Scouting Report on Chris Lofton

Chris Lofton was a 9th round pick by the San Francisco Giants. He is currently playing for the San Jose Giants, and that is where I watched him play on May 31st 2012.

Defensively, he wasn't tested hard, but he made all the routine plays and showed off some pretty good range in center field (range factor suggests that he has under average range). His arm seems pretty accurate, even on the run, but it is a pretty weak arm. On the bases, a botched pickoff move gave him two extra bases. He probably wasn't running his hardest but I thought he showed above average speed (Baseball Cube suggests that speed is his best attribute, rating it at 79 out of 100).

Offensively, he showed his above average patience (69 according the Baseball Cube) when he got ahead 2-0, faked a bunt to get 3-0, then took low and away to walk. As a left handed hitter (right handed thrower), he was mainly pitched away it seemed. In his next at-bat, he took an outside fastball for ball before hitting a hard liner to 2nd for an out. Next time at the plate, he took a low pitch and then hit a high pitch hard to first for a ground-ball out. He got ahead in his next at-bat 1-0 again, before faking another bunt to make it 1-1. He then swung and missed at the best pitch he saw in the whole at-bat, but worked an 8 pitch walk with some good takes and fouls. So what I saw was a decent but not great contact hitter with a good eye with not much power but some bad luck.
Statistically, Lofton has not had a good professional career. Despite a .319 career BABIP and walk rate just short of 10%, he has a .642 career OPS. He doesn't seem to have any power to speak of, and his "speed scores" are extremely disappointing.

He is extremely unpolished, and the ceiling certainly is really high, but there is some talent there obviously.

Australian Baseball and Minor League Pitching Metric

As the Australian Baseball League 2011 season wraps up, I thought it made sense to come up with a pitching metric to evaluate pitchers pitching in the league. Since we didn't come up with a reliable A and AA pitching metric, I filled out the rest of the spreadsheet with minor league pitchers (from the White Sox system) who had pitched at all 3 levels.

The ABL players that have pitched in A-ball had an average ERA of 3.39 in the ABL. Those same pitchers have a 3.51 ERA in A-ball, a difference of .12. Those pitchers averaged a 1.19 WHIP in A-ball and 1.16 in the ABL, a .03 difference. So there is a slight upgrade from the ABL to A-ball, but the difference is very small, so no one will judge you if you just use the A-ball metric we are about to create and use it on ABL players.
The pitchers on the list that pitched in AA had a 3.16 ERA and a 1.21 WHIP in A, and a 3.7 ERA and 1.32 WHIP in AA (a .54 ERA difference and .11 WHIP difference). The pitchers that pitched in AAA had a 3.43 ERA and 1.233 WHIP in AA, and 4.32 ERA and 1.37 WHIP (a .83 ERA difference and .137 WHIP difference).

The Mariners sign Muneno Kawasaki

The Mariners have reportedly signed Muneno Kawasaki to a minor league contract. At age 30, in his past 5 years in the NPB, he has a .344 OBP, .721 OPS, 1.1 PPG, and 2.76 PAPP. According to the Japanese metric, this is projected to be a .311 OBP, .61 PPG, 3.5 PAPP, and a -1.15 Simple WAR. In 2011, Kawasaki was worse, with just a .310 OBP, which is just a .277 OBP once adjusted for the MLB. He is also a below average shortstop according to range factor, although it is worth noting that he is above average according to fielding percentage. He homers less than 1% of the time, and walks just 6% of the time. He did have a decent stealing rate, at about 72% success rate. You usually want a 75-80% rate for stealing to be worth it. One would expect some kind of regression in the MLB, meaning that his one decent weapon would be taken away from him. It is just a minor league contract, so its not like the Mariners lose anything, but I don't see Kawasaki having success in the Big Leagues.

Are the Braves really going to trade Jason Heyward?

There are some rumors on the Internets that the Braves may deal Jason Heyward. Surely this just frustrated Braves bloggers, desperate to pin the failures of 2011 on something. It wasn't a very good offensive season for Heyward, a bad .319 OBP, .708 OPS, 2.8 PAPP, and .89 PPG. With that said, he still put up a 2 WAR, and he only made $497,000, which is a fantastic WASP of 249. 2010 was much better though, as he put up a 5.2 WAR, 78 WASP, .393 OBP, .849 OPS, 2.41 PAPP, and 1.3 PPG. So what was the difference? One would be tempted to say that a book got out on him after his rookie year, and pitchers knew how to pitch to him. There is a rather obvious problem to this. He walked 91 times in 2010, it is not as if pitchers were just throwing meatballs up to him for him to hit. There is a better nonstatistical analysis, he wasn't healthy. He was battling injuries all year, and simply wasn't able to play up to his best abilities. There are statistical explanations as well though. Start with BABIP, in 2010 it was .335, in 2011, it was .260. This could either be luck, or he hit the ball like a little girl in 2011. If he was unhealthy, as it seems he was, it was the latter. The isolated slugging was lower, but not by a whole lot. As far as ratios go, the biggest difference was the percentage of walks per plate appearances, but it was really only about a 3% difference. Most distressing was that he went from 14% of his flyballs being in the infield in 2010, to 20% in 2011. In my opinion, most of these statistics could be explained by injuries. He is going to go through arbitration for the next 4 years, and won't be a free agent until about 2016. You simply aren't going to anyone that can get you that type of value realistically (unless you can get 2 or 3 MLB ready prospects or Mike Stanton). The Braves have made some pretty strange moves in recent years, but they have a pretty solid organization. I would be shocked if they made a move here, because this would make no sense.