Brendan Lafferty: Rule 5 Scouting Report

The Phillies took Brendan Lafferty in the AAA part of the Rule 5 draft from the Royals. Lafferty was originally a 47th round pick by the Phillies in 2004, but decided to go to UCLA instead. After 4 years as a mediocre (statistically) reliever, the Royals took him in the 18th round in 2009. He has basically only been a reliever in the minors and the 26 year old pitched the whole year in AA (so he is old for the level).

Lafferty's Pitch F/X data comes from the Arizona Fall League in 2011.
Known for his fastball, it averaged over 94 MPH, along with a lot of sinkers (averaging between 93-94 MPH) and sliders (83.58 MPH average). He also threw a reasonable number of changeups that average just under 80 MPH. When you look at other relievers with similar fastballs, his changeup is much slower than most relievers who throw that hard (which made looking for velocity and pitch comparisons basically impossible).  So even though he is not known to have good secondary stuff, he at least throws it a lot. He is somewhat of a sinker/slider guy, but the fastball and change at least gives him some other weapons. Statistically, he doesn't act like a sinker/slider pitcher either. He had a good strikeout rate (25.5 %) with a gigantic walk rate (14.4%) with a mediocre ground-ball rate (and high home run rate) in 2012. He pitched in an extreme hitters park in 2012, but actually gave up more homers on the road.

He also threw strikes under 60% of the time in 2012. 60% is usually considered a magic number that virtually every successful Major League pitcher surpasses (with very few, such as Cliff Lee and Kevin Slowey throwing 70% or near). So, if one is trying to put Lafferty in a category, it is impossible to put him into the sinker/slider category (and is hard to put him in the advanced older pitcher category as well), and instead he falls under the wild/hard throwing lefty.

He has a better K/BB against lefties, along with a better GB %, but his home run rate is higher against righties. This seems to be more of a fluky HR/FB % issue than an actually telling us about his skill set (there are always some issues with reliever splits and sample sizes, even when looking at multiple seasons. Lafferty giving up more homers to lefties doesn't jive a lot with the rest of the information we have).

Lefties that throw hard are always interesting and usually valuable, but the age obviously limits his ceiling. He has the good strikeout rate but Lafferty obviously has a lot of other issues. His delivery is somewhat hard to watch, as he brings his leg up rather high and pauses in the middle of his delivery. His arm slot then seems to not follow his delivery, as he moves his body like he is going to come over the top, only to come what you would probably call 3/4ths. He has good size at 6-3, but it doesn't appear that he is using the size to his advantage and actually looks like he is working against his body while pitching. In much of the video I watched of Lafferty, he was keeping the ball low, but had all kinds of problems with basic command/control. With his velocity and mix of pitches, he shouldn't be giving up homers if he is keeping the ball low. While there is no real way to quantify whether or not he is keeping the ball low (there are technically several ways, but none without flaws such as relying on selection bias, possibly bad stringer data in AA, or just looking at ground-ball rate), it seems safe to assume that a pitcher that throws a sinker at least a quarter of the time but has a 1.34 HR/9IP is not keeping the ball low. I wholly expect that the Phillies are taking a chance on left-handed velocity and will most likely tinker with his delivery in either AA or AAA.

How much does velocity matter?

I wanted to see the correlation between velocity and effectiveness in a pitcher. This has huge ramifications for scouting, as a pitcher's velocity is one of the first things looked at by scouts. So here I used any pitcher who threw at least 20 innings in 2011 in the NL West. I used Fangraphs customizable reports, and used FIP - as the standard of effectiveness, and used their velocity charts. My assumption before hand was that top velocity matters very little and speed differential matters much more, so I also subtracted the highest velocity from the lowest velocity for each pitcher (click on the images to enlarge).

Interesting to note that the Phillies, the best pitching team in baseball, had only one qualifying player throw 94 MPH, and no one threw harder. All 5 pitchers that threw over 95 were above average (above average is having a FIP - below 100, below average is anything above 100), so it does seem there is a positive correlation between big time velocity and success. 22 pitchers didn't throw pitches at 90MPH or more, and 9 were above average and 13 were below average.
There were only two pitchers who had differentials more than 20 MPH, and they both were above average. 20 pitchers had differentials of 15 or more MPH, 15 were above average and 5 were below average. However, 16 players had differentials of less than 10 MPH and 12 of those pitchers were above average. So perhaps there isn't much to speed differential. At the very least, we have to say the results are inconclusive. It doesn't even seem to help to have a slow pitch necessarily, as 3 of the 4 pitchers with pitches less than 70 MPH were below average.
So it does seem that having a 95+ MPH pitch correlates to success, while not being able to throw 90 correlates to failure.

