what you can expect. A quick look at Eric Patterson in the minor leagues over the past three years and you’ll find that he’s also put up good SB numbers. 24, 46, & 43 are his last three years totals. That’s an average of 38 a season, just a shade below Roberts totals. Remember, Roberts has more experience as well, so his learning has taken place.

2. Leadoff Hitting Ability
There is no arguing the fact that moving Alfonso Soriano out of the leadoff spot, which Roberts would do, would be great for the team. Roberts has a great ability to make pitchers work hard to get him out and has the ability to take a walk. In 2007, he posted an on base percentage of .376 in the leadoff spot and managed a very impressive 4.2 pitches seen per plate appearance. Those are the kind of numbers that have me salivating. However, let’s look at Patterson. Hitting primarily out of the leadoff spot for Iowa (AAA), Patterson posted an on base percentage of .362 and has a career Minor League on base percentage of .366.

3. Lefthanded Bat
Brian Roberts is a switch hitter and would provide another lefty bat for the lineup dominated by right handers. Eric Patterson is a lefty and would also provide the balance.

4. Versatility
Roberts can play both middle infield spots. Patterson plays second base as well as the OF, which he worked on last season.

5. PECOTA Projections
Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus has produced a stat projection system called PECOTA. Like any projection system, it has it’s flaws. After all, can we really predict the future? Of course not, but can we use prior performance to make fairly good educated guesses using lines of regression and other math? Of course. PECOTA does just that. It provides best case and worst case scenarios for a player, and I tend to gravitate toward the mean of those. Looking at Silver’s PECOTA projection for Patterson last year, since it’s the only one up right now, we see that Eric Patterson was ML ready last year and was projected for a fairly successful season. Let’s use those projections and call them his 2008 projections for the sake of argument. Here is how he compares with Brian Roberts actual 2007 numbers.

Patterson projects for a little more pop in the bat, but less plate discipline. Both appear to be very similar to each other.

Conclusion
Bringing in Roberts is a great idea IF the Cubs do not have to mortgage the farm to get him. To get him by giving up both Sean Marshall and Sean Gallagher as well as perhaps Ronny Cedeno is too much. I’d rather take my chances with Patterson and save the prospects.

Despite all the cry of OBP being the key to winning, we really haven’t seen that major surge upward since Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball. Perhaps teams have figured out that while OBP is important, it was simply something undervalued and available cheap for Billy Beane, which was the whole premise of the book. 1913 or so looks like a tough year for hitters, reaching just a tad over .290. It’s interesting to note major spikes in the data as well. Take a look at the spike in 1920. Here is the reason:

The Joint Rules Committee voted to ban the use of all foreign substances (saliva, resin, talcum powder, paraffin) as well as any other alterations (shine or emery) to balls by pitchers. As a result, the American League opted to allow two pitchers from each club the option to use a spitball for one more season. The Nationals set no limitations as long as all “practicing” pitchers were identified and any other pitcher who was caught cheating would be suspended for a minimum of ten days.

Baseball Almanac

Are stolen bases really dying? If you look at the trend in the NL, which is widely considered the stolen base league, you notice that they declined consistently in the 20’s till the 70’s. If we take that trend, we should see the rise of the stolen base right around 2060. I look forward to that.

I wish the teams would stop building small parks. These small ballparks with little to no foul territory is killing off one of the most exciting plays in all of baseball, the triple. Really, is there anything more entertaining than watching that hitter round second and dig for third only to slide under the tag and look up to the umpire, his helmet flopping over his eyes, to see him wave “safe”. Bring back the triple.

Fielding in the beginning years of baseball…bad. Fielding in the modern era…good.

For this study, I used the stat OPS+, which is an adjusted look at On Base % + Slugging. What this does is take the park a player plays in out of the equation. It attempts to balance the playing field a little. An OPS+ of 150 or more is excellent, while an OPS+ of 50 or less is poor. I broke down the main contributor by position for each team in baseball last year below. Leaders by position are highlighted in yellow.

After looking at the data, I notice a few things that can either encourage us or worry us.

For the sake of argument, I took a look at the five starters that pitched the most innings for each Major League team last year and ranked them in order of their ERA+, or adjusted ERA as it’s sometimes referred to as. Basically ERA+ is as follows:

Adjusted ERA+, often simply abbreviated to ERA+, is a statistic in baseball. It adjusts a pitcher’s ERA according to the pitcher’s ballpark (does it favor batters or pitchers) and the ERA of the pitcher’s league. Average is set to be 100; a score above 100 indicates the pitcher performed better than average, below 100 indicates worse than average.For instance, if the average ERA in the league is 4.00, and the pitcher is pitching in a ballpark that favors hitters, and his ERA is 4.00, then his ERA+ will be over 100. However, if the average ERA in the league is 3.00, and the pitcher is pitching in a ballpark favoring pitchers, and the pitcher’s ERA is 3.50, then the pitcher’s ERA+ will be (significantly) below 100.

