That's Not How The Reals Are Ordered

Why would someone bring up stats that are blatantly wrong to support a counter-intuitive conclusion? Because they hate base-cloggers, that's why.

""Everybody's wondering why I didn't pinch-hit for Corey," Baker said. "Corey, in his career, has been better against left-handers than right-handers."

Corey Patterson, career:
Vs. RHP .260/.302/.423
Vs. LHP .240/.273/.375" - FJM

Rarely do they make it quite this easy to make fun of them. Thanks, Dusty.

By the way, the last Joe Morgan ESPN Chat was basically 90% people asking Joe questions about Gary Sheffield and consistency and the like - Joe Baiters, if you will. Why even bother wasting everyone's time then? I am disappointed about losing that weekly source of amusement. Read more ...

Taking Out The Trash

Corey Patterson, Jay Gibbons, and the "garbage" home run. OriolesCentral had a post about how these (and other) O's hitters would hit home runs when they didn't help the team (they were up or down by a lot of points), but it was based on general observation - here's my initial response, and some stats about it:

Perhaps Corey Patterson and Jay Gibbons just aren’t very good hitters (shocking, I know) so when a team has a huge lead, the opposing pitcher is OK with throwing fastballs in the zone (which these guys can actually hit) and when the game is close, they throw breaking-pitches and paint the corners (which they can’t hit). I don’t think it has anything at all to do with “clutchness” but is rather a general lack of talent. I question whether or not it is actually the case that these players do hit a lot of “meaningless” HR, so I’ll take a look at that sometime soon and post something about it. If you already did that, then I will defer to your conclusions (I assume it’s just your impression of what happens).

Jay Gibbons: 25.1 PA / HR career
In Close & Late Situations: 45.8 Plate appearances per HR
Tie Game: 33.1 PA / HR
1 Run Difference: 23.4 PA / HR
2 Run Difference: 20.1 PA / HR
3 Run Difference: 18.3 PA / HR
4 Run Difference: 34.1 PA / HR
Within 4 Runs: 24.2 PA / HR
More Than 4 Runs: 31.6 PA / HR

It appears that Jay actually hit home runs more frequently when the team is up/down by 1-3 runs than when the game is tied or the lead is large. In general, Gibbons homered more often when the game wasn't out of hand.

In High Leverage Situations: 29.2 PA / HR
In Medium Leverage Situations: 21.2 PA / HR
In Low Leverage Situations: 28.2 PA / HR

Gibbons (strangely) homered more often in medium leverage situations than either of the two extremes.

As for when Gibbons hit home runs, it was 29.4 PA / HR in the first three innings, 18.2 PA / HR in the middle three innings, and 34.2 PA / HR in the last three innings. That seems to imply that Gibbons rarely hit homers in the eighth when the team was down by 6 (or whatever).

His clutch score via fangraphs is -1.77 for his career (and was only positive once, in 2002) so, in general, he does worse in "clutch" situations than his usual production, but I would have to say that the evidence doesn't support him hitting too many "garbage" home runs.

Corey Patterson: 34.7 PA / HR career
Close & Late: 31.4 PA / HR
Tie Game: 33.9 PA / HR
1 Run Difference: 40.2 PA / HR
2 Run Difference: 38.5 PA / HR
3 Run Difference: 23.3 PA / HR
4 Run Difference: 51.8 PA / HR
Within 4 Runs: 35.3 PA / HR
More Then 4 Runs: 31.5 PA / HR

High Leverage Situations: 40.3 PA / HR
Medium Leverage Situations: 31.9 PA / HR
Low Leverage Situations: 35.1 PA / HR

Innings 1-3: 41.7 PA / HR
Innings 4-6: 34.8 PA / HR
Innings 7-9: 32.2 PA / HR

Clutch: -1.82 Career, One year non-negative (2003)

Corey is "unclutch" and does hit home runs more frequently late in the game and in non-high leverage situations. The home runs came more often when the game was out of hand than when it was close. Could potentially be a "garbage" HR hitter.

I want to look at a "clutch" HR hitter now - David Ortiz.