Kyle Kendrick: Arbitration

Kyle Kendrick has a 2.1 WAR in 5 seasons. The crazy thing about this is that he had a 2.1 WAR in 2007. He then turned around and had a -1.4 WAR in 2008, and in 2011, his WAR was 1.1 (he made 2.45 million in 2011, a decent WASP of 2227). He has a horrible career PE of 4.43 and 4.97 adjusted PE. In 2011, things were a little better with a 2.3 PE and a 3.63 adjusted PE (4.26 PE and 5.33 adjusted PE in 2007). The lack of strikeouts (4.14 K/9IP) is striking, and he got away with a low BABIP (.261) in 2011 and his FIP was 1.33 higher than his ERA. He is the rare pitcher that throws less than 60% strikes, and his career TR is a lowly 7.15. In 2011 it was better at 8.96, and 8.65 in 2007. This means that his "best" year might have actually been worse than 2011. There is plenty to suggest his 07 season was pretty lucky anyway, as his FIP was 1.07 higher than his ERA and his BABIP was well below league average and slight below career average at .281. Despite being a groundball pitcher (1.37 GB/FB), he still struggles with the long ball (1.2 HR/9IP). His career RE 24 is -15.51, meaning he has given up 15.51 runs more than an average pitcher would. Kyle Kendrick is like the guy who has 4 really successful brothers (Worley, Halladay, Lee, and Hamels) but still can't get a job, and lives with his parents. He isn't going to be worth the money he is going to get in arbitration but one would have to imagine it would be hard to dump him. If any organization attaches any value to Kendrick, they are overvaluing him, his "good" years were clearly fluky, as shown above.

The Rangers, Cliff Lee, Beltre, and Napoli

Around the World Series, I heard a member of the Dallas media say that the Rangers used the money they would have spent on Cliff Lee and spent it on Beltre and Napoli and that is why they were in the World Series. So I wanted to look at the numbers.

They lost: 
Cliff Lee: 6.8 WAR 11 million dollars (will make 21.5 million in 2012)
Frank Francisco: 1.1 WAR 4 million dollars.

They gained:
Mike Napoli: 5.5 WAR 5.8 million dollars
Adrian Beltre: 5.2 WAR 14 million dollars.

The Rangers lost 7.9 WAR (at 15 million dollars), but gained 10.7 WAR (19.8 million dollars). So by signing Beltre instead of Lee and trading Francisco for Napoli (the most lopsided trade of the year), they gained 2.8 WAR at 4.8 extra million dollars, a 1714 WASP, meaning they got good return for the extra money they had to spend. Cliff Lee and Frank Francisco put up a 1898 WASP, while Beltre and Napoli put up a 1850 WASP, meaning the Rangers gained a slight efficiency with these moves.

In this article, I wanted to see if the Angels had any reason whatsoever to trade Mike Napoli. His 2011 .414 OBP, and 1.046 OPS were clearly career highs, and it is hard to imagine anyone would have predicted this. But how was he as an Angel? A .346 OBP, .831 OPS, and 2.14 WAR average in his 5 years in LA is nothing to sneeze about. In fact, every single one of those numbers are better than Vernon Wells numbers in Toronto. Just a straight up trade would have been a loss, and the Angels also sent Juan Rivera to Toronto. I know a big reason for the trade was Napoli's defense, but Vernon Wells also has a career negative D-WAR. Every year in LA, Napoli had an offensive winning percentage of over 50%, and he had a 2.61 PAPP. You just don't find catchers like that. He also had a really impressive 102.73 PPS.

As far as Adrian Beltre goes, he is a hard one to figure out. He has been a notorious contract year player, which made his 2011 season that much more surprising. In 2004 with the Dodgers, he put together one of the alltime great seasons, posting a 10.1 WAR. The next year, his first year in Seattle, he posted just a 1.9 WAR. He then followed up his last year in Seattle with a 1.1 WAR, then had a 6.1 WAR with the Red Sox the next year. One thing you notice about Beltre, a mediocre OBP at .329 on his career. A lack of patience becomes apparent, only walking 6.8% of the time, and seeing a league average 3.76 pitches per plate appearance (leads to about a league average 89.95). When this happens, BABIP and power becomes even more important.  In 2004, he had a 1.79 PPG, in 2005 it was 1.14 PPG. In 2009 he had a 1.07 PPG, but in 2010 was 1.4. You wouldn't think power would fluctuate that much, but in 2004 he hit a homer 7.3% of the time, but in 09 it was just 1.7% and for his career it is 3.9%. We saw this when we looked at Vernon Wells in a previous post, impatient hitters tend to be inconsistent, and I think that is what we see with Beltre.

