Jose Fernandez's conservative projections

Jose Fernandez's rookie season, as a 20 year old starting pitcher, started out as an interesting conversation piece. He had a couple of spectacular starts offset by some so-so starts, generally depending on whether he was home or away at the time. By the end of 2013, he was the talk of baseball writers and won the Rookie of the Year honors. Despite how he finished 2013, projection systems are taking a conservative approach to how Fernandez will perform in 2014.

First, let's look at the projection systems' numbers and then a discussion of them will follow:

System, IP, K/9, B/9, ERA, FIP, WAR

• ZiPS: 154, 9.53, 3.16, 2.57, 2.87, 4.5
• Oliver: 118, 9.67, 3.27, 2.74, 2.86, 2.6
• Steamer: 192, 10.01, 3.35, 3.35, 3.05, 3.8
• Fans: 201, 9.72, 2.87, 2.83, 2.97, 4.2
• PECOTA: 186, 9.77, N/A, 2.44, N/A, 4.6

If we average them all out, here is a list of how the projected numbers stack up to his 2013 numbers:

• IP - 170, less than 2013
• K/9 - 9.75, higher than 2013
• B/9 - 3.16, higher than 2013
• ERA - 2.79, higher than 2013
• FIP - 2.94, higher than 2013
• WAR - 3.94, lower than 2013.

As you can see, the average of the five projection systems paint a picture of a pitcher not as successful as last season. Two of the five systems projected his WAR at equal to 2013 or higher. They all projected more strikeouts per nine but higher ERA and FIP numbers.

The projections are, in fact, conservative. Is there a good reason to be? Well, sure. So many things can happen to a pitcher. There are pulled muscles, blisters, line drives hitting them like tiny dodge balls, sore shoulders and elbows and just plain bad luck. And consider that of the 79 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title last season, only 46% of them, or 36 of them pitched 200 innings or more. Pitching is a tough gig.

But what if Jose Fernandez stays healthy and pitches 200 innings or more? What can we tell from last year? What we did see was a pitcher who gained mastery and unbelievable numbers as the season progressed.

In his first ten starts covering April and May, Fernandez went 2-3 with a 3.78 ERA with a 1.204 WHIP. Here is how he did each month after that:

• Jun: 2-1, 1.67, 0.928
• Jul: 3-1, 2.08, 0.857
• Aug: 3-1, 1.15, 0.846
• Sep: 2-0, 0.64, 0.786

Unbelievable, eh? He was getting better as the season went along. As you may or may not know, during the season, I pick the games every day to predict which team will win or won't win. In the first half, if Jose Fernandez was at home, I would pick the Marlins to win. If the Marlins were on the road, I would pick them to lose if Fernandez was pitching. After the first half, I always picked him to win. It did not matter if he was home or on the road.

This is a special pitcher who just happens to be heading into his Year 21 pitching. There is something exciting about him and when he pitches, he is the kind of pitcher that everyone wants to watch. The only thing that can derail him is some sort of injury and you really have to root against that happening with all of the fibers in your body if you are a baseball fan.

It is easy to understand the computer models being conservative. Things happen to pitchers. So much that actually occurs in the game are out of their control. His fielders have to field, his batters have to get ahead in the game to keep him on the mound and his catcher has to frame and block pitches well.

But there is a lot in his control. Even as a freshman pitcher, he got batters to swing at 31% of his pitches out of the strike zone. I think his walks will come down significantly. I think he has adapted to pitching on the road and getting batters to hit less fly balls on the road (which the records show he did). For gosh sakes, he led the league with only 5.3 hits per nine innings! That is remarkable.

If he stays healthy--and man, I hope he does--I see no reason why his ERA cannot again finish under 2.50, his winning percentage stay above 60% and his strikeout to walk ratio to improve. I see no reason why he cannot go 200 innings at least and yet keep his WHIP under 1.00.

I cannot wait to see what he does because pitchers like him do not come around very often. If Jose Fernandez does not finish with 6 WAR or higher, I will be totally shocked and disappointed.

A Charlie Snow Day

The life of a writer is not always kind. Here I am with a snow day which means (with the holiday on Monday) that I have a four day weekend. Great, I thought, I will have plenty of time to write. A rare occurrence of late. The problem is that I have no ideas at all. My first thought was lame. Maybe I will do an All Star Team of players with winter-like names. J.T. Snow would play first. But that idea went down the drain after the former Giants' first baseman. But I did see a guy who piqued my interest that no one else will care about. His name was Charlie Snow and he played one game in 1874.

That's right, 1874. He played his one game for the Brooklyn Atlantics of the National Association, a league that is still debated about in its inclusion as a Major League Baseball league.

I could bore you with the history of the Brooklyn Atlantics, but if you were interested, you can check them out on their Wikipedia page. Suffice it to say that the Atlantics were the champions of baseball starting in 1859 and for several years that followed. But when the National Association began in 1869, the Atlantics did not join until 1870 and lost all their best players. By 1874, they were a bottom tier club. Tommy Bond, later a twice-40 game winner with the Boston Red Stockings started 55 games and went 22-32.

The team played in Capitoline Park in Brooklyn, New York in 1872. A drawing of the ball field is shown below:

The team moved to Union Park after.

One of the guys Tommy Bond might have thrown to was a catcher who played one game. His name was Charlie Snow, or Charles M. Snow. Snow was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on August 3, 1849. His parents, Benjamin and Laura Snow were both born in Maine.

By the 1860 census, Benjamin was out of the picture and Laura was a single mom listed as a housekeeper. The same was still true in 1870, but Laura, Charlie and sister Ida were now living in Boston.

Some time between that census in 1870 to 1874, Charlie made his way to Brooklyn. He lived there the rest of his life. Despite his one game with the Atlantics, his is listed in the 1880 census as a ticket agent and in all subsequent census records as a stationary salesman or the manager of a stationary store.