As a result, ERA+ is a good way of comparing pitchers’ performances across different run environments. In the above example, the first pitcher has performed better than the second pitcher, but his ERA is higher. ERA+ corrects this misleading impression. - (Source)

So we see that anything over 100 is considered league average and below is considered below average. Jeff Sackman of the Hardball Times did several research based posts in December of 2006 and found that ordinarily, most teams struggle with production from not only the 5th spot in the rotation, but from the 4th spot as well. In fact, here were his findings as to the average ERA for the five spots in the rotation.

Lg      #1      #2      #3      #4      #5
MLB     3.60    4.14    4.58    5.10    6.24
AL      3.70    4.24    4.58    5.09    6.22
NL      3.51    4.04    4.57    5.11    6.26

As you can see, teams tend to struggle greatly from the back end of the rotation, and my data shows the same. When we look at the ERA+ for each team by spot in the rotation, a number of things jumped out at me. I’ve highlighted the MLB leader for those spots in the rotation for easy viewing.

When I took at look at this data, it confirmed what I already knew and have been trying to convince people of all year. Our rotation is fine. It’s better than fine, it’s almost the best in baseball.

For our model today, we’re going to be using two types of data that I pulled from outside sources. The first of these are win shares. Sabermetric guys are familiar with this stat and tend to put a good amount of stock into it. It’s a stat that was devised by the Saber god, Bill James, and has been tweaked a bit by the folks at The Hardball Times. On an unrelated note, the guys at THT have been gracious to request my insight for the forthcoming 2008 Season Preview book due out in the spring, so you’ll have to look for that. That being said, their simple definition of a win share is as follows:

Win Shares. Invented by Bill James. Win Shares is a very complicated statistic that takes all the contributions a player makes toward his team’s wins and distills them into a single number that represents the number of wins contributed to the team, times three.

To sum that up, the Cubs managed a staggering 85 wins last year, which means they had 255 win shares to distribute among the players based on their contributions to the team. For a more in depth explanation, be sure to check out the article on Wikipedia.

Once we have how many of the wins can be attributed to each player, we can look at the salary they collected in 2007 and calculate what the Cubs paid for that player’s contribution in terms of wins in the standings. For example, a player being paid a very good deal of money (cough Alfonso cough Soriano) would be expected to put more wins on the board for the team. That’s how it should work, but did it? To calculate a players value, I simply divided their salary (in millions) by the wins they contributed and came up with the cost per win. The results might surprise you.

When we look over this summary, I pull out a few interesting nuggets that I don’t know if I would have known otherwise.

1. Rich Hill was really cost effective. Explain to me again why people want to trade him? Someone that young, making that little and producing that much is pretty valuable.
2. Our most productive player was Derrek Lee and even he only produced 8 wins.
3. Ouch, did Scott Eyre kill us!!!
4. Hey Neal Cotts, thanks for nothin’
5. Jacque Jones, everyone’s whipping boy all year, produced a total of 5 wins for this team and ranked as our 6 best contributor. It sure is a good thing we got rid of that worthless piece of garbage. We sure can’t have a guy like that on our team.
6. Mark DeRosa was THE STEAL of the off-season in 2006. Jim Hendry gets a gold star for that signing, when a lot of people criticized it due to DeRosa never really playing full time.
7. Jason Kendall was worth the flyer we took on him, but isn’t worth the money Milwaukee spent on him this off-season.
8. Who would have thought that Felix Pie contributed as much as Matt Murton and Mike Fontenot last year?
9. Daryle Ward was another nice bargain off the bench. Yet another gold star for Hendry on that one.

So we notice some interesting things, but in the end you have to ask yourself “Was Alfonso Soriano worth $1.23 million we paid him per win produced?” Could we have gotten by with something a little cheaper and spent that money elsewhere? Did the ends justify the means on this 2007 team? What surprises you about this data? Is there any nuggets I missed? Let’s discuss.

Tune in tomorrow when we take a look at how our starting rotation compared to the rest of the league using ERA+. It should be fun times, at least for dorks like me.

All salary data collected from Cot’s Baseball Contracts

Sean Marshall seems to be the starter the fans most want to see in that rotation, with the lowest average rating of all the choices. Angel Guzman seems to be a guy most want nothing to do with. Curious to me was the interest in Mark Prior. I know people understand the risk involved with him, but despite that, 23 people ranked him # 1 in their minds.

Here’s a look at some of the comments left in the survey to explain the thought behind the vote: