Expect Mike Napoli's numbers to dip

Mike Napoli was just one of the many things that went really right for the Boston Red Sox last season. A catcher for most of his career, Napoli moved to first base and surprised everyone with just how good he was over there. He also had a highly successful year at the plate. The bottom line was that Mike Napoli was the third best first baseman in the American League last season. Do not expect a repeat.

That seems like a weird statement in respect to the fact that his batting average and on-base percentage were nearly exact to his career average and his slugging percentage was twenty points lower than his career average. In light of those statistics, you would think his slugging would bounce back and after more than 3,200 plate appearances, his average and OBP would be good baselines.

But several things are troubling about making that leap. First was his strikeout rate. If you were told that of Mike Napoli, Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds, Napoli had the highest strikeout rate of the three, would you believe it? Well, it's true. Napoli struck out 187 times in 578 plate appearances, or 32.4% of the time. This is the second straight season where he has struck out 30% of the time or more, so it is a definite trend.

Napoli has very good plate discipline and that kind of discipline does not regress quickly. So the best way to look at what is happening at the plate is to look at his contact percentage inside the strike zone.

After two straight seasons with a contact percentage in the strike zone of 78.7% in 2010 and 2011, that number dipped to 74.7% in 2012 and then down again to 72.4% in 2013. The four projections looked at for this piece do not expect the trend to continue to plummet but most predict a strikeout rate of at least 30% and that makes a lot of sense.

When your strikeout rate is that high, you better be highly efficient with your batted balls because you will have so much less of them than most players. In order to maintain a batting average of .250 or higher with those kinds of whiff rates, batted balls are everything.

That said, Mike Napoli had a very good time with his batted balls in 2013. His BABIP of .367 was easily the highest of his career and 57 points over his career average. Perhaps some of it is legit though. Napoli hit more line drives in 2013 than at any time of his career--by a lot!

In 2013, Mike Napoli's line drive percentage was 24.4%. It was the first time in his career that he was over 20%. His career average (dragged up with last year's numbers) is only 19.4%. So how do you explain the sudden surge of line drives? Was it playing first instead of catching and not being all beat up? Was it some new-found batting skill from better study or mechanics? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it was a fluke. Line drives, as mentioned in this space a million times, are gold to a batter. Nothing besides a ball going over the fence has more of a chance of being successful than a line drive. Lots of line drives will usually lead to a above average BABIP like Napoli experienced in 2013.

Napoli could repeat this new-found success. But the odds seem to be against it based on his career norms. And even with all those line drives and his very high BABIP, because of the strikeouts, he still batted only .259. With his walk percentage being terrific, any batting average for him of .245 or higher will lead to a very good on-base percentage. But if his line drive percentage goes back to norms, the strikeouts stay high, then his batting average will dip by twenty points or more with a more normalized BABIP.

Do not expect his slugging percentage to improve back to his career level of .502 either. Napoli's ISO has been dependent on where he has played most of his home games. It was in the .220 range with the Angels, much higher with the Rangers and then back to the Angels level with the Red Sox where Fenway Park is not the best place for lefty swingers to hit homers.

The projections for Mike Napoli look right. They are pessimistic compared to 2013. They do not expect his offense to be as good (or as valuable) and they expect his defense to decline. While the latter conclusion is suspect as he has become a very good first baseman, even these projections might be too optimistic for Napoli. The expectation here is for his OPS to drop from .842 in 2013 to the .780 to .800 range.

Not excited about Australia either

For the fourth time since 2004, Major League Baseball is going to mess up its schedule to start a series overseas with games that count before the regular season starts. It was bad enough that the first three started anywhere from four to five days before the regular season started. This year, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks will play in Australia a full seven days before the season starts. It's messed up.

Zack Greinke made a bit of a stink about not being excited to go and a bunch of people fussed about it--especially those in Australia. But Greinke is right and this does pose quite a bit of a problem for the players.

But it is not just about the players. There has been a lot of talk about making baseball's opening day a national holiday. Hey, I'm all for that. But first, all the teams would need to make Opening Day the same day.