But he had that one game in 1874. His time on the field must have been brief that game because he only had one plate appearance. And, of course, Charlie Snow set the record for batting average that would be tied several times since because his one plate appearance resulted in a single.

That would be interesting enough as a curiosity. But his day in the field was also interesting. According to Charlie Snow's player page, in that one game played behind the plate, mostly likely catching Tommy Bond, Snow had three chances in the field and botched them all. That's right, he had three chances and made three errors. His fielding percentage was a big fat zero.

Snow lived in Brooklyn the rest of his life, as stated, and died in August of 1929 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery there. There is one game to his record. He was perfect in his career batting and totally imperfect with his fielding. Not much of a story here, but that's all I could come up with on this Charlie Snow Day.

Brantley extension shows changing MLB economy

Michael Brantley will not blow you away with his statistics. He is slightly above league average for his bat, a good base runner with just barely acceptable stolen base success and a league average fielder. And yet, in these days where the cost of a win keeps going up, the Cleveland Indians spent $25 million spread over four years and a fifth could cost them another $11 million to extend Brantley. And it still ends up being a good deal for the Indians. Say what!?

This is not to belittle Michael Brantley. He is a nice player. He is useful. He is better than replacement. But with Michael Bourn in center field, Brantley is a left fielder without power and decent on-base skills. He will give you about a .320 wOBA and a range of 1.5 to 2.0 of WAR. And that is worth $25 million? These days, it is actually worth more.

A win (the "w" in the WAR equation) is currently worth $5 million. That figure has risen from about $3.7 million in the not too distant past. Brantley had his typical season in 2013 and was worth 1.7 WAR. If you do the math, 1.7 times $5 million is $8.5 million in value. $25 million spread over four seasons is $6.22 million a season. So you see that despite Brantley not being a "star," he is now a bargain.

Even if you accept the team option of $11 million at the end of the deal for the fifth year, you still stay ahead. That would make the total deal worth $36 million over five years or $7.2 million per season and you are still ahead.

According to one projection, Brantley should be worth a total of 7.5 WAR over the next four years. He is entering his Age 27 season. Regression models show two peak years and then a gradual decline. 7.5 WAR is currently worth $37.5 million, or $12.5 million over what the Indians will be paying him.

If you add in the fifth year, then Brantley should compile 9.2 WAR or $46.2 million of value for $36 million the team will have to spend. That is a good deal no matter how you look at it. And even better, the deal will end before Brantley starts to really slide down over the regression cycle of his career.

One other point is overlooked here. The price of a win keeps going up. The four year contract that is already a bargain for the Indians becomes even more so if the cost of a win keeps rising the way it has.

It is understandable if the first reaction to the total cost of the contract for a player just north of average like Michael Brantley seems like a whole lot of money. But it is really a good deal for the Indians in today's market. We are just going to have to get used to meh players being this expensive.

Ranking Joe Mauer among first basemen

The Twins have seen enough of Joe Mauer getting dinged and dented behind the plate and will make him the team's permanent first baseman. While most will lament that Mauer's extraordinary contract makes sense only if he is an elite catcher, the money is not the point here. It is better for the Twins to get some value for their money with Mauer at first for years than to see him ground into dust within two or three years behind the plate. The question being pondered today is: What kind of value will Mauer bring to first base?

Fortunately, this is possible because over the years, Mauer has put in some time at first and has logged 471+ innings there. While the Twin City's star will lose his positional value as a catcher to one considered of little value at first, the extra playing time should close the gap pretty smartly.

Let's take a look at where he could stand around the Majors for first basemen. The starting point is defense.

One site gives his his time at first a 2.6 runs above average which translates to 8.6 runs over the course of 150 games. Another site puts that number at 3 and 7. Where would that rank among the first basemen of last season? Would you believe that the higher number would have ranked him second and the lower number fourth?

If you add in the positional part of the equation, his overall fielding worth as a first baseman will end up somewhere between the -2.5 to -4.0 range. That sounds awful, but for first basemen, it is very good.

Let's move to base running. The two big sites have a discrepancy of two runs. One says that the last three years have been at -1 while the other says it is a plus one. Average them together and you basically get a league average base runner. Where does that put him among first basemen based on last year?

Would you believe tied for fifth? Mauer has always been a great athlete and not your typical lead-pants catcher. Since first basemen are not known for their speed either, Mauer rates quite favorably.

Now everyone's favorite part--offense. If you throw out Mauer's first cup-of-coffee season and divide his batting runs above average by nine, Mauer has averaged 23.4 runs a season. But since he was mainly a catcher, he has averaged only 127 games a season.

Last season, Mauer compiled 25 runs (or 26 depending on the site) in only 113 games! With perhaps 150 games possible or more playing first base, would not 30 runs be a reasonable expectation? It could go higher. In 2012, Mauer played 147 games and compiled 31 runs. Thirty to thirty-five runs above average seems the sweet spot here.

If we stick with the lower number, that would place Mauer sixth in the Majors among last year's first basemen. Out of thirty teams, that's pretty darned good.

If you average the three skill sets together and do the division, Joe Mauer seems likely to finish as either the fourth or fifth best first basemen in baseball. If he has a really good and healthy season at the plate, he could end up as high as third.

Fourth seems the likely destination. Since two of the three projection systems I looked at for this piece have him at an estimated 5.5 WAR, then fourth seems very logical. And by the way, with the way a win is valued these days, that is a $26 to $28 million player and above his contract value ($23 million) for the season.

Pushing Joe Mauer to first base makes perfect sense for the Twins. He will still be the team's best player and they get to keep him in the lineup more often (barring some fluke injury). And contrary to all the naysayers, if Mauer hits like he always has or even slightly less, he will still earn his contract, first baseman or not.

