2013 NPB kwERA Leaders

The simple stat I usually use to evaluate pitchers in the NPB is usually kwERA. With the offensive environment shifting a couple times over the last few years thanks to ball changes, the walk and strikeout rates have stayed relatively the same, making it easier and more effective to use statistics that just use those numbers, not relying on the changing homer and batted ball rates. We could just use strikeout and walk percentages, but using kwERA helps visualize success (or failure) in a run based format like ERA.

The kwERA constant doesn't work the same in the NPB because of a different run environment, meaning, in this case, that NPB kwERAs are pretty consistently higher than ERAs. Therefore, it doesn't really work when trying to figure out which pitchers have been "unlucky" (in simple DIPs terminology), and may be slightly misleading without context. However, I didn't come up with a new constant (the base assumption in kwERA is that a pitcher who walks as many batters as he strikes out "earns" a 5.40 ERA) for two reasons. The first and most obvious, since this is a ranking, we are comparing pitchers to each other. It doesn't really matter what the actual numbers are, just the comparisons between pitchers in the list. Secondly, adjusting the constant might confuse a reader not familiar with the NPB run environment. The kwERA "environment" is similar in both leagues, so seeing a pitcher with a 4.00 kwERA would be a starting pitcher that is good not great, similar to what it is in the Majors.
 
I also included HR % because, as the name says, kwERA only looks at walks and strikeouts. Without actually factoring it into the formula, looking at how pitchers did preventing homers can be helpful contextually.

In the rankings, I separated leagues because one league has a DH and the other doesn't, which is usually going to affect pitching statistics. However, the Central, which doesn't have a DH, had a higher HR % (driven by Wladimir Balentien) and about the same kwERA, so you could combine the two.

I also labelled each pitcher by which role they occupied during the season in hopes that we could separate the relievers from the starters. Role was determined by majority of appearances. For instance Masahiro Tanaka had one relief appearance, but clearly he was a starter. I used 50 innings as the cutoff for the list.



No surprise, but Masahiro Tanaka lead the NPB in starter's kwERA, followed by Kenta Maeda, Tomoyuki Sugano, Toshiya Sugiuchi, and Chihiro Kaneko. Out of starting pitchers, the best at limiting homers was Daniel Cabrera in the Central League and Shota Takeda in the Pacific League (though Tanaka was right behind him and Takeda had the worst kwERA in the PL out of pitchers with at least 50 innings). Shinya Kayama was the only pitcher in the NPB with at least 50 innings that didn't give up a homer.

Yoshio Itoi Scouting Report

Yoshio Itoi, with Toritani and Abe as honorable mentions, appears to be the best position player in Japan that has a chance of coming to the Major Leagues for the 2014 season. Itoi has not yet reached international free agency, so he would need to be posted (of course, as this article was nearing completion, a report came out that said the Buffaloes do not plan on posting Itoi and he doesn't become an international free agent until 2017. We will see how that plays out, but for now, I'll focus on the player himself and not the theoretical availability of the player. Until that recent report, everything I had heard suggested that Itoi would be posted, and that was the reason the Fighters traded him away before the season started).

Itoi has always been attractive due to not only his good NPB numbers, but because of the evident plate discipline that comes with them:

Career 10.6 BB %, 16.8 K%, 120 OPS +
2013: 11.0 BB %, 15.8 K %, 120 OPS +

In his age 32 season Itoi has maintained his overall hitting statistics and improved his walk and strikeout rates.  He has been batting 3rd most of the season, but was changed to lead-off temporarily by the Buffaloes, only to be switched back (and then switched back to lead-off on Tuesday and Wednesday). I don't think he has the power that MLB teams look for for the 3 hole (though he has a 128 SLG +, his ability to walk separates him more, with a 137 BB % +), making him more of a lead-off type hitter if not a guy who hits in the bottom half of the order in the Majors. Compared to other hitters in the NPB (specifically the Pacific League, where I am comparing statistics for this post), his ability to walk and hit for more power is more notable than his ability to hit for average (114 Batting Average +).

Here is a GIF of his swing from the WBC in March

Let's break down his swing more slowly by looking at screenshots. These are from 2012, so he is wearing a Fighters jersey (even though he plays for the Orix Buffaloes now), but his swing is the same.

He turns his hip a little bit which causes his body to no longer be facing the ball directly, with his back turned slightly towards the pitcher. This seems to be  momentum related, like pulling back on a rubberband to make the force coming forward harder.

Here he doesn't seem to be on balance, and at this point it seems sort of amazing that he ever hits for power. If you didn't see the screenshot below it, you would perhaps think that he was about to be hit by a pitch and was moving out of the way.

This is where he gets more "normal", with the bat head coming forward. There is a lack of "jailbreak" on the part of Itoi, meaning he isn't starting to run as he swings. He stays in there, he just looks a little strange feet wise, and he is clearly trying to pull this ball.

