Hughes ready for ’09
Phil Hughes had a terribly disappointing 2008. There’s really no way around that fact. The subject of numerous true and untrue Johan Santana rumors, the Yanks expected big things out of the 22-year-old in 2008, but injuries derailed his season. He flashed some signs of life at the end of the year and had a generally stellar showing in the Arizona Fall League. To that end, Hughes is ready for 2009, as he told Mark Feinsand today. We lose sight of the fact that Hughes is still young, but there is no reason he won’t be a good Major League starter. While critics may say, “Fool me twice” and warn about over-hyping Hughes again, I’m expected big things from the right-hander next year.
BA’s Top 20 Hawaii Winter Baseball Prospects
Baseball America released their top 20 prospects list for Hawaii Winter Baseball today, and two Yanks’ farmhands made the cut: Andrew Brackman at #2, and Jeremy Bleich at #8. Brackman was behind Giants’ first rounder Buster Posey, while he & Bleich were two of just three pitchers in the top 13. Austin Romine and Damon Sublett didn’t make the cut.
Report: No arbitration for Pettitte
Despite Mike’s well-reasoned argument, the Yankees are not going to offer Andy Pettitte arbitration, according to Ken Davidoff. The Newsday scribe writes that the team is planning on extending an arbitration to Bobby Abreu and Mike Mussina but not to Pudge. Team officials feel that doing so with Pettitte would give the lefty leverage to earn more than the team wants to pay him. If Pettitte feels slighted and undervalued, this move could blow back in the Yanks’ face as he jets for Joe Torre’s Dodgers. The Yanks would get burned by Pettitte and lose the draft picks at the same time. Considering that the $4 million difference isn’t that much to the Bombers, the team should just offer Andy arbitration.
NERDS!!!!!!!!!!
Those geeks who live in their mothers’ basements have done it again. They’ve gone and made another stat, which clearly makes everyone enjoy the game less. Plus, they don’t even watch baseball! They just play with their Excel spreadsheets. What happened to the days when men were men? We judged baseball players on what we saw, not on what some computer told us. Someone get Billy Beane on the line. I have to give him a piece of my mind for writing Moneyball.
Silliness aside, I just got through reading this article by Dave Cameron explaining wOBA. Before you dismiss this statistic, I suggest you read it as well. Then read this article by Tom Tango, the dude who developed the statistic.
At this point you might find yourself saying that the last thing the baseball world needs is another statistic. I’ve heard plenty of people, including a beat writer or two, say the same thing. However, I think that’s missing the point. If we find a better way to measure baseball production, why shouldn’t we use those stats when making our arguments? You might not like Baseball Prospectus and their not-so-up-front formulas, but wOBA is spelled out pretty clearly. So is its intention:
OPS, as you probably know, significantly undervalues the ability of a hitter to get on base. It treats a .330 OBP/.470 slug as equal to a .400 OBP/.400 slug, when the latter is more conducive to scoring runs. wOBA gives proper weight to all the things a hitter can do to produce value, and is a more accurate reflection of a hitter’s value.
Of course, getting people on board with this is the problem. Many are comfortable saying Nick Swisher had a .219 batting average, therefore he sucks. No argument, no matter how well articulated, could bring this type of person around. We’ve always used batting average, so why change now? wOBA is for the fan who understands that just because things used to be done a certain way does not mean they should always be done that way.
What makes wOBA easy is that it’s scaled to OBP. League average is usually .335, plus or minus 5. So you know if a player is doing well or not without comparing him to other players. The average is already set to the league average OBP. Here is the 2008 Yankees leaderboard. As you can see, A-Rod wins by a mile.
We’re not going to shove this stat down your throat. Not by any means. But when we get into an argument over player performance and stats come into play, I’m probably going to defer to this.
Offer Andy Arbitration? Duh!
Today is the deadline for teams to offer arbitration to their free agents (players have until Sunday to accept), and over the weekend we had a nice little discussion about whether or not the Yanks should offer Andy Pettitte arbitration. Most fans seem weary of Pettitte because of the combination of how he pitched in the second half (he had a 6.23 ERA & 1.68 WHIP after July 30th) and his ever increasing age (he turns 37 next June), but to me this is a no-brainer: offer the guy arbitration.
Note: Before I go any further, let me just make it clear that my opinion about offering Pettitte arbitration has nothing to do with him being a “Dynasty Yankee” or his very good, but often overblown postseason track record. Nostalgia has no place in roster moves.
