Thursday is the first day when all of the players from every major league have reported to spring training.
Wednesday's biggest signing was RHP Homer Bailey with a 6-year, $105-million contract extension with the Reds. I expect Bailey to have a big year, but I'd kind of want him to have that big year before I started shelling out cash equal to what Mark Zuckerberg makes by the time he wakes up in the morning.
Bailey has pitched in the majors each of the last seven seasons, with a career record of 49-45. His best production so far has been his 13 wins in 2012.
In addition, the Orioles made official RHP Ubaldo Jimenez's 4-year, $50-million contract and the Giants avoided arbitration with 1B Brandon Belt by agreeing on a $2.9-million salary for 2014.
-- Another Opening Day starter: LHP Francisco Liriano for the Pirates. I would expect RHP Gerrit Cole to be Pittsburgh's ace by season's end.
-- I've mentioned position battles at second base, but there also are a number of teams looking for a starting third baseman.
Part of the problem is injuries. Brewers 3B Aramis Ramirez, who missed much of last season because of an injured left knee. He underwent surgery in December to remove a non-cancerous polyp from his colon, and he's at least 35 years old. In Toronto, the question is whether 3B Brett Lawrie can avoid injuries such as the strained right oblique muscle that cost him time last year.
There's also 3B/1B Mat Gamel. Once a promising Brewers prospect, he underwent surgery on his right knee in both 2012 and '13. After he injured the knee in the Braves' camp, they have released him.
Rookie 3B Cody Asche is penciled in as the Phillies' starter, with his strongest competition from a more promising but less ready rookie, 3B/1B Maikel Franco. At best, Asche could have average production for his position. This looks like a situation ripe for acquiring a surplus third baseman from another team, or perhaps an overpriced offer to 3B Michael Young to come back out of retirement.
* * *
Basketball. Carmelo Anthony scores 42 points but goes 8 for 12 at the foul line? Or I'd trade a bunch of Ricky Rubio's 17 assists Wednesday and trade them for the four free throws in six attempts. The result is that I'm still trailing in free thrown percentage, but still leading 7-1.
Showing posts with label Homer Bailey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homer Bailey. Show all posts
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
How Homer Bailey (Mike Minor?) could be like Jarrod Washburn
In 2003, when Lenny Pappano hired me for the opening of the dear departed fantasybaseballscout.com web site, one of the features we advertised was "How to Find a Cheap Starting Pitcher Who Can Pile Up the Wins."
I had done similar research a year earlier that pointed to Jarrod Washburn. He improved from 11-10 in 2001 to 18-6 as a 27-year-old in '02.
Thus was born, after I joined fantasybaseballscout.com, the Jarrod Washburn Award. The pre-season projected winner for 2003 was Jason Schmidt, who lived up to the spirit of the award by improving from 13-8 to 17-5.
There were other successes during the lifetime of fantasybaseballscout.com.
I'm reviving the Jarrod Washburn Award for this blog, and I'll post revivals of other remnants from fantasybaseballscout.com before this season begins.
Before I get into the methodology, here's the bottom line. The Jarrod Washburn Award for 2014 is ... drum roll ... Homer Bailey.
Honorable mention to Mike Minor and Alex Cobb. I'll say it here now. Even though the research gives the edge to Bailey, I wouldn't be surprised if Minor has a better year. And I'll be willing to bet you can pick up Minor for less money. (According to Sporting News Fantasy Source, you can. It lists Bailey at $21 and Minor at $19. Also, this is not an endorsement of the publication. It just happens to be the first one I picked up. There might or might not be others, for comparison purposes. And if the setbacks I've encountered go away, I'll have my own dollar values by the end of this month.)
Neither of them, nor Cobb at $15, is cheap or inexpensive.
Bailey's price is inflated by memories of his two no-hitters. To date he has been too inconsistent, too feast-or-famine, to be considered a top-tier pitcher.
To find one of my candidates for the award at a more reasonable price, you might look to Jarrod Parker at $10 (which sounds like such a bargain that you probably wouldn't get him at that price). He also has the magical first name of Jarrod.
To begin the process, I listed all of the pitchers who won between 11 and 13 games in the majors last season. Consider them players who have had a measure of success in the majors, but not necessarily "pile up the wins."
This list started with 33 pitchers. But among those were true stars who didn't win a whole lot in '13: Yu Darvish, Ubaldo Jimenez, James Shields, Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez. By eliminating any pitcher who had won more than 13 in any major league season, the list shrunk to 13.
The other factors I use:
-- Injury history
-- Height
-- Age
-- Last year's opponent batting average
-- Last year's strikeout/walk ratio
-- Team prospects
The injury history is important for two reasons. 1) A pitcher who has worked to return from an injury can have the mental makeup needed for success. 2) A pitcher who hasn't been hurt yet is going to have arm trouble at some point.
