Free Agent Fantasy Team Update: Grilli and Slowey to the DL

Another injury riddled and roster moved filled two weeks for the Free Agent Fantasy Team:

Grilli, Slowey and Bogusevic all went to the DL and were placed on the Inactive team. Luis Cruz also went to the DL, but I just released him because I didn't want to use a minor league roster spot to keep him around.

Thomas Neal was brought up to big league team, but then went back down. I obviously updated his stats, but he stays on inactive team. Loney did go on paternity leave, but came back, so no roster move.

Melky Cabrera was activated off the DL and went to big league team. I also signed Humberto Quintero, who signed a big league contract with the Mariners, to get my big league roster up to 21. Since we are about 104 games into the season, he will make $171,852. I released Bobby Wilson from my minor league team to make room, as he wasn't hitting in AAA and I have plenty of catching depth now, with 3 on the big league team and Kelly Shoppach still on the minor league team. I also released Clay Rapada to put my inactive team back at 15.

Assuming 104 games played:

16.1 fWAR, 46.7 wins, 57.3 losses

16.2 rWAR, 46.8 wins, 57.2 losses

13 WARP, 46.3 wins, 57.7 losses

-2.9 WAA, 49.1 wins, 54.9 losses

The three replacement level metrics are the  closest they have been all year, unifying as the wheels have absolutely fallen off of my team. 

Free Agent Fantasy Team: Melky Cabrera's Decline

We are now two months into the regular season, and it is time for the bi-monthly update of my all free agent fantasy team.

Roster Moves: Shawn Camp and Eric Chavez both go on the DL, so placed on the minors/inactive part of roster, as my injuries continue to mount. David Ross goes back on the active part of the roster after being activated. To clear the second spot on the inactive list, I released Matt Downs, who was not hitting at all in the PCL for the Marlins. I was sort of interested in Jon Rauch for the inactive list, as he signed a minor league deal with the Orioles, but couldn't bring myself to clearing a spot for him. I would have ironically added him if he signed a MLB deal, like Ankiel or Gregg.

Since most teams have played about 56 games:

9.7 fWAR, 26.16 wins and 29.84 losses

11.2 rWAR, 27.664 wins and 28.336 losses

9.2 WARP, 27.12 wins and 28.88 losses

.9 WAA, 28.9 wins and 27.1 losses

So after a really slow start, and then a recovery that put me over .500, my team has regressed to a slightly below average team through two months.

In this week's player profile, I wanted to look at Melky Cabrera from 2010-2013.

Cabrera was a below replacement player in 2010 with the Braves and was released after the season. 2011 and 2012 were his big offensive years, playing for the Royals and Giants. He was then suspended for PEDs and signed with the Blue Jays in the off-season. So far this year, he has been a slightly below league average hitter.

Keeping in mind that he is a switch hitter, meaning that he will bat lefty more than righty, here are where pitchers have thrown the ball to him on average broken down by year:

There is no real difference in how he is being pitched as far as average location goes. This probably means that there has not been an obvious flaw in his swing that he either fixed after 2010 or has had exposed in 2013. Here are the average pitches he has swung at, broke down by year, along with his hits (for the purpose of this post, I am only referring to the "In Play, no outs" plays when talking about hits) for each season:

The most significant difference is his hits so far in this season, coming more low and away when he bats left-handed. To further break down each year (and get a look that hopefully tells us more than his the above charts), I will look at his spin and speed charts on hits and whiffs for each year. Here is his 2010 spin and speed chart on pitches he swung and missed at:

Here were the pitcher release points on his whiffs:

Here are the release points he got hits off of in 2010:

 

Despite always having the platoon advantage, he struggled against low and out righties. He was also more likely to struggle against far out lefties. Here is the spin and speed chart on his hits in 2010:

Curveballs were clearly a huge problem for Cabrera, as the bottom left of the swinging strike spin and speed chart shows. He didn't swing and miss against a 97 MPH + fastball and even hit some, and he seem to get hits about as often as he whiffed on fastballs over 94 MPH. For whatever reason, he didn't seem to do a lot with averagish fastballs, but he ripped up below average fastballs pretty well. He didn't seem to do extremely well against the area you would call changeups, at least from a ration perspective.

What changed in 2011? Here is his speed and spin on whiffs:

Still a lot of curveballs and a lot of hard fastballs, what about the release points on whiffs?

He still seemed to struggle with low and out pitchers. Compare the above chart to the release points he got hits off of:

 

He had success against low and out righties, but not low and out lefties. It seems like the higher the lefties, the more likely he was going to hit it. The cluster against right-handers was further from the center than the whiff release points, which is what you would expect. Here are the pitch types Cabrera hit in 2011:

 Much better than the year before, Cabrera hit curveballs. He also hit a lot of above average fastballs, along with some changeups as well. Obviously there were more hits in 2011, but there was also a lot more balance when it came to pitch type.

 In 2012, Cabrera would have won the batting title if it weren't for the suspension and the bad publicity. Switching up the order a bit, here are the pitches he hit that season:

Controlling for the difference in volume, they look pretty similar. He hit some curveballs, a few changeups as well, though he didn't seem to excel against plus velocity as well. Here are the release points of the pitchers Cabrera got hits off of in 2012:

 

Cabrera really excelled against pitchers with tall release points, especially right-handers. Here are the release points he whiffed against that season:

 The tall ones didn't making him whiff, but neither did the short ones, as it seems that he mainly whiffed against relatively normal release points. Here are the actual pitches he missed:

Again, it seems that he didn't handle top notch velocity as well, and he had a lot of whiffs on curveballs. It isn't as pretty as it was in 2011. What about so far in 2013?