The sentiment for this national holiday is that fans long for that magical start of the season after watching a month of Spring Training games. What does this do to the fans of the D-backs and Dodgers who have this day pushed all the way back to March 22 and the games are on odd hours and they are not played in an NL West stadium.

Sometimes I feel like that grumpy smurf. I hate this sort of thing. I hate the World Baseball Classic that messes up Spring Training and makes you worry about your favorite players. I hate that Opening Day is not the same for every team and not all day games. And I especially hate these overseas games that artificially start the season in places where the teams are not supposed to play.

I get that Bud Selig wants to make baseball a world cultural thing. But, Bud, it is already there. The game has spread around the world and Australia already has a big baseball culture and has sent players to play in the MLB. That push is not necessary.

Now let's get back to the players for a second. Do you folks know how far away Australia is and how long it takes to get there? It is somewhat better from the West Coast like the these two teams are heading from (yes, I know Arizona is not on the coast). But even so, that is a long honking trip.

The players will get there in time to play exhibition games against Australian teams on March 21 and then play each other twice on basically the same day (our time) on March 22. The players' systems will be messed up for at least a couple of days before the trip and a couple of days after.

But then they have a two-game record that stands frozen in time for seven days until the rest of the season starts and these two teams have to go back to some semblance of Spring Training in between. This will not be fun.

Rail all you want about Greinke, but he is dead on with this. Frankly, you expose these two teams to a whole lot more danger by having to make that long trip to foreign soil.

The other thing it does is accelerate the decisions that Don Mattingly and Kirk Gibson have to make. They have to set their clubs earlier than normal. And Greinke is right about messing up the routine that is a normal Spring Training.

Doing this is not aesthetically pleasing to the fans, to the players, to the managers and general managers or to anyone but perhaps the host country. It simply is another way for Selig to put some imaginary feather in his cap for his overstated legacy.

Let's look back at a little history of this. In 2004, the Yankees and (then) Devil Rays began their season in Tokyo. The Yankees won 101 games that season and finished in first place. But they were only 11-10 in April, the team's worst month of the season. April was also the worst month of the season for the Devil Rays that year with a .316 winning percentage.

In 2008, the Red Sox and Athletics began their season with two games in Tokyo. The Red Sox had a good month of April. The A's also got off to a good start that season in April, but faltered in July and August. The Red Sox also had a poor August. Coincidental perhaps.

In 2012, the Athletics and Mariners started their seasons early (Puerto Rico?) for two games starting on March 28. They did not play again for a week and then played each other again in the states. The A's had a horrible April and May that season and played .600 ball the rest of the season. A better start to the season could have seen them in the playoffs. April wasn't that bad a month for the Mariners.

I am not really stating that there is a one to one ratio here and the results could be a coincidence. But doubt does creep into your mind and it makes you wonder if the long trip and throwing a team out of sorts has anything to do with it. And if any doubt is caused to creep in on anything, MLB shouldn't be doing it.

I applaud Zack Greinke for saying what he said. He probably speaks for a lot of the players. He certainly speaks for the fans and for this particular baseball writer. I hate messing with the season in any way.

Opening Day is a sacred thing for many people. All the teams should begin their seasons on the same day and doggone it, they should all be day games.

The Angels have a chance in the AL West

The news this spring from the AL West has been interesting to say the least. While nobody should ever discount the Athletics again, the Rangers have three starters with various ailments and question marks behind them. The Mariners got Cano, who now wants the general manager's job, but have Iwakuma and Walker hurting. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the state of California on the West Coast of the USA in North America on Planet Earth just might be able to do some business here.

That opinion might sound a bit whacked for a team that just finished a miserable season at 78-84 with a -4 run differential. Their pitching was abysmal and two big splash free agents, Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton were invisible. But even ZiPS has the team winning 85 games in 2014, good enough for a first place finish in the division. Is that realistic?

There are three keys to the Angels being able to rebound in 2014. The first is what contributions the team gets from the aforementioned Pujols and Hamilton. The second is if the starting rotation can be better. And the third is the bullpen. Let's take a look at each one of these keys individually.