Newest Seattle Mariner? Hisashi Iwakuma

For over a year now, it has been rumored that the Rakuten Golden Eagle's pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma is going to sign with the Seattle Mariners. Iwakuma is an innings eater, throwing 48 complete games (6 shutouts) in 226 starts (that is complete games in 21% of his starts). That is a higher percentage than Cliff Lee completed (18.4%, James Shields completed 33% of his starts, but has a much lower rate for his career). In his career in Japan, he has a PE of -.04 and had a PE of -1.09 in 2011. Once going through the Japanese pitching metric (a metric I calculated in the Yu Darvish article, trying to measure how pitchers from Japan did in the Majors), his (using his career numbers) WHIP is 1.29, ERA of 3.86, and just 77 strikeouts a year. This is what he could be expected to do for the Mariners. In Japan, his K/BB ratio is a very solid 3.43, and gave up just .64 HR/9IP. One concern that may be nothing but should be taken seriously (because moving from Japan to America or vise versa can be a culture shock and stressful, remember all the preparation Ichiro put himself through.), is when he changed from Kintetsu to Rakuten. His first year for the new team was a disaster, putting up a 4.99 ERA with a career high 7 wild pitches. It is hard to tell what kind of adjustment the move to Seattle (if it happens) Iwakuma would have to make, and whether he would struggle to adapt. It is also hard to gauge how much he might be worth. My guess would be somewhere between the 5-10 million dollar a year range. I certainly wouldn't pay more for him.

Jason Knapp

Jason Knapp is a Starting Pitcher in the Cleveland Indians organization that was part of the Cliff Lee trade. He is currently ranked one of the Indians top prospects. He spent 2008-'10 in Rookie and A Ball for the two organizations. He has been exceptional, at a -5.67 PE. He is an extreme strikeout pitcher, in his 4 starts in non-rookie A-ball in 2010, he struckout 42% of batters (16.31 K/9IP). However, in those 4 starts he had a BABIP of .400. He must have had terrible fielding though because his FIP (Fielders' Independent ERA) was 1.26, while his regular ERA was 3.94. This is a trend that Knapp has seen since he has moved to the Cleveland organization, and the Indians should really question the fielding in their farm system. Something Knapp seems to struggle with is leaving runners on base once they get there, only had a 61.9% LOB in those 4 starts. He doesn't allow the long ball though, as he didn't give up any in 2010, and has only allowed 4 through 2008-2010 (150.1 Innings). He has occasionally struggled with walks, but overall has a good K/BB ratio, and he never gave up a BAA of over .226 in A ball. His 2011 season was pretty much wiped with a shoulder injury and surgery. This was obviously a big set back, and while most pitchers recover from surgeries on the shoulder, not all do. This is obviously a very good young pitcher, and one that could be in the majors in the relatively near future, as long as his shoulder recovers.

Series Review: Phillies vs Cardinals

So yeah. That happened. To cap off a great first round of postseason play, the Cardinals shock the Phillies, as Carpenter out-dueled Roy Halladay. The Phillies were my World Series pick, and statistically they were picked to win this series. The pitching match-ups were so stacked toward the Phillies. However, statistics are averages, and Cliff Lee pitched terrible, Roy Oswalt pitched terrible, and Edwin Jackson pitched amazingly. The Law of averages said this probably wouldn't happen, but the very unlikely happened. There really isn't any other way to explain it. The Phillies hitters were really unimpressive, and didn't successfully work counts and take pitches (only 3.5 pitches per plate appearances in game 5 with no walks). When you do that, you lose virtually every time. Ryan Howard did nothing in the last 3 games, and Pence, Polanco, Ibanez, and Ruiz all underperformed (and Ruiz and Ibanez were rated really low, not much were expected from them). The Cardinals bullpen, once considered a problem, performed very solid. Despite battling injuries Schumaker proved to be one of the best hitters in the series, and was pretty lowly rated. Just a goofy series, and it proved just about anything can happen in a 5 game series.

