Joey Votto's Awesome Pop Up Streak

All Reds fans would agree Joey Votto does lots of awesome things.  Recent focus has been put on that fact that Joey Votto has reached base in his first 32 games of the season.  That is moderately awesome by Vottoian standards. But even more impressive is his streak of avoiding pop ups.  Last year Joey was the only batter in both leagues to have a 0 pop ups(among those qualified for batting title).        

I checked today and there are 16 players yet to pop up in 2011.   Unsurprisingly, Joey Votto is one of those 16 along with Brandon Phillips.  That means for at least 182 regular season games, Joey Votto has not popped out.    He also did not pop out in the three post season games last year.

Avoiding pop outs is not new for Joey.  In 2009 he had the third lowest pop up % in the majors at 1.4% and in 2008 he popped up 3.8% of the time which was good for 15^th in the majors.  The last time that anyone had a 0% pop out rate was Larry Bigbie for the Orioles back in 2004.  In fact Larry had a career long aversion to pop ups.  In his entire 392 game career he only popped out 1 time. 

The Mystery of Travis Wood

The mystery of Travis Wood

Before yesterday’s game, I heard the word inconsistent before most every mention of Travis Wood’s name.  He actually has been in a consistent pattern of alternating quality starts with disaster starts (more ER than IP) every other time.  Good thing yesterday was the quality start turn and he delivered on schedule.  I am going to look a bit deeper into Travis Wood to see if we can tell more about his hot/cold start.

Travis Wood 2011 Starts

4/2 (7ip,1er, 0bb, 7k, 1hr)

4/8 (5ip,6er,2bb,4k,0hr)

4/13 (6.2ip,1er,3bb,5k,0hr)

4/18 (3.1ip,6er,1bb,3k,0hr)

4/23(6.1ip,3er,1bb,5k,1hr)

Is it bad luck?

                Overall Travis Wood's ERA is 5.40.  His xFIP (expected ERA with average defense and   10.5% of FB turn into HRs) is 3.70. His career ERA is 3.93 and career xFIP is 3.91.  So I think it is safe to say that he has been unlucky to thus far to be at a 5.40 ERA.

                Adding up his lines in the quality/disaster starts we get this:

Quality Starts: 20ip, 4bb, 17k, 2hr, 17H

Disaster Start: 8.1ip, 3bb, 7k, 0hr, 15H

From those two lines we can see his strikeout rate is about the same in both lines but he is walking more in the disaster starts.  He is also having a lot more balls fall for hits in the disaster starts.  So luck plays a role but his walks are not helping his cause either.

Pitch F/X  

                Below is Travis’s Pitch F/X data for 2010 per thanks to Texas Leaguers Pitch F/X site.   Last year Travis was throwing his 90MPH four seem fastball (FF) almost 2/3 of the time.  See the bottom of the posting for a pitch type key.

Primary Stuff

                The four seamer is Travis’s primary pitch.  One thing that stands out is he did not rely on it over 50% in the first and the third games.  We’ll see more on what he did in those two games in the secondary stuff section.   Nothing besides that usage pattern nothing seems to stand out on his primary fastball. 

Secondary stuff

                Below is a chart of all secondary pitches that Travis pitched over 10% of the time in his 2011 starts.  In the first game he was throwing his four seam fastball and his cutter for over 80% strikes.  He was obviously emulating his off-season workout partner Cliff Lee and he even got Lee like results.   Too bad that lasted only one game.

               In the third game he threw the change 22% of the time and mixed his pitches more.  He was effective with the change getting 6 whiffs.  I guess in this start he decided to emulate team mate Edison Volquez and it worked to get him a quality start.

 

Overall

                I think overall Travis is just fine.  He seems to have had two outings where he had better than Travis Wood stuff on 4/2 and 4/13.  The others days Travis Wood looked like an average Travis Wood.   When Travis is average his results will be well about a 4.00 ERA pitcher which will give you a quality start often but sometimes the balls will fall in as he is not overpowering. 

                Seeing this I feel good about what we have seen in Travis Wood thus far.  Only suggestion is we should send him between starts to the Phillies to see if he can emulate Cliff Lee some more.