Pujols and Hamilton

Things have not started well for Josh Hamilton as he cannot even get out of the gate in Spring Training with a calf issue. You never like to see a player not be able to start his preparatory part of the season behind. But a calf is not the most serious of injuries and eventually, Hamilton should get his season underway. But what kind of season will it be?

ZiPS has him at 2.3 WAR with only 6 runs above average on offense. Other projections systems have anywhere from a win and a half to 2.7. Those pessimistic numbers are understandable with the season Hamilton had in 2013 that lead to a career low, 1.9 fWAR.

But there are two things to consider. First, Hamilton was much better in the second half with a .344 wOBA compared to .302 in the first half. While that second half wOBA is not where his career has been, it is higher than any of the projection systems predict for him. I do not expect a return to his glory days in Texas, but a .350 wOBA is not out of the question.

Then there is Albert Pujols. How soon we forget that Pujols was the best player on the planet during his first ten years. While regression is natural, his fall off in production the last two to three years seems unnatural. His wheels were never right since 2011 and without a solid base beneath a batter, the batter cannot do what he once did.

Pujols stubbornly played through the pain until reason finally prevailed and he was shut down after just a partial season a year ago. All indications are that he is healthy. I think he has one more great year in him. I have already mentioned in another post that in Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections, Albert Pujols was projected to have the highest offensive score.

They are alone in that assessment, however. Other projection systems range from 1.5 WAR (no way) to 3.8. His wOBA projections go from .336 to .366. His career average is .420. Woof. I will go out on a limb here and predict a .380 wOBA for Pujols in 2014.

If Pujols and Hamilton play even close to what I have predicted, they will make that lineup more dynamic and make Mike Trout even better.

The Rotation

In the last four years, only 22 pitchers have started more than 120 games and compiled over ten WAR. The Angels have two of them in Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson. That said, Weaver scored 5.7 fWAR in each of 2010 and 2011 and did not equal that total for his last two seasons combined. His strikeout rate has come down and he has lost three MPH on his fastball.

All that said, there is just something about Jered Weaver to believe that he will find a way. The projection systems agree (mostly) and have him in the mid-threes range. That seems reasonable and solid to me.

I have to admit that I was surprised by C.J. Wilson's season a year ago. He was really good for the Angels and was one of the most pleasant stories of their lost season. He cut down on his walk rate, kept the ball in the park better and his 3.51 FIP was quite impressive. It changed my opinion of him and my worries about his durability since changing from a closer to a starter have been unfounded. He has been as durable as they come. He should be in the ballpark of where he was a year ago.

The rest of the rotation last year was putrid. Williams, Blanton and Hanson stunk up the joint. Only Blanton of those three remain and if he makes the rotation, nobody will be more surprised than me. The depth charts show a rotation of Weaver, Wilson, Garrett Richards, Tyler Skaggs and Hector Santiago. On paper, that is a much more solid rotation than last year.

Skaggs and Santiago were obtained in a big three-team trade that cost them Mark Trumbo and a minor league pitcher. That is a great deal for the Angels. Pujols will make up for Trumbo's offense and Skaggs and Santiago have to be better than Blanton and Hanson.

Tyler Skaggs never really got going with the Diamondbacks, but that is a tough place to pitch. He had success in the minors that even the projection systems believe will translate to the Angels.

Hector Santiago had a 3.51 ERA as a starter last year for the lousy White Sox team. It should have been better, but it looks like he ran out of gas towards the end of the season and got roughed up a bit in the second half. The experience should put him in good stead for this year and at the very least, should make him one of the better fifth starters in the AL West. Anything would be an improvement over Blanton. Geez.

All in all, the rotation is in much better shape in my opinion. Richards can take the next step and Skaggs and Santiago should be better than what was around last year following a very good 1-2 combo.

The Bullpen

This bullpen still worries me. I am not a big fan of Ernesto Friari. His tendency to give up the long ball is frightening. But his strikeout rate is among the best and if he can do better at not delivering the soul-sucking homers, he could be very good.

