Ultimate Zone Rating In The Boston Globe

Shocked was about the only way to describe myself when I came across this passage in Adam Kilgore’s article in today’s Boston Globe. Kilgore, along with Amalie Benjamin, cover the Red Sox daily beat for the Globe. This was one of the few times this season a story written for the newspaper caught my attention… though both contribute to the Globe’s Red Sox blog that is a must-read.

Here’s what Kilgore wrote today:

The Sox are fourth worst in baseball and second worst in the AL in runs prevented, according to the Ultimate Zone Ratings on fangraphs.com, a website devoted to baseball statistics. The UZR considers range, errors, and arm strength, denoting a value, in runs, to each. By the formula, the Sox have prevented 17 runs below average. For comparison, the league-leading Tigers are plus-33.2.

Statistics show what any close follower would expect – the left side of the Sox’ infield has been a liability and the main reason for the poor rankings. Shortstops have combined for a -7.0 UZR, and Julio Lugo by himself is -5.3; only Yuniesky Betancourt of the Mariners is worse among AL shortstops. Nick Green has made nine errors, tied for the most among major league shortstops.

At third base, Mike Lowell has prevented 6.2 runs below average; only Michael Young of the Rangers is worse in the AL. Lowell has been uniformly average in all fielding aspects save one: range. He remains a slick fielder, but offseason hip surgery shaved a step or two off the ground he covers.

It’s nice to see someone take a new angle and step outside the anti-sabermetric media box for once. I applaud you Kilgore and will be cursing WEEI this afternoon as the Big Show mocks your “stupid, brain-hurting numbers”, or whatever they decide to call them.

AL East Defense by UZR … with Graphs

Just a quick morning update… goes by all players that have played the position and have a UZR rating for that position on fangraphs.com. When I update in the future I’ll list each UZR per position and team overall. Sample size warning!

Left side of the field, awful.

Brett Gardner is good.

Very good defensive team.

Infield defense is crazy good, Vernon Wells is miserable.

What in the hell is up with Adam Jones and Nick Markakis?

Red Sox Pitching Prospects Major League Equivalency

Like some of the best baseball stats websites, I can visit MinorLeagueSplits.com and play around with their tools for an hour and not even realize it.

Tonight, while check out Clay Buchholz’s numbers I looked at his MLE’s, or Major League Equivalencies. Basically it takes his stats, adjusts for luck and the park and level he is pitching at in the minors, and spits out what his numbers could/should resemble if he was pitching for an average Major League Baseball team.

3.75 Fielding Independent Pitching ERA, 0.86 WHIP… not bad MLE’s for a guy currently being blocked by Brad Penny, and soon John Smoltz.

Interested, I decided to look at the rest of the Sox top starting pitching prospects that have been starting all season at one level or another. Below is the table, sorted by MLE FIP.

	IP		FIP	WHIP		K/9	BB/9	K/BB		HR/9		GB%	LD%	FB%
Buchholz	62.7		3.75	0.86		6.8	2.3	2.9		0.7		55%	13%	31%
Kelly	60.7		3.83	0.97		4.5	2.8	1.6		0.3		53%	12%	33%
Pimentel	49.3		4.38	1.66		4.2	4.0	1.0		0.4		46%	16%	35%
Bowden	58.7		4.49	1.30		4.8	4.3	1.1		0.5		37%	16%	45%
Tazawa	68.3		4.91	1.21		6.5	3.6	1.8		1.2		44%	13%	41%
Price	55.0		5.00	1.58		5.4	5.4	1.0		0.7		41%	13%	42%
Portice	47.0		5.02	1.45		7.1	3.6	1.9		1.3		44%	28%	24%
Doubront	51.7		5.37	1.59		6.8	5.8	1.2		1.1		49%	12%	38%
Weiland	50.0		5.63	1.82		5.2	6.1	0.9		0.9		52%	21%	27%
Huntzinger	44.7		6.14	1.57		4.2	5.6	0.8		1.2		47%	14%	38%

You have to be flat out ridiculous to pitch in the low levels of the minors and have a very good translation, and ridiculous is probably the best way to describe Casey Kelly’s 48.1 IP in Class-A and first 11.2 IP in Class-A Advanced.

Michael Bowden’s name has been brought up a lot this year around the Red Sox related interweb, mostly while talking about our amazing pitching depth and his 2.47 ERA for Triple-A Pawtucket. However, his pedestrian strikeout rate, coupled with his almost shocking walk rate and extreme fly ball tendency heeds caution. Hopefully he is “working on specific things” that have led to these developments and his numbers will correct over the course of the season.

Red Sox Hitters… xERA’s?

xERA has been a staple pitching statistic for a long time as another option to FIP and DIPS ERA estimation. Did you know the person behind xERA also developed a way to find a hitters xERA? Using Dwight Gill’s formulas, I have calculated the xERA’s of the Red Sox hitters.

Much more information about xERA can be found on xera-baseball.com.