Projecting the five least valuable players of 2014

Without much else to do in this dead zone waiting to see where the last remaining free agents wind up and Spring Training games, looking at projections is a fun way to pass the time. Whether you do this for fantasy baseball purposes or--if you are like me and do not play fantasy--just for the fun of it, There is a lot of stuff to sort through and ponder. Projection systems are difficult to wrap your head around because some project actual playing time and others assume everyone is going to get 550 plate appearances. The latter, I suppose, is helpful in case a player breaks out in Spring Training and ends up as a starter (which rarely happens). What I thought I would do on this Sunday afternoon was cull through the various projection systems and determine who the five least valuable players would be in 2014.

Such an exercise is harder than you think. First, I have an artificial number of projected plate appearances of 450. I want to consider starters and not part-time players. Secondly, I have to figure out which of these players will actually get the playing time he is projected to obtain. For example, one of the lowest rated was Brett Wallace. But he was just DFA'd by the Astros and doesn't figure to catch on with a full-time gig anywhere else. And lastly, most of the projection systems have to agree on the lack of value a player will have in 2014.

After making my list, a discussion on the merits of each will occur. Think of it as sort of an over/under type discussion. For disclosure sake, I used PECOTA, Steamer, Oliver and Fans projections. I used MLB Depth Charts to confirm possible playing time.

Okay, the list:

1. Garrett Jones - Average Projection of 0.23 WAR
2. Raul Ibanez - Average Projection of 0.3 WAR
3. Mitch Moreland - Average Projection of 0.55 WAR
4. Adeiny Hechavarria - Average Projection of 0.65 WAR
5. Ryan Ludwick - Average Projection of 0.78 WAR

Garrett Jones - Jones holds one of the most extreme L/R splits in the Majors with less than a .600 OPS against left-handed pitching and in the high .878 against right-handed pitchers. He is penciled in as the platoon partner with Jeff Baker at first base. That would be a good thing for Jones as he is capable of hitting more than twenty homers. If he can field first base at near league-average level, he could score 2.0 in WAR. If he plays full time or spends any time in the outfield, all bets are off.

Raul Ibanez - The projections are logical since Ibanez is 41 years old and should never wear a glove. But the Angels only need him as a DH and have plenty of outfielders. So unlike last year in Seattle, Ibanez should only be a DH. That said, will he get 400 plate appearances? He won't if he is platooned (and he should be). Based on offense alone, he could get 1.5 in WAR.

Mitch Moreland - Moreland has no home at first base with the Rangers' addition of Prince Fielder. MLB Depth Charts has him listed as the Rangers' DH. Plus, he has spent plenty of time in the outfield too. Moreland's career doesn't seem to be going anywhere and I think these projections are pretty money.

Adeiny Hechavarria - Not only is his name a bear to spell, but he was awful for the Marlins last season. And still, he is pegged as their starting shortstop again this year. I don't think he will ever hit and a sub-.300 on-base percentage could be his norm. He gets bonus WAR points for his "important position" on the field, but doesn't score all that well as a fielder. If he reaches 1.0 in WAR in 2014, it will be a surprise.

Ryan Ludwick - I kept hearing last year that the Reds will be okay once Ludwick comes back from injury. And it made me scratch my head. Yeah, he had a pretty good 2012, but that is the anomaly for him over the past five seasons. The Reds have him penciled in as the starting left-fielder. I think it is a pie-in-the-sky scenario for them. He is not great in the field, and 2012 aside, his bat has been missing since his days with the Cardinals. I think his projection is fair. His positional ranking hurts him, his fielding hurts him and I don't see him repeating 2012 for offensive production.

There you have it. The projections have spoken. But of course, nobody knows how any player's season will go until he actually plays the games.

Ralph Kiner and the 1955 pennant race

Ralph Kiner's play in 1955 almost made a difference in the pennant race between the Indians and the Yankees. Unfortunately, his back broke down in the home stretch and it was the Yankees who went to the World Series. Check out my post on It's About the Money, Stupid.

Allen Craig and his slugging percentage

There is a world of numbers available to the baseball writer and the ardent fan of the game of baseball. While this is a very good thing, the numbers can also make us restless and under-appreciate the great offensive game of some of the players we write about and root for. You see this with Votto in Cincinnati with people screaming that he takes too many walks and does not drive in enough runs. And you see it with Allen Craig and people talking about his power numbers for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Craig slugged .555 and .522 in 2011 and 2012. He hit 33 homers in his first 733 plate appearances during those two seasons. He only hit 13 of them in 563 plate appearances in 2013. So what happened?

There are a combinations of things that lowered his home run total. The two main culprits are that he had less chances to hit them and on the chances where he did have the opportunity, those batted balls did not go over the fence as often. Let's break this down a bit.

Allen Craig hit more ground balls and line drives in 2013 than he has in any other season. And correspondingly, the percentages were higher on both. Of his batted balls, 297 of his 413 batted balls were either ground balls (45%) or line drives (26.9%). Obviously, ground balls are not going to go flying over the fence. And generally, line drives do not either. Of Craig's 199 line drives over the last two seasons, only five of them have gone for homers.

Having less of a percentage of his batted balls being fly balls means less of a chance for a possible home run. His percentage of fly balls went from 37% in 2011 to 33.3% in 2012 to 28.1% in 2013. The three years do seem to show a trend. His rate of ground balls and line drives have gone up in each of the three years as well.

Having less of an opportunity to hit a home run due to less fly balls can then be combined with less of those fly balls actually clearing the fences. Just like the other trends listed previously in the last paragraph, there is a three year downward trend for Craig's fly balls going for homers. That number was 18.3% in 2011 and went down to 17.1% in 2012 and then sank drastically to 11.2% in 2013.