The rest of the cast looks just so-so. But I do not worry much about bullpens, especially this time of year. A struggling bullpen is the easiest thing to fix during a season and if the Angels are not comfortable with what they have, lots of cuts by other teams could give them some options at the end of Spring Training.

If the Angels have weaknesses other than what we talked about, it would be at the catcher position and I think Raul Ibanez was a stretch as is the pick up of Carlos Pena. The depth is not there and if bodies go down, the Angels could struggle again.

But all things being equal and somewhat healthy, is this team eight wins better than last year? I think so. Is that enough to beat the Athletics? I'm not so sure. I do believe Angel fans will have a lot more fun this summer.

The Red Sox still haven't retired Wade Boggs' number

Three years ago this month, I wrote a bit of a tirade that one of my favorite players ever, Wade Boggs, had not had his uniform retired by the Boston Red Sox. Three years later, the Red Sox have still not honored one of their great players in this way. The 100th Anniversary of Fenway Park was a great opportunity. It passed by. So what is the problem, Red Sox? Why is one of your very best still treated better by the Tampa Bay Rays than by his home team? The post I wrote way back then is just as relevant now. I have dressed it up a bit, but the post is thus repeated here:

 Wade Boggs is in the Hall of Fame. He did most of his playing damage and built nearly two-thirds of his career numbers while playing for the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox have not retired his number. That's a crime.

There seems to be some thought put into this business by the Red Sox. Apparently, they want their retired numbers to represent players that finished their careers with Red Sox uniform draped around their persons. Yastzremski, of course, played his entire career with the Red Sox as did Jim Rice, Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams. There is one exception that I will take exception to in a minute.

While this makes sense on some level, the new reality is that in modern baseball, very few players will play their entire career with one team. Chipper Jones and Derek Jeter are a couple of the last of a dying breed. Teams have adopted front offices with large groups of analytic employees that now help shape teams and their rosters. Veterans that no longer produce are allowed to "walk" once they hit free agency. The Red Sox are famous for (correctly) jettisoning players who outlive their usefulness. And once upon a time, they did so with Wade Boggs, who was allowed to walk away and sign with the Yankees.

That is not the player's fault. That is the new reality. And as such, decision-making on how retired numbers are thought about should adapt along with the new reality. If a player played a large part of his career with a certain team and the player makes it to the Hall of Fame, his dominant team should retire his number. Period. 

Wade Boggs certainly fits this category. Boggs amassed 2,098 of his 3,010 hits while a member of the Boston Red Sox. 422 of his 578 doubles were hit wearing their uniform. While with the Red Sox, Boggs had five seasons where he led the league in batting and more importantly, six times led the league in on-base percentage. He led the league twice in OPS, once in OPS+, twice in doubles, twice in runs scored and six times in intentional walks. What else does a player have to do?

Here is a statistic for you. Wade Boggs five times hit over .350 with an on base percentage over.400 with 40 or more doubles. Only Rogers Hornsby and Tris Speaker did that more times with seven apiece. His seven-year run from 1983 to 1989 might be the greatest seven-year stretch for a lead off batter in history. 

For four straight seasons from 1985 to 1988, his batting average was never lower than .357 and his on-base percentage was never lower than .450. And here is the favorite statistic: For his career (if the math has been done correctly while looking at his splits in baseball-reference.com), Wade Boggs had a line drive percentage of 26 percent. Amazing.

I was in New England during Wade Boggs' career and Channel 38 was one of the few channels we could get back then while living in New Hampshire and southern Maine. I watched Wade Boggs a lot. And during his seven year peak, he seemed impossible to get out. And it was that kind of production that made Dave Righetti's no-hitter even more spectacular because to get it, he had to get Wade Boggs out multiple times including the swinging strikeout that ended the game. That is how good Wade Boggs was to watch. 

Boggs easily should have won the MVP in 1987. His WAR of 9.1 led the league that season. And a strong case could be made for the years before and after 1987. There is no way the Red Sox make it to the 1986 World Series without Wade Boggs--a World Series the Red Sox would have won if not for the blundering of manager, John McNamara. 

