Defensive Indifference

News: Reds 3B Edwin Encarnacion reached base Wednesday in his 27th straight game, the most for a Reds player since RF Austin Kearns reached base in 32 straight in 2003.

Analysis: Encarnacion is a streaky slugger for any Fantasy league when he is going well. He is on pace for a career year at this point, but you have to expect inconsistent results from the free-swinger.

Seems a little odd to call someone with a 27-game on-base streak a free-swinger, but, hey, Jimmy Rollins had that überlong hitting streak and he’s kind of a BDC, so maybe they’re right. Only thing is, Encarnacion’s OBP is currently 102 points above his average on the season, and, just to prove this isn’t something new, his career OBP is almost 80 points above his career AVG. Not Barry Bonds, but no Delmon Young either. He’s also seeing a decent 3.9 P/PA this year, which is just about his career average there too. But he is a Latino, so CBS is probably right.

As of tonight, the Minnesota Twins lead the American League Central with a record of 16-15. This was supposed to be the best division in baseball, but so far it looks more like its National League counterpart. Sure the Tigers and Indians will play better, but as we close in on the 1/4 mark of the season, it seems clear to me that this vaunted division isn’t nearly as good as we all thought it would be entering the season.

Here’s a team-by-team breakdown of the flaws:

Twins (16-15): Minnesota ranks sixth in the AL in ERA, but their starting pitching isn’t really this good, only the performances of Scott Baker, and to a much lesser extent Boof Bonser, seem believable. The offense is brutal and only going to get worse. Not a single player is slugging in the .500s and there are three regulars — Mike Lamb, Carlos Gomez and Adam Everett — with sub-.300 OBPs. Two of them, Everett and Gomez, seem unlikely to improve this season.

White Sox (15-16): Mr. Almost No-Hitter Gavin Floyd and Jose Contreras are both pitching well above their heads and based on their peripherals are due a serious regression to the mean. I actually think the offense will be OK once Nick Swisher gets going and I’m not worried about their struggles in Toronto, given the Blue Jays’ pitching. I actually think Chicago has a puncher’s chance, but that has more to do with the Central being weaker than expected than anything else. Given their shenanigans with a blowup doll, I suspect I’ll find it hard to pull for this bunch.

Continue reading ‘The AL Central: Chock Full of Overratedness’

And a lot more from Troy Percival and others from that upstart club in Tampa Bay in this piece over at AOL. There’s some intangibles stuff, but a lot of statistical analysis too if that’s your thing. And yes, I think the Rays are for real. On top of that I think the AL East is pretty safely the toughest division in baseball. Enjoy.

As someone who straddles the line between MSM and blogger on a daily basis — yes it is possible to be a “privileged sportswriter” and enjoy the filthy stylings of “Big Daddy Balls” — I thought I’d weigh in on the whole Buzz Bissinger freakout situation, even if I’m a few days late to the party.

What I am going to do is draw a parallel between the blogger-MSM feud and the sabermetrics-scouts feud that still simmers in some corners, but was much more heated in the immediate aftermath of the release of ‘Moneyball’. In both cases, the “feuds” are stupid and a creation of extremists on both sides of the debate. Seriously, how many sabermetricians believe there’s no value to scouting and how many bloggers believe there’s no value to journalists? I’ll generalize and say very, very few.

On the flip side, I do think there is a little more pushback from MSM members against bloggers, just as there was some pushback from scouts with the rise of sabermetrics, largely because both bloggers and sabermetricians were seen as a threat to the respective livelihoods of an established industry. I think that will slowly dissipate as members of the MSM realize bloggers aren’t a real threat to hard-working journalists.

Continue reading ‘Bloggers:MSM::Sabermetricians:Scouts’

One of the most surprising things about the start to the 2008 season has been Indians’ LHP Cliff Lee’s utter dominance of opposing hitters in his first four starts. Coming off a 2007 in which he posted an ERA of 6.38 in 97.1 innings, Lee has a 0.28 ERA in 31.2 innings thus far this season. Naturally, the question on everyone’s mind is a more or less profane version of “what the hell is going on?” Has Cliff Lee turned a corner at age 29 and returned to his 2005 form (if not better) or is this just a run of good luck? In order to answer that question, let’s break down Lee’s numbers in 2007 compared to 2008:

2007: 97.1 IP, 66 K, 36 BB, 16 HR, 38% GB, .309 BABIP

2008: 31.2 IP, 29 K, 2 BB, 0 HR, 46% GB, .153 BABIP

To me, there are two obvious things that stand out. Most obviously, Lee’s BABIP is absurdly low so far this year, at .153. What this means is that Lee has been getting pretty damn lucky on balls in play, and that a regression to the mean is imminent. The other obvious thing is that Lee’s control has improved dramatically from last season. Lee walked 8.1% of hitters last season, and has walked only 1.9% of hitters so far this year. His strikeout rate is much better too, at 27.9% compared to 14.9%. His HR rate this season (zero) is obviously way too low, and will undoubtedly rise; especially considering that his FB rate is not much different from last season (46.6% as opposed to 49.7%). What has changed is that many balls that were line drives last year are now GB, and those rates will probably regress toward the mean as well. Continue reading ‘Is Cliff Lee For Real?’

Up until tonight, Jacoby Ellsbury was having a quietly good season. He certainly wasn’t matching the fanfare he generated last year during Boston’s World Series run. So what does he go and do? Hit two home runs in another comeback win for the Red Sox and kind of spoils what I’m about to write.

Ellsbury has 52 at-bats this season, and while his batting average is 45 points lower than it was last season in his first 116 at-bats, he’s better in almost every other way.

He’s got eight stolen bases compared to nine last year. He’s already got 13 walks compared to eight last year in more than double the playing time. And he’s got three home runs now, compared to three last year.

Two things in particular stick out to me. First the truly impressive bump in his walk rate. Assuming we’re dealing with SSS issues and he takes a step back from this impressive start, he’s still looking like the rare ideal leadoff hitter — one who combines speed with an outstanding ability to get on base. Second, the fact that, entering tonight, he was actually a little unlucky (that may have changed by the morning). According to The Hardball Times, Ellsbury had a whopping 32.6 line drive percentage, but a BABIP of .286.

Based on the correlation between LD% and BABIP in this study by Dave Studeman, Ellsbury should have a BABIP of .446.

OK, so the elephant in the room here is that, of course, Ellsbury isn’t this good. He’s not going to have a LD% that high for the rest of the season. But even when he comes down to earth, I don’t see why Ellsbury, with his stellar bat control, can’t be among the league leaders in LD%. That means lots of hits, and probably lots of doubles, considering he plays his home games in double-happy Fenway Park.

His performance Tuesday notwithstanding, I’m still not sold on the home run power, the thing that could turn him into a true superstar, but with his contact skills and his walk rate, and of course his speed and excellent defense, the Red Sox appear to have a special player on their hands.