The End Of An Era

Today is the deadline to tender contracts to players under team control, and the Orioles have decided that they've had enough of Daniel Cabrera. The towering righty with the powerful arm and no control was non-tendered and will be a free agent. The team apparently didn't want to go to arbitration with Cabrera and risk having him pull in $4-5 M or so after his 8-10, 5.25 ERA, 6.58 tRA, 65 tRA+ season.

I have to call this a bad decision. As infuriating as Cabrera is 95% of the time, he still provides above replacement innings. I'm no longer drinking the kool-aid with Daniel, but I'd be highly surprised if he isn't worth $4 M next year. Plus, who's going to pitch now? Guthrie's solid and Olson should be decent, but after that it's a whole lot of, well, crap. Maybe Daniel really wants to stay and approaches the team about a contract at a cheap rate, but I doubt it. Oh well.

The team also let Lance Cormier go (though they still may try to sign him to another minor-league deal) even after his solid season (4.53 tRA, 99 tRA+).

On the bright side, there are some other players that look interesting.

LHP Chris Capuano was non-tendered by the Brewers after missing all of 2008 with Tommy John surgery. In 2007 and 2006 he posted back-to-back 4.33 tRA seasons and combines a good strike-out rate (7.4 K/9 career) with decent control (3.0 BB/9). He may not be ready for the start of the season and the Brewers are going to try to bring him back on a minor-league deal, but I'd still make an inquiry.

Charlie Haeger is a 25 year-old righty who throws a knuckleball. While he hasn't had much success at the major league level, I like the idea of having a guy in the organization who can float 'em up there to eat innings as a swingman - the kind of thing R.A. Dickey did for the M's last year.

Chuck James is a worse (though younger) version of Capuano. Actually, other than his HR problem, he's not too dissimilar from Garrett Olson either. (I don't want five of the same guy, but you try filling out this rotation.)

Ty Wigginton was let go by the Astros despite his .285/.350/.526, 23 HR, .377 wOBA, 112 wOBA+ season. He is pretty bad with the glove, but swings a consistently above-average stick. The O's have no place for him - I'm just surprised he wasn't tendered a contract. Considering Casey Blake got 3 years and $17 M, having Wiggy around for one year at $7-8 M seems like a solid investment. I know the 'Stros need to cut payroll, but I would've thought that they could sign and then trade him. Now they get nothing.

The main problem for the Orioles is that many of these bargain type players wouldn't have spots on the roster. The team needs pitchers and there aren't many even OK ones being let go - that's what makes the decision to drop Cabrera seem even stranger. I wonder if someone will scoop him up on the cheap and get a solid (though not close to his potential) season from Daniel. Read more ...

You Have To Swing Sometimes

I was completely unsurprised to learn that Daniel Cabrera holds the major league record for most at bats with a strike-out in each one. 11 AB, 11 K's. After seeing him hit the other day in Milwaukee - in between pitches he looked at the bat like he wasn't quite sure what it was he was holding - I almost expected it to be worse, somehow. Read more ...

It Used To Be True

People are starting to notice :

"The sky is blue. Water is wet. Daniel Cabrera has command problems. All of these things have been inarguable truths forever, and they’re so clear, there’s been no reason to state the obvious. His career BB/9 is 5.14, which is just one shade south of abominable. He’d walked 100 or more batters in each of the last two seasons. During the 116 starts he made from 2004 to 2007, he’d gotten through without walking a batter just three times.

Well, after last night’s 7 IP/2 R performance where he didn’t walk anyone against the Yankees, he’s now accomplished that same feat three times in his last six starts. He did it three times in 116 starts prior to this year, and he’s already done it three times in the last month. In his last four starts, he’s thrown 30 1/3 innings and walked just three batters. Three walks was a normal inning for Cabrera last year, but now he’s walking three guys over a three week stretch? This is baseball’s version of cats and dogs living together.

Is this command improvement (3.21 BB/9 on the year is a huge improvement for Cabrera, believe it or not) based on some identifiable change in Cabrera’s skillset? Well, to start off, we see that Cabrera isn’t throwing nearly as hard as he did when he came up three years ago. In 2005, his average fastball was 96.2 MPH, making him the hardest throwing starting pitcher in baseball. This year, he’s at 93.1 MPH, which ties him for just the 9th highest average fastball in among starters. He’s still a power pitcher, but it appears he’s (intentionally or not) taken something off of his fastball, and this reduced velocity correlates very well with lower walk rates.