	G	PA		BA	OBP	SLG	OPS		IP	xER	xERA
Kevin Youkilis	40	172		.362	.483	.659	1.142		31	32	9.35
Jason Bay	53	232		.283	.405	.618	1.023		48	44	8.22
Jason Varitek	40	167		.248	.335	.531	.866		38	27	6.33
Mike Lowell	52	220		.302	.327	.505	.832		52	32	5.50
J.D. Drew	49	195		.253	.374	.481	.856		43	26	5.40
Dustin Pedroia	52	242		.325	.415	.432	.847		51	30	5.29
Jeff Bailey	23	81		.188	.309	.391	.700		20	9	4.01
Jacoby Ellsbury	52	241		.313	.351	.379	.731		57	24	3.83
Nick Green	37	122		.288	.352	.414	.767		29	12	3.82
Rocco Baldelli	16	52		.265	.308	.449	.757		13	5	3.76
Julio Lugo	25	88		.266	.341	.354	.695		20	8	3.58
David Ortiz	48	217		.187	.281	.289	.570		53	15	2.55
George Kottaras	19	55		.188	.255	.292	.546		14	4	2.36

After working out the formulas for expected earned runs created and innings batted, we are able to calculate how many expected earned runs a batter would score if he alone had all 27 outs to work with.

– League average xERA is about 4.60

– Youkilis is 4th in baseball behind Joe Mauer (13.25!!), Albert Pujols (10.52) and Manny Ramirez (9.53)

– Ortiz is 312th in baseball

– Delmon Young’s xERA is 0.96, I don’t even know what to say about how horrible that is.

Red Sox Starters… Dominant, Disaster, Neutral

Numbers are based on Pure Quality Starts, which ranks starts on a 0-5 scale based on innings, hits allowed, strikeouts, strikeouts to walks, and home runs allowed.

Scores of 0-1 are a Disaster, 2-3 are Neutral, and 4-5 are Dominant.

Team
Starts	52
Dominant	24	46%
Disaster	10	19%
Neutral	18	35%
Beckett
Starts	10
Dominant	8	80%
Disaster	2	20%
Neutral	0	0%
Lester
Starts	11
Dominant	5	45%
Disaster	2	18%
Neutral	4	36%
Wakefield
Starts	10
Dominant	4	40%
Disaster	2	20%
Neutral	4	40%
Penny
Starts	10
Dominant	3	30%
Disaster	2	20%
Neutral	5	50%
Matsuzaka
Starts	5
Dominant	1	20%
Disaster	2	40%
Neutral	2	40%
Masterson
Starts	6
Dominant	3	50%
Disaster	0	0%
Neutral	3	50%

—————-

Notes:

- Wakefield’s first four starts were his only Dominant starts of the year

- Penny had two Dominant and four Neutral starts in May

- Beckett started the year with three Dominant starts, then had two Disasters, and is now working on a five game Dominant streak

- Zack Greinke has ten Dominant and one Neutral on the year. His Neutral start was 5 IP (no point), 6 H (no point), 0 ER, 9 K, 2 BB.

Daniel Bard Pitch F/X by Speed

Here is Daniel Bard’s updated PFX chart through his first six major league games.

As you can see, there is evidence of both a 4-seam and 2-seam fastball, with three changeups thrown in [one of which made Joe Mauer look bad on a swinging strike three].

What once was his 12-6 curveball is now a slurve, though you can see by the breaking ball cluster, he is still working on this pitch as some are more curvy and some more slidery.[

Pavano, Verlander

On May 5th I posted a graph that showed Carl Pavano and Justin Verlander as the best two starters in the American League to go after in your fantasy leagues because they had very good skill and very bad luck at the time. That is a recipe for future success.

I had to close and delete some comments on that post because of some commenters resorting to name calling and such over the fact that someone said Pavano was actually a decent pitcher. [Dave Cameron on Fangraphs wrote "Pavano Pitching Well" on May 25]

Since that posting the players have performed like this:

Pavano: 4-1, 3.82 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 31 K, 8 BB

Verlander: 4-0, 1.57 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 45 K, 8 BB

Of course, a few days later I post the same graph for the National League and Ricky Nolasco was in the must-buy category. He has since been sent to the minors. I still say his major problem has been luck. He pitched a complete game of great ball in his first AAA start and will once again be a target when he gets recalled.

I’ll probably post new skill/luck graphs later today.

Red Sox 2009 RBI Percentage

RBI Percentage Formula: 100*(RBI-HR)/Runners On

	Runners On	Runs Batted In	Home Runs	RBI Pct.
Jason Bay	159	47	13	21.4
Kevin Youkilis	104	28	7	20.2
Mike Lowell	150	33	8	16.7
Dustin Pedroia	114	16	1	13.2
J.D. Drew	118	21	6	12.7
David Ortiz	136	18	1	12.5
Jacoby Ellsbury	102	13	1	11.8
Jason Varitek	109	20	8	11.0

I only included those with 100+ men on base.

Jon Lester’s HR/FB Rate

Lester HR/FB

Career: 9.3 %
2008: 7.0 %
2009: 17.5 %

xFIP, which normalizes home run rates, has Lester as a 3.87 pitcher so far in 2009. Hopefully the normalization becomes reality soon, because these lasers being hit off Lester are becoming tiresome.

Mike Lowell’s Walk Rate

There have been 335 hitters in Major League Baseball with 50 or more plate appearances in 2009.

324 have better walk rates than Lowell does. He is walking in 2% of his PA.

The 10 worse players at walking have been Kenji Johjima, Miguel Tejada, Miguel Olivo, Alex Gonzalez, Ichiro Suzuki, Robinzon Diaz, Dioner Navarro, Cristian Guzman, Bengie Molina, and Nate Schierholtz.

Hey Mike, your OBP is  .319, take a pitch.