MVN: Most Valuable Network

Via MLBTR, we learned today that the Yankees may have interest in acquiring Chad Qualls, the closer for the struggling Diamondbacks. Their interest depends on a number of other factors, namely the health of the starting pitchers (I'm looking at you, Joba's disappearing fastball), which could necessitate a return to the rotation for Phil Hughes, and the effectiveness of Brian Bruney in the bullpen.

So far this year, Qualls has been no better than average, and probably below average, in terms of most traditional measures of relief effectiveness. He has saved 13 games in 17 chances (76%) with a 4.22 ERA, both below average marks for a closer. He's 31 years old and his best Baseball-Reference comp is.... Scott Linebrink(?).

Why would I be happy if the Yankees acquired him and the ~$1.5M he's owed for the rest of the year? A few reasons. First, he has walked only two batters unintentionally all season (two!). Second, for every batter he has walked, he as struck out over 14 batters, giving him an 8.16 K/9 ratio. And reason number three is that almost 65% of balls put in play against him have been on the ground. Here's a list of guys with a higher groundball rate than Qualls (min. 32 innings):

• Brad Ziegler
• Brian Bass

That's it. That's the list. The reason you don't know Brian Bass (assuming you know Ziegler) is simply because he's not any good at doing anything besides keeping the ball on the ground. As I showed before, Chad Qualls is good at many things in addition to throwing groundballs, one of which is flicking sunflower seeds. According to xFIP, his ERA should be under 2.50, not the 4.22 it stands at right now.

On the surface, Chad Qualls is a nobody. Wikipedia apparently didn't know he existed prior to 2008. Most people have never heard of him, and I'll bet that if acquired, most of Yankees Universe will collectively say, "This guy is gonna help the bullpen?" Strikeouts, control, groundballs... I think he'll do just fine.

Hello out there. I'm Zach Sanders, one of the new writers here at StatSpeak. A little bit about myself: I also write for Baseball Daily Digest and analyze the Mariners for Inside the Majors. I run my own site, MLB Notebook, as well. I have always held StatSpeak in high regard, so this is really an honor to be here. Now that it's out of the way, let's get to the good stuff...

First off, I'd like to thank everybody who applied to join the StatSpeak team over the past week or so. It's been a hectic week for us, but I'm happy with how it's turning out. This process isn't completely done, however, so if I haven't gotten back to you yet about writing, don't take this as a "no." We're still reviewing applicants to see if there's anybody else we'd like to add, and I'll be getting back to each person individually, regardless of how long it takes me.

For now though, I'd like to introduce the newest writers for Statistically Speaking. Some of the names might be familiar, others might not, but they are all quality baseball analysts that bring something to the table. The names are as follows: Zach Sanders, Daniel Jerison, Pat Andriola, and Adam Guttridge. Zach has been providing quality work at various places around the web, including MLB Notebook and Baseball Daily Digest. Daniel Jerison is making his blogging debut, but I think will impress you readers out there. Pat Andriola has been writing at Mets Geek, but won't be joining StatSpeak until early August because of prior commitments. And finally, Adam Guttridge, whose work you may know from THT, will be contributing on a part-time basis.

I'll let each person introduce themselves in more than ~5 words like I just did, but I wanted to get the news out there so we can get this ball rolling. If you haven't heard back from me yet, you will be very shortly, so just be patient for a little while longer.

Bobby Abreu used to be known as a guy with one of the best power/speed combinations in the game. From 1999-2002, he slugged .500 or better in every season and routinely stole 25+ bases. He hit 41 home runs in the home run derby, including a then-record 24 in one round. Since that home run derby, he's transformed into a below-average power hitter, but maintained the .300 batting average ability he had always possessed.

This year, at the age of 35, he's taken that changed approach to a whole new level. With just four home runs on the season, he's slugging only .426 as of this writing. His strikeouts have also been declining, which is a strange thing to happen to a player past his prime, and his groundball percentage has been increasing the last four years. It's possible that he has recognized his decreased power potential and adjusted his swing to be more conservative.

Here's what stands out the most: Abreu has stolen 16 bases this year and been caught only twice. Sixteen! That's more than burners like Curtis Granderson, Brian Roberts, Shane Victorino, and Carlos Beltran, not to mention his higher success rate than all of those except for Beltran (who is one of the most successful base stealers ever).

Abreu has seemingly found the foutain of youth with an increased spring in his step. Even his UZR has improved, though it still remains below average and is subject to lots of noise. With all the talk these days about late-career resurgences being fueled by PED's, Abreu's transformation is a welcome sight.