Pre-Statistics picks: 3-1
Statistic Picks: 0-4
Teams with higher payroll: 2-2
Interesting note: none of the top 9 payroll teams made it past the first round. The Tigers, 10th highest payroll, have the highest payroll out of teams remaining.

Playoff Preview: Phillies versus Cardinals

I picked the Phillies to win the World Series, so of course I have them winning the series before statistics.

Everyone expects the Phillies to use this rotation: Halladay (.23 WAR per start, -2.75 PE), Lee (.22 WAR per Start, -3.52 PE) , Hamels (-2.33 PE, .17 WAR per start), and Oswalt (2.01 PE, .06 WAR per start). Their lineup should look like this (in no particular order): Victorino (.04 WAR a game, 2.5 PAPP, 1.47 PPG), Ibanez (1.2 PPG, negative WAR, 3.6 PAPP), Pence (.04 WAR a game, 1.44 PPG, 2.32 PAPP), Ruiz (.02 WAR per game, .72 PPG, 2.72 PAPP), Howard (.017 WAR per game, 2.58 PAPP, 1.53 PPG), Utley (.032 WAR per game, 2.79 PAPP, 1.17 PPG), Rollins (.025 WAR per game, 2.56 PAPP, 1.36 PPG), and Valdez (Negative WAR, 3.47 PAPP, .74 PPG). Madson (-3.08 PE, 1.7 WAR), Lidge (.3 WAR, -5.92 PE), Worley (-1.51 PE, 2.5 WAR), Stutes (-1.14 PE, 0 WAR), Bastardo (-5.83 PE, .7 WAR), Kendrick (.4 WAR, 2.29 PE), Blanton (2.45 PE, .5 WAR), Herndon (-.6 WAR, 1.16 PE), and Schwimer (-.1 WAR, .18 PE) should round out their bullpen.

For the Cardinals, the starting rotation should look like: Carpenter (.11 WAR per Start, .07 PE), Lohse (.083 WAR per start, 1.66 PE), Garcia (.028 WAR per start, .34 PE), and Westbrook (3.91 PE, Negative WAR).  Their bullpen maps out with these guys: Rhodes (2.95 PE, -.6 WAR), Rzepczynski (1 WAR, -2.07 PE), Dotel (-4.04 PE, .9 WAR), Jackson (1.38 PE, 3.8 WAR), Salas (-3.93 PE, 1 WAR), Mclellen (3.23 PE, negative WAR), Motte (-3.15 PE, 1.6 WAR), and Boggs (.3 WAR, .43 PE). They will probably run out this lineup (in no order): Jay (.01 WAR per game, 2.92 PAPP, .63 PPG), Berkman (.036 WAR per game, 1.5 PPG, 2.21 PAPP) , Holliday (.033 WAR per game, 1.48 PPG, 2.4 PAPP), Pujols (.037 WAR per game, 2.33 PAPP, 1.7 PPG), Freese (1.1 PPG, .019 WAR per game, 2.71 PAPP), Furcal (.028 WAR per game, 2.855 PAPP, 1.12 PPG), Schumaker (.005 WAR per game, 3.05 PAPP, .63 PPG), and Molina (2.71 PAPP, .99 PPG, .028 WAR per game).

As expected, the Phillies have the much better starting pitching. However, I still found it a little shocking just how much better is. The Cardinals' lineup does have a better WAR, and Plate Appearances per Positive play, but the Phillies have slightly better pop, with a better Production per Game. The bullpen situation is a little weird too, with the Cardinals having a much better WAR (perhaps slightly skewed by Edwin Jackson), but the Phillies have a much better Pitching Efficiency. All said, most of the numbers lean toward the Phillies, so I am sticking with the Phillies for this series.

