Saturday Rockpile: Who would you rather have - Ubaldo Jimenez or Johan Santana?
by Andrew T. Fisher on Aug 15, 2009 9:29 AM MDT
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PrintThat isn't a hometown comparison. No, Ubaldo has really started capturing national attention. The article of the same name is from Fake Teams, the fantasy sports SBNation site. Ubaldo is even getting love from the readers. He is leading in the poll by nearly double, though given the site, votes are probably cast with knowledge of draft slot. But just for fun, let's look at our stud's stats against the former Cy Young winner.
Ubaldo has allowed less hits, far less home runs and has a comparable WHIP. He's just walked too many. Sabermetrically, Jimenez has the edge, achieving a tRA of 3.18 vs Johan's 3.59. Our ace also has a lower FIP, 3.31 to 3.71.
Then of course, there's that thing that the Mets are paying $20million for Santana's services and have $117.5million left on his contract through 2013. Jimenez is making just $750k and is owed $9.25million through 2012, with options through 2014. Jimenez wins from Fangraphs value as well, giving the Rockies $19.7million in value (4th in NL) while Santana is at $12.6million.
I'll admit readily that we're not comparing apples to apples here. Johan is a 30-year old 9-year veteran while Ubaldo is 25 and barely has two years of continual play on the MLB roster. Still, who would have thought three years ago that the Rockies would have a pitcher in the same conversation as the Mets lefty?
Rockies News and Links
Speaking of dominant starters, Josh Johnson was good last night. The kid set a career high in strikeouts and lost his no-hitter in the seventh inning. It should be no surprise though. The kid is 31-13 in his career, including a ridiculous 19-3 since coming off Tommy John surgery. His career ERA is 3.28, he's been the 5th most valuable starter in the NL, has as many strikeouts as Ubaldo Jimenez, and has the second fastest fastball, ranked 8th in NL in value. So it was a good pitcher that beat us last night. It sure would be nice if we could beat a good pitcher before we have to in a playoff series.
Mike Timlin was released yesterday. The Rockies told him there was no spot in the MLB bullpen, so he walked away to be with his family in Castle Rock. Ryan Speier was activated from the DL to take his place and promptly blew a save last night.
Baseball America came out with their best tools issue, ranking players all the way to Class A. Most notable is Todd Helton's ranking as MLB's 3rd best hitter, behind Pujols and Hanley Ramirez. Huston Street earned honors as the third best reliever (not a bad trade) and Troy Tulowitzki checks in as being the 2nd best fielder with the 2nd best arm. Also appearing are Brad Hawpe, Eric Young Jr, Jhoulys Chacin, Esmil Rogers, Mike McKenry, Craig Baker, Jordan Pacheco, and Hector Gomez.
Rox riding a hot Fowler in August heat | ColoradoRockies.com: News
When asked why he has started hitting well again, the Rox CF said "I have no clue." Jim Tracy knows though: six of the eight starts in his hitting streak have come against LHP, meaning he's making hay mostly from the right side still.
Eaton gets early call to pitch - The Denver Post
After seeing him allow two runs in three innings last night, Bob Apodaca called Adam Eaton "impressive."
Troy Tulowitzki has started every game Jim Tracy has managed. Trainers are suggesting Tulo is fatigued (this is a tired Tulo?) and needs a day off. Tracy suggests next Friday against the Giants. Why? Rest him in Washington...Tulo also "impressed" while visiting the Dolphins' training camp before the game, and Troy Renck echoed yesterday's murmurs on Purple Row by saying the Rockies seem to have a ceiling offer of $2million for Tyler Matzek and that it appears no deal is imminent.
If you've read this far, you're probably very bored or very interested. There's more links under the fold - Buster Olney sounding off on beanballs, and several sabermetric topics.
Beanballs
Buster Olney looks into hit batters in a couple ESPN Insider Articles. In one, he notes the teams that hit the most batters win more. Only ten teams have hit fewer batters than the Rockies, so Colorado bucks the trend a bit. The other article:
The players have a code, and it's about time the league wises up to it, writes Buster Olney. Olney claims that MLB "whiffed" on the Rick Porcello-Kevin Youkilis fued and that the league needs to wisen up to the "Code of Proper Retaliation."
Sabermetric Thoughts
BtB's latest Poor Man's Predicted Standings. The Rockies have made up two games on the Giants and three on the Dodgers since the last installment.
tRA has been added to Fangraphs and is currently listed under the batted ball section of a pitcher profile. The tRA numbers will be slightly different than those at StatCorner because they use a different source for batted ball data as well as implementing park factors.
Graham MacAree explains: What is tRA? For a more detailed explanation, check out RockiesMagicNumber's Counting Rocks article on tRA.