The head remains in a good spot, staying with the ball and not going a different way from his body.

As he finishes his swing, this is when he starts to break out of the box, not leaving early, but instead letting his momentum carry him out of the box.

 Here is another look at his follow through in a different at-bat:

 His balance is just odd, as his body seems to be leaning towards the catcher while his right leg is going in the opposite direction. My initial guess is that this would subtract from his power potential, but statistically he packs quite a punch for a guy that doesn't have a stout frame.

Here is what he looks like hitting a pitch low and in (like in the GIF)

He seems to succeed on inside pitches by moving away from them, using the balancing act to get his body away so he can extend his arms and avoid getting jammed. All the GIFs and screenshots above are of him pulling the ball, but the below screenshot shows Itoi hitting a homer to the opposite field

It is hard to see him doing anything different here, it just looks like he was perhaps a little late on the pitch. Without any spray charts, it looks like Itoi is a pretty pull heavy hitter and is always going to be attempting to pull the ball with authority. He evidently has the raw strength to hit a homer the other way and I have seen him flip balls the other way for hits (on both the inside and outside of the plate), but I think the preference is to pull and that is where most of his power comes from, which makes you wonder how he will handle balls on the outside of the plate.

 I took a look at the last 430 pitches Itoi has seen at the plate in the NPB (the number is random because I started keeping track at a somewhat random time. It is a good sample size though). I tracked the Yahoo! pitch tag, velocity, opposing pitcher platoon, result of each pitch, and the general location of the pitch just for the ones he put in play.

In that time, Itoi put 66 pitches in play (in play includes homers for this post) that I have location data for, 77 overall (I just missed the other eleven for some reason). Compared to MLB league average (I don't have league average pitch breakdowns for NPB), this is about half a percent below average. However, this doesn't mean he has contact problems, as he whiffed at only about 6.5 % of the pitches he saw in the time period. He took called strikes 21.6 % of the time, and balls 41.6 % of the time. This is about 5 % more balls than league average, but also nearly 3 % more strikes taken than league average in the Majors (by taking the 28 % strikes looking out of strikes thrown and multiplying it by .64, which is the strike percentage in the Majors. Both of those numbers were taken from Baseball Reference). This means that Itoi seems to be a passive hitter overall. He also has a foul percentage of about five percent less than MLB average (12% to 17%), which probably hurts his pitches per plate appearance. He has less swing plays than most hitters, but unless he can get his foul total up, he won't be driving pitch counts up as much as you would expect. Considering his low whiff percentage, I don't think contact is a problem, and I could see the fouls going up in different sample sizes.

In 2013, one real concern has been his platoon splits. He has just a 97 BA + against lefties, with a 8 % difference in batting average (Yahoo! is the only place I know of that has NPB splits, with just splits for the current season, and they don't have OBP or SLG) between righties and lefties, bigger than the MLB average of 6 % in batting average for left-handed batters. 150 of the 430 pitches in this data set were against lefties and only 7.3 % of them were whiffs, meaning he wasn't having a problem making contact against them. He took a few more called strikes, but had about the same ball percentage. Itoi had 6 groundouts versus 6 flyouts against lefties, versus a crazy 22 to 8 ratio against righties. However, all 4 home runs came against righties in the 430 pitch sample size, as well as all 3 line drives (which can be a somewhat subjective tag).

Out of the three home runs I have location data for, one was low, but in the middle part of the plate, another was high and away, and one was up and in the middle of the plate. Three of them were fastballs, and the other one was classified as a forkball. The most common location for Itoi to make contact on was middle away, meaning pitches that were on the other side of the middle of the plate, but about middle height. The least common was up and in, with just two pitches hit, both fastballs for base hits. It was probably least common because pitchers generally want to avoid that location, noting what we saw in his mechanics, he hits the inside ball very well. This also seems suggest that any concerns about him being able to reach the ball away with his swing are unwarranted.

The average velocity of the pitches he hit was 131.13 KMH, or about 81.3 MPH. His average whiff was 134.19 KMH, or about 83.2 MPH. This is odd, as most hitters whiff at pitches that are slower on average. The average pitch Itoi saw overall was 132.5 KMH, about 82.15 MPH. The most frequent whiff pitch for Itoi was the slider, while 9 of the 66 contact plays were on sliders (he saw 79 sliders).

Only 39 of the 430 pitches he saw were 146 KMH (roughly 91 MPH) or above, meaning that he hasn't seen a lot of good velocity lately, something he will see if he plays in the Majors. MLB teams will have to make sure he is able to handle that kind of velocity, because his success simply won't translate to the Majors if he cannot. He has seen four 95 MPH fastballs, and he has hits on two of them, one that was in the middle of the plate (and low), and one that was away. He also whiffed and took a ball on 95 MPH fastballs. That whiff is the only whiff of the 39 pitches (he did have a check swing strike, which I think is technically considered a whiff), so it appears you can't blow good fastballs by him.