Fortunately, Craig is very successful with his ground balls and line drives. His BABIP on ground balls was .279 in 2013, much higher than the league average. And his line drive BABIP and overall OPS with them are off the charts. And a 26.9% line drive rate is elite and right up there with Votto and some of the other great hitters.

When you have a great hitter like Allen Craig, you most often see a guy who is not pull conscious. And Craig is not a big pull hitter. Most of his batted balls are hit up the middle. He only pulled the ball 110 times in 2013. Center field and the gaps are the furthest distances to have to hit a fly ball for a homer.

But Craig is also doing less with the balls he pulls as far as power goes. In 2012, eight of his 108 pulled batted balls went over the fence. That number dropped to 4 in 110 plate appearances in 2013.

To tie up a little of what we have talked about so far, the data seems to indicate that there is a three year trend in Allen Craig hitting less fly balls and having less of those fly balls going over the fence. The numbers also indicate that Craig is not overly prone to pull the ball and when he has, less of those batted balls are going over the fence.

Add up this information and you have a recipe for a first baseman/outfielder with less and less power as the last three years have progressed. That doesn't mean that Craig is any less of a great hitter. But he is less of a slugging threat than he was when he first arrived on the scene.

Trends are more apt to continue or taper off than they are to reverse. The prognosis for Craig as a power threat is not good. To be sure, this has implications in the fantasy baseball world, but it also affects a bit on how often the Cardinals score and their willingness to play Matt Adams more at first because Adams hits more homers.

This need for more power by the Cardinals weakens the Cardinals' defense. Craig is a better first baseman than Adams and most outfielders are better outfielders than Allen Craig. The Cardinals' need for power due to less provided by Craig means less defense to play them both.

All of this sounds like criticism and it is not. Allen Craig is an elite hitter who, according to the numbers, seems to perform really well in the clutch. But unless trends are undone and Craig changes his approach, the trend for Craig is to hit with less power while his efficiency increases. More power would be nice, but most fans around the country would agree that having Allen Craig on their team's lineup would be mighty tasty.

Alex Avila-nche

In 2011, Alex Avila seemed to come out of nowhere to become one of the best catchers in the American League. He won the Silver Slugger Award, made the All Star Team, put together a wOBA of .384, threw out 32% of base steal attempts and put up a 4.6 fWAR, 5.2 rWAR season. However, that was he pinnacle of his young career and he has come crashing down the last two seasons. It has been an Alex Avila-nche.

Here are his last three seasons in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS and wRC+:

• 2011: .295/.389/.506, .895, 140
• 2012: .243/.352/.384, .736, 104
• 2013: .227/.317/.376, .693, 92

That is a pretty heady fall. But it was not just his offense that fell. He had, by the numbers, his worst fielding season and after three years of throwing out base steal attempts at a 30% clip or higher, he fell off to 17% last season. Many give the pitcher most of the credit or lack of it on stolen bases, but Avila has dealt with pretty much the same group of pitchers in each of his seasons.

What is to make of this drop of his overall game? No doubt, catching is a tough position and a catcher gets dinged up over time. That kind of abuse makes you give an extra pause to the kind of offensive players that Piazza and Posada were to hit so well for so long as catchers.

But there are other factors too. Alex Avila has very good plate discipline. But sometimes pitchers figure those kinds of patterns too. Avila, like Gardner in New York, takes the first pitch a lot. In a nearly one third of Avila's at bats last season, he took the first pitch and also nearly a third of the time, he was 0-1 in the count.

It is interesting to note that first pitch strikes really jumped for Avila last season. Up until 2013, the highest pitch strike rate against Avila was 56.9%. Last year, that jumped to 62.3%. So pitchers really tried to get that first strike against him and did on a much more higher occasion.

Why is that important? Because Avila is a .176 hitter after an 0-1 count. These scouts and today's pitchers are no dummies.

Another aspect that jumps out at you with Avila is his success rate against left-handed pitching. In his great year, he compiled a .779 OPS against lefties. In 2012, that fell precipitously to .539. In 2013, that number did a further Avila-nche to an awful .455. That forces the manager's hand and makes Avila more of a platoon catcher as we saw last year with Brayan Pena.

Alex Avila's great season of 2011 was aided somewhat by a very high batting average on batted balls in play. His BABIP that season was .366. The last two seasons, that has fallen to a little above average at .313 in 2012 and .302 in 2013. That is important too because Avila strikes out quite a bit. Last season, Avila struck out 29.6% of the time. That was a career high after averaging 24.1% for his career.

Add the two together: Less balls in play plus a lower BABIP and you have a nice recipe for a deep regression.

So where do we go from here with Alex Avila? He will probably get more playing time with Pena gone. The new backup is young Bryan Holaday. Holaday has done nothing to show that he is any great shakes as a batter. His small sample size the last two seasons should not give anyone any optimism that he is that good a hitter if you look at his minor league records.

Holaday will spell Avila against left-handed pitchers, but since there are fewer of those than the alternative, Avila will get most of the playing time. All the projections have Avila bouncing back to the 2.5 WAR range in value after he tanked at 0.6 last year. But he is going to have to stay healthier and make some adjustments.

Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs.com had a fascinating article about the beating that Avila takes behind the plate. Perhaps that is the smoking gun here. But Avila is a catcher and that will not change. That being said, Avila does not have the makings for a long career as a starting catcher and unless something changes soon, he is going to sink out of sight.

Scrapbooking and scorecards

I wrote a memory piece of whimsy over at It's About the Money, Stupid that featured names like Mickey Mantle, Joe Pepitone, Harmon Killebrew and others. Check it out.