Boggs didn't get started as a major league regular until he was 25 years old. He was a seventh round draft pick that took a while to get a chance. And his minor league numbers were wasted until the Red Sox finally let him play (295 hits in Triple-A with a .418 OBP). Even starting so late, Fangraphs gives him 98.1 WAR for his career. 75.7 of that WAR was accumulated as a member of the Boston Red Sox. That is far more value than Jim Rice's career and more just in Boston than Carlton Fisk accumulated for his entire career!

Speaking of Carlton Fisk, he did not finish his career in Boston. If the Red Sox can retire Fisk's number, they can retire Wade Boggs'.

Boggs gave the Red Sox one of the most amazing careers as a third baseman that franchise has ever seen. He worked extremely hard to make himself a good fielder too. JAWS has him as the third best all around third baseman of all time. Baseball-reference.com has a method of breaking down a career in increments of 162 games (the length of a season. Wade Boggs averaged 200 hits, 94 walks, 100 runs scored and 38 doubles.

Simply put, Wade Boggs was the bomb for the Boston Red Sox and for Major League Baseball. I have been crying out in the wilderness for three years, Mr. Henry. Retire that uniform number. It was 26 with the Red Sox in case you've forgotten. In the last two years, Brock Holt and Scott Podsednik have worn it. Seriously!?

Getting the job done in baseball

There are many passions in my life. I obviously love baseball. But there is also history, genealogy, gardening, golfing, the origin of words, etc. Since there did not seem like anything better to do on the freezing cold March Saturday, I thought I would combine a couple of my passions for this post. This one is about names and where they came from.

The origin of names has always been a passion of mine. Surnames did not just spring up out of nowhere. They often described where a person was from, what he did, who his clan was, who his father was and many more. For example, in Swedish culture, Eric Pederson was Peder's son and his son would be Ericson.

I have watched a lot of baseball in my time and read a million box scores. Those surnames confront me on a daily basis. So I figured I would channel my inner @dianagram and list them out for you. Who knows, this could either bore you to tears or be mildly interesting. I will go alphabetically because it is easier.

Jeff Ballard - a ballard master was in charge of arranging the ballast in the holds of ships. Jeff, one of the most popular Orioles ever, was a ballast that held steady the Orioles' rotation in 1989.

Len Barker - A barker was originally a tanner since tanning leather used the bark of trees to do the job. Later it became a word for a pitchman and barkers can still be found at fairs around the country. Not too many people tanned Len Barker fastballs.

Trevor Bauer - A bauer was a farmer and Trevor keeps getting sent to the farm club. Maybe someday the former #1 draft pick will put it together and reap a harvest from his pitching.

Mike Baxter - A baxter was a baker. So Mike scored 26 runs in 2012, or two baker's dozens.

Chief Bender - A bender cut leather or was a bent wooder, a guy who made wood parts. Bender, a Hall of Fame pitcher from the dead ball era sort of fits those descriptions.

Emilio Bonifacio - A boniface was an innkeeper. And I'm sure Bonifacio has stayed at his share of inns during his career.

John Bowker - a bowker bleached yarn for a living. Alternatively, in some parts of a old England, a bowker was a butcher. John Bowker spent most of his short career on the bench, so he heard his share of yarns.

Smokey Burgess - A burgess represented a borough at official functions. Smokey, who had a long, eighteen-year career, usually represented the pitcher when he pinch hit for him.

Gary Carter / Carter Capps - A carter carted things around in his cart. A carman was similar and we'll let Don Carman do that for us. A cartwright made carts, but certainly did not invent baseball.

Yurendell de Caster - A caster made small bottles. Yurendell made just two small Major League at bats in 2006, but is still playing in the Mexican and independent leagues.

Joba Chamberlain - A chamberlain was a steward for royalty. Mariano Rivera could be considered royalty, could he not?

Happy Chandler - A chandler was a dealer or a trader, which suits Happy to a tee since he was voted into the Hall of Fame as a baseball executive.

Aroldis Chapman - A chapman was a peddler. Aroldis peddled himself after he defected from Cuba.

Lou Collier / Zach Collier - A collier worked on a coal barge, which could not have been too pleasant. Zach Collier has been a disappointment for the Phillies since they drafted him in the first round several years ago. He ended up hitting in the minors like Lou did in the Majors.