Of course, the most common pitch Itoi saw was the 4-seam fastball, seeing it 50.2 % of the time. Here is the breakdown of the rest of the pitches he saw:

79 sliders

52 curveballs

29 changeups

19 2-seamers

16 forkballs

7 cutters

1 sinker

11 "others"

Because of the right-field profile despite good speed, Norichika Aoki seems to be a somewhat logical NPB to MLB comparison for Itoi, especially since they are about 6 months apart in age. Just off hand, Itoi seems to be a slightly slower version of Aoki that hits for more power (not to mention more sensible and orthodox hitting mechanics than Aoki). Here are Aoki's last two seasons in the NPB, adjusted by league average:

2011: 112 OPS +, 121 BA +, 118 OBP +, 106 SLG +
2010: 128 OPS +, 134 BA +, 132 OBP +, 124 SLG +

Aoki definitely hits for a better average (or did in the NPB at least), but Itoi also brings better power. Overall, they seem to be similar hitters in effectiveness, but go by it in slightly different manners. The assumption that Aoki is faster is also disputable as well. In Itoi's age 29 season (2011), he had 31 steals and was caught 6 times. In Aoki's age 29 season (also 2011), he had just 8 steals in the NPB, and last had 30 or more in 2008 (of course, he did it in the Majors in 2012 as a 30 year old). Itoi's overall statistical profile seems to be a better one than Aoki's since he seems to have more speed and power, something most MLB teams would probably take over the ability to hit for average.

Even with the move to right-field (which has a 10 run difference in value from center-field according to traditional positional adjustments, but just a 5 wRC + difference in 2013 so far, or about a .022 difference in SLG), the ability to do more than hit makes Itoi a somewhat safe player as long as (potential) posting money doesn't get too high. At the very least, his ability to play defense and run the bases makes him a useful backup outfielder. Perhaps in the same vein, I think his hitting skills are diverse enough (he hits for average, power, and walks as well) that we can expect at least some of it to translate well in the Majors. He most likely isn't going to get himself out by swinging at bad pitches, can hit the ball out of the ballpark, and doesn't seem to have obvious holes in his swing. His ability to hit left-handers is a concern, but he could still be an every day player if the rest of the skills translate. I think he can be a good MLB player, a slightly above league average regular that probably isn't going to be extremely exciting, but he should hit at a level that would justify a much bigger posting fee than the ones that have been paid out for NPB hitters in recent years.

Notes from the KBO All-Star Game

The Korea Baseball Organization's All-star game was last week, so I thought it was a good way to get a look at some of the better players in the league, and took some short scouting notes on many of the players in the game.

These aren't notes on everyone that played in the game, but a good number of them. I tried not to focus too much on "foreign" pitchers as they are somewhat known commodities. The broadcast strangely didn't have pitch velocities so I gathered them from Naver's scouting reports. They don't have reports on everyone though, so if there are no velocities are in parenthesis, then there is no available data. Naver also uses large MPH ranges, which should be kept in mind. I also inserted the players' WAA according to my formula next to the player, but I used runs  instead of wins to avoid a lot of decimal points in the post (I also rounded to full numbers), and for position players I only looked at offense. For pitchers, I just used the ERA RAA.

Radhames Liz (9 RAA) of the LG Twins is a foreign pitcher that I think can find a home in a MLB bullpen with his fastball, threw a lot of breaking balls (79-88 on slider, 74-81 on curve) despite his elite fastball (88 MPH to 100 MPH). He didn't get them down real well, and gave up quite a bit of fly-balls.

Right-handed pitcher from Lotte Giants Song Seung-jun (-6 RAA) is somewhat 

short and stocky, listed at about 6 feet 235 pounds. His curve (69 MPH to 79 MPH)

had some serious command problems and there was not a lot of life on his

 fastballs (81 MPH to 92 MPH). It does tail arm side, and he tries to use the back

 door corner against lefties and would also throw the slider (75 MPH to 84 MPH)

 in to lefties. The curve was more to right-handers, and he would elevate more of a

 4-seam fastball to righties, though he would still throw the more 2-seam fastball 
(81 MPH to 90 MPH) to righties as well.


Jung Sung-hoon, the LG Twins (9 RAA) 3rd baseman, seemed solid defensively. He
showed some good athleticism, could block balls in front of him, and could go get 
balls, though he botched a really easy play. He had a really strong arm.

Lee Jin-young LG Twins (10 RAA), is lanky and thin. He's got a lot to his swing,
swings really hard, and was fooled badly on a breaking ball. Lee does stay back
on high pitches well and can drive them up the middle. 

Lee Byung-kyu, also of the LG Twins (16 RAA), has an upright stance, good bat 
speed, and a pretty short stroke, causing him to handle up and in pitches well.
The plate discipline seems to be lacking but he's got good contact skills.