Pitch Types Key

FA           Fastball

FF           4-seam Fastball

FT           2-seam Fastball

FC           Cut Fastball

SI            Sinker

SL            Slider

CU          Curveball

CH          Change-up

Optima Central Division Dashboard - Starters

This is the final of my belated NL Central preview posts.   In this post I am looking at the starters.   As I did in all three posts,  I am using Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA pre-season forecasts from April 3^rd.   The starters are ranked in the order of highest WARP starter to the lowest WARP starter based on the forecast from PECOTA. Here is the dashboard:

 

This starter chart surprised me a bit.  I figured the Brewers upgrade made them better but I did not expect them to project to be the best starting staff in the division by a wide margin.  Injuries should pull them back to the pack.  The Cubs and Cardinals create a 2^nd tier.  The Reds and Houston form a 3^rd tier.  Last are the Pirates who somehow manage to field a major league team with 3 starters projecting to be worse than Nelson Figueroa.

Notes on starters:

• The Reds seem low to me.  I think the Reds make up for the top end quality with depth. So we can handle the inevitable injury better and that is not reflected here.  I think we have a better rotation than the Astros in reality.
• The Cardinals seem to have the opposite type of rotation compared to the Reds.  They are great at the top but then drop off to the near replacement Kyle Lohse.   I don’t wish injuries on anyone but the Cardinals are running much more injury risk than the Reds in the rotation.
• The Brewers are projecting to have the 1^st, 3^rd, and 4^th best starters in the division.  Those are Greinke, Gallardo, and Marcum in that order. 
• The Pirates have a horrible staff.  They have a 5^th starter as their #2 and it gets worse from there.

Optima Central Division Dashboard - Relief Pitchers

This is part 2 of my series to look at the NL Central via a dashboard view.  The WARP below is based on the April 3 PECOTA forecast.  In part 1 we looked at the position players where the Reds are behind the Cardinals by just over 4.5 wins.  When we look at relievers the world returns to its natural order with the Reds clearly dominating.

The results are sorted by WARP for each pitcher in pen.  So the 1 column is the highest pitcher by WARP and the 2 column is the second highest in WARP.   This rank order view allows you to see how deep the pens are.  Overall the bullpens are expected to be a net loser versus replacement level driven by the two bad relief staffs of the Astros and Cardinals.    

Some notes on this chart:

• The Reds show the deepest bullpen having the most valuable reliever at every rank 1 through 6.  Chapman (Reds Reliever 1) includes some starts but I think that is OK as one job of the bullpen is be backup starters and having a potential Cy Young level starter in your pen has value.
• It is heartening to see how the Reds gain 3.7 wins on the Cardinals in the pen.  Should be fun to tune into the latter innings of Cardinals games this year.  Ryan Franklin has done his part to help the Cardinals live down to this projection.  
• The Astros are terrible.

I will post part 3 on starters in the next few days.

Optima Central Division Dashboard - Position Players

It is over one week into the season but I won’t let that stop from doing one last season preview.  In fact, I won’t stop there. I’m going to do a three part series on the subject.   In my quest to better understand the serious subject of the NL Central, I created a series of dashboards to get a look at the relative strengths and weaknesses of the NL Central teams.  I took the final PECOTA forecast from April 3^rd and created a dashboard for position players, starters, and relievers to see the teams in a simple chart.   I’ll put up position players today, relievers on Monday, and starters a few days later.

Position Players Dashboard

Looking at the total WARP for position players you can see the Cardinals have a big hitting edge at 23.3 WARP.  The Reds follow in 2^nd (18.6 WARP) followed closely by the Brewers (16.9 WARP) and Cubs (16.4 WARP).    As always, Pittsburgh and Houston trail.

A few things I take away from the chart:

• Despite their reputation, the Cardinals don’t seem any more starry or scrubby than the rest of division.
• The Reds have an opportunity in LF to improve. As I talked in my last post this forecast is probably too low.  Gomes is looking very good thus far both hitting for power (not surprising) and showing great patience at the plate (surprising).  Given plate discipline is driven by approach there is a good chance we'll see a sustainable improvement from Gomes.  If not LF is a position we have many options at today with Heisey, Alonso, Lewis, and more.
• The difference makers for the Reds are Votto,  Phillips, Catchers, and Bruce.  Votto and Bruce for being good.  Catchers and Phillips for just not being bad as the rest of the division.
• Third base is a position the division is pretty bunched up on. 
• The Pirates are one Overbay short of fielding a decent team on the position player side of the ball.
• Houston is really bad.

