Should the Mets trade David Wright?

2007 was David Wright's best year, when he registered a 7.8 WAR. Since then, he has fallen with a (144 games) 2.5 WAR in 2009, a (157 games) 3.9 WAR in 2010, and a (102 games) 1.4 WAR in 2011. He made 14.25 million in 2011, putting his WASP at 10179 WASP, which is horrible. He is a horrible defender, with a -5.6 D-WAR for his career, and a -1.2 D-WAR in 2011. He has a below average fielding percentage and an about average Range Factor. In his career, he has a .380 OBP, .887 OPS, 2.31 PAPP, and 1.59 PPG. He sees 3.99 Pit/PA, has a .668 Offensive Winning Percentage, and 7.1 Runs Created Per Game. He does this by getting a .340 BABIP, .222 ISO and .362 Secondary Average. He has been an above average power hitter, above average slugger, as well as an above average walker. In 2007, he had a .356 BABIP that helped him get a .416 OBP, .963 OPS, 2.04 PAPP, and 1.775 PPG. He had an ISO of .208, a .425 Secondary Average, and saw 3.98 Pit/PA. All this got him a mind boggling 9 Runs Created Per a Game Metric, and a .742 Offensive Winning Percentage. In 2011, the numbers were less impressive. He had a .345 OBP, .172 ISO, .334 Secondary Average and .602 Offensive Winning Percentage. These numbers are all good, as well as his 2.54 PAPP, and 1.45 PPG. His BABIP fell to .302, as did his Runs Created per Game at 5.6. David Wright is still a good offensive player. Every team would love to have 2011 David Wright in their lineup. However, not with his salary and not with his defense. This would certainly point to the obvious choice of the Mets trading Wright. There is something to consider though. Wright could return to his 2007, or even career self. If this happens, even with his gigantic salary, he would be worth it. So are the injuries Wright has suffered hampered his future performance so he will never be the same? Or are the injuries going to be something that continues? Or will he return to his old form? This is the question the Mets will have to think long and hard about. It would be hard to critique them going either way.

The New Matt Kemp Contract

A Barry Bonds type 10 (!) WAR in 2011. This is worth an A-Rod type contract at 30 million a year according to the Halladay Standard. Over the past 3 years, he has averaged a 6 WAR. This is worth 18 million dollars, but he got a 8 year 160 million dollar deal, worth about 20 million dollars a year. So if you take his average over the past 3 years, the Dodgers overpaid him. However, according to his 2011 season, he is being underpaid. So which is it? Kemp has a career OBP of .350, but in 2011 that number soared to a .399 number. In fact, before 2011, his career OBP was just .336, very unimpressive. His Secondary Average jumped from .296 in 2010 to .434 in 2011, and his ISO went from .201 to .262. In 2010 he had a Runs Created per Game of just 4.4 to 8.6 in 2011, as his Offensive Winning Percentage rose from .478 to .771. These jumps are staggering enough (I could go on, for example his OPS jumped from .760 to .986) that if they happened 10 years ago, there would be serious accusations of steroid use. So why were 2010, where he was an okay offensively and bad defensively (according to D-WAR) outfielder, and 2011, where he certainly deserves the MVP, so different? Our old friend BABIP. In 2010, his BABIP was a touch lower than league average at .296, while in 2011 it was a monstrous .380. So obviously a big key to his success in 2011 was BABIP, but was it BABIP luck or was he just legitimately hitting the ball harder? One important thing to look at is walks of course. For the first time in career, he walked above league average. There are two ways to look at this: 1. Because he was either hitting the ball harder or experiencing some mad BABIP luck, pitchers pitched him more carefully, giving him more walks or 2. He has changed as a hitter and is more patient. There is a lot of belief, and I admittedly think this thinking has a lot of merit, that number 2 is not possible. As a fully developed adult playing at the highest level of baseball possible, one does not change the way one sees the ball and develop more patience the thinking goes. This is shown by pitches per plate appearance, probably the most predictive and consistent offensive statistic. To confirm this kind of thinking, Kemp's Pit/PA was 3.96 in 2011, while it was 3.91 in 2010. This is above average, but certainly not a drastic change. So now on the issue of BABIP, Kemp has always been a flyball hitter, but it was slightly more so in 2011 (.62 GB/FB to a career .73). His line drive percentage was the same as it has been his whole career, as was his infield flyballs. However, a greater percentage of his flyballs left the yard at 14.8%, compared to his 10.8% career average. Since he played in the same ballpark the whole time (his OPS +, an Adjusted OPS that accounts for ballpark factors where 100 is average, jumped from 106 in 2010 to a league leading 171 in 2011), one simply has to conclude that he is at least hitting his flyballs harder. However, he only hit 11 more home runs in 2011 than 2010, even if all those 11 less HRs turned into outs in 2010, it would not affect OBP all that much. So one has to conclude that there was a lot of BABIP luck to go along with him hitting the ball harder. Paying a player after an amazing season is always risky, one cannot rely on Kemp putting up these awesome numbers (a PAPP of just 2.04). However, Kemp has a shot of at least being good enough to meet the Halladay Standard in his 20 million dollar a year deal (he needs a 6.7 WAR a year) most years. It is just really risky, especially for a team that is supposed to be bankrupt.