Kim Yong-yi, of the LG Twins (-1 RAA), is pretty thin, but he can pull the ball with 
power, especially on balls up. He holds bat high, with not an extremely quick
swing, so it seems that you can bust him in.

Son Joo-in (-2 RAA) is thicker than a lot of his LG Twins teammates, but he has a
mostly other way stoke. 

I liked Jeon Jun-woo (4 RAA) of the Lotte Giants, especially his bat control.
He showed some raw power to the pull side, with good size, and a little bit of 
speed as well. 

Lee Seung-yeop (-1 RAA) of the Samsung Lions appears to be a low ball hitter,
keeping the bat well away from body. He swings a lot, showing pretty good bat 
control and contact, but his plate discipline is lacking, and you can get him to 
ground out on breaking balls.

Kim Hyun-soo (12 RAA) of the Doosan Bears is a massive left-handed hitter. The
 bat isn't fast, but he will change his swing to where the ball is pitched. This seems 
to hurt him as he will swing at pitches he shouldn't. I thought Kim moved okay for
 size, especially out in right field where he played defensively.

Kim Dae-woo (3 RAA) is a good sized Lotte Giants left-handed hitter. I am not in 
love with the swing, more of a contact pull swing, really robbing him of power. 
Kim does run pretty well. 

Shin Bon-ki (-6 RAA) of the Lotte Giants has a good contact tool, and pulled a low
pitch well. Unfortunately, he clearly has no speed.

Kim Tae-goon (-5 RAA) is the NC Dinos catcher. Sort of a bad body type player, 
and his swing wasn't great either.

Park Byung-ho (29 RAA) of Nexen has size and raw power that you have to like,
but his swing angle may cut into his ability to hit the ball in the air with authority
on a consistent basis against better competition.

Lee Jae-hak (5 RAA) of the NC Dinos is a young right-handed pitcher who throws 
a lot of 2-seamers away. There is a lot of pause and movement in his mechanics 
and in the game, his control was really off. Lee slings his arm at end of his 
delivery and creates a somewhat low arm angle along with a strange body position.
The slingshot action gives him good movement, but the ability to repeat and 
command has to be a question. He was really just throwing the same pitch over
 and over again, but the movement and location made it a little hard to tell where 
it was going. It is most likely a contact pitch and not a whiff pitch, so high is not a
 good location for it. Lee can occasionally take a little off for what looks like some
 kind of changeup, though he would throw it with the platoon advantage.

Kang Yoon-gu (3 RAA) is a Nexen Heros LHP that moves his fastball (86-94) all 
around and out of the zone. It seemed to me that there were two different fastballs,
 as he could move a 2-seamer low in the zone (Naver does not list a two seamer).
 His changeup (75-85) fooled Lotte's Kang Min-ho (-1 RAA), but he never really got 
it low. If he fooled anyone with it, it was just because of speed differential, not 
movement or location. The curveball (64-77) also looked mediocre in both 
movement and velocity.

Kim Sung-bae (4 RAA) is a Lotte Giants RHP with a low arm slot, basically a side 
arm guy. He has a straight down type slider (75-81), though it looks like he is just 
taking some velocity off the fastball and the ball dips a little bit lower. It could be a
 changeup, though he throws it with the platoon advantage. Against lefties, he 
threw arm side off-speed pitches and fastballs (78-89) low and in.

Hong Sang-sam (7 RAA) is a 23 year old Doosan RHP with quite a bit of deception.
It starts with a little bit of a hip turn to the plate, with a slow delivery that must 
drive hitters bananas. His body looks like it is going to come forward, but he stops
it almost mid motion to get his legs going forward before he delivers the ball at a
pretty high 3/4ths angle. He really liked his curveball (68-79), which appeared to be
a really nice pitch with some really good vertical drop. He gets on top of the fastball
86-93), giving it some downward plane, but for the most part, the pitch did not look 
impressive. The changeup (Naver calls it a fork instead of a change, 78-86) is
clearly a work in progress, as it also has vertical movement, and he will throw it to
lefties, but he was having some problems getting it down. 

Kim Hyuk-min (-20 RAA), the Hanwha Eagles RHP, is sort of thin, though too old to 
really expect to add weight. He uses a high leg kick and a mid glove set in his 
delivery to create a little deception. The fastball (87-95) might have a little tail on it
and he seems to get on top of it reasonably well. The breaking ball (slider, 76-87) 
was rare and had real command issues.

Oh Hyun-taek (8 RAA) is a Doosan sidearmer RHP with a classic slurvy breaking
 ball that he used heavily. Hiding the ball with a little bit of a leg kick in his delivery,
 he uses a two seam fastball on the outside part of the plate when he has to face 
lefties.