Dexter Fowler - A dexter was a dyer and a fowler was a keeper or catcher of birds. We have a jackpot here with two occupation names in one guy. And Fowler has caught his share of fly balls hit by Cardinals.

Bob Feller - A feller cut wood. Mr. Feller broke more than his share of bats with his fastball.

Darrin Fletcher - A fletcher made arrows. There have been nine Fletchers in the Major Leagues. Darrin, who had a long career, is the most recent. The Royals have a minor league player named Brian Fletcher.

Vern Fuller / Larry Walker / Michael Tucker - Fullers, walkers and tuckers were all occupations involving cloth. Tucker has become popular as a first name and there are six such first named players in the minor leagues right now.

Jeff Granger / Wayne Granger - A granger was another word for farmer.

Ben Grieve - A grieve or greave would have been a bailiff, foreman or a sheriff.

Eric Hacker - A hacker made hoes.

Bryce Harper - A harper played the harp, something  I cannot imagine Bryce ever doing.

Bob Horner - A horner made cutlery, handles or combs, mostly from horns as you can imagine.

Wally Joyner - A joyner or joiner were skilled carpenters.

Wee Willie Keeler - A keeler was a barge man or worked on coal riverboats.

Braden Looper - A looper operated a looping machine to close the opening in the toe of seamless hose or to join knitted garment parts. Braden Looper was a closer, so that works.

Sean Marshall or Brett Marshall - A marshall was a horse doctor or shoesmith.

Jordy Mercer - A mercer was a seller of cloth.

John Milner - A milner worked in a mill.

Paul Molitor - A molitor was a miller by trade.

Al Nipper - A nipper was a boy who assisted a wagoner by delivering or picking up goods.

Jarrod Parker - A parker was a park keeper.  Jarrod tries to keep things in the park.

Scott Proctor - A proctor was a university official.

Mark Redman - A redman maintained passages in mines.

Bob Skinner - A skinner was a mule driver or delivered hides. Bob wasn't mule-headed.

Joe Tinker - A tinker was a pots and pans dealer or a knife sharpener. Or he finished with Evers and Chance.

Bill Travers - A travers was a toll collector on bridges. He was rarely popular.

Jacob Turner / Justin Turner - A turner was a lathe worker.

Adam Wainwright - A wainwright was a master builder of wagons or wains. Adam now often carts the Cardinals on his back.

There you have it. By the way, a tasker was a common farm laborer and when I did the family genealogy, that is what my ancestors did generation after generation. How boring!

Have a great weekend!

If wishes were fishes, Brian Dozier

A happy employee is always a good thing and the employee wanting to continue to stay where he enjoys working is refreshing for a team like the Twins whose teams have not exactly been in the hunt in recent seasons. So it is good that Brian Dozier is happy and having a good time. Yet, despite his exciting and unexpected first full season, there is no incentive for the Twins club to get too far ahead of itself despite Dozier's wish for a extended contract.

Whether you believe Fangraphs.com or Baseball-reference.com's valuation systems--which differ on Dozier's value in 2013 by a win--Dozier did have a very good year. Depending on the site, Dozier was a 2.8 or a 3.8 WAR player worth either $14 or $19 million. Based on a season like that, it might be tempting to think that locking him up long-term would be a good idea.

But we are not talking Trout here. These are the cheap seasons teams count on long before a player becomes even arbitration eligible and the Twins will be just fine in paying $550,000 for that kind of value. And who could blame them? That is the system in place: Maximize value in the controllable years and then try not to overpay when the player gets the leverage.

Besides, no one saw this coming from Brian Dozier. Yeah, he had a .779 career OPS in the minors, so .726 in 2013 should not be that shocking. The average was stunted from his minor league days at .244, but the 18 homers were a big surprise. He was a good, all-around solid player at a skill position. He ran the bases well, fielded surprisingly well for moving from his natural position of shortstop to second base. And he hit for pop. What's not to like?