Delving more into the world of pitcher sabermetrics, Colin Wyers at The Hardball Times attacks the practice of subtracting ERA and FIP, saying it distorts the difference between the good and bad pitchers, especially at extremes. Fangraphs has a ranking of ERA-FIP numbers, of which Jason Hammel ranks 3rd in MLB.
Ever wonder how to project the statistics of a player? Wyers uses Joe Mauer as an example to explain.
That's it for today...have a wonderful Saturday, Rowbots.
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The Matzek line
Man, I hate stuff like this, it seemed like a throwaway line by Renck: “The Rockies have shown signs they will go to $2 million.” What signs? For all we now he read this at Purple Row.
I still say that if they won’t go higher than $2million, they’re stupid. Unless the bonus is $2million, and the contract is for additional millions…
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
he said his source was an Oregon coach
I suppose that could be a stretch from the fan post commentor but I doubt it. And I agree with your last point. They knew it would take over $2mil draft day
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
by Andrew T. Fisher on Aug 15, 2009 11:16 AM MDT via mobile up reply actions
That was his source for Matzek heading to Eugene to enroll in classes
If Coach Horton was also the source of the line about the bonus, it seems pretty slippery to phrase it as “The Rockies have shown signs” rather than attribute it to Horton, or an “unnnamed source.”
Maybe this is just throwaway stuff at the end of a story that wasn’t primarily about Matzek and thus reflects no intention on Renck’s part, but it bugs me nonetheless. It doesn’t seem that it is clearly saying Horton was the source for the enrolling in classes, the demands, and the offers, and yet, people will read it that way.
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
The thing I don't get, is
if the Rockies know $2 million is the upper limit after paying Brothers and Wheeler, why even go for a reach like Matzek in the first place. I could see them thinking he would come down off whatever his demands were, but they knew he was never going to get slot. So I think the number is bogus or coming just from the Matzek camp
And obviously the draft order was such that they didn't know who they would pick later when they took Matzek
still, seems like the $2 million number is strange
I'm personally getting fried at all these other clubs offering 8th rounders huge contracts and such
Seth Smith status: Finally Getting Playing time
Mike McCoy status: FREE MIKE MCCOY
by Andrew Martin on Aug 15, 2009 12:20 PM MDT up reply actions
Yeah, it's annoying.
But at the same time, the other high school pitchers taken before Matzek have all signed for right around $2-3 million. Now granted, Matzek is considered better than these others and slid precisely because of his signability. But if he thinks anyone was going to offer him close to $7 million, he’s flat crazy.
And I think that maybe should be high school players, not just high school pitchers.
I’m going off of memory from what I read a couple days ago.
how far over slot were we with Dex?
I kind of give a pass to clubs signing an 8th round guy who would’ve been a 1st/sandwich/2nd round guy but was pretty acquiesced to playing football or basketball somewhere else, but some of these guys are incredibly headscratching.
Seth Smith status: Finally Getting Playing time
Mike McCoy status: FREE MIKE MCCOY
by Andrew Martin on Aug 15, 2009 12:33 PM MDT up reply actions
FIP and ERA
Wyers’ other recent article on component ERA stats and how well they predict ERA was also a good one. He tested ERA, FIP, xFIP and tRA in terms of their ability to predict ERA (which is a big, but obviously not the only) reason behind their existence) using a split half reliability test to look at root mean square error. FIP, xFIP and tRA ended up about the same.
The other great point was to remind that these component ERA stats abstract not just from defense, but also from timing:
Walk, Strikeout, Groundout, Home Run, Strikeout
has a very different result than
Home Run, Strikeout, Walk, Strikeout, Groundout
I think such abstraction makes more sense when one is looking at a small sample (like a season’s worth of stats) and is interested in a projection or “true talent” estimation than when looking to assess the value a player provided in a sample. Though, even in the latter case, tRA and FIP are still useful…data is useful, and there’s a lot of noise in ERA, or any stat in small (one season) samples.
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
A beanball is a baseball thrown at the head.
As the head was colloquially referred to as the “bean”.
So when a batter is “beaned” he is hit in the head.
I know the term has kind of expanded to include just general plunking, but that’s because people had been misusing it and other people were too lazy to correct the offenders.
You’ll notice that Olney correctly refers to it as “plunking”.
I encourage all of us on Purple Row to correctly use baseball’s slang terminology.
