Baseball Mike

How are rookie hitters doing this year? Unlike the rookie pitcher scene in the AL, hitters across the majors aren’t exactly burning it up, but some are still putting together pretty solid first seasons.

Here’s a look at those who qualify for the batting title (not that any of them are going to win the batting title, but the qualification of 3.1 plate appearances per team games played is a good cutoff to show only the rookies who are getting a lot of playing time).

Josh Barfield (.293/.331/.423) leads the class in batting average. After a slow start, he hit .400/.435/.590 in July and has 16 steals on the year.

Dan Uggla (.291/.351/.496) has been a pleasant surprise, making the All-Star Team and becoming a good fantasy second baseman. He has 16 home runs (driven by a 33.6% fly ball rate) and 61 RBIs. He also has a great 30.3 VORP.

Kenji Johjima (.291/.335/.459) got hot in June but cooled off in July. His stamina is untested, but if he can stay at these levels right now, he will put up a solid year for a catcher. One thing that’s a little distressing is his walk rate: he has only walked 15 times for the year, and only once in June.

Ryan Zimmerman (.288/.353/.470) is my choice for NL Rookie of the Year so far. He leads all rookies in hits, doubles, RBIs, extra-base hits, and walks (tied with Conor Jackson), and he has put up a nice OPS and even stolen 9 bases. He has a 9% walk rate. It looks like all the predictions about Zimmerman were right on the mark.

Prince Fielder (.287/.346/.505) has also met expectations, as he has 20 home runs on the year so far. He has also stolen 5 bases, more than his father did in his 13-year MLB career. In terms of batting average, he had a poor June and a good July, but his power has been down since May, so he may be experiencing some fatigue.

Mike Jacobs (.287/.350/.512) leads all rookies in OPS and Isolated Power. He has had some pretty serious problems hitting lefties, though: .181/.234/.264 in 72 at bats.

Hanley Ramirez (.270/.339/.435) has faded from his strong start, but he has stolen 31 bases and scored 80 runs, leading all rookies in both categories. He has shown a relatively good eye: he has 39 walks, which isn’t great but is better than expected, and he has seen over 4 pitches per plate appearance, which leads all rookies.

Conor Jackson (.269/.357/.421) leads all rookies in OBP. He hasn’t shown much in terms of average or power. This falls pretty much in line with expectations. With his patience at the plate and other skills, he looks to evolve into a pretty good player, though he still has a way to go.

Josh Willingham (.263/.338/.478) has the lowest average of the bunch. I think many people expected he’d be a Three True Outcomes guy, though he has been frustratingly inconsistent from month to month and doesn’t have a good OBP. He still has some value because of his catcher eligibility in fantasy leagues, and he has 16 home runs and very good Isolated Power (.215), so he could explode (in a good way) if injuries don’t get to him first.

Barely missing the cutoff for this list in terms of minimum plate appearances are Ronny Paulino, Melky Cabrera, and Nick Markakis.

There are 167 players with over five stolen base attempts this year–including Julio Franco, who’s 5-5.

Six of them have been thrown out 10 or more times:

Scott Podsednik: 13
Juan Pierre: 12
Jose Reyes: 11
Chone Figgins: 11
Alfonso Soriano: 10
Rafael Furcal: 10

Sixteen players with five or more attempts are successful less than 50% of the time. The winner of the the “Do Not Go!” award so far this year is Jeff Francoeur, who is 1-6 in stolen base attempts and is truly an out-making machine.

Thirteen players with five or more attempts have a success rate of 100%. Both Melvin Mora and Luis Matos are 7-7.

Scott Podsednik leads all runners in pickoffs with eight. Between his pickoffs and his 69.8% stolen base rate, Podsednik is either one of the most overrated speedsters or one of the sloppiest runners in the game.

In fact, going back to 2003, only Juan Pierre (73) has been thrown out more times than Podsednick (59). But don’t worry, Podsednik-haters: Scott has been picked off more often (35) than Juan (25) during that time period.

Microsoft Excel is every baseball nerd’s best friend. The spreadsheet program, which is a standard despite some alternatives, is the best place to play with data. Databases such as MySQL and even MS-Access are great for storing and selecting data, but Excel is a top choice for lightweight data analysis.

If your data lives in a true database, there are a number of ways to get it into Excel, such as performing a query, saving the results into a delimited file format, and then importing into Excel. You can also query databases directly in Excel using Microsoft Query.

Sean Lahman is responsible for a massive and excellent database of yearly stats from 1871-2005 here.

