Let's dive into the latest edition of Full Count from Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports..
- It's early in the season, but it already seems like the Giants' Mark DeRosa could be the odd man out in San Francisco. DeRosa is obviously versatile, but the club seems to be set at shortstop, second base, third, and in the outfield. The veteran is earning $6MM and he seems like a prime candidate to be traded.
- The Rangers are off to a hot start but the club is concerned about their lack of a dominant right-handed set-up man. Alexi Ogando was supposed to fill that role but instead, he's flourishing as a starter. Darren O'Day is coming off two strong seasons but he's viewed as more of a "seventh inning guy". Because of that, look for Texas to target a strong right-handed reliever before the deadline.
- The next young starters in line for contract extensions might be the A's Gio Gonzalez and the Cardinals' Jaime Garcia following the deals given to Trevor Cahill and Clay Buchholz. However, Gonzalez is a Super Two player, meaning that the A's might have to guarantee him another year to cover his first year of free agency.
Garcia is also a super two.
Mike Napoli for Frank Francisco
Shawn Camp, Rauch, Dotel, or Frasor could all be options (not sure about the dominance of the last two though). Rauch would make sense. Camp might be too expensive to try and pry away from the Jays. He might be the best, most reliable arm out of that pen.
On a different note, Carlos Villeneuva has looked really solid so far this year. Not sure what the Brewers were thinking.
If the giants are looking for a salary dump, the brewers could be a fit for derosa. I wouldn’t give up anything of value for him though
Change of scenery and a small sample size is helping villa. He’s trended downward for the last couple years, and the crew had cheaper options.
what was trending down, other than his FIP?
2007: 4.80
2008: 4.49
2009: 4.28
2010: 3.74
villanueva’s k/9 spiked hugely last year, but i dunno if you can call it a surprise. 7 k/9 was way too low for a guy who misses bats as often as he has. swing strike %:
2007: 10.5
2008: 11.2
2009: 11.8
2010: 12.8
i wouldn’t expect him to be quite as great as he’s been so far in 2011, but it was clearly a steal by AA from a milwaukee org asleep at the wheel
baseball-reference.com/players/v/villaca01.shtml
Not sure what your looking at, but aside from a slight improvement last year over the year before he’s trended downward in era basically his whole career. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to think that that small drop last year might have also been related to his career low in innings pitched. Simply put he was not worth the pay raise. I don’t have anything against villa, but i wouldn’t bet the farm that by july, he’ll wont be doing mop up duty for the jays with an era north of 5
no, that’s the point: if you use something sloppy like ERA, you miss out on the fact that he’s actually been quite alright and gotten better year after year. in other words, he was worth the pay raise
are you familiar with FIP? DIPS? please enjoy this article and especially the video
fangraphs.com/library/index.php/pitching/fip/
ERA may be “sloppy” but the runs that are actually surrendered are what win or lose games. A pitcher who keeps runners from crossing the plate is still a good pitcher regardless of what his peripherals say.
Peripherals are a good way of looking at how pitchers get outs, what their potential is, and which way their career may be heading. But ignoring ERA is really a bad idea.
ERA may be “sloppy” but the runs that are actually surrendered are what win or lose games
red herring. ERA purports to measure an individual (the pitcher) performance. but what it measures involves a dozen factors that have nothing to do with the pitcher. “most convoluted stat”: fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-most-convoluted-…
of course it’s true that pitchers bear a degree of responsibility for the quality of contact they surrender at times. so if you prefer tRA or something like it, i can dig it. but tRA is not as clean or as easy to use as FIP, which is a really marvelous stat
more on your concern that ignoring ERA completely compromises analysis (as usual, tom tango cuts to the point nicely):
It’s true that not all contact plays are the same. But, do we have an issue with OBP? What does OBP say: all walks, singles, and HR are worth “1”. Does that make any sense? No, of course not. But, OBP is just one component to offense. There’s also moving runners over, as well as baserunning.