Seth Smith status: Finally Getting Playing time
Mike McCoy status: FREE MIKE MCCOY
you're asking for a beaning square in the ribs
The Rockies need some oldschool purple/white striped high socks. The team’s problem is it’s lack of swagger. I feel strongly that these socks will provide the swagger necessary to tap the potential that are the Rockies.
i will stab you right in the bean
Seth Smith status: Finally Getting Playing time
Mike McCoy status: FREE MIKE MCCOY
by Andrew Martin on Aug 15, 2009 12:15 PM MDT up reply actions
THE DESTRUCTOBEAN
The Rockies need some oldschool purple/white striped high socks. The team’s problem is it’s lack of swagger. I feel strongly that these socks will provide the swagger necessary to tap the potential that are the Rockies.
good call my bad
I suppose we used the term too loosely in high school
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
by Andrew T. Fisher on Aug 15, 2009 1:31 PM MDT via mobile up reply actions
Oh sure
First you get called a spelling nazi, and now you want people to be called the usage nazi???
by rockieprogress on Aug 15, 2009 9:09 PM MDT up reply actions
I really haven't taken enough Linear Algebra to really follow what they're doing
Which is amusing, considering I’ve passed Linear Programming.
I can vaguely wrap my head around what they’re working on, which makes me wonder why they don’t employ a linear optimization method to see if they can’t establish a “best fit” and essentially reformulate FIP.
The FIP I know and love is just a quick and dirty back-of-an-envelope kind of metric that can be done on a pocket calculator. xFIP obviously requires more work, but it’s a good adjustment.
Maybe I’m posting this in the wrong forum.
Seth Smith status: Finally Getting Playing time
Mike McCoy status: FREE MIKE MCCOY
The beauty of FIP is simplicity
If it does that well in predicting future ERA compared to other methods and it can easily be calculated off original stats, that’s something, and probably one reason why people have gone in different directions (like DIPS 3.0 and tRA type approaches) to try to improve on it.
I think to go deeper, at some point one needs to choose the goal—projecting stats or determining value. I’m sure people have been putting work into better projecting pitching stats, but a lot of that stuff is under the hood or in the threads of places like the book blog and I’ve not kept up with it.
You should post on the THT thread or track Wyers’s contact info down at the site or at BTF. Colin seems pretty responsive to questions.
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
original stats?
Weird Freudian slip there or something. I meant “traditional” stats.
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
FIP is what FIP is.
And the beauty of FIP isn’t just that it can be done pretty easily, but that its terms are easy to remember – it’s been a long time since I’ve had to look up the formula for FIP, which I can’t say about a lot of other things.
We can certainly make a non-linear FIP – I’ve done so before, as have others. You do gain some accuracy, at the expense of complexity.
Is that responsive? What service!
Thanks for the link.
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
Not that he wasn't "effective"
but why is Dac so impressed with Eaton?
Seth Smith status: Finally Getting Playing time
Mike McCoy status: FREE MIKE MCCOY
Hammel left team due to death in family..
Not sure if this belongs here…but I read in the Post’s game summary, that Hammel left the team right after the game, due to a death in his family. I wonder he knew of this before the game and maybe it affected him. Man, he’s had a rough month :(
This makes me very very sad :(
Watching the purple row from high atop the big brown monolith on California Ave
Ubaldo with the contract
Johan in the abstract. I picked them both in fantasy!
King of the bling come to lay down the evidence//Not George Bush, L-Millz be da president
Very nice of PF to point out that they're in the conversation
Jimenez is having quite a season. The two are even closer this season when you realize that Jimenez is averaging 8.4 K/9 on the road and 7.5K/9 at home, and that the latter is largely a park effect. One of the many wonderful effects of Coors for pitchers, even post-humidor, is that it suppresses strikeouts significantly (like 10%).
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
Moneyball
I was just looking back at PF’s wOBA article, and the mention of Moneyball made me remember how much I didn’t enjoy that book. I felt like the author, who freely admitted to knowing nothing about baseball, was talking down to the audience, and all that I really got out of it was that OBP is an important stat. What really upset me was the end of the book, when he began slamming baseball writers from across the country, none more so that our own Hall of Fame writer Tracy Ringolsby. The book just irked me.
"Speak softly and carry a big (hockey) stick." - Theodore Roosevelt
Are you referring to the paperback?
If so, Ringolsby took his own shots first.
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
Yes
I’m fully aware of the shots that all of the writers took at the book, most of which as I recall were actually at Billy Beane’s supposed ego rather than the author. It just seemed underhanded to slam writers that have covered the game for years. To each his own, but I thought it was unnecessary.
"Speak softly and carry a big (hockey) stick." - Theodore Roosevelt
Lewis alleged that Ringolsby brush off the book
by saying Lewis had a limited knowledge of baseball and an infatuation with Billy Beane. If Ringolsby is going to go ad hominem, I can’t blame Lewis for firing back, and I doubt Ringolsby would, either.
Leave Dexter alone! You're lucky he even performs for you!
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