Height is important because scouts prefer bigger, seemingly more durable pitchers. One of the many things I learned from John Benson is that the bias toward tall pitchers, especially tall lefties, is justified. Sorry about that, Sonny Gray.
Age is important. Various research has shown that ballplayers, both hitters and pitchers, tend to peak at about 27 years old. Even a bit younger for pitchers, because the woods are full of pitchers who never had an age 27 season before they were injured. Today, I probably would have overlooked 30-year-old Jason Schmidt, though perhaps he was just vastly superior in the other indicators. I don't remember.
Team prospects are important because it's a lot harder to win with a losing team. This qualifier was subjective. I considered "good" teams to be those that have been in the playoffs during the last couple of seasons or seem likely to be this year (I'm talking to you, Angels).
Opponent batting average and strikeout/walk ratio are the two underlying statistics that I think show how well a pitcher is actually throwing, much more than wins or ERA or saves or strikeouts alone.
Here's a breakdown of the 13 pitchers in the study, in order of the number of positive categories. In case of ties, I've looked at specific categories to see if one pitcher has at least a subjective advantage over another.
1. Reds RHP Homer Bailey, the only one with a positive in all 7 indicators
2. Braves LHP Mike Minor, 6 positives
3. Rays RHP Alex Cobb, 6
4. Indians RHP Corey Kluber, 5
5. Athletics RHP Jarrod Parker, 5
6. Marlins RHP Jose Fernandez, 4
7. Athletics LHP Tommy Milone, 4
8. Mets RHP Dillon Gee, 4
9. Orioles LHP Miguel Gonzalez, 4
10. Red Sox LHP Felix Doubront, 4
11. Rays RHP Jeremy Hellickson, 4-minus because he'll miss at least half of the season
12. Brewers RHP Wily Peralta, Statistical Anomaly No. 1, 3
13. Padres LHP Eric Stults, Statistical Anomaly No. 2, 3
I did some additional research on the 34-year-old Stults to see if there's something in him that suddenly made him a winner. I'm still not convinced that even his limited success last season was a fluke. He probably won't win even 11 games again.
By the way, with the number of wins declining for league leaders, I'm considering a change next year to consider pitchers with between 10 and 12 wins for the previous season, and no season with more than 12. Minor was the only pitcher with 13 who survived the cut for this year. Bailey and Cobb each won 11 in 2013, and Parker 12.
* * *
While visiting baseball-reference.com for some historical information for this post, I saw an "in memoriam" section that included Ralph Kiner, who died Thursday, and two other players I followed for a time. Two other players whose career didn't get them a wire-service obituary. I saw the late Jophery Brown (died Jan. 11) pitch in his only major league game in 1968, and later saw him as a stunt man in many Hollywood feature movies. Never met him, but I did meet the late Tim Hosley (died Jan. 21). I remember playing in a poker game with him and some of his Toledo Mud Hens teammates at their hotel in Rochester in 1972.
I followed to a very good biography of Brown from SABR, and to an obituary notice from a California funeral home. And here's a good posthumous biography of Hosley. Not sure what he did after his playing days, but his Wikipedia entry indicates that he played in the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association.
What I take from all of this is related to this line from the obituary notice: "Enjoy the little things in life...for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things." Or even things at all. And that the lives of the players we follow, big-time and small-time, aren't all that much different from any or ours. We live, we love, we find a way to survive financially, and eventually we don't live any more. Enjoy it while we can.
I had done similar research a year earlier that pointed to Jarrod Washburn. He improved from 11-10 in 2001 to 18-6 as a 27-year-old in '02.
Thus was born, after I joined fantasybaseballscout.com, the Jarrod Washburn Award. The pre-season projected winner for 2003 was Jason Schmidt, who lived up to the spirit of the award by improving from 13-8 to 17-5.
There were other successes during the lifetime of fantasybaseballscout.com.
I'm reviving the Jarrod Washburn Award for this blog, and I'll post revivals of other remnants from fantasybaseballscout.com before this season begins.
Before I get into the methodology, here's the bottom line. The Jarrod Washburn Award for 2014 is ... drum roll ... Homer Bailey.
Honorable mention to Mike Minor and Alex Cobb. I'll say it here now. Even though the research gives the edge to Bailey, I wouldn't be surprised if Minor has a better year. And I'll be willing to bet you can pick up Minor for less money. (According to Sporting News Fantasy Source, you can. It lists Bailey at $21 and Minor at $19. Also, this is not an endorsement of the publication. It just happens to be the first one I picked up. There might or might not be others, for comparison purposes. And if the setbacks I've encountered go away, I'll have my own dollar values by the end of this month.)