Big Time Slugger or Speedster who doesn't strikeout? Which would you rather have?

A theoretical debate in baseball has always gone something like this: "Would you rather have a guy that strikes out a lot and is slow, but hits tons of home runs, or a guy who is fast and rarely strikes out, but can't hit the long ball?". We have seen this in criticism of Ichiro Suzuki (before this lackluster year), as critics insist he is overrated because he only cares about hits (his next one will tie him with Mickey Mantle, and this doesn't count any of his hits in Japan) and doesn't hit home runs. So I wanted to take 4 real examples of current players' best seasons (2 sluggers and 2 speedsters) and see what the key saber-metric statistic, WAR (Wins after Replacement Player), had to say on the debate. For Brett Gardner of the Yankees (clearly in the speedster category), his best year was 2010, when he had a .383 OBP, 47 RBIs, 47 steals, with 101 strikeouts. His offensive WAR (we are going to ignore defense for this post) was 3.3. The other speedster I picked was, of course, Ichiro. His best offensive season was his first year in America, where he had a OBP of .381, 56 stolen bases, 69 RBIs, 8 homers, and 53 strikeouts. This gave him a WAR of 6.2 on offense. The first slugger I picked is pretty obvious, Ryan Howard. He has some of the highest single season strikeout totals in National League history. His best year was in 2006, when he had a .425 OBP, 181 strikeouts OPS of 1.084, with 58 bombs, and 149 RBIs. His WAR was 5.6. The second slugger I picked was Carlos Pena. His best year was in 2007, when he had an OBP of .411, 142 strikeouts, 46 homers, 121 RBIs, and a OPS of 1.037. His offense WAR was 5.9. There are plenty of more sluggers and speedsters that we could evaluate, but looking at just these 4 seem to show that both the slugger and the speedster are equally valuable.

Why it is ridiculous to say that a great hitter is more valuable than a great pitcher

As the season gets close to ending, the MVP talk is starting to heat up. With the awesome year Justin Verlander is having there has been some talk about whether he should not only win the Cy Young Award, but perhaps the MVP as well. Now I don't want to discuss whether he deserves it as not (I like having separate awards for position players and the pitchers, but that is just my little opinion), but there has been one interesting critique that I want to smash. Some have said that a pitcher can't be as valuable as a position player, because the position player is on the field everyday, while the pitcher is only on the field every 5 days (or on the Yankees and White Sox, 6 days). Before we look at some statistics, lets just reason this out. In a 5 day span a batter (in a good offense) would get about 20 plate appearances. In a start, most pitchers will face at least that many batters (not to mention, a pitcher can shut down the entire lineup for the entire game, ensuring a win, a hitter can only drive in a bunch of runs, which doesn't necessarily have the same value. For example, a hitter can get 5 rbis but the pitcher could give up 6 runs. If a pitcher shuts out the opposing team, they can't lose). As far as fielding, most defensive chances are routine plays that every major leaguers could make, with probably one sparkling opportunity (rough estimate) in 5 days (except Sam Fuld and Asdrubal Cabrera, who seemed to make 1 a game in the first half of this season). Not to mention that a great pitcher can be pitched around, if not pitched to. You can't "hit around" a pitcher (besides maybe bunting). But now to statistics (mainly Sabermetrics), we will look at 4 players: Cliff Lee, Curtis Granderson, Verlander, and Jacoby Ellsbury (all Cy Young and MVP candidates). Because most statistics between pitchers and hitters cannot really be compared (the only really other thing we have is comparative standards, like a .300 batting average is the standard of good, as is an ERA of under 4, etc. That wouldn't be helpful), we will have to rely almost exclusively on the statistic WAR (Wins after Replacement, which measures how many wins the player gives you over a regular player). For many people, Curtis Granderson is a favorite for the AL MVP, and his WAR is 5.2 (its actually negative on defense, meaning he is an under-average fielder for the first time since he became a full time player in the big leagues. Verlander's WAR is a shocking 7.7. Ellsbury's is 6.5, making him more valuable than Granderson, but still not as valuable as Verlander (all this is according to how Baseball Reference, one of the most respected places for baseball stats rates the WAR). Cliff Lee has thrown himself in the ring as well, with a 6.1. Unless one believes that WAR (and sabermetrics in general) is just bogus, then it appears that great pitchers are at least as valuable as great hitters.