Behind the horrific season Kevin Slowey is having

Perhaps I am just a sadist, but I find a horrifically ugly season interesting and entertaining. Horrific and ugly are two words that quickly come to mind when assessing Twins starting pitcher Kevin Slowey's 2011 season. The bizarre thing is that Slowey has had moderate success in the Majors before this year. In 08, he put together a 3.99 ERA, 1.154 WHIP, and a ratio of over 5 strikeouts per walk. Last season, his stats weren't quite as good, but very formidable (2.3 WAR in 08, .8 WAR last season). This year, his numbers look something like this. 0-7 (I put very little stock in pitching records), 6.54 ERA, 1.360 WHIP (not awful, and I will show you why his WHIP isn't bad in a second), a -.4 WAR, and a WASP of 6480. What went wrong? Well, it appears that Slowey's problems with the longball have finally caught up with him. His 1.5 homers allowed per 9 innings is about standard for his career and is way too high. He doesn't walk hardly anyone (averaging just .8 walks per 9 innings, an amazing number), but perhaps that is the problem. The stats seem to show he is not throwing it out of the zone at all. He has thrown 70 percent of his pitches for strikes, while the artist of quality strike throwing, Cliff Lee, is throwing 69 percent of his pitches for strikes. It is pretty easy to claim that Slowey has neither the stuff or control to live in the strike zone as much as Lee does. His batting average against is .303 and .321 on balls put in play. That means that either he is extremely unlucky or is getting the ball hit hard off him. The Twins have not been good on defense all year, and statistics seem to show that Slowey may be just unlucky this season, as his FIP (fielder independent ERA) is 4.49 (which is still a career high). Also, what was fly balls in previous years for Slowey, have turned into line drives (a career low in fly ball percentage, and career high in line drive percentage). Another thing that may hurt the "he is unlucky case" is that he hasn't even given up an infield hit. Slowey's curveball is being hit unlike its ever been hit before as Fangraphs notes that his curveball has given up 4.1 more runs than an average curveball. Is Slowey experiencing bad luck on a bad team? Sure, but he is not exactly Cy Young either.

Make the most of your time: Takashi Saito

One of the strengths that has emerged for this year's Milwaukee Brewers is the back end of their bullpen. Takashi Saito has been a very underrated reason for this. While K-rod and Axford get all the press, Saito is quietly being dominant. In only 23.2 innings he has registered a .9 WAR (for perspective, Cliff Lee has a 6.6 WAR in 220 innings, about 1 per 33 innings). He has done this by registering a 1.80 ERA, 1.183 WHIP, stranding over 90% of base-runners, and hitters hitting just .227 on him (its actually been much lower most of his career). Right handers are hitting just .180 off him, and in the hot August the Brewers had, he gave up just a .138 batting average. The best thing? He has already outdone his salary in 23.2 innings by posting a 1944 WASP. He is a free agent at the end of the year, and there is a good chance that a big market team will overpay him to be their setup man.

Beware of the World Series MVP, and the Reds SS problems.

Edgar Renteria is basically became the Reds shortstop because of one pitch and one swing. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful swing at the most important time possible, as Renteria's 3 run shot off Cliff Lee in the World Series to give the Giants the lead for good in game 5 sealed the deal and Lincecum shut the Rangers down. The Reds, because the Giants wouldn't sign him (even though he was the MVP of the World Series), gave him $2.1 million to join the club for the year. I thought it was a bad deal (more on how terrible the deal actually is) to start with, but its really hard to be as bad of a deal as the Giants were in with him. In 2 years in San Francisco, he made $18 million, had an OPS below 700, hit a grand total of 8 homers, 70 rbis, and posted a WAR of just .4. This gave him a horrifying WASP of 45000 in his time as a Giant. How has he been this year? A replacement player. Exactly a 0 WAR. He has a WASP of 4200, a lot better than his one as a Giant, but still not good at all. The even bigger problem the Reds have faced this year? They have no replacement. Their other shortstop Paul Janish has appeared in 105 games, but he is barely over the Mendoza line, an OBP of .251, a OPS of .502, all for a total of a -.4 WAR (he is only in the majors because he can field at a 1.1 WAR, because his offense is at -1.5). The only good news is that he is making only $438,000, giving him a WASP (see previous posts on how to calculate WASP) of 1051 (its a very nice WASP, because they are paying him near league minimum they shouldn't expect anything from him is what the statistic assumes). However, he is already 28, and its hard to imagine he will improve anymore, meaning that the Reds really really need help at shortstop.