While Pettitte endured his worst big league season in terms of ERA+ last year, there is also considerable evidence that bad luck played a role in his performance. Check it out:
FIP | Hper9 | Kper9 | BBper9 | HRper9 | GB/FB | Contact% | |
2007 | 3.87 | 9.95 | 5.89 | 2.88 | 0.67 | 1.45 | 81.4 |
2008 | 3.71 | 10.28 | 6.97 | 2.43 | 0.84 | 1.80 | 80.8 |
If you looked at the raw numbers without having seen Pettitte pitch over the last two years, you’d say he was at least as effective in ’08 as he was in ’07, perhaps even moreso. The slight increase in hits allowed is almost entirely negated by the decrease in walks allowed, while the improved GB/FB & contact rates indicate that Pettitte did a better job of keeping the ball down while still getting swings and misses. The significant increase in strikeouts is obviously a big plus and evidence that his stuff is still fine, but the decrease in homerun rate is a negative, albeit a small one (it’s a difference of one extra homer every 52.2 IP).
Despite the general improvements in his rate stats, Pettitte’s ERA in 2008 was just about half-a-run higher than it was in 2007. When you allow fewer walks, induce more grounders, and rack up more strikeouts than the year before without significant spikes in hits and homers allowed, you almost have to blame the defense behind him. Decreases in DER (.678 in ’07, .667 in ’08) and GIDP rate (one GIDP every 7.43 IP in ’07, one every 13.60 IP in ’08 despite increased GB rate) support this.
My one real concern about how Pettitte pitched in 2008 is how righties just tattooed him. During his career prior to ’08, Andy held RHB to a .267-.322-.395 batting line (.282-.332-.394 in ’07), but last year they smacked him around to the tune of .325-.376-.476. Via the wonder that is Fangraphs, we can see that Pettitte threw his cutter 27.9% of the time last season, up more than 10% from past years. Maybe Andy relied too much on the pitch, and because RHB saw the pitch so much last year, they were able to tee off against it. I honestly don’t know, this is all just speculation on my part, but something worth considering.
As far as the actual arbitration process goes, it’s a very low risk situation for the Bombers. If he declines, then you’re netting draft picks if he goes elsewhere (there are rumblings that he’s considering the Dodgers, but I suspect that’s just to give himself some leverage) while still maintaining the ability to resign him. If he accepts, then he’d be back for another year at $16-18M (the 20% max salary cut rule doesn’t apply to players with more than six years of service time, however that’s irrelevant because no player has ever had their salary decreased in arbitration, and it’s not about to start with Andy Pettitte despite an ever so slightly below league average year). Given Pettitte’s recent track record as a league average starter workhorse, the risk is worth it for a team with ginormous holes in it’s rotation and more money than they know what to do with.
If the Yanks choose not to offer arbitration, what do they gain? The risk of potentially paying him $16-18M is reduced, but there’s always the possibility that another team makes a big offer and they end up paying him that much money to stay anyway, maybe even over multiple years. If Pettitte does decide to go somewhere else, the Yanks would receive no compensation picks, and would have to replace Pettitte’s innings with someone who they’ll probably end up paying a similar amount of money to over several years. As the say goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
It’s a no-brainer, offer Pettitte arbitration and take the risk of overpaying him for one year rather than having to replace him by overpaying someone that may not be able to handle New York while not gaining any draft picks. Did I really need 800 words to explain something this obvious?
Melky, Cano performing well in winter ball
In case you missed it, Ian Kennedy was rock solid in his last start this past Tuesday. He lines up to start Tuesday for Mayaguez (off-day tomorrow). The AzFL and HWB seasons are over as you already know; here’s the highlights from the guys still playing down in the Caribbean:
- Melky Cabrera: 12 for 35 (.343), 6 R, 22B, 5 RBI, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 SB in 9 games
- Robbie Cano: 8 for 26 (.308), 6 R, 4 2B, 7 RBI, 3 BB, 2 K, 1 SB in 6 games (remember, he’s strictly DH’ing)
- Frankie Cervelli: 9 for 35 (.257), 8 R, 1 2B, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 7 BB, 8 K in 16 games
- Justin Christian: 41 for 141 (.291), 22 R, 7 2B, 3 HR, 17 RBI, 12 BB, 21 K, 10 SB, 1 CS in 34 games
- Reegie Corona: 15 for 55 (.273), 10 R, 5 2B, 1 HR, 9 RBI, 3 BB, 6 K, 1 SB in 25 games
- Walt Ibarra: 14 for 66 (.212), 3 R, 2 RBI, 6 BB, 13 K, 3 SB 1 K in 28 games
- Ramiro Pena: 13 for 51 (.255), 4 R, 2 2B, 1 HR, 6 RBI, 0 BB, 1 K, 1 CS in 15 games
- Jon Albaladejo: 7.2 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 WP in 7 appearances
- Wilkins Arias: 7 IP, 11 H, 12 R, 12 ER, 6 BB, 10 K, 2 WP, 1 HB in 12 appearances
- Edgar Soto: 1 IP, 4 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 1 HB in 1 appearance
Feel free to use this as your open thread for the evening. Lots of interesting NFL action today, so talk it up here. Just be nice.
Update (6:10pm): IPK was flat out awesome today: 9 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 7-13 GB/FB. His last two starts: 16 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 10 K. What a bust.