So long, Lance Berkman and Michael Young

A couple of Texas institutions during the past fifteen years hung up their spikes this week. Between the two of them, Lance Berkman and Michael Young banged out 3,940 hits while wearing the uniform of teams from Texas. Berkman, of course, was the first round draft pick of the Houston Astros who had quite a career there and Young plied his trade with the Texas Rangers for his long career.

Though they were both drafted in 1997 and both were institutions where they played and banged out consistent .300 batting averages over the years, the similarity between the two players pretty much ends there. If the sun were Cooperstown, Lance Berkman was the Earth and Young, probably Jupiter. I said Pluto last night on Twitter, but that was a bit unkind and in response to another blogger who stated that Young retired on the cusp of Cooperstown. Young was not even close to that kind of player.

But Lance Berkman was. If he could have stayed healthier, he could have really put up the kind of numbers that would get him a plaque. Berkman's injuries led him to have only twelve seasons where he played more than a hundred games. Out of those twelve, he slugged over .500 eleven times and had over a .400 on-base percentage eight times.

Just to give you an idea of how different they were offensively, Lance Berkman had a career wOBA of .400 on the dot. Michael Young had a career wOBA of .342. Lance Berkman's offense was worth 433.6 batting runs during his career. Young's offense was worth 44.2, almost ten percent of Berkman's contribution. Berkman finished with a 144 wRC+ (same as his OPS+) and Young, 104.

Interestingly, they finished within six total bases of each other for their career, but Berkman compiled his in almost 800 fewer plate appearances. Berkman's 1,201 career walks more than doubles Young's career total.

Young was much more durable. In one twelve year stretch, Young played more than 150 games in eleven of those seasons. He also led the league in hits twice and batting average once. He made seven All Star teams and finished in the top ten in MVP voting twice.

Young was more of a cog in a wheel of some very good Rangers teams (and some very bad ones). Berkman was a contemporary with Biggio and Bagwell for years and was just as much as an offensive star as either of them.

Young will always be marked down a bit because he played half of his games in Texas Rangers' home parks, always considered hitters' paradise. Indeed, his home OPS for his career is 108 points higher than his road OPS.

Berkman just flat out hit no matter where he was. For his career, Berkman a .946 OPS guy at home and .940 on the road. His OPS was over .900 for every month of the year--over .950 for three of those months. He had a career .970 OPS with two outs and runners in scoring position, a .926 OPS in late and close games and a .956 OPS in tie games.

Young played more valuable positions on the field and his versatility is somewhat what kept him a fixture for so long. That is not to say that he always played them well. Berkman played the bulk of his career as a left-fielder (while Bagwell was at first) and then as a first baseman: two positions that do not rate highly on the positional skill ranking. But he played them reasonably well most of the time.

Young was strictly a right-handed batter who was consistent against pitchers who threw with either arm. Lance Berkman was a switch-hitter who was much, much better batting left-handed.

Both players were considered good clubhouse guys. Berkman was known for his humor and for keeping things loose and teammates laughing. Young was a leader of his clubhouse in Texas for many years.

Both played quite a few post-season games. Berkman over-performed his career numbers there was killer in his two World Series appearances. Young under-performed in his post-season career.

As you have seen, Lance Berkman was twice as valuable a player than Michael Young. But both are gone now and after watching them for all these years, they are going to be missed. Baseball goes on, but every so often, you lose players that have seemed to be with you forever. Michael Young and Lance Berkman were Texas baseball and it won't be the same without them. 

Edinson Volquez is not the next Liriano

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been a bit like the Statue of Liberty when it comes to broken pitchers: "Give me your tired, your poor..." They took a seemingly broken A.J. Burnett and received two productive years from him. They took a seemingly broken Francisco Liriano and he had a fantastic year for them last year and even won a playoff game. Now, the expectation is that their next tired and poor pitcher to reclaim is Edinson Volquez. It's not going to happen.

I have to admit that I am biased against the guy. So let's put that up there right at the start. He has been the worst starting pitcher in baseball over the past three seasons. He gave up the most earned runs allowed in his league in 2013 and the most walks in 2012. But people still look at him as a "stuff" guy that just needs to figure it out.

The past is littered with such guys. Stuff doesn't always get you a good pitcher. Let's put some things in perspective here. Edinson Volquez has made 154 starts in his career and pitched a total of 850 innings. For all that pitching, he has the grand sum of 1.7 rWAR to his credit. To be fair, Fangraphs.com gives his career 5.9 fWAR.

Volquez has one good season to his credit--2008, his first year with the Reds. That season featured his best BABIP and his best HR/9 rate. He also featured a 75.5% strand rate. All of which lead him to a FIP that season of 3.60. It was a good season. But the rest has been a whole lot of nothing.

Are there legitimate comparisons with Liriano who had his own struggles with the Twins before coming to Pittsburgh? Well, yes, if you want to state that both had been disappointing. But there was always some concern (whether fair or not) that the Twins never believed in him because he did not fit their pitch-to-contact, low walk mantra.

I think the comparison ends pretty much there. After completing a successful 2013, Liriano now has three very good seasons to his credit in his eight years of pitching. Volquez still has the one. Liriano has a 2.41 strikeout to walk ratio for his career. Volquez is at 1.77.

Liriano has a 1.333 WHIP for his career. Volquez has a career WHIP of 1.505. Liriano has a devastating pitch, his slider, which has racked up 99+ runs in value over his career and a change-up that has given him 16.4 runs of value above average. Volquez does not have such a killer pitch and his highest pitch value for any of his pitches is his change-up which has a career run value of 5.9. Every other Volquez pitch type has a negative value.

Liriano has struck out a batter more per nine for his career more than Volquez while walking a batter less. I think the situation with Liriano and the Pirates last year was that the Pirates had something to work with, just like what they did with Burnett. I don't see the same canvas with Edinson Volquez.

