Since the Rockies are toward the end of a four game set against the Braves, it seems like an appropriate time to bring up an old topic: Dan Uggla.  Despite doubling and hitting a home run on Tuesday night, Uggla has been terrible all season.  That's not a surprise; it's been well documented (see, for example, here, here, here, and here).

Now that the Rockies have acquired the suddenly Ruthian Mark Ellis, it's worth looking back at the highly speculated, but never consummated trade for Uggla.  However, a caveat: though I'm a believer in the value of objective statistics, I also believe that results will vary depending on circumstance.  A different hitting coach, more agreeable manager, different teammates, different perspective from the batter's box, distance from a beach, a bad night out at an overrated downtown restaurant... all of these things can affect the human side of players who lack the mechanical nature needed to reinforce good habits and expel bad ones. 

Regardless of how Ellis performs the rest of the way, I can say that looking back at my vociferous advocacy for an Uggla trade last winter is a source of great embarrassment.  Despite all of the above caveats, it's hard to see how Uggla performs better as a Rockie than a Brave.

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Having never seen him pitch, I can't claim to know a lot about Tyler Anderson.*  Keith Law poo-poo'd the pick, but I only trust his recommendations on cookware.  A big lefty with a couple of good pitches sounds like a fair deal to me, but the best quote I've seen on him comes from his high school coach in a story by the Salem Statesman Journal:

"He's an extreme competitor and an incredible hard worker," said Mike Gomez, his high school coach at Spring Valley High, in an interview with MLB.com."He's a warrior. For us in high school, he was a bit inconsistent ... he showed flashes of his brilliance. The coaching staff at Oregon did a great job of getting him to be consistent.

I'll leave it at that.  John Sickels of Minor League Ball is "very pro-Story" and I like to tell a story now and then, so we are in agreement. 

You can probably deduce the same things about these two guys from a Google News search as me.  Instead, let's take a look at the drafts of Rockies past...

*Despite going to a school that produced multiple early round disappointments for NL West Teams (Matt Antonelli, Jamie D'Antona), I never got into NCAA baseball. 

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It hasn't been a pretty month.  Seven wins and fifteen losses* have stunted the promise built in the first month.  No need to rehash the low moments, and it's no surprise that there were some unsustainable performances in March-April.  An important thing to remember is that over-your-head performances are usually necessary for great seasons. 

The interesting thing is that the over-the-head performances from hitters only brought the team up to middle of the pack offensive output.  In March-April, Rockies hitters posted a cumulatively mediocre .316 wOBA; middle of the pack for the NL.  They followed it up in May with a composite .321 wOBA, but that is heavily aided by the 14-3 drubbing of the DBacks. 

The hitters can law some blame a low BABIP relative to the rest of the NL - .280 in March-April wasn't particularly unlucky, but it was the fourth lowest in the league.  Similarly, .275 in May doesn't sound that bad, but it was, again, fourth lowest in the league.  The big difference for Rockies hitters has been patience.  They went from leading the league with a walk 10.2% of the time to a middling 8.4% walk rate. 

A lot of this makes sense when you think about individual hitters.  Cargo started slow; Herrera was hot.  Stewart/Lopez have been terrible; Iannetta was not.

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Chris Iannetta fascinates many at the Row, myself included - and I'm not easily impressed ("Wow!  A blue car!").  Few Rockies players have inspired as much disappointment, frustration or unabashed fandom as CDI, and his start to 2011 probably hasn't changed minds all that much.  The question seems to be, albeit through only 52 plate appearances (prior to Tuesday's game), what is more real: the .211 BA, or the .423 OBP? 

It seems highly probable that neither is real, and it goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that 52 plate appearances is nothing.  Yet, I can't help be impressed with the .6 fWAR thus far on the season.  Still further, I'm perplexed 34% K rate.  Is our protagonist (antagonist?) doomed to be forever an enigma?  1.  Let's hope not.  2.  Let's talk about it ...

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Before we resume discussing advanced pitching metrics, David Pinto posted that ESPN will being a lot more with advanced statistics on their programming this season.  It will be interesting to see how they integrate it: in a separate, brief segment, or in their typical shove-it-down-your-throat fashion.  It will also be interesting to see, since they contract with writers from both Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs, which advanced metrics they use for pitchers, batters and fielders.