Reds as NL Central Favorites

The final PECOTA projected records are up at Baseball Prospectus.  Here are the  projected standings:

Cardinals 86-76

Brewers 85-77

Reds 82-80

Cubs 79-83

Pirates 71-91

Astros 65-97

 

As you can see this means the Reds need to close 4 games on the Cardinals and 3 on the Brewers in the Division.   Variance gives the Reds a chance but I want the Reds to be favorites.  So I have made a few adjustments as outlined below that seem quite reasonable to make the standings more "realistic".

Reds 84-78 (+2 Win) 

• +.5 Gomes - PECOTA depth charts for some reason have Alonso as the primary left fielder and Gomes as a pinch hitter.  Alonso is worth only .3 wins in 335 PA.  Gomes is projected to be worth .5 wins in 167 PA.  So we gain a half win if Gomes doubles up to the 335 PA that Alonso is projecting.
• +.5 Ondrusek - Logan Ondrusek is projecting -.6 WARP.  If he is that bad he'll be sent down and replaced by a replacement level pitcher. That is good for half of a win.
• +1 Opening Day - We should have lost that game yesterday.  Took a career hit out of Hernandez to win.  So let's count that as one we stole from the Brewers off the top.

 

Cardinals 83-79 (-3 wins)

• -2 Berkman - Berkman is projecting 2.8 wins in Right Field.  There is a good chance he'll fail in the outfield.  His replacements, John Jay and Allen Craig, are near replacement.  Pujols may be good enough to hold off Berkman from stealing any playing time at first.  So I'll count that as two wins less for the Cardinals.
•   -.5 Rasmus - You can count on Tony LaRussa's to make some questionable playing time choices.  I translate this as Rasmus won't get to the 679 PAs that he is projected to PECOTA.  Rasmus projects to 1.7 WARP. I'll say that is a half win too high.
• -.5 Holliday - Holliday had an appendectomy today.  He is setup for 4.2 WARP.  I think we can cut .5 wins off of that for time off and return to full health.

Brewers 83-79 (-2 wins)

• -1 Opening Day - As explained in Reds section above.
• -1 Starters - PECOTA shows every Brewer starter at 28-29 games started.  That is a lot of health for a team that already is down Greinke.  I'm going to count them -1 as their 6,7 starters are replacement at best.

How great was Ramon Hernandez's opening day?

Great win for the Reds.  I am always struck in baseball that often your heroes of the game come from the most unexpected players.  I have an unjustified poor perception of Ramon because he takes playing time from the probably definitely better player in Ryan Hanigan.   So when Hernandez hits a home run it was certainly one of the unexpected hero moments for me.

This made me think, while Ramon is certainly not done at age 34 and still playing well,  this home run very likely be the most valuable hit he will have for the rest of his career.  Also I wondered how valuable was this home run in the context of his entire career?

Below is the win expectancy chart from FanGraphs of the game. The Reds were down to a 9.8% win expectancy.   That means Ramon’s hit was worth 90.2% of a win!  

I looked through the play logs of Ramon’s career which are available on FanGraphs since 2002.  The next biggest hit he had was on 4/17/09 when he hit a two run home run in the top of the 9^th where he made a 66.3% change in the Reds win expectency.

So the answer is while we don’t have his entire career we can safely say it was his most valuable hit since 2002.  It is also very likely to be the most valuable hit of the rest of his career.  This would likely be the most valuable hit of most careers as you have to be pretty lucky to even be in the situation where you can make this valuable of a hit.

What I also found interesting is that for his entire career Ramon’s WPA at the end of 2010 (adding up all these win expectancies from every at bat he ever took) was  -0.57.   That is pretty good for a catcher as his offense has been right about average (0) over his entire career.  This single game (.929 WPA for the game) pushes him into positive territory.