Jarrod Saltalamacchia: Arbitration

Salty made $750,000 in 2011,  and posted a .7 . WAR (worth 2.1 million according to Halladay Standard). He had a career high in Plate Appearances, and his other real full season was in 2007 where he had a .1 WAR. It would be a pretty big jump in arbitration to go from 750,000 to 2.1 million but I am certainly no expert at guessing how much a player will get in arbitration. In 2011 for the Red Sox, he had just a .288 OBP, with a .737 OPS. The good news is that he was a pretty good slugger at .450 slugging percentage. He also had a 1.21 PPG, but a 3.088 PAPP. He was horribly inefficient but had some pop. His secondary average was .285, while his PPS was 91.85. In his career, his Runs Created per game was just below average at 4.2, and his offensive winning percentage is .434. He has a .307 OBP, .712 OPS, and 91.99 PPS. He hasn't consistently had the power he had in 2011, with a career PPG of .98 and a .161 ISO (he had a .215 in 2011, it is hard to tell if that is fluky or whether he just loves Fenway. The Ballpark in Arlington where he used to play is a very great hitters ballpark, so the latter seems unlikely). He has a .322 career BABIP, even though he had a 2011 BABIP of .304, there is perhaps hope it will return to form. More likely, this career BABIP was fluky anyway. His Secondary Average is mediocre at .246. Salty is a horrible defender with a -1.4 D-WAR in his career and a -.6 WAR in 2011. He also had that weird incident in 2010 where the Rangers couldn't bring him up because he suddenly couldn't throw it to the pitcher. We should probably not read too much into that, but it gives you concern about his mental makeup. In 2011, Salty was absolutely terrible at the start of the year and picked it up as the year went along. He is an above average power hitter, but a way below average walker. The strikeouts will irrationally turn away people as will the low batting average. Because of this it is hard to know what his trade value would be, but certainly some team would see a catcher with some power and ignore the flaws. And there are flaws, the low OBP and high PAPP is very concerning. He is under average overall. The only hope is that his solid pitches per plate appearance (3.91 in his career, 3.95 in 2011) and slightly above average PPS will turn into a better OBP (read more walks). This is possible, but probably unlikely considering the decently large sample size of Salty's career. I don't think you can count on Salty and (obviously if he gets the 2.1 million or more) I would try to trade him.

Series Review: Yankees and Tigers

A-Rod, while not rated high statistically this season and therefore was not a reason the statistics picked the Yankees, was an absolute disaster.  He struck out 6 times and went 2 for 18 in the series. In now big samples, it is apparent that A-Rod is not a very good postseason player, and he is still on the hook for a lot of money and a long time. It was the Tigers, not the Yankees, that took advantage of the short right porch, with multiple barely shouldn't be homers in that should-be illegal ballpark. C.C. Sabathia's performance in the series was disappointing and disrupted, and Ivan Nova had to pitch twice, and the statistics were clear, Fister is better than Nova. It showed in game 5. Verlander only pitched once (twice if you count that horrible first inning in game 1), and wasn't his best (5.00 ERA), but out-pitched Sabathia (6.23 ERA). Both bullpens, which the statistics basically called equal, pitched really well. Max Scherzer was lucky if not good for the Tigers, giving up tons of flyballs in his start, but still only having a 1.09 WHIP and 1.23 ERA for his two appearances. Also unexpected was Rick Porcello starting game 4, not Brad Penny (which I had written in the series preview). Not to mention that the 4th pitcher was supposed to face Sabathia and not Burnett. This really messed with the statistical preview. For the Yankees, Texiera had another mediocre playoff series, walking rarely and not coming with hardly any hits. For the Tigers, Delmon Young, an extremely overrated player with low statistical ratings, had a very big series with 3 homers and hitting over .300 despite chasing all kinds of bad pitches, Miguel Cabrera hit just .200 in the series, but as batting average is very overrated, he was very solid in the series and the Yankees had to repeatedly pitch around him. Maggolio Ordonez and Brandon Inge, both veterans who had terrible seasons, were very productive, and many of the holes the lineup had this year were at least taped up in this series. Again, metrics and statistics show what has happened over a period of time, but in a period of 5 games (1-2 for most pitchers, not to mention how the suspended game altered the pitching match-ups) things that statistical averages say will happen, may not happen. It is a small sample. I expect the statistics to do better in the 7 games series's and much better when I use the metrics to construct a season preview next year.

 

My Pre-Statistics picks: 2-0

My statistics picks: 0-2

Teams with higher payroll: 1-1

Free Agent Watch: David Ortiz

After the (hilarious) historic collapse of the Boston Red Sox in 2011, they face many questions going into next season. Who will be there manager? What is going to happen with their GM Theo Epstein? How can they make all these bad contracts go away? Among these questions is, are they going to sign David Ortiz? As has become custom, I will look at the previous 3 seasons and see how much Ortiz is worth. Over the last 3 years, Ortiz has put up a 6.9 WAR, 2.3 WAR a year. This is the same as Todd Helton, less than half of Ian Kinsler's, about half of Mark Texiera's, and less than half of Ben Zobrist's. It is pretty evident that Ortiz is overrated. In the last 3 years Ortiz has made $38.5 million, giving him a 5579 WASP, well over the Halladay Standard. Instead, Ortiz is actually worth $6.9 million. He is actually coming off a year where he had a very nice PAPP (2.25) and a solid PPG (1.44) and he still gets on base (.398 OBP), so he can very valuable in the lineup, but he can't field, and he can't run, which really hurts his overall WAR. He still has a 7.6 Runs Created per game and his Offensive Winning percentage is .713. He is still a very good offensive tool, but not worth what the Red Sox have been paying him. My guess is that the Red Sox will overpay him and keep him.