And as good as it was, his season still feels a bit unlucky. His batting average on balls in play was only .278, far below the league average despite having a decent 20.8% line drive percentage. Dozier's BABIP on line drives was .604, well below the league average of .674. He also pops up to the infield more than you would like to see happen.

If you normalize Dozier's BABIP for 2013, he would have hit .262 instead of .246 and his on-base percentage would be .325 instead of the .312 that it was.

Despite those observations, the projection systems are low on Brian Dozier. Only one predict him to hit above .250. Only one predict an OBP as high as 2013 and only two expect his slugging percentage to stay above .400. I expect Dozier to beat those numbers and to repeat or better his value in 2014.

Part of the reason is that I see the growth in his game. In his 81 games in 2012, Dozier swung at 33% of pitches thrown to him out of the strike zone. That same statistic was 23.1% last season. That is quite an improvement.  And while 10 of his 18 homers were on the road, he still had a slugging percentage over .400 at home, which is pretty impressive for a second baseman considering his home park.

Despite my optimism for Dozier in 2014, I still do not think the Twins have any compelling reason to even talk about an extension at this point. By the time Dozier gets any leverage, he will be pushing 30-years-old and we'll see how he is doing then. The system is set up for the teams to get a great rate on value in a player's controllable years so even if Brian Dozier has enough wishes to fill the sea with fishes, he should continue to build his case for his leverage years.

Is Will Venable vulnerable to regression?

Being an East Coast writer sometimes makes it difficult to appreciate or notice players from the other coast. After all, most of their games are starting just when I am thinking about going to bed. I would like to think that I keep track of what's going on pretty well still. But I question that when looking at Will Venable's 2013 season and being surprised at the numbers I saw there. Once discovered, the obvious question is whether he can repeat those numbers.

First off, let me say that I have always rooted for Will Venable. I have a soft spot for the offspring of players that I have watched in the past. I saw Max Venable, Will's dad, play and that automatically makes me interested in Will. More on Max in a second.

J. Baumann of Fangraphs.com has already written a fairly comprehensive piece on Venable and strongly believes in regression for 2014. I wish I had not read it because I like to make up my own mind. But many of you might be like me and will be surprised by Venable's 2013 season, so let's look at some of the numbers.

So what were the surprises I found with Will Venable's season? The first thing I noticed were the stolen bases. I had no idea he was so good at doing that. Venable has stolen more than twenty bases in a season for four straight years. Not only that, he is very good at it.

Venable's success rate of stealing bases for his career is 81.8%. That is fantastic. What I love is that his father was good at stealing bases too. Despite Max being more of a utility player, he stole at a 78% success rate. Combine them both and they, as a family, have been successful for 80.5% of the time stealing bases. I wondered if that was some kind of record (minimum 200 attempts).

My first look was at the two Tim Raines. And stopped dead there as that family's combined percentage was like 84.5% or something. But still, the Venables have done alright stealing bases.

The other thing to look at with Will Venable was his sudden power surge in 2013. In Venable's first five years, he hit 45 homers in 1,582 plate appearances or 2.8%. He hit 22 in just 481 plate appearances in 2013 or  4.6%. That's quite a jump.

The jump is also reflected in his home run to fly ball rate. For his first five years combined, his rate was 10.7%. That figure jumped to 19.8%. Baumann explains part of that (at least) by the change in the dimensions of Petco Field where the right field fences were brought in before the 2013 season. All but one of Venable's homers were pulled to right field.

Baumann also focuses on Venable's success against left-handed pitchers in 2013, something he was abysmal at for most of his career as a left-handed batter. In that piece, Baumann buys somewhat Venable's account of his new stance and the work he had done with hitting coach, Phil Plantier. But you have to wonder if that new found success was the fluke or what the five years before of futility against left-handers more indicative of what to expect moving forward.

The thing about Venable is the contradictions. For the past three seasons, Venable has had a high line drive rate, so you would think his batting average would be higher than his high of in the .260s range. He also has a moderately high BABIP rate for the last three years as you would expect from those line drives. But why isn't the average higher?

You would think that, since he pulls the ball so often, his ground ball BABIP would be low, but it is fairly healthy at .242.