Maybe I have been so down on Volquez for so long that I cannot see the silver lining the Pirates are seeing. I certainly can be proven wrong in thinking that there is no chance the Pirates turn him around. Some of his peripherals with his short stint with the Dodgers were better. So maybe that is what the Pirates see.

The projections are fairly kind to him. Two that I checked in with have him finishing with a 4.01 FIP. Another pegs it at 4.36 (his career average). Perhaps that would be good enough for what the Pirates are looking for. As a fourth or fifth guy in the rotation, that would be somewhat acceptable.

But those projections still like his 8.4 K/9 rate and look at his low LOB rate and high BABIP and say that he was unlucky. Perhaps. But perhaps he simply is not a very good pitcher who is what he is. I could be wrong. But don't count me as an optimist here that the Pirates will raise another pitcher from the dead.

Why should people hold ill will to Jerry Remy?

We have a fundamental question to ask here. How much of a son or daughter's actions are the responsibility of their parents? How much hate to parents of mass killers should there be? The answer to the question has a lot to do with some angst being reported about the public's response to Jerry Remy returning to the broadcast booth in Boston.

Here is a typical argument against such a move written by Steve Buckley of the Boston Herald.  Buckley says quite frankly in the piece that Remy should not return. He later waffles a bit, but here is the major meat of his concern:

No.

Yes, Remy struck all the right cords of grief yesterday when he expressed his condolences to the Martel family. He began the conversation that way and he ended it that way. And to look into Remy’s eyes is to see a man whose life, whose family’s life, has been thrust into chaos in the aftermath of the events of August 15. He also spoke of his 5-year-old granddaughter, saying, “This is a little girl who is going to grow up with no mother and no father. She’s probably going to have issues. We can’t even imagine at this point.”

And sadly, that’s what is at issue. To watch a Red Sox game on NESN this season, and to see and hear Remy engage in his famously upbeat and entertaining banter with play-by-play man Don Orsillo, it will be difficult not to think of that brutal murder, difficult not to speculate about the trial, difficult not to think about that little girl.

Basically, what Buckley is saying here is that if Remy returns to the style that made him famous as a broadcaster and made he and Orsillo one of the most entertaining duos in baseball is compromised by what the public thinks about what Remy's son did.

If you haven't heard what happened with Remy's son, you'll have to look it up. It is brutal and it is awful in the most unimaginable way. But again, the question remains: How much should the public hold Remy responsible for his son's crime?

I say none. I came from a broken home and my choices have led me to a productive and reasonably honorable life. Others have come from perfect households and much love to commit horrible crimes. Drug addicts, murderers and other bad things that happen to the children of families are their own choices.

I don't buy that a criminal should be let off because they were beaten severely as a child. Every human being has a thousand choices each and every day. Some of those choices are between self-inflicting and inflicting harms on others. Different choices can always be made and are not. Oh, there might be the odd disorder that renders a person incapable of making good choices, but I think those are rarer than most people think.

I have dealt with this personally with drug addiction within my own family. The child was loved and surrounded by care and good examples of what being a good person and a good citizen are. The child chose a life of drugs and stealing and crime. Despite the human nature that makes us blame ourselves as parents, the truth is that the child made all the wrong choices.

Jerry Remy did not commit that horrible crime. Jerry Remy did not turn his granddaughter into an orphan. His son did. Remy was a baseball player and then a broadcaster. That means a lot of traveling and being away from home. But Remy says that his wife was a great mother and I believe that. The son made the choices, not the parents.

Feel sorry for the grandchild and for Mr. and Mrs Jerry Remy and for Jennifer Martel's family. But do not deprive the man from going on with his life doing what he was meant to do. A horrible thing happened. Everyone does not need to be punished because of it.

Starlin Castro and his nosedive

Starlin Castro of the Chicago Cubs burst onto the scene as a twenty year old kid in 2010. In his next 445 games for the Cubs, he belted out 529 hits including 96 doubles, 26 triples and 27 home runs. He looked like the brightest young shortstop in the game. Before the spring of 2013, there were legal troubles and the entire 2013 season was a wash for him offensively as everything went downhill. What went wrong with Starlin Castro and will he right himself in 2014?

If you look at the counting stats, you can see just how far Castro fell in 2014. Here are his string of OPS figures for his seasons thus far: 755, 773, .753, .631. Which number doesn't fit in there? Yeah, it is that obvious.

There are many opinions as to what happened. Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs.com believes that a more patient approach was forced on him and it backfired.  Another source, which I cannot seem to find at the moment, believed that BABIP was at least partially to blame.

Let's look at a couple of these insights to see what they are about. First. Sullivan makes a good point in that the Cubs encouraged Castro to see more pitches and he did. The problem, as Sullivan points out, was that Castro was very successful on the first pitch and by not swinging at the first pitch, he lost one of his best weapons.

Sullivan also shows that despite seeing more pitches, Castro did not walk any more than he did in the past and in fact, walked less. His walk rate was the lowest of his career and the strikeout rate was his highest.

The BABIP theory might be part of Sullivan's theory. Perhaps losing the first pitch to jump on, Castro's contact success suffered. If you look at Castro's heat maps for each of his years, his contact led to over a .300 average on just about every quadrant of the plate and even just off the outside corner and middle in as well.

If you look, then, at his heat map for 2013, only the upper third of the plate led to contact that was productive and just off the plate, middle-in was his happy zone. Every other quadrant of the plate was awful.

To me, the biggest "tell" is his success on line drives, or I should say the lack of it in 2013. Here are Castro's BABIPs on line drives for his career (starting in 2010): .738, .739, .716 and .593. Again, which number doesn't fit?