Career: 18.7 PA / HR
Close & Late: 16.9 PA / HR
Tie Game: 16.8 PA / HR
1 Run Difference: 21.0 PA / HR
2 Run Difference: 16.9 PA / HR
3 Run Difference: 17.6 PA / HR
4 Run Difference: 29.1 PA / HR
Within 4 Runs: 18.6 HR / PA
More Then 4 Runs: 19.7 PA / HR

High Leverage Situations: 20.2 PA / HR
Medium Leverage Situations: 19.6 PA / HR
Low Leverage Situations: 17.4 PA / HR

Innings 1-3: 22.5 PA / HR
Innings 4-6: 16.4 PA / HR
Innings 7-9: 18.9 PA / HR

Clutch: 2.89 Career

David Ortiz has a pattern of hitting home runs more often in low leverage situations than in high leverage ones. He does homer more with the score closer and later in the games. Ortiz is "clutch", but as home runs go, it's hard to say that he doesn't hit the occasional "garbage" shot, himself.

To get a definitive conclusion here, I would need to go throw the game logs to look at the situations for each HR these guys hit - I don't want to do that so I'll just say that Jay and Corey probably don't hit lots of "worthless" home runs (no more than would be expected). Read more ...

Adam Jones vs. Failed Outfield Prospects

Many players have the necessary tools to be successful, but they don’t always turn them into the skills needed to put up good numbers. I also think you need to take injuries out of the equation (unless there is a good reason to believe the player is extra vulnerable). Any player can get hurt any have their career not go where it should have.

Jeffrey Hammonds: Rushed to the big leagues – spent 60 games in AA and AAA before coming up to the Majors. He hit OK (.311/.333/.483) in AAA (as a 22 year-old) in a small number of games but never showed much plate discipline or even that much power. He was still an above average hitter as a rookie in ’93 and in ’94. Had limited playing time ’95 and ’96 (injuries?) but was a solid player for almost his entire career (OPS+ [On-base plus Slugging above league average 100 = average] of 111, 111, 114, 111, 91, 93, 96 from ’97 to ’03 for a career OPS+ of 99]. If that was combined with excellent defense from CF instead of slightly below average defense from all three OF positions then his offense would have been acceptable. He just wasn’t the impact player he was “supposed” to be.

Averaging his 6 best years gives an annual WARP3 (Wins Above Replacement Player (total on-field contributions adjusted for league difficulty, park effects, era, games played, etc)) of 3.4. Bedard was worth 8.1 wins last year, so 6 years of Jeffrey Hammonds (20.4) could certainly be worth more than 2 of Bedard (16.2), if neither was hurt.

Corey Patterson: Spent only 89 games in AAA in ’01 (as a 21 year-old) before being brought up full-time, even though he only hit .253/.308/.387. That followed a year in AA of .261/.329/.491. He got worse every year in the minors but was advanced anyway. Still is a solid MLB player providing good defense, some speed, and a little bit of power.

He has had an average WARP3 score of 4.6 the last couple years. Over 6 years that’s 27.6 – well ahead of Bedard’s 16.2 over 2.

Darnell McDonald: Never hit particularly well at any level of the minors until he had repeated the level or was older than his competition. Even then, he never showed all that much power. It was clear that he wasn’t going to be an impact player in the majors.

Adam Jones: As a 21 year-old in AAA he hit .314/.382/.586 with 25 HR in 101 games in a park that depresses HR by 15%. Adjusting his league difficulty to the MLB level yields .291/.341/.488, with about 40(!) HR. (AAA is about 90% the difficulty of MLB in general, and it was a pitchers’ league). Jones was probable one of the 5 best players in AAA last year.

As a 20 year-old in AAA he hit .287/.345/.484. He has made a major step forward 3 years in a row – that isn’t something you see very often.

(For comparison’s sake) Torii Hunter: As a 21 year-old in AA he hit .231/.301/.338. As a 22 year-old in AA he hit .282/.324/.438 before moving up and hitting .337/.344/.543 in AAA (in 26 games). Hit .255/.309/.380 in the majors at 23 and was sent down to the minors again for 55 games as a 24 year-old.

Adam Jones hit better as a 20 year-old in AAA than Hunter did as a 22 year-old in AA.

It’s not just the tools that everyone believes in. Jones’ stats back it up the way they didn’t for those other guys (minus Hunter two years later). That’s why I’m so confident is his ability to produce at the major league level, even if his OBP isn’t going to be too high in ’08.

Jeff Bagwell for Larry Anderson wasn’t a bad trade in retrospect; it was pretty bad at the time since Bagwell’s minor were very good for someone his age in the league in which he played (He got on base and hit a ton of doubles). Boston didn’t realize that. Nobody would have said that he was a future HOFamer (hopefully), but it was fairly clear that he could be a good major league player.

It isn’t 100% possible to predict what a player will do, but it is possible to have a pretty good idea. When the scouting guys and the stat guys both say a player will be good it usually turns out to be true. [Edit: Except Andy Marte... nobody really saw that one coming.] Read more ...