Also, we note that Cabrera has essentially become a one pitch pitcher. In fact, he’s taking the idea that a pitcher needs secondary pitches and throwing it out the window. He’s thrown 87 percent fastballs this year. Eighty-Seven Percent. That’s up from 74% last year, and the difference is almost entirely from the slider, which he’s using half as much as he did a year ago. Instead of throwing one of every five pitches as a breaking ball, he’s now throwing one in ten.

These two shifts represent a real change in approach for Cabrera. He’s gone from a big time power fastball/slider guy with no idea where the ball is going to a fastball pitcher with an occasional slider and decent command. Not surprisingly, he’s posting the highest ground ball rate of his career, which is directly related to the amount of fastballs he’s throwing. However, those extra ground balls and fewer walks have come at the expense of his strike out rate, which is now a below average 5.48 K/9. He ranked in the top five in strikeout rate in both 2005 and 2006, racking up nearly one per inning over those two seasons. The move away from the slider and the reduced velocity has allowed hitters to make more contact, but he’s counter balanced that drop with the improvements in walk rate and ground ball rate.

Cabrera seems to be learning that his pitch selection and velocity is a sliding scale. By throwing more fastballs at a reduced velocity, he’s getting ahead in counts and keeping runners off the bases. He might not lead the league in strikeouts anymore, but he might have finally figured out how to be an effective major league starting pitcher."

Daniel has been somewhat of a punchline for national baseball people. I'm glad that is coming to an end, and if he can keep up his production then I think people may go back to thinking he could be a top starter "next year", as they used to say (every year, before being proved wrong). An increase in his strike-out rate once he learns to harness the breaking-ball in certain situations could jump him into legitimate #1 starter territory. The stat about zero-walk games is pretty amazing I think. Read more ...

Decisions, Decisions

After his excellent start (and finish) against the Royals, I've seen a lot of discussion about what to do with Daniel Cabrera. There seem to be three main schools of thought on the issue: (1) He's just in the middle of a good streak and can not be depended on to be a consistently good starter - trade him, (2) He's finally turned the corner and is going to be a top-of-the-rotation starter that the O's can build around - keep him, (3) Keeping him or trading him is entirely dependent on what kind of package the O's would get back.

I actually stand at about 2.7 here. I think he really is turning into a quality starter and at age 27 I think he can be an asset to this team for a number of years. However, I realize that career years and hot-streaks do happen and it is certainly possible that he will regress again, and therefore I would trade him only if the players coming back are worth slightly less than Cabrera's ceiling (that is, I'd accept a slightly lesser package to make up for the risk of him reverting to his earlier form, but only a slightly lesser package). Ideally what I would do (and I don't know if I've mentioned this before) but I'd try to sign him (as soon as he has a rough start) to a 3 year $15-18 million deal with a team option or two. With a guy like Carlos Silva getting $12 million a year, I think even $20 million would be fine for Daniel. It doesn't make him much less tradeable, since teams will have the cost certainty that they wouldn't if he was still arbitration eligible. The option years are really the key - if they can keep him at $8-10 million a year if he's pitching well, then I think it's a very solid contract. In four years, $10 million might buy you Kyle Lohse. Plus, I think Daniel would actually be agreeable to such a deal. He seems to like it here pretty well, especially with Rick Kranitz as the pitching coach. Lock him up as an expected #3 starter and fill in around him. The team should have enough pitching depth that they'll be OK if he goes back to being a #4, but they will be in a great position if he gets anywhere close to his (reasonable) ceiling (a top #2). I wouldn't expect Adam Jones, Chris Tillman, and three other pieces, but if they can get a middle infielder or two and maybe a third baseman (all that are projected to be at least average major leaguers at their positions) than I'd pull the trigger.

One of Daniel's top comparables is Jason Schmidt, and I'd hate for the O's to make the same mistake that the Pirates did. Schmidt saw an increase in home runs and walks along with a drop in strike-outs and after an injury plagued age 27 season (so it's a year ahead of Cabrera age-wise) he was traded to the Giants for Armando Rios and Ryan Vogelsong. All he did was become a dominant starter - getting his home runs and walks back under control and increasing his K's to over one an inning. For his five years in San Fransisco (like three years and two option years, mind you) he made about $37 million. The O's could in fact use very similar salary escalations - $5 million, $6 mill, $ 7 mill, $ 9 mill (option), $10 mill (option). Judging by the way MacPhail has handled contracts so far, I doubt he'll sign Cabrera this year, or maybe even after the season (if at all). That's still better than trading him at a discount though. Read more ...