Neither of them, nor Cobb at $15, is cheap or inexpensive.
Bailey's price is inflated by memories of his two no-hitters. To date he has been too inconsistent, too feast-or-famine, to be considered a top-tier pitcher.
To find one of my candidates for the award at a more reasonable price, you might look to Jarrod Parker at $10 (which sounds like such a bargain that you probably wouldn't get him at that price). He also has the magical first name of Jarrod.
To begin the process, I listed all of the pitchers who won between 11 and 13 games in the majors last season. Consider them players who have had a measure of success in the majors, but not necessarily "pile up the wins."
This list started with 33 pitchers. But among those were true stars who didn't win a whole lot in '13: Yu Darvish, Ubaldo Jimenez, James Shields, Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez. By eliminating any pitcher who had won more than 13 in any major league season, the list shrunk to 13.
The other factors I use:
-- Injury history
-- Height
-- Age
-- Last year's opponent batting average
-- Last year's strikeout/walk ratio
-- Team prospects
The injury history is important for two reasons. 1) A pitcher who has worked to return from an injury can have the mental makeup needed for success. 2) A pitcher who hasn't been hurt yet is going to have arm trouble at some point.
Height is important because scouts prefer bigger, seemingly more durable pitchers. One of the many things I learned from John Benson is that the bias toward tall pitchers, especially tall lefties, is justified. Sorry about that, Sonny Gray.
Age is important. Various research has shown that ballplayers, both hitters and pitchers, tend to peak at about 27 years old. Even a bit younger for pitchers, because the woods are full of pitchers who never had an age 27 season before they were injured. Today, I probably would have overlooked 30-year-old Jason Schmidt, though perhaps he was just vastly superior in the other indicators. I don't remember.
Team prospects are important because it's a lot harder to win with a losing team. This qualifier was subjective. I considered "good" teams to be those that have been in the playoffs during the last couple of seasons or seem likely to be this year (I'm talking to you, Angels).
Opponent batting average and strikeout/walk ratio are the two underlying statistics that I think show how well a pitcher is actually throwing, much more than wins or ERA or saves or strikeouts alone.
Here's a breakdown of the 13 pitchers in the study, in order of the number of positive categories. In case of ties, I've looked at specific categories to see if one pitcher has at least a subjective advantage over another.
1. Reds RHP Homer Bailey, the only one with a positive in all 7 indicators
2. Braves LHP Mike Minor, 6 positives
3. Rays RHP Alex Cobb, 6
4. Indians RHP Corey Kluber, 5
5. Athletics RHP Jarrod Parker, 5
6. Marlins RHP Jose Fernandez, 4
7. Athletics LHP Tommy Milone, 4
8. Mets RHP Dillon Gee, 4
9. Orioles LHP Miguel Gonzalez, 4
10. Red Sox LHP Felix Doubront, 4
11. Rays RHP Jeremy Hellickson, 4-minus because he'll miss at least half of the season
12. Brewers RHP Wily Peralta, Statistical Anomaly No. 1, 3
13. Padres LHP Eric Stults, Statistical Anomaly No. 2, 3
I did some additional research on the 34-year-old Stults to see if there's something in him that suddenly made him a winner. I'm still not convinced that even his limited success last season was a fluke. He probably won't win even 11 games again.
By the way, with the number of wins declining for league leaders, I'm considering a change next year to consider pitchers with between 10 and 12 wins for the previous season, and no season with more than 12. Minor was the only pitcher with 13 who survived the cut for this year. Bailey and Cobb each won 11 in 2013, and Parker 12.
* * *
While visiting baseball-reference.com for some historical information for this post, I saw an "in memoriam" section that included Ralph Kiner, who died Thursday, and two other players I followed for a time. Two other players whose career didn't get them a wire-service obituary. I saw the late Jophery Brown (died Jan. 11) pitch in his only major league game in 1968, and later saw him as a stunt man in many Hollywood feature movies. Never met him, but I did meet the late Tim Hosley (died Jan. 21). I remember playing in a poker game with him and some of his Toledo Mud Hens teammates at their hotel in Rochester in 1972.
I followed to a very good biography of Brown from SABR, and to an obituary notice from a California funeral home. And here's a good posthumous biography of Hosley. Not sure what he did after his playing days, but his Wikipedia entry indicates that he played in the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association.
What I take from all of this is related to this line from the obituary notice: "Enjoy the little things in life...for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things." Or even things at all. And that the lives of the players we follow, big-time and small-time, aren't all that much different from any or ours. We live, we love, we find a way to survive financially, and eventually we don't live any more. Enjoy it while we can.
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