Song Chang-sik (-1 RAA) is a hefty RHP for Hanwha that showed off a really 
good split/fork, and also seemed to have a separate change that was less 
impressive. His pitching philosophy seemed to be soft, soft, and softer. I thought 
this pitch selection might make him a reverse split pitcher, and so far this year,
lefties have a much higher average against him, but he has a better K/BB against
lefties as well.

Are Speed Players More Consistent?

We are often told that "speed never slumps", and the cliche itself is almost certainly true. While batting statistics go up and down in both small and large sample sizes, you wouldn't expect actual speed to have highs and lows (unless the player is injured). The implication of "speed never slumps" is usually that faster players go through less offensive slumps than those that are not fast. In fact, in a conversation about Yasiel Puig, I heard one commentator say that he shouldn't have long slumps because he runs well. The thought process is usually that when the fast player is "cold" at the plate, they will still beat out infield hits and be able to get on base with bunts. So I wanted to look at whether or not speed hitters go into slumps more than power hitters. I couldn't find any articles that actually tested this, there was one on defense, but couldn't find one on speed. There may be some out there, but hopefully they tested it differently (that is, I don't think I am copying anyone's ideas and did all my own work, but I am sure I am missing plenty of studies that I couldn't find. If you know of any good ones, leave them in the comments).

So I used FanGraphs leaderboards, and looked at the 694 qualified hitters since 2000, took the top 30 players by ISO and compared it to the top 30 hitters by speed score. I then looked at month by month (because this is easy to do with the FanGraphs leaderboards, and I had no idea what amount of time I should look at for slumps and cold streaks) for the 60 players, and used the standard deviation of all the months by wRC +, in order to measure the player offensively as a whole. I did this year by year, because skill sets obviously change over years. Then I used the average standard deviation of each year, followed by the average standard deviation of each group of 30 years. If you want to check my work, here are both sheets:




If the thesis that speed players slump offensively less was true, we would expect a smaller standard deviation from that group. That isn't what we got using this method though, with the power guys slumping slightly less. Dewayne Wise and Mike Trout (small sample size) seem to be the most streaky guys from month to month in the speed group, with Russell Branyan being the streakiest power guy. The most consistent power hitter was Alex Rodriguez, with Juan Pierre and Ben Revere (just 2 years of sample size) being the most consistent speed players.

Is Paul Konerko's Bat Speed Fading?

Paul Konerko has been a pretty successful hitter for the White Sox for a long time now, with a 121 wRC + for his career. He wasn't showing many signs of slowing down either, with better than career average years each of the last three seasons. However, through a month and a half of the season, Konerko has been a terrible hitter, with what would be a career low walk rate and career high strikeout rate (if you ignore the 6 games he played for the Dodgers in 1997). He also is hitting for no power, and while his BABIP is lower than it almost ever is (and he had high BABIPs over the last three seasons), the other numbers suggest that something else is going on. He is 37, so you wonder if he is just losing his bat speed. Using Pitch F/X data and other tools, I wanted to see if we could test this.

First, I looked at all 262 pitches he has seen that were 90 MPH and over. There are at least a couple sliders mixed in there, but we will keep them in there, ignoring classifications for now.

90-91 MPH, 41 pitches, 12 balls put in play, no swinging strikes

91-92 MPH, 60 pitches, 11 balls put in play, 5 swinging strikes

92-93 MPH, 43 pitches, 15 balls put in play, no swinging strikes

93-94 MPH, 40 pitches, 9 balls put in play, no swinging strikes

94-95 MPH, 31 pitches, 3 balls put in play, 3 swinging strikes

95-96 MPH, 16 pitches, 4 balls put in play, 2 swinging strikes

96-97 MPH, 18 pitches, 4 balls put in play, 2 swinging strikes

97 + MPH, 13 pitches, 3 balls put in play, 2 swinging strikes

He has handled above average fastballs very well, at least when you look at contact versus whiffs (which stabilizes faster, so we don't have to worry too much about small sample size). So it would seem, from this data, that his bat speed is fine. He can catch up with good fastballs and at least make contact with them. Of course, we haven't looked at where he is putting balls in play, which can give us an indication of bat speed.