FIP is the same thing: it is only concerned with one component to pitching. The interesting thing with FIP is that the players wtih the best FIP are also the ERA leaders. For example, here’s the top 10 FIP of pitchers born since 1962, minimum 10,000 batters faced:
FIP
2.99 Martinez Pedro
3.28 Clemens Roger
3.33 Johnson Randy
3.33 Schilling Curt
3.34 Maddux Greg
3.35 Smoltz John
3.48 Brown Kevin
3.55 Saberhagen Bret
3.60 Gooden Dwight
3.68 Mussina Mike
And here are the top 10 in ERA, under the same criteria:
ERA
2.93 Martinez Pedro
3.12 Clemens Roger
3.16 Maddux Greg
3.28 Brown Kevin
3.29 Johnson Randy
3.33 Smoltz John
3.34 Saberhagen Bret
3.46 Schilling Curt
3.46 Cone David
3.51 Gooden Dwight
Look at the names. Pedro is #1 in either case, as is Clemens. Even Maddux doesn’t move much. Schilling and RJ are on both lists, as is Smoltz and Kevin Brown and Bret Saberhagen and Dwight Gooden. In fact, there is only one player different in the top 10: Mussina is #10 in FIP (he was 12th in ERA), and David Cone is #9 in ERA (he was 11th in FIP).
This is the revelation of DIPS and FIP: even though we completely ignored the number of hits a pitcher allowed (COMPLETELY) we were still able to get a top 10 list using only HR, BB, and SO that pretty much matched their ERA. That’s astounding isn’t it?
So, the purpose of FIP is not to dismiss hits allowed and other non-HR contact plays, but simply to break it up into its own component (fielding-independent pitching, FIP). And, the fantastic byproduct of doing that is that even if you dismiss hits allowed and other non-HR contact plays, you STILL get a very similar answer.
I’m curious if you actually watched villa last year or if your going off just numbers. I probly saw 70-80% of his work and what you might be missing is that he started the year in high pressure innings, even getting a save, but by the end of the year macha mostly had him in mop up and facing the bottom of the order. He could not get the heart of an order out to save his life. The question is does he give you anything more than a guy like sean green or brandon kintzler at about a million bucks more? The answer is no.
i’m curious if you actually looked at the numbers or if you’re going off just memories from casual observation, which are massively less reliable
“what you might be missing is that he started the year in high pressure innings, even getting a save, but by the end of the year macha mostly had him in mop up and facing the bottom of the order … The question is does he give you anything more than a guy like sean green. The answer is no.”
o rly?
villanueva’s average leverage index in 2010 was 1.098
sean green’s average leverage index in 2009 (when last he pitched) was 1.051
villanu permitted 38% of inherited runners to score
green permitted 44% of inherited runners to score
villanu’s swinging strike %: 12.8
green’s swinging strike %: 8.7
villanu’s FIP was 3.74
green’s FIP was4.42
about the only thing green does better than villanueva is induce groundballs. those are valuable, but not as valuable as strikeouts. particularly when the contact green does surrender results in more extra base hits (34%) than the contact villanueva surrenders (29%)
at the end of the day, i don’t mind your preference for a guy like green over villanueva; i’m not telling you who to like. milwaukee made the same choice you say you would
but if you’re going to try — as you just did — to tell someone definitively that villanueva was not worth keeping because of a guy like sean green, you’ll have to find some compelling evidence outside of these numbers. (and “trust me i saw some games” isn’t going to cut it, because all of them suggest villanueva was the better pitcher to keep)
advantage blue jays
but if you’re going to try — as you just did — to tell someone definitively that villanueva was not worth keeping because of a guy like sean green, you’ll have to find some compelling evidence outside of these numbers. (and “trust me i saw some games” isn’t going to cut it, because all of them suggest villanueva was the better pitcher to keep)
NAILS
My point all along has been that i don’t have anything against villa, but the brewers are a better team with guys like kintzler, green bradock, axford and an extra million bucks to add more talent in other areas of need. Besides, arguing that villa is a god in april based on a handfull of innings is a waste of time, get back to me in august.
that’s awesome. i walk you through the previous four years of data, and you pretend i’m basing my conclusions on april
we better trust that good eye of yours
dude, seriously. watch the games
I did not say that ignoring ERA completely compromises anything. I said it’s a bad idea to ignore it.
While the two often track together, it is possible for a pitcher to have good FIP or xFIP and not have corresponding success in ERA. That might be because of other factors, but how would you know without looking at ERA and being aware that success in actually preventing runs is not there?
On the point of throwing out every traditional number in favor of a new number, I saw Bill James on the Discovery channel discussing the statistics he helped create. He sounded very reasonable in advising that new stats gave different ways of looking at the game and not necessarily the only way.