SIERA

Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average, or SIERA for short, was introduced about a year ago by Baseball Prospectus (the link takes you to their glossary page where there are further links to the five-part introduction).  It's a lengthy introduction, but the authors, Matt Swartz and Eric Seidman, note that SIERA is a successor to Nate Silver's QERA, which has a "simple" formula: QERA =(2.69+K%*(-3.4)+BB%*3.88+GB%*(-0.66))^2. 

You can click over to BP for the SIERA formula, but essentially the authors attempt to unfold all of the individual components of QERA, apply an appropriate multiplier, and correct for the fact that GB% is actually a percentage of balls in play instead of a percentage of plate appearances (such as K% or BB%).  For ground balls, SIERA uses (GB-(FB+PU))/PA, which puts less weight on them.  SIERA is way more arithmetically complicated than the simple examination that follows, but hopefully this will be a helpful introduction (or re-introduction) to the metric.

What does that accomplish?

Taking a step back, let's recall the video referenced in the FIP and xFIP overview.  In that, FIP is said to track the pitcher, umpire, stadium and luck.  The use of HR in FIP's formula is largely responsible for it tracking the stadium and luck (xFIP reduces the presence of stadium and luck by using expected HRs).  SIERA, which at its core relies on Ks, BBs, and GBs, claims to go a step further by eliminating the effects of the stadium and luck.  It accomplishes this partially by treating GBs as a pitcher skill (as an Ubaldo lover, an idea I greatly appreciate) instead of considering HRs.*  Removing HR from the equation essentially eliminates the key park and luck factor, but HRs are still accounted for by the notion that high Ks and lots of GBs should result in fewer HR.  In particular, high Ks matter in limiting the possibility of HRs and XBH.  The umpire, by way of controlling the strike zone, is still accounted for in SIERA. 

*As stated in their introduction, HR/FB is highly variable from year to year and dependent on luck.   Also, as noted in BP's Part 1, there is an inherent unfairness in treating all HRs the same. 

On its face, SIERA does eliminate the effects of the stadium.  As far as I know, there are no park factors listed for ground balls.  However, there are park factors for walks.  I'm not a believer, but there's no denying that 1) less foul territory could allow for more opportunities to draw a walk (or other outcomes) by decreasing the opportunity for foul pop outs, and 2) the optics of a park, or perception as a difficult place to hit HR, could change a hitter's approach.  Yet, neither of those are necessarily borne out when you sort the park factors by BBs.  There are lots of favorable parks for HR in the top ten for walks.  In sum, SIERA goes further than FIP or xFIP in removing park effects, but might not entirely eliminate them.

It's a bit tough tough to say that SIERA completely eliminates defense and/or luck when ground balls are one of the three core factors.  In a vacuum, ground balls are always better than fly balls because they can't become fly balls.  There's (probably) less variation in trajectory and fewer potential landing spots (the ball has to touch the infield to qualify, and there's less space by volume in the infield than the outfield).  It's a little like the Woody Hayes saying in football, "Three things can happen when you pass the ball, and two of them are bad."  Three things can happen on a fly ball - a home run, batter reaches, and an out - and two of them are bad.  Only two things can happen on a ground ball: batter reaches or an out.

However, the key reason that ground balls are considered better than fly balls is that they preclude the greatest danger (HRs) and are more likely to be converted to outs by the defense.   In that loose sense, SIERA still tracks a bit of defense.

We will go into how pitchers end up ranking (versus other metrics), but I want to discuss one more formulaic aspect of SIERA (and other advanced pitching metrics).  Follow over the jump, and then share your own thoughts, likes and displeasures with this crazy little metric...

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With the off-season mercifully winding down, and with a lot of new(er) faces on the site, it's an opportune time to go into two frequently mentioned advanced metrics: Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) and expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP).  This isn't tended to be an "us versus them" lecture, nor is it meant to condescend or browbeat. 

Is it rocket science?