Here is his spray chart (all pitches) in 2013 so far, according to Texas Leaguers:

Here he is so far in May:

As you can see, so far this month, Konerko isn't pulling any balls down the line with any kind of authority. This could be evidence that he can't get around on balls. Let's compare his chart from last year from the start of the season to May 12th, the same amount of time from the first chart:

It seems that all the batted balls in all the zones are deeper. So perhaps it is a question of strength (which is usually related to bat speed in some way). First, let's look at his spray chart for the entire 2012 season:

Konerko pulled a lot of homers last year, and he isn't doing the same this year, at least not so far. If you look at his average batted ball distance according to Baseball Heat Maps (teasing out balls hit less than 150 feet), he is hitting the ball over 13 feet shorter per batted ball this season. He is simply not hitting the ball as hard, this is not a BABIP issue. When you look at where he is swinging and missing at pitches:

Konerko is missing on some pitches inside, but he is missing at a lot of pitches high and a lot of pitches low and away. The evidence suggests that he is guessing at a lot of pitches, as he is missing mainly breaking balls. Plate discipline is not usually a problem for him, so perhaps he is trying to compensate for lost bat speed. In this way, he is able to keep hitting fastballs (though unable to pull them with authority because the strength and speed isn't there) because he is guessing fastball, but it causes him to swing and miss at a lot of breaking balls. Either way, there is something seriously wrong at the plate for Konerko. Maybe he is just injured and trying to play through some issues. If this is the case, perhaps some rest will help him heal. Or, the problem could be that age has caught up to him, not allowing him to be as strong as he once was.

Complete Hitter KBO WAR for 2012

In December, I broke out my formula for measuring WAR in Korea Baseball Organization (the KBO). For hitters, it didn't contain any kind of defensive metric or positional adjustment, and I didn't have a complete list of players, only looking at a few of them. Thanks to Dan of Mykbo.net, this is the day I fix this flaw. I looked at the top 9 players for each team in hits (I was planning on doing plate appearances, but My KBO's statistics sorts by hits, and I didn't notice that until I was nearly half way done) for this post).

It is called KBO WAR, but we are only actually looking at KBO WAA (wins above average instead of wins above replacement). One of the reasons for this is that, while we created a replacement baserunning method, creating a replacement defensive method just seems a little pointless. Also, when looking at KBO players, at least from an international perspective, we don't really care what a replacement KBO player looks like. While understanding what a MLB replacement player looks like can be helpful (though I have never liked that MLB players' defensive and baserunning components are compared to average while their batting component is compared to replacement), understanding what a KBO replacement player looks like just doesn't have much value if you are trying to see if any are prospects (at least statistically prospects) to move into bigger leagues such as the MLB or NPB. With that said, we may not even care about the average KBO player looks like. A little more on that later.

For positional adjustments, I used the traditional positional adjustments created by Tom Tango.There are some variates out there, such as Baseball Reference uses -10.5 runs for a first baseman instead of -12.5. I just used the -12.5 run value because that is what I have usually used, but I am always open to other arguments I guess. I tweaked the positional values slightly, giving RF a run more than LF. This is because it usually takes a better arm to play RF. I was supported in it being a better position by them having more put outs, but they actually had less assists than left field.

Calculating actual positional value will be a little difficult. I just used percentage of innings, because that makes the most sense to me. Such as, say a theoretical player plays 500 innings, 400 of them at 1st, and 100 in left field. 20 percent of -8 is -1.6, and 80 percent of -12.5 is -10, thus, the player's positional value is -11.6. I think this works because it doesn't artificially award utility, but does take it into account (a problem arises when say a player can play 2nd well, but has to play left field because 2nd is already taken. I can't think of how to get rid of such team biases).

Defensively, I used range factor and a percentage factor instead of a run factor (but will calculate it as runs). I used: Player Range Factor - League Average Range Factor for position, divided by league average range factor times 100. This obviously needs some kind of minimum basis, and that is why we are only looking at starters. It doesn't need to be said that this is a pretty terrible defensive component, especially compared to what we have to work with when it comes to MLB players (and those metrics are pretty flawed as well), but it gives us something to work with.

For catchers, I subtracted the averaged passed ball ratio by the player's passed ball ratio and multiplied it by 100 to move the decimal up 2 and add it to the difference in caught stealing average times 100. For example, if a catcher has a 32.6 CS % and .007 PB ratio, the catcher has a .9 defensive value. Yes, this weighs stolen bases higher than passed balls. This is for several reasons, one being the difference between wild pitches (data we don't have for catchers) and passed balls is somewhat subjective.

I didn't look at pitchers, because I am only doing the positional players here, but adding the defensive component to pitchers would be interesting.

As you will see in the spreadsheet, I put something called WAE, Wins Above Excellence. Because we don't even even care about average players from a international perspective, there should be some kind of cutoff for when we should start caring about them from an international perspective.
Any way we do this will probably be arbitrary (Especially since we don't have a ton data on position players that have played in both American and Korean leagues, and I usually distrust translations). A couple of years ago, using an even more crude method, it seemed that there weren't any internationally interesting Korean position players. Because I didn't know where to set the baseline (I am open to suggestions!), I just left it blank for now.

Of course, WAR, other than FIP WARs for pitchers, doesn't take in account what we might call luck, randomness, or BABIP luck. There have been several attempts to try to neutralize the BABIP out of hitter statistics, and I have tried several of my own. Here, I am using Hitter FIP, which turns into a runs created per 9. Instead of using innings as the baseline, I am using games played. You still add the 3.2. This has obviously problems, such as ignoring doubles and triples, discounting speed, but may be useful in a basic predictive sense. It is unrelated to WAA or WAE, but I am including it for fun.