That is a naturally low BABIP on line drives. The Major League average is around the .660 mark. Castro has been super consistent in the number of line drives he hits per season. The difference was that in 2013, less of them found free space.

Starlin Castro also hits about 1.5 ground balls for every fly ball, or nearly 50% of his batted balls. Whether it is due to poorer contact, better defensive positioning or what, but his BABIP on fly balls also suffered. After being in the .228 to .254 range for his first his first three years, it fell off to .177 according to Baseball-reference.com.

The thing that hurts the most about Castro's season in 2013 is that he was particularly awful against teams in his own division. He was good against the Cardinals. He has always been good against the Cardinals. But look at these OPS figures against the rest of the division: Reds - .432 (!), Brewers - .599 and Pirates - .491. He has always been pretty successful against all those teams in the past.

So what does the future hold for Starlin Castro? That depends on a few things that helped cause such a bad season. Perhaps his head was in a bad space between the legal troubles last spring and the lawsuit and counter-lawsuit going on in the Dominican Republic. Perhaps he was just unlucky with his line drives and twenty more of them will fall in for him in 2014. Perhaps the Cubs will allow him to go back to hacking at first pitches. After all, he is never going to be a patient hitter. That is just not who he is.

The important thing for the Cubs is that Castro is a plus player at a thin position around the Majors if he has an OPS of .750. But another season in the .630 range will have to force them to rethink the future with him.

For the Cubs, Starlin Castro has to be better against his NL Central opponents and he has to have be better than he was in 2013. It will be one of the more interesting stories to watch in the coming season.

The Tigers are getting defensive

The Detroit Tigers had the third best pitching staff (overall) in the American League in 2012 and 2013. They had the second best offense in the American League in 2013 and the fourth best (by OPS+) in 2012. That combination should land you close to 100 wins each season, right? But the Tigers won 93 games in 2013 and 88 in 2012. Those totals are not terrible by any means and got them to the post season. The missing ingredient has been defense.

The idea for this post came from a conversation between Neal Kendrick (@neal_kendrick) of High Heat Stats and Jacob Smith (@JTD_Smith) that started with this tweet:

AL pitching leaders in fWAR for 2013 1. Max Scherzer, DET 2. Anibal Sanchez, DET 3. Felix Hernandez, SEA 4. Justin Verlander, DET
— Neal Kendrick (@neal_kendrick) January 26, 2014

Think about that for a second. Their starting rotation featured three pitchers in the top four in the American League. And Doug Fister was eighth! Their fifth starter, Rick Porcello, is a ground ball pitcher that needs fielders to field his batted balls.

How did that staff ever lose? They lost, at least in part, to fielding.

In the old school way of looking at things, the Tigers' fielding would have looked great. Hey, they finished with the least amount of errors in the AL and the highest fielding percentage. The trouble is, we now know that fielding percentage is nice if you are getting to a lot of batted balls. But when you are not, you have a lack of defensive efficiency no matter how good you are at catching and throwing the ball.

In 2012, the Tigers were next to last in the AL in defensive efficiency. In 2013, they were tied for tenth out of fifteen teams. In 2012, the team as a whole had a -31 runs below average according to Baseball Info Solutions. In 2013, that figure was worse and ended up at -64 runs! That is between five and six wins of bad defense. While we are not dealing with direct cause and effects here, it is a coincidence that adding those lost wins gets the team pretty close to 100.

Who is to blame for this lack of focus on defense for the Tigers? It is easy to blame Jim Leyland because he is gone now. But you have to give him some of the focus. Leyland wanted as much offense in the lineup as he could possibly stack. He would bring outfielders to play second base. You have to give part of the blame to the general manager and owner who signed the biggest free agent regardless of what it meant for the offense.

Whatever the case may be, it looks like the organization is finally paying some attention to defense. The Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder was one example of sacrificing a little offense to get much better defense. The move also allows Miguel Cabrera from third base, where he was a disaster last season, to first base, a position he is much more capable of playing.

If you look at just the infield (the outfield is okay), you have the following improvements from last year again based on Baseball Info Solutions and a projection of what will happen in 2014:

First base: Fielder to Cabera: -10 runs to -3.

Second base: Omar Infante and others to Kinsler: -7 to 12

Shortstop: Jhonny Peralta and Jose Iglesias: 0 to 10

Third base: Cabrera to Nick Castellanos: -15 to -5.

By my count, that is an improvement of 46 runs just in the infield. The infield improvement does not only improve the infield but also the pitching. The biggest beneficiary will be Rick Porcello and his 50+% ground balls. But it will also help the entire pitching staff.

The one question, of course, is how much offense the new infield will cost. Most feel that Iglesias' offense was a fluke last year. We don't know yet how Castellanos will fare at the Major League level. And you have to wonder how much Kinsler will dip leaving the friendly conditions of Texas.

Kinsler is a loss in offense compared to Fielder and Castellanos (naturally) will not equal Cabrera offensively. But even if the Tigers lose twenty runs of offense, that is more than doubled by the improvement of the defense.

You have to wonder if Iglesias and Castellanos struggle early on offense what the Tigers will do. Hopefully, the Tigers will stay with it. The team has come close to the promised land in the last two seasons. Perhaps with some defense, they can make the last hurdle to get there.

Joe Torre versus Joe Girardi in bullpen usage

I have long been curious if Joe Torre really did beat up his bullpens and if Joe Girardi was as good with bullpens as his reputation. So I crunched their numbers and spit out my results in a post over at It's About the Money, Stupid. I hope you go over there and enjoy it.

BBA Linkfest - General snow drifts

Welcome to another edition of the BBA Linkfest, where I scour the earth for links from my fellow members of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance general chapter. "General," here means that the sites that make up our chapter do not focus on one particular team, but all of baseball and in some cases, all of life. The title of this post comes from staring out my window at another gray, wintry day where the wind is howling and it seems like I live in the frozen tundra. Reading these writers at the very least makes me think of spring and better times when baseball again will be here.