The difference in volume makes it hard to compare, so here is the spin and speed on hits so far this season:

He seems to have reverted back to having problems with curveballs, but he seems to be handling what you would normally call sliders well, and it doesn't appear he is having any problems with velocity. Here are the pitchers he has hit so far:

Here are the pitchers he has whiffed against this year:

He seems to be struggling as a right-handed hitter so far, and he is having a lot of problems with low and out release points, points he should never have problems with as a switch hitter, but points he was clearly having problems with earlier in his career. 

He seems to have fallen into a bit of his old habits, struggling against curveballs and funky release points. The bat speed still appears to be there and he can still hit fastballs, it looks like his approach is a bit out of order right now, so it is unlikely to expect a 2011-2012 Cabrera, but it doesn't look like he has actually lost "talent" in way of bat speed, though the power hasn't shown up yet.

The Giants New Lineup

After the Melky Cabrera-Jonathan Sanchez trade (I wrote a post just a couple days ago saying it would make sense for the Giants to trade Sanchez), MLB Network projects this to be the Giants lineup in 2012:
 Melky Cabrera 2.9 2011 WAR, .331 Career OBP, .729 Career OPS
Freddy Sanchez 1.1 2011 WAR, .335 Career OBP, .748 Career OPS
Pablo Sandoval 6.1 2011 WAR, .356 Career OBP, .857 Career OPS
Buster Posey 1.5 2011 WAR, .353 Career OBP, .815 Career OPS
Aubrey Huff -.9 2011 WAR, .342 Career OBP, .808 Career OPS
Brandon Belt -.3 2011 WAR, .306 Career OBP, .718 Career OPS
Jeff Keppinger .6 2011 WAR, .332 Career OBP, .720 Career OPS
Nate Schierholtz 1.6 2011 WAR, .318 Career OBP, .727 Career OPS

League Average in 2011: .318 OBP, .711 OPS.
Giants: Career Averages of .334 OBP, .765 OPS. 2011 Average 1.575 WAR Average, 12.6 overall.

This means that while the Giants' lineup has better than average OBP and OPS, their 2011 WAR is only 1/3.43 of the WAR needed to win 95 games. This could suggest a couple of things, both of which I think are partly true. 1. Players like Aubrey Huff were once good hitters, but are clearly washed up and 2. Players like Sanchez and Posey were injured and didn't put up a good WAR, despite putting up good OBP and OPS. Another pretty obvious reason the WAR doesn't match up would be bad defense, which is certainly the case for guys like Huff and Belt.

How Far Away are the Royals?

The Kansas City Royals are an organization that has a lot of promise. Their minor leagues are ranked highest in baseball, and they seem to have a lot of promise. So the real question is: just how far away are they? The Tigers' bullpen and 5th starter had -9.7 PE, and a 10.8 WAR. Tigers' lineup is .127 WAR a game, 10.06 PPG, 25.864 PAPP. Tigers' top 4 starters: Verlander (-3.73 PE, .253 WAR a start), Fister (.16 PE, .26 WAR a start), Scherzer (.44 PE, .073 WAR per start), and Penny (9.87 PE, negative WAR).
The Royals were 24 games behind the Tigers for division title at the end of the 2011 season.  The Royals' lineup looked something like this most of the year  (in no order, and excluding players they traded away): Butler (.015 WAR per game, 1.19 PPG, 2.59 PAPP), Pena (.0041 WAR per game, 3.43 PAPP, .61 PPG), Hosmer (.01 WAR per game, 1.36 PPG, 2.655 PAPP), Getz (.004 WAR a game, .82 PPG, 3.04 PAPP), Moustakas (.006 WAR per game, .71 PPG, 3.09 PAPP), Escobar (.92 PPG, .013 WAR per game, 3.23 PAPP), Gordon (.039 WAR per game, 1.51 PPG, 2.42 PAPP), Cabrera (2.67 PAPP, 1.46 PPG, .019 WAR per game), Francoeur (.018 WAR per game, 1.35 PPG, 2.73 PAPP). This means their lineup has a 35.855 PAPP, about the same (very slightly better than the Tigers), their PPG is 9.93, which is lower than the Tigers, but barely. Their WAR is also slightly better at .1281. The Royals top 4 starters were Hochevar (.055 WAR per start, 2.683 PE), Francis (.045 WAR per start, 4.767 PE), Chen (.104 WAR per start, 2.053 PE), and Paulino (.09 WAR per start, -.328 PE). This is a .294 WAR and 9.175 PE. Detroit's was 6.74 PE, and .593 this year. This means that Kansas City's rotation is anywhere from 33% to 50% worse than the Tigers. Even though the lineup is good enough to compete with the Tigers, with this much problems in the rotation, they stand no chance. The Royals' 5th starter and bullpen looks like: Duffy (.5 WAR, 2.724 PE), Soria (.8 WAR, -1.113 PE), Crow (2.1 WAR, -2.883 PE), Collins (1.1 WAR, -.817 PE), Wood (-.303 PE, .9 WAR), Coleman (1.6 WAR, -3.587 PE), Holland (2.6 WAR, -6.617 PE), and O'Sullivan (9.413 PE, -1.6 WAR). This means their bullpen had a -3.183 PE, and a WAR of 8. This bullpen is much better if you take O'Sullivan out, as he is clearly an outlier, however, he was part of this bullpen, so you have to count it. The Tigers have a better bullpen with O'Sullivan in there for Kansas City, but if you take him out, Kansas City actually has the better bullpen. So what is standing in the way between Kansas City and a division crown? Starting pitching. They need lots of it, but if they can find some (they have the lowest payroll in baseball, so they will have to do it through prospects), they stand a chance.