Remember, most of this stuff only works on full time players, and again, that is fine, because we don't really care about part time KBO players or above replacement but below average bench KBO players.Without further words or explanations (I am sure many of you skipped the method and went straight to the results, which is fine), here is my list of the 72 (9 from all 8 2012 teams) players,sorted by WAA:
Let me know if you find any errors, etc. I have noticed that the speed score is well below 0 combined, which is a problem and skewed the WAA to a negative. I have left it, but just note that players are probably better runners than the metric is giving them credit for and they are probably worth a little more on a whole than the WAA gives them credit for. If anyone wants to fix this component, be my guest. Defensive and offensive value is positive, which it should be since these players are starters, or at least play a lot. You would expect starters to be, on average, better than league average. The positional adjustment, as a whole, is negative, which it should be. In case you were wondering, the average hFIP for the 72 players was 3.93.

This approach is somewhat crude and has plenty of flaws, but hopefully it will help us quantify and rank the talent in the KBO. You will notice that there is a 2nd sheet called "defensive guts", which is just the defensive averages for each position. If you would just like the spreadsheet, feel free to look at it or download it here.

Non Roster Invitees: Outfielders

Continuing our look at the non-roster invitees to spring training in the Majors, here I will look at the Outfield Non Roster Invitees. First, a quick note on some of the numbers I am using.

Rv600 is what Stat Corner estimates would be the run value of a player over 600 plate appearances using their wOBA numbers. This value, like FRAA, Range Factor, and Speed Score, will only be the 2012 numbers, while the RBAT is career wise in the Majors and by it's nature, the odds system is career wise.
This gives us two defensive rankings, two offensive rankings, and one baserunning rankings, which seems to make sense with how we (or at least I) evaluate players.

I realize that Range Factor creates a bias towards centerfielders since their range factors are usually higher. I am fine with that bias, as it creates a positional adjustment. To be clear, I am only looking at 2012, and each player's OF number as a whole (so if a player played 10 games in left, 10 games in right, and 80 in center, then I am taking the combined number). For minor league players, we will obviously use RF/G since that is all that is available, but for MLB players, we will use the more reliable RF/9. Billy Hamilton's RF/G was left out since he played shortstop in 2012. This makes his ranking artificially low, especially since he showed very good range in the Arizona Fall League and should have elite range in center long term. He ranks 3rd, but he probably deserves to be first (like he does in the odds rankings). You should be able to view the spreadsheet below:

Non Roster Invitees: Catchers

Here, I broke down all the announced (that is, official and on each team's website) non-roster invitees to Spring Training catchers and put them all in one spreadsheet. I used their passed balls per game, caught stealing percentage, along with their offensive odds or rWAR if they have played a significant amount of time in the Majors. I combined their rankings like I have in previous posts to make a ranking of the catchers. No reason for a longer introduction, so here is the spreadsheet:

Brandon Mann Scouting Report

Brandon Mann signed a MiLB contract with the Nationals. Mann has pitched the last two years in the NPB for the Yokohama Bay Stars. He was used mainly as a reliever in 2011 and mainly as a starter in 2012. Overall, he threw 92.2 innings in the NPB with a kwERA - of 113. For obvious reasons (kwERA just involves strikeouts and walks), I didn't include park factors when looking at kwERA -, but when looking at FIP -, I did include park factors.

The Yokohama Bay Stars park regressed park factor over the last two seasons has been 115. I only wanted to look at the last two seasons because that is when the ball changed and I think the variables of the pre-2011 NPB makes it really hard to compare the two, as they are basically different leagues. However, from 2006-2010, it wasn't that different, with a 113 park factor, meaning that offense was suppressed at basically the same scale for Yokohama's park as the rest of the NPB. Just from a cursory look at the park factors, it seems this was basically true across the NPB.

Mann had a 3.69 FIP in his two years in the NPB, while league average (in the Central League) FIP was 3.46. However, when you adjust it for the park, you would expect the average Bay Stars (assuming half of their games are at home and the other half are at parks that roughly average out to be average) pitcher to have a FIP of 3.72. Using this crude method, Mann had about a 99 FIP - in the NPB.

The big problem is relief/starter splits, which it seems we don't have unless we want to manually go back and input them for the NPB ourselves. I don't want to do that for this post, so we will just go with the statistical fact that Mann was average to below average in the NPB, depending on whether you want to include home runs or not. Considering that he split his time between reliever and starter, you would expect him to be better than starters and probably a little better than the mean. He really wasn't, so there wasn't a lot to like about him from a statistical standpoint.