I think that like many of the people who fall in love with new stats, you feel there’s no reason at all for any of the old ones. I happen to disagree. In that disagreement, I’m not trying to make you look bad or insult you, I’m simply stating that I don’t think that the FIP formula:
(13HR+3BB-2K)/IP
by itself defines pitching. If you believe it does, that’s fine with me.
no one here has said or implied that FIP “by itself defines pitching”. i have even said the opposite (“FIP is the same thing: it is only concerned with one component to pitching.” / “The purpose of FIP is not to dismiss hits allowed and other non-HR contact plays, but simply to break it up into its own component”)
like the other dude who pretended i was talking about april, you’re pretending i’ve taken a position that in reality i’ve actively contradicted
why do you guys do that? is it just so you’ll have something to say?
Hey, that part about “just so you’ll have something to say” is a bit rude. In your own answer to me you ascribed a statement to me that I had not written. Sometimes when people are on opposing sides of an argument, things can be misconstrued.
In the posts you’ve made it seems to me that you’re trying to say FIP tells all don’t worry about ERA or any other stat which doesn’t lead to FIP. You didn’t directly say that, and that may not be what you meant to convey, but that’s the sense of things I was getting.
I’ll quit now, because I don’t want to get into one of these internet tough-guy. In doing so, I hope you’ll understand that I didn’t write anything to you with any intended malice or disrespect.
I hope that’s good enough for you and keeps things friendly here at MLBTR.
“In your own answer to me you ascribed a statement to me that I had not written.”
it’s true that you didn’t write “completely ignoring ERA compromises analysis”, but that is a position that follows logically from what you did say (“ignoring ERA completely is a really bad idea”). indeed, why would it be a really bad idea to ignore ERA completely unless it did compromise analysis?
i will apologize for attributing that position to you if you confirm that you believe ignoring ERA completely does not compromise analysis. if you do believe that, there isn’t anything to apologize for because my attribution of that position to you was correct and it doesn’t matter that you didn’t actually say the words explicitly
not only are the positions you have attributed to me not implied by anything i’ve said, on the other hand, they are in fact contradicted by things i have said in this very thread. do you see the difference? it is significant
the funny thing here is that if you do take the position now that ignoring ERA does not compromise analysis, there was no reason for you to say what you said in the first place, that it was a bad idea!
and to be clear, you shouldn’t understand me as being unfriendly here. i don’t go out of my way much when talking numbers and conclusions to pal things up or keep things light, but my criticisms are almost always about the things being written and not the people writing them. the majority of my time here is spent goofing off
“In the posts you’ve made it seems to me that you’re trying to say FIP tells all don’t worry about ERA or any other stat which doesn’t lead to FIP. You didn’t directly say that, and that may not be what you meant to convey, but that’s the sense of things I was getting.”
that’s fine. i can’t tell you that you didn’t get that impression
the problem is that if i ask you to cite examples of things that could plausibly create that impression, you won’t be able to come up with much. and that’s because not only have i not taken such a position anywhere here, but many of the positions i have taken (and things i’ve said in support of them) directly contradict the impression you say you had gotten!
that’s what i find tedious. but i’m still having fun. i don’t have time to not have fun with this stuff
Dude, not only did I not write [it’s true that you didn’t write “completely ignoring ERA compromises analysis”] neither did you! You’re moving around the word “completely” which changes the meaning of the statement you are putting in my mouth.
Since it’s all about words you put in my mouth, let’s forget the whole thing – and I’ll clarify what I think below:
I am a multi-stat person who thinks that analysis of performance requires careful examination of a set of numbers to be certain what you’re saying is true. When it comes to pitching analysis, simply ignoring ERA is a bad idea.
If you re-read the first comment I put up, that’s what I wrote there, although I hope what I wrote here clarifies further.
“When it comes to pitching analysis, simply ignoring ERA is a bad idea.”
as you know, i agree. but my point to you is that this still was/is not worth saying unless you have/had reason to believe i thought/think ERA should be ignored (rather than deemphasized), which you didn’t/don’t – since everything i said, quoted, and linked to endorses prioritization not exclusive use
apparently convoluted stats lead to convoluted conversations. glad we’re on the same page now
“The Rangers are off to a hot start but the club is concerned about their lack of a dominant right-handed set-up man”
god that org is way too preoccupied with relievers. there’s only so much volatility you can hedge against in relief work. worry more about the first 7 innings
I don’t think their starting pitching has been the issue. Oliver and O’Day have been not good and brutal respectively.