However, the great thing about the Web these days is that you don’t need access to a baseball database. In fact, stats for the current season don’t get compiled into Lahman’s database until the season is over. The solution is to use Excel’s underappreciated Web query feature. After the jump I have a step-by-step guide to using this tool to get Baseball Prospectus stats. The guide may seem a bit tedious, but I think it’s the best way to get a feel for things in case you want to try it with another site. I also mention a shortcut near the end.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently, whoever does USA Today’s online player notes really misses Peter Gammons, or just hates Buster Olney and John Kruk:

If you watched the Angels/Red Sox game on ESPN last night, you noticed that Jon Miller and Orel Hershiser couldn’t stop talking about how difficult it is to hit home runs in Fenway this year.

It’s true that Fenway ranks last in terms of its home run Park Factor for 2006. However, I wouldn’t be too alarmed. Here are Fenway’s HR indexes going back to 2001:

Other parks experiencing a wide variance in terms of HR numbers this year include Camden Yards (+0.346 over its 2001-2005 average), PETCO (+0.331), Rogers Centre (+0.231), U.S. Cellular (-0.244), and Coors (-0.223).

Furthermore, Fenway’s index in terms of Runs hasn’t seen any drastic variation.

Soriano news from MLB Trade Rumors:

Word from a source is that the teams still standing in the Alfonso Soriano sweepstakes are only the Astros and Angels.

I know we all got burned during the last Soriano trade when we over-emphasized park effects. Still, let’s see what we have here. Minute Maid Park is a great hitters park, and especially a great home run park - if you’re a righty. Soriano (righty) could reach 40 home runs on the year if he ends up in Houston. Remember how the switch-hitting Carlos Beltran tore through Houston in 2004 (.258/.368/.559 in 90 games).

And what of Soriano’s speed? Phil Garner’s Astros had 159 stolen base attempts in 2005, the second most in the league (after the Mets). They will let Soriano run.

Angels Stadium, on the other hand, surpresses home runs around 10%. Most of the damage is done to lefties, but righties might experience a power outage there as well. In this scenario, Soriano turns into the guy everybody thought he’d be in Washington. Which, we have learned, was wrong anyway…

What of Soriano’s speed in LA? Mike Scioscia’s Angels led the majors in stolen base attempts in 2005. Soriano will still get to run.

Now, looking at things in real life, both teams need Soriano to spark their offenses. They each rank in the bottom six in terms of team SLG. Looking at things from the perspective of a fantasy baseball player who owns Soriano, though, you might be rooting for him to go to Houston and get his crack at that 315-foot left porch.

It’s common knowledge by now that Chien-Ming Wang has a low strikeout rate. In fact, he almost defies belief: How can somebody with so few strikeouts be successful at the big league level?

Of course, being on the Yankees doesn’t hurt: Wang has an 11-4 record this year. But he also has a 4.01 ERA. This shouldn’t happen to someone who has 44 strikeouts and 34 walks in 134 innings!

Wang is effective, despite how low strikeout rate (2.85 per nine innings) in part because he also has a low walk rate (2.2 per nine) and a low home-run rate (0.52 per nine). He’s still lucky in terms of that 11-4 record. Historically, pitchers who pitch like Wang will not have a record like 11-4. However, with those rates, luck doesn’t tell the whole story.

Taking a look at other major league pitchers with low strikeout rates and over 10 starts this year, only one, Aaron Cook, comes close to Wang in terms of ERA, and it’s because he has similar walk and home-run rates. Cook’s 3.88 ERA comes with a 6-9 record.

Another low strikeout pitcher, John Rheinecker, has been extremely unlucky with a .367 BABIP. And whereas Scott Elarton has had a lucky .250 BABIP, he can’t get enough balls in play to take advantage of his luck, since he gives up over 2 home runs per nine and has a higher walk rate than strikeout rate.

The life of a low strikeout pitcher is extremely precarious. All it takes is one overblown rate–walks, home runs, or even a hard-luck stat like BABIP–to upset the balance of any success he might appear to have.

This is something so obvious, I didn’t even think about it until now. If you’re following the MLB trade deadline intensely, like I am, the first place you need to check is MLB Trade Rumors. If you go to ESPN, Fox Sports, Sportsline, and ten million other sites and blogs, you are going to get a headache and probably start drinking a little too much. Let Tim suffer for you! If you start with MLB Trade Rumors, you will get the latest news about what is actually going on, and if you’re intrigued you can check out the comments or the other sites after that.

It’s not just one of those random blogs by a guy who blogs whenever he feels like it (like this one), but a true source by someone dedicated to bringing you the latest trade rumors and deals as they happen.

For example, check out this post and its comments about the defection of Cuban infielder Yuliesky Gourriel and this post and its comments about the Phillies’ trade prospects.

How do your fantasy players compare to real-life players at similar positions? Here are AVG, OBP, and SLG stats for both leagues by position.

Here are the home run and stolen base breakdowns by player position (and by league) for 2006 so far.