Mann is a 28 year old left-hander that was drafted in the 27th round by the Tampa Bay Rays back in 2002 (when they were still the Devil Rays obviously). He would spend multiple years in A-ball, and miss all of 2007, but reached AA in 2009 where he posted a 4.87 kwERA mostly as a starter. He would split 2010 with the Dodgers A+ as a reliever and the Atlantic League (Independent ball) as a starter before going to Japan.

According to NPB Tracker, he never reached 90 MPH on his fastball and averaged 88.2 MPH with a slow curve (~71 MPH), along with sliders and changeups that averaged about 80 MPH. It also seems that he added a 2-seam fastball ("shutto") in his 2nd year in the NPB (his worse year, in which he was a starter). As far as MLB starters go, there isn't a great comparison when it comes to pitches and velocity other than Bruce Chen, though Mann's fastball is slightly better. When looking at non qualified  pitchers, Eric Stults is very similar (though his curve is a little slower) and maybe Chris Young with a few more MPH on the fastball is another comparison.

When watching video of Mann, you notice that he has a fairly standard delivery that seems easy to repeat and comes over the top in a 3/4 delivery. Even though it seems that the Nationals do need a left-handed reliever, it would be really surprising if Mann makes it out of spring training with the big league club. I see him starting the year in AAA.

Greg Garcia Scouting Report

The Texas League (AA) had some really good shortstops in 2012. The headliner was obviously Jurickson Profar, but Josh Rutledge went on to have a little success in the Majors with the Rockies later in the year, Leury Garcia (when he wasn't stuck at 2nd) is an intriguing prospect, and Jean Segura was one of the main pieces that got the Angels Zack Greinke for the last 2 months of the season (and Segura has a shot of starting for the Brewers in 2013). However, none of those were the league's best hitter, as the best hitting middle infielder (qualified 2nd baseman or shortstops) was the Cardinals' Greg Garcia. In a league where the average player was about 24 years old, Garcia was 22 (meaning he wasn't too old for the league).

Since being drafted out of the University of Hawaii in the 7th round of the 2010 draft, Garcia has hit well in every level he has been in. He has 146 walks (12.3 %) and 185 strikeouts (15.6 %) so far in his career and had a 137 wRC + / 117 wOBA + /132 OPS + in AA in 2012. This kind of hitting makes it hard not to be noticed.

Supposedly, the Springfield Cardinals park is friendly for lefties, but it has played basically Texas League average (the league average slash line is .257/.327/.391) over the last two seasons as a whole. So while there are some reasons to be skeptical of his very slight power jump (.136 ISO and 10 homers versus .125 career ISO and just 6 homers in the 163 games before 2012). He did hit for more power at home (.454 SLG to .383 SLG on the road), but was a better OBP guy on the road. This is most likely who he is, a high OBP, low power guy, a skillset that works when you are a middle infielder. He has an extremely high GB % (over 50% in 2012), so it is unlikely that his high BABIPs (.320 and over in every level so far) will translate to the Majors. So there are some reasons to be a little skeptical of his bat statistically, at least not being as excited about him as his numbers say we should be. In watching him at the plate, the scrawny looking player has what looks like a quick bat along with some good bat control. He isn't afraid to uppercut his swing, which might be more of a concern (because of the inevitability of infield pop-ups and what appears to be below average power) if he didn't have such a high ground-ball percentage. The swing is smooth and he keeps his head on the barrel and the follow through is really pretty to watch.

While he had a positive FRAA in the APPY league in 2010, he mainly played second base. He had a negative FRAA in 2012, but he played only shortstop. With that said, he did have a better than average range factor at shortstop, making it seem like his 20 errors were the reason he didn't rate positively. Obviously when you are looking at prospects, it is much less worrisome if they lack polish defensively than whether or not they actually have the athleticism for the position. It seems that Garcia has plenty of athleticism, as I've clocked him as an above average runner, and he had a 5.1 speed score in 2012 (and throughout his short minor league career, he has hovered around 5.0). With that said, he isn't much of a stolen base threat, stealing just 18 bases (with 11 caught stealings) over the last two seasons. He appears to have a strong arm, further solidifying his role as a solid middle infielder.

Despite not showing up on hardly any Cardinals' prospect rankings from what I have seen, there is a lot to like about Garcia. Even if he moves to 2nd more permanently, that still provides him with good positional value and there are a lot of reasons to think that he will hit in the Majors. I don't see him hitting for much power, but he has good peripherals, along with a good average (that is, he isn't relying solely on walks, as prospects that do tend not to pan out. Of course, many of them are 1st base/DH types with slow bat speed) in the minors. There isn't anything alarming in his swing and he takes a lot of pitches. He does have big platoon splits in the minors, but they weren't as bad in 2012, as he held his own against lefties. Left-handed hitting middle infielders with solid/average tools are valuable (at the very least he is a platoon, and the good kind, one that can play 75 % of the time, utility infielder) and he is a guy that could help the Cardinals soon.