sample size. over the course of a long season, their rotation has potential but is suspect. given the quality of the arms in it and the fact reliever volatility is ordinary and almost impossible to control, their bullpen is comparatively stable
I think the Rangers can pretty much sleepwalk into the playoffs this year, and while bullpens don’t provide tremendous “value” during the season, a shutdown pen is pretty much essential in the playoffs. I’d fully expect them to make a trade for a guy during the middle of the season, which is better than signing guys to multi-year deals before hand, and sorting out all the starting pitching they have, and possibly even making a move there.
as far as sleepwalking into the playoffs goes, i don’t put that much stock into a 2 week performance. and while i don’t disagree that a team needs its bullpen to perform well in the playoffs, it’s like i said before: there’s only so much you can do to hedge against that volatility. in most cases, committing resources in the form of talent in a trade is only slightly less foolish than committing them in the form of a long-term contract
i mean if the pen is in shambles by the deadline, it won’t be hard to justify acquiring someone who’s performing better. but the guys they have now are not scrubs
Giants should trade derosa or release him. He is useless now with Tejada at short, and Sandoval hitting to well to bench. Wish the Giants could find a team that would trade for Rowand since he is playing great. Even though he is hitting well he will eventually go into a slump for about a month like he always does.
I honestly think the Giants should give DeRosa another try before trading him. He hit well all spring training and has started the season going 4 for 11. If it wasn’t for the deep depth the Giants have, I could see DeRosa playing everyday. The only reason why DeRosa struggled the last year and a half was because of a wrist injury he developed in the middle of 2009 which was still brought over into 2010 despite getting surgery on it the previous off-season. He hit well for the first half while with the Indians in 2009 when healthy. Now that DeRosa has recovered from his wrist troubles, he is starting to hit like he did before his wrist troubles.
Are the Giants going to have room for him to play everyday? Probably not. But the Giants should at least try to get him more playing time before Ross and Torres come back from the disabled list so that he can at least build value for if the Giants need to trade him. In a perfect world, keeping DeRosa would be wise because of the leadership and versatility he brings to the table. DeRosa would make a fine bench player/pinch hitter for the Giants year-long as he would help strengthen their bench and would make a fine substitute in case anyone else got injured.
Given that he can play six positions, takes professional at-bats, has the potential to knock one out every now and then, and is a great clubhouse influence, I don’t see how it does any good getting rid of DeRosa. The fact that the Giants now have Sanchez and Tejada on the infield is a catastrophically weak excuse to reason parting with him. Sanchez didn’t earn the nickname “Fragile Freddy” without due cause and as much as I like him, its only a matter of time until he hits the DL again. Likewise, Tejada is hitting this week, but prior to that, fans(albeit stupidly) were already itching to bench him in favor of other options. Use DeRosa to spot Sanchez one day, use him to spot Tejada the next, then spot Burrell after that such that he’s starting 3-4 games a week to spare these guys the wear and tear. Just too many places in the lineup that DeRosa fits already, even more if something happens to a starter.
I know that dumping DeRosa’s salary makes it the financially wiser move, but to me, Fontenot seems like the player with the least upside and the greatest redundancy on the bench.
My point exactly. In my opinion, DeRosa just may be our best bench player by the fact that he is our best all-around hitter and most versatile player on the bench. Especially with the injuries of Cody Ross and Andres Torres as well as the fragile-ness of Freddy Sanchez and aging of Miguel Tejada. While we do have a lot of depth, we also have a lot of questions as well in terms of the offense’s health. I think if given enough playing time, DeRosa will have a bounce back year, hopefully year-long with the Giants.
The Giants can use DeRosa as a super utility player and he give you depth. There is no reason to give him away.
isn’t it funny how all the rangers good, true starters were in their bullpen all along?
I would think the Twins might be interested in DeRosa. Nishi goes down to injury and granted Luke Hughes has played OK, I think DeRosa would be an upgrade. The Twins were also interested in DeRosa a couple seasons ago so they may revisit that idea.
DeRosa to the phillies?
DeRo to Cubs, Cubs have already brought back Wood, Johnson, Moore, Wellemeyer, et al, though only Wood and RJ made the team.
Who for him?
17APR~ Missing the 8th inning guy, instead of Ogando?
All the Rangers have to do is get PEDRO STROP into the 8th … He’s there, use him.