Cabrera Shuts Down KC

Lets look at the Pitch/FX data for Daniel Cabrera's excellent start against the Royals.

Daniel wasn't throwing as hard as he has been (more 92-95 than 94-97) and the movement on it is very different. Instead of breaking like a two-seamer - down and in to righties - it broke more like a four-seamer or even a splitter, with the same vertical drop (just a little bit less) but it didn't run in to rights (or away to lefties) as much.

Cabrera seems to have thrown 11 sliders and, discounting 3 he threw as "waste" pitches, 75% (6 out of the remaining 8) were in the strike-zone. Something I just noticed, but may be a potential problem... it appears that when Daniel throws a slider, his release point is higher than when he throws a fastball.



Going back this seems to be a persistent issue. I wonder if it is noticeable to the hitter. In contrast to the fastball, He's actually getting more horizontal movement on the slider, with it breaking away from right-handers an extra couple inches. It has flattened out slightly, but by a smaller amount than the increase in horizontal movement.

Now that SonofSamHorn has righty/lefty breakdowns for their Pitch/FX data, I can look at that too. Daniel threw zero sliders to left-handed batters. And he didn't throw any change-ups in the game at all. It was all fastballs, all night and other than the Alex Gordon double they really couldn't do a thing with them.

Believe it or not, but Cabrera actually should have done better than he did. I count 9 pitches that were in the strike-zone but were called balls. Despite the way it looked on the Gamefeed, only one pitch out of the zone was called a strike for him. (Luke Hochevar, on the other hand, got 5 "balls" called strikes and only one pitch in the zone called a ball.)

Great performance from every angle.

Now that the game is over, MLB has the video up for free. Despite desperately wanting to go to sleep, I'm going to watch the game (the pitching half, at least). Read more ...

Oh, Danny Boy

CamdenDepot has a couple of good posts looking at Daniel Cabrera's season thus far. They look mostly at Cabrera's mechanics.

SonofSamHorn (yes, a Boston blog) has an excellent Pitch/FX tool up that I used to look at Daniel's starts (4/2 - 4/23, 4/28 isn't up).

First up, his release-point. I was surprised to find that he was far more consistent in his first couple of starts (5 BB in 4 IP, 4 BB in 6 IP) than in his more recent starts (especially his 8 inning 0 walk performance against Seattle - his release-point was all over the place).

Compare the 6 IP, 4 BB day (against the M's):



to his 8 IP, 0 BB day (also against the M's):



and then compare each of those to Jeremy Guthrie's on 4/27 (5 IP, 2 BB):



Cabrera is better, but still has a ways to go to be consistent.

Next up, the fastball.

Daniel's velocity has gone from 91-94 to 94-97, which is somewhat strange, since it appears that he is thowing a larger percentage of two-seamers (vs. four-seamers) than he was before.

Let's look at his first start of the year:



I won't go into an explanation of what the breaks mean (check out the wiki on the site if you're interested) but a general rule of thumb is that pitches in the 10 vertical, -10 horizontal area are two-seamers and pitches in 12 vertical, -5 horizontal area are four-seamers (I don't know if he grips the pitches differently - I'm just going by movement). Daniel threw about an equal number of pitches in both areas, including a few that had almost no horizontal movement.

Now let's look at the graph from his 4/23 start:



A lot more of his pitches were two-seamers. Almost all of them, in fact. He's getting a lot more action on his fastball, and he's throwing harder. That is definitely a good combination.

How about his breaking-ball? He is throwing it a little less, but since he's throwing more strikes, it is more effective. I can't get exact data, since the graphs of pitch types and outcomes don't match up, but it is clear that he is getting a lot more swings and misses with it than he had before. With him throwing more strikes in general, batters can't just sit back a take the breaking-pitches for balls.

I looked at Daniel's control by seeing (about) how many pitches were way out of the strike-zone (more 6 inches). He's throwing a smaller percentage of balls (pitches out of the zone) way out of the zone - it's gone from 42% to 62% to three starts in the mid/upper 30's. True, this didn't take swings or umpire calls into account, but it's nice to see that he's a little more around the plate.

That his K's/9 is way down (5.11) compared to last year (7.31) while his walks are also up (5.11 per nine from 4.76) concerns me, but he has gotten ground balls (53%) and has kept opponents from making solid contact (only 11% line-drive percentage) which means that his BABIP (.231) isn't that flukey. The high home run rate is, however, as 14% of fly balls are clearing the fences, compared to a career rate of 10%. He's also ending at bats quicker, as he's throwing 3.7 pitches per plate appearance - down from 3.9 last year. If he can become more consistent with his mechanics (and so throw some more strikes) I think Daniel can have a solid year. He'll need to trade some walks for some strike-outs (and then add a few K's on top of that), but I expect him to do it. Read more ...