The low average, then, must be in part because he swings at a lot of balls out of the strike zone (37% in 2013) and his high strikeout rate (22.9%). If he was more selective, he would have a better chance at more quality contact.

I can see why Will Venable would be excited about what occurred last year. From appearances, something clicked for him in July and after a putrid first half, he had an wOBA of .388 in the second half good for an OPS in that half of over .900.

But a lot of the fluctuation seemed to be tied to his BABIP, which was extremely high (even for him) at .375 for the half. And he regressed in September after BABIPs through the roof in July and August. Much of the rest of his numbers were similar. He hit eleven homers in the first half and eleven again in the second. He struck out just as much in the first as in the second.

Venable is a nice player overall. He is a good base runner and plays center field very well. He will give you a wins above replacement somewhere between two and three wins. But his lack of plate discipline will not change much and even seems to be heading in the wrong direction. I root for him for the reasons stated above. But I don't see 2014 being as good for him as 2013. But that's why they play the games.

Billy Hamilton better hit .280 or higher

Billy Hamilton played thirteen games at the Big League level in 2013. And yet the accumulated 19.4% of the Cincinnati Reds' stolen bases for the season. So I get why the Reds are excited about having the rookie leading off and creating havoc for the other teams. The question is whether he will get on base enough to make that big of an impact.

Shin-Soo Choo got on base an incredible 300 times last season (162 hits, 112 walks and 26 HBPs). And while I believe Choo had a career year (read: outlier), of all the projections for Hamilton I have looked at, the highest projected number of times on base for Billy Hamilton was by ZiPS at 192 times.

And even with ZiPS being the most generous of the systems with times on base, that system only gave him an on-base percentage of .319. Such a low on-base percentage simply is not high enough.

Let's look at it another way. Of all the times the Reds got on base last season, 34.4% of those base runners scored. Choo's rate was higher at 35.7%. If we apply even Choo's higher rate (by the quality of the hitters behind him), then if Hamilton gets on base 192 times, he will score roughly 69 times, or 38 times less than Choo did a year ago.

The cast around Hamilton for the Reds is pretty much the same as what was in their lineup a year ago. Todd Frazier and Brandon Phillips might have better years. Or they might not. Even if they do, it will be difficult to make up for 38 less runs scored from the top of your lineup.

Billy Hamilton played 502 games in the minor leagues. For the sum total of those games, he batted .280 which gave him a .350 OBP. That would definitely work for the Reds if he could do that. The one problem is that he stumbled at the highest level of Triple-A. In 504 plate appearances in Triple-A, his OBP was .308. That definitely will not cut it for the Reds. I believe that is what troubled the projection systems the most. Well...computers are not troubled, they just spit out stuff based on past history.

Of course, baseball is not just about hitting and scoring runs. There is also preventing runs scored by the other teams. The news is much better there concerning Billy Hamilton. Everyone acknowledges that Choo was miscast as a center fielder last season and his defensive numbers showed the problem.

According to the defensive numbers, Choo cost his team between 1.5 and 1.9 wins last season. Hamilton could go as high as the positive number above replacement. In other words, his defensive could mean a three-win swing over Choo just by chasing down outs in the outfield.

Comparing Hamilton to Choo of last season is probably not fair. Choo had such a good year that most lead-off batters would pale in comparison. Choo was worth 4.2 rWAR or 5.2 fWAR (whichever your preference) while the most generous projection for Hamilton is a 2.5 WAR. In other words, his defense will not make up for the lack of offense.

Billy Hamilton will make things exciting on the base paths. He will have spectacular moments there and in the field. The question here is not any of those things. The question is whether he will get on base enough times to be the lead-off batter.

The problem for the Reds is that there is no one else to bat at the top of the order. The team's best on-base guys are Joey Votto, and to a lesser extent, Jay Bruce. You want those two guys batting third and fourth. Nobody else on the team gets on base nearly enough.

Projections are often wrong and Billy Hamilton could be a break-out star. But for that to happen, he needs to bat .280 and get on base at a .340 clip at least. Either way, it will be one of the most fascinating things to watch this season.