Looking back at the Josh Hamilton-Edinson Volquez Trade

Its always fun to look back at old trades and see which team "won" the trade. Just on the surface of it, it appears that the Rangers won this trade with the Reds. After the 07 season, the Rangers sent Edinson Volquez and Danny Herrera to the Reds for Josh Hamilton. Herrera (currently a member of the Mets, after beginning the season with the Brewers) spent 3 years with Cincinnati and recorded an even 0 WAR (Wins above Replacement), meaning he was no more than a replacement player or an average backup player. He made about $1,212,500 in salary in his time as a Red, making his WASP (War and Salary Per) 2,425. Volquez (still a member of the Reds, but has been up and down between AAA and the Majors this year, after being the Game 1 starter in the ALDS last year) has posted a 4.3 WAR in his 4 seasons as a Red (for comparison, Cliff Lee has a 6.1 just this year, and Verlander has a 7.7 this year, and WAR is not an average, it can and should be added up). In that time, he has made $2,897,500 in salary. This gives him a WASP (WASP works like an average, unlike WAR) of about 673 overall, which is actually very nice (his WASP for this year is 5346 though). Since Josh Hamilton has been a Ranger, he has made $11,451,830, much more than Volquez and Herrera combined. However, he has compiled a 16.8 WAR (along with an AL MVP and MVP of the ALCS), giving him a WASP of 681 overall (almost the exact same as Volquez). So it appears with both WAR and WASP (mainly because of Herrera's failure) the Rangers won this trade.

Because Baseball Needs Another Statistic: the WASP

For those not familiar with baseball statistics or sabermetrics, "WAR" has been the hot statistic of the past few years. WAR (meaning Wins above Replacement or Wins After Replacement) combines statistics for both hitters and pitchers and tries to determine how many wins the player gave his (or her in softball I guess) team. A great, simple intro to WAR can be found here. So (at least theoretically) WAR measures players and make them easier to rank. So, for example, Derek Jeter (with a 1 WAR this year, which is not great by any means) is better than backup middle infielder for the Rangers Andres Blanco (with a 0 WAR this season, meaning he is, to use a fun sports term, "just a guy", any major leaguer that belongs in the majors could replace him). However, this doesn't tell us that Derek Jeter is paid much more than Blanco. There is a (sort of) relationship between salary and WAR, but not in the sense that I will suggest should be taken in account. Before we look into the details of the proposed statistic, I will first admit that this isn't necessarily new. I am just doing it in a different way, there are ways certain sites and people measure this, but to my knowledge they aren't using the formula I will give.
I call this statistic WASP (standing for War and Salary Per). It's really simple. First, take the player's salary, and since we mentioned Jeter, let's start with his salary of 15 million dollars (according to baseballplayersalaries.com). Then, because everyone in the MLB makes at least 6 figures, cut off the last 3 zeros. So we are stuck with the number 15,000. Next, you divide it by his WAR, and because Jeter's WAR is 1, you are left with 15,000. The rule for this stat is that the higher the number, the worse off. You want a low number (similar to ERA or WHIP for pitchers). So lets compare Jeter with Blanco. Blanco's salary is a much smaller $520,000. Obviously we chop off the last 3 zeros to get us to 520, but we have to treat negative and even WARs differently than a positive WAR, so the formula changes. On an even or negative WAR, you add (technically subtract, you are actually adding -2) 2 to the WAR (so if the WAR is -.5, change it to -2.5), change it to positive and multiply (not divide) it by the salary number (maybe I lied about the simplicity). So we change Blanco's 0 to 2 and then times it by 520, which gives you 1040. This number is lower (and lower is better, remember) than Jeter's. This means that Blanco is more "valuable" (in dollars and cents terms) than Jeter (statistically of course, this doesn't measure unmeasurables like leadership, I am looking forward to your comments Yankee fans). This is a statistic that is especially important to teams like the Athletics (it is kind of a "Moneyball" inspired statistic), Rays, and Marlins who have little to no money to spend. These teams must get the most value out of players as possible. So lets just look at how some other players stack up according to WASP. Mike Stanton of the Marlins has a WAR of 5.1 and a salary of 416,000. This gives him a WASP of 81.5, which is an absolute blowout of Jeter and Blanco. Jacoby Ellsbury, a MVP candidate outfielder for the Red Sox, has a salary of 2.4 million, and a 6.8 WAR. This gives him a WASP of about 353. Adam Dunn has a shocking WASP of 52,800, Justin Verlander has a 1655, Cliff Lee a 1833, Carlos Pena 5555, C.J Wilson 1639, Pat Burrell 1111, and Matt Latos at 287.5. It is certainly a stat that rewards any kind of production from players that are paid less than a million dollars. You can easily calculate the WASP of your favorite players or players on a certain team by using sites like baseballreference.com and baseballplayersalaries.com and a calculator. I will be playing around with this stat on the blog in the future, and if you have any interesting findings be sure to comment on the blog or email me at clinthulsey@my.unt.edu or follow me on twitter @clinthulsey.

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.