Many people on the site seem fine with FIP and xFIP, and its use has come a long way since the first orientation was given on Purple Row in April '09.  It's not particularly new anymore, and the theory of Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS), conceived and developed by Voros McCracken, has been around for about a decade.  McCracken and DIPS even have their own Wikipedia pages, and McCracken worked for the Red Sox for a time, which is pretty neat. 

Before we go further, I think it's important to share that I'm not a math guy.  I did fine with it in high school, but never much enjoyed it.  I took two math classes in college because it was the minimum to satisfy the core curriculum requirement: intro statistics, and intro calculus.  I scraped together a B in stats, and got a C- in calculus.  (In my defense, it was an 8 AM three times per week during a less responsible era in life.) 

FIP and xFIP rely on the same fundamental numbers that people use in the course of normal baseball discussion: HR, BB, HBP, K.  There's no magic, and the formula (which can be seen in the above link to the Fangraphs glossary) is pretty easy to grasp: HRs, BBs and Ks are appropriately weighted and divided by innings pitched, and a constant is added to give the final product an ERA-esque look.  It's only slightly more complicated than commonly referenced staples like OBP and SLG.  They do some interesting math stuff that wouldn't have occurred to me, but, even with my very limited abilities, I can understand it.

After the jump is a video - humorous, mildly insulting, but to the point - that illustrates how FIP works.  If you haven't seen before, you should watch it.  If you have seen it, you know it's worth watching again.

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A few weeks ago, Mike Axisa at Fangraphs took a cursory look at who would serve as a replacement for Huston Street in the event of an injury.  Jeff discussed this at the time, but I want to take a closer look at how the three people mentioned have performed in different situations. 

Last off-season featured a variety of hypothetical arguments about who should fill in, but with Street and Betancourt healthy, plus Lindstrom, the team is long on late-inning experience (for what that's worth).  This off-season's closer picture is (so far, knock on wood) much better than last year. 

Continue with me as we get an idea of whether Betancourt, Lindstrom and Belisle deserve to be the first three mentioned as replacement closers...

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Sunday's loss to the Dodgers in 11 innings was a very frustrating game. An early lead was quickly snuffed by any combination of bad luck, poor defense, questionable bullpen usage, controversial calls, and an inability to build on an early lead off of a shaken starter.

Troy Tulowitzki had possibly his worst defensive game of the season, making a handful of errors, throwing and fielding (yeah, they ruled one of those a hit, but come on, it was an error). Jason Hammel exited the game with a supposed dead arm after 4 incredibly mediocre innings. The pitching staff threw 4 wild pitches as well, at least one on a strikeout-dropped-third-strike that allowed the batter to reach.

While technically these were scored as wild pitches, one has to wonder why so many balls in the dirt got away from the catcher, Paul Phillips. Which leads me to an almost bigger question:

Why was Paul Phillips even playing?

The immediate answer is that backup catcher Chris Iannetta was still hurting from a calf strain he had sustained the week before while running to 1B to back up a grounder. Troy Renck confirms this, but Tracy Ringolsby, the TV announcers, and Iannetta himself all reported that Iannetta was good to go for the start on Sunday.

Since his initial callup in 2006, Iannetta has had a very shaky career with the Colorado Rockies. In his first season, Iannetta posted a respectable .759 OPS, and a downright solid .370 OBP. His slugging numbers had yet to develop, but his career looked promising.

2007 was a pretty paltry year for Iannetta, batting a mere .218/.330/.350, and while he was prepared to fight for the starting position, the organization decided he needed refresher midseason, seeing him demoted to AAA Colorado Springs. What he worked on in AAA seemed to have worked, as he came out in August and September hitting over .300 and posting wRC+ of 164 and 123.

2008 was Iannetta's real breakout year. Taking the starter role early from recent re-signee Yorvit Torrealba and never looked back. Over the season, Iannetta did not post a wRC+ below 118 excepting May, when he posted a 88 wRC+. This is to say that in 5/6 months of the season, Iannetta was 18% more valuable at the plate than the average bat. And in May he was 12% below (/brushes under the rug). It looked to most everyone that the Catcher of the Future had finally arrived.



Click past the jump, because there's a lot more to discuss.

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