It'll Be A Battle Till The Bitter End (For League Lead In Walks)

Going from marveling at Ben Sheets' amazing control for a strike-out pitcher to a couple of guys in the O's rotation who have a ways to go to even be average in that department - Daniel Cabrera and Adam Loewen.

Daniel Cabrera has been frustrating pretty much everyone who has heard of him for years now. In consecutive starts to start the 2006 season he went: 1.1 IP, 3 H, 7 R, 7 BB 1 K; 5, 3, 1, 9, 10; 7, 5, 1, 1, 6. Consistent he is not. The guy will pitch 4 innings and give up 5 walks and 7 runs, and then come back and throw a complete-game shut-out with 2 walks and 10 K's. Every time you think he's finally put it all together, everything falls apart.

Let's take a look at Daniel's progression as a pitcher. K/9 has gone from 4.6 to 8.8 to 9.6 to 7.3. BB/9: 5.4 to 4.9 to 6.3 to 4.8. HR/9: 0.9 to 0.8 to 0.7 to 1.10. H/9: 8.8 to 8.1 to 7.9 to 9.1. When Leo Mazzone came aboard, Cabrera's stats other than walks continued to gradual improve, as they did the previous year. The BB/9, however, shot up well past his previous high. Then in 2007, in order to compensate for the high walk rate, Cabrera altered the way he pitched (from anecdotal evidence: he seemed to throw softer (93-95 as opposed to 96-97) and the fastball was straighter; he also seemed to "groove" more pitches in an effort to not walk guys) and while his BB/9 were a career best, all of his other stats dropped off. I'm fairly comfortable calling 2007 a bad experiment year that is more "outlier" than indicative of a new career path.

For 2008 I'm projecting an improved K/9 of 7.8 (though I think that he could easily go above 8.5 or even 9); some continued improvement in BB/9 to 4.5; the HR/9 getting back on track at 1.0; and a slightly improved hit rate at 8.8 per nine. An average of composite ERA and fielding independent ERA gives 4.42. I think this a perfectly reasonable projection and that Cabrera (with some luck) could get it under 4 in the next couple of years. Or, you know, he could walk 150 guys and be out of the league - whichever.

And now to the left-hander:

I like Adam Loewen a lot. I think he has a chance to be a top of the rotation starter in the future - I just don't think that's going to come this year. People may look at his 3.56 ERA from 2007 and assume further improvement. The truth, however, probably lies in between that 3.56 and his 5.37 from 2006.

While there was a drastic improvement in ERA, Loewen's K/9 fell from 7.9 to 5.0 and his BB/9 rose from an already very bad 6.6 to an atrocious 7.8. [2007 was a small sample size - 30 IP - but it still counts for something.] He went from being a bit unlucky on BABIP (.314) to a bit lucky (.286).
For 2008 I projected Loewen's K/9 to be a solid 6.9 - a small drop-off from '06, but much better than '07. His control was never very good in the minors (5.2 BB/9) and I have him at (what for him would be fantastic, but is still not good) 5.7. Loewen is quite good at keeping the ball in the park (0.3 HR/9 in the minors and in '07; 0.64 in '06) so a HR/9 of 0.6 sounds like it's in the right neighborhood. As for H/9, its been 8.9 and 8.1 in successive years, so 8.75 seems reasonable.
This produces an ERA of 4.53, which I think may still be a bit optimistic.

Adam Loewen has all of the tools (size; good velocity; movement on the cut-fastball; quality curveball) to be an effective pitcher, and most of the stats back it up (good K rate, low HR rate, low-ish (but not terribly flukey) hit rate) but the control is the big issue. If he can't get it below 5 per nine, then he can't be a #1 (or even #2) starter, and even a big improvement for 2008 will still have him amongst the worst in the league.

People seem to have Adam Loewen as the team's #1 or #2 starter with Daniel Cabrera as #3 (or sometimes worse). I think that is incorrect based on their respective levels of play to date, and that Cabrera possesses just as much potential as Loewen. It seems that people like Loewen better because he's younger, and so they can "dream" on him more. Cabrera is only 27 years old - for a tall pitcher who was rushed to the big leagues that isn't so bad. I'm holding out hope that he can make a quality career for himself.

[Interestingly, Daniel Cabrera is the 8th most similar pitcher to Adam Loewen through age 23.] Read more ...