Before I start linking to our sites, special mention has to be given to Michael Clair and his Old Time Family Baseball. Clair, a hilarious individual who gives me great pleasure from his writing and his Twitter persona, completed his third annual blogathon last weekend to benefit Doctors Without Borders. Not only did Clair exceed his goal by a landslide, but he also brought together hundreds of the best baseball writers in the land who submitted work for him for the weekend. I salute Michael Clair and all those writers that made the goal just a stopping point on the final total. Great work, everyone. And trust me, you could spend an entire day reading all those excellent posts. So do it! I also love his recent post on one of his favorite players of the past.

And here we go with the links!

Justin Miller is a good baseball guy and I like his articles and his prospect scouting reports. This post talks about the recent signing of Grady Sizemore, a guy who most of us are rooting for in his comeback. InsideTheMLB is the site's heading.

Over at the Baseball Hot Corner, Jason Leary has a great post titled, 5 Tattoo Ideas for Tortured A's Fans. You have to check that out, right?

I am so pleased that High Heat Stats has joined the general chapter. This is a world class site that started on baseball-reference.com as that site's blogging crew. They have only gotten better as they left B-R and have gained new writers (many from our crew here in the general chapter!). Their post I am featuring today is written by Doug and is so packed with information, you need to set aside some good quality time. But read it!

David, over at Baseballroundtable.com has a great post about prospects to watch in 2014. Great stuff.

Over at Know Hitter (I love that title), there is a suggestion for what the Mariners' new acquisition, Corey Hart, should play.

Kenneth Matinale of Radical Baseball has an interesting post in which he takes issue with the Yankees' off season strategy. I'm not sure I agree, but that's what makes baseball so great!

The Playoff Pitch site has had a series going with breaking down 2014 teams, which is always a fun exercise. The latest one is on the 2014 Red Sox.

Off the Bench is an interesting and fairly new site not afraid to make bold stances. Take, for example, this post and then the response gotten from that post. Makes for fun reading.

I enjoyed the post over at Baseblog94 on the Cubs' new manager, Rick Renteria.

Even though it is not a recent post, I am constantly moved by Stevo-sama's post about his father over at The Baseball Enthusiast. It was reposted from Baseblog94 with additional pictures. Very moving.

One of the great things about my affiliation with the BBA is watching all these folks who become friends who go on to better things. Chris Carelli is a great guy and a great writer whose The Baseball Stance featured his stuff. The site now provides summaries and links to his work for Yahoo Sports along with the occasional full piece. Very cool and I am happy for him.

Matt Whitener of Cheap.Seats.Please takes a stab and listing the top ten shortstops in the Major Leagues today. How many do you agree with? Matt and I definitely agree on the number one name.

In his latest post, Grubby Glove talks about where he has been. I'm just glad he's back!

Theo of Hot Corner Harbor has another of his usually thoughtful posts on predicting the Hall of Fame. Interesting stuff.

Speaking of the Hall of Fame, For Baseball Junkies compiled a list of the most questionable votes by the writers.

Chuck Booth of the always reliable MLB Reports talks about the the first week of the season and Australia. BTW, I always appreciate the site's #FF support each week.

My buddy, Bryan O'Conner, of Replacement Level Baseball also talks about the Hall of Fame and the Hall of Stats. Did you know that he is better looking than Ben Affleck?

Through the Fence Baseball has really continued to expand and get better each year I have done this. They have become a don't miss site! For example, here is one-of-a-kind content on the best freshmen college baseball players of 2014.

Dan at The Ball Caps Blog had an interesting take on Richard Sherman's bombastic interview. But if we stick to baseball, his amusing take on Phillies fans is a fun read.

Call to the Pen is another site that has grown tremendously since I have been doing this. They are now part of the Fansided network. Cool on them. Dan Zinski's report on Tony La Russa's HOF logo is a case in point of why they are where they are.

Italy's Che Palle! by Mario Salvini shares an amazing picture he found on Twitter. It is amazing too.

Another site that has come a long way is MLB Dirt, which is now part of the Field Rush network. Alas, I used to write there semi-regularly and have great guilt that I no longer have the time to do so. Jonathan Mitchell is one of the greatest guys on the planet and his feature recently covered Grant Balfour returning to the Rays and that C-word.

Another great bud is Dan from the Left Field site who also writes for High Heat Stats. Dan is a real interesting guy with a great family and what I like about his site is that it features baseball, his favorite music and his love of craft beer. Check out his recent playlist.

The Sisco Kid of Baseball Sisco Kid Style hit the nail on the head with his HOF picks, which is pretty amazing. Whether I agree that it should have only been three or not is neither here nor there.

The always interesting Sully of Sully Baseball has probably the best solution I've heard to the problem of which hat to wear to the Hall of Fame for those chosen. Good solution! Interesting post!

Ben's Baseball Bias salutes the three HOF inductees.

If you've ever wondered how a baseball is made, Dugout 24 has just the video for you!

The Sports Banter posted some interesting, sometimes hilarious and random thoughts in a recent post.

Clint of Diamond Hoggers is part of one of my favorite baseball podcast teams. And I don't just say that because they invited me to join them once. The latest installment is linked here.

Mike Hilywa has a real fun post over at Off Base Percentage on Australian baseball. I love the pic and the heading too.

Apparently, Jack Morris is tired of getting scrutinized by baseball writers. Shawn Anderson of The Hall of Very Good gives us all the details.

There are the links, but before I go, I figured I would leave you with one toot of my own horn. Your favorite Fan recently garnered his first ESPN byline. Very cool for me!

See you next time and stay warm! Baseball season will get here eventually.