If you've been reading StatSpeak for a while now like the rest of the world, you've probably noticed some turnover in the past year or so. A blog that was at one point written only by Pizza Cutter expanded to include some of the bigger names in sabermetrics, such as Eric Seidman, Colin Wyers, Brian Cartwright, and Matt Swartz (vote for Matt and Brian!). Sometimes relative unknowns at the time they started here, these guys have since moved on to sites like The Hardball Times, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, and even done consulting for Major League teams and players. While StatSpeak is proud to have such a strong alumni list, which you can read in full in Pizza's Valedictory, we must constantly be searching for new people to fill the void left by talented writers moving on to other things. As you can see, I'm still here ;)

With that, I am putting out a call to the readers of Statistically Speaking, asking for your help. We would all like to keep this blog going full time, and it will be a difficult task to do once Matt undoubtedly wins BP Idol. So if you are interested in writing for StatSpeak, send me an email at dcn29@cornell.edu. Don't post your interest in the comments section, because I have no way of contacting you if you do so. This isn't a formal application or anything like that, and there aren't any qualifications you must have, except for a passion for baseball. Also, as you can probably tell, the schedule here is pretty flexible, so don't let that be a concern.

All you have to do is tell me your name and that you're interested, but feel free to point me to any of the work you've done in the past, or even write a sample post (neither of these things are required in your email). I'll get back to each person as soon as I can with further instructions.

I've been working on a list of writers that I have found to be interesting, but I'm 100% sure that there are talented people out there that haven't been exposed yet. If you want to write for a respected blog with a wide readership of intelligent baseball fans, this could be your chance.

If you don't know him already, you should try and learn a thing or two about Mark DiFelice. In a nutshell, he's a reliever for the Brewers who, after a long career in various levels of the minor leagues, has been mowing down hitters with nothing but an 82-mph fastball. No knuckleball or gyroball or anything like that, just batting practice fastballs that make guys like Hanley Ramirez look foolish.

In a post at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron presents this pitch f/x graph from one of DiFelice's games:


Gameday classifies those pitches as sliders and changeups because, well, major league pitchers just don't throw nothing but fastballs at 82 miles per hour and get away with it. DiFelice isn't just getting away with it, he's been more than 2 linear weights (LW) runs above average per 100 pitches with it despite throwing it almost every single time. The average horizontal movement of that "thing" is between +1.4 and -2.9 inches, so it's pretty straight. But part of what makes it effective is that, compared to the average major league fastball, it's not straight at all. Major leaguers have fastballs that, on average, tail about 5 inches to the arm side. Don't believe me that it's a fastball, DiFelice says so himself in that Yahoo link above.

I'm not going to go further in analyzing DiFelice, because my pitch f/x abilities are severely limited in that regard, and Dave Cameron already did a good job of it. What I noticed today was that there is another mostly unknown pitcher who has a similarly puzzling fastball.

That pitcher is David Robertson, a reliever for the Yankees. Robertson was known in the Yankees system as a guy with a devastating curveball and an average fastball. Radar guns confirmed this in the major leagues, when people saw the 90-91 mph fastball and his big looping curve racking up the strikeouts. I checked out his player card today and was surprised to see that 80% of his pitches this season have been fastballs. Not only that, his fastballs are registering 1.47 LW runs above average per 100 pitches. That puts him in the same company as Jonathan Broxton. Take another look at that graph above for DiFelice, and then look at this graph for Robertson's game on June 12th against the Mets:


Ignoring the colors, look at the cluster of dots in the middle of the graph. Yes, I realize that DiFelice's ball drops a lot more than Robertson's, but the horizontal movement is almost exactly the same. Robertson's fastball is more like a cutter than anything else, and that's probably why it has been so effective at around 90 mph, despite throwing it 4 out of every 5 pitches.

Ask any Yankee fan how Robertson has been able to have a strikeout rate of over 13 per 9 innings this year and over 11 per 9 innings in his career, and he'll probably tell you it's because of that curveball. And it might be because of it--after all, that huge curve might be in the back of a hitter's mind, causing him to miss the fastball. If you want to surprise him, tell him just how effective Robertson's "just average" fastball has been, and you'll end up looking real smart.

This past week I was on a long bus ride sitting next to a (Canadian) friend I had just met about two weeks ago. Because my idle thoughts usually revolve around baseball, our conversation eventually shifted to that subject. As you probably expected, the average Canadian isn't so knowledgeable about baseball, Tom Tango not withstanding. I was explaining different ideas to him, and he was asking a lot of good questions.

So we're talking about what pitches different guys throw, and he asks about pitch counts, so I mentioned my post from a few days ago. I started to tell him about the whole statistics side of baseball, and player value and such. That's when the "R" word slipped out. He looked at me blankly and said, "Do you expect me to know what a 'replacement player' is?" This friend of mine had only a vague notion of what the minor leagues consisted of, and now here I was being asked to explain a concept that not even JC Bradbury understands.

Here's where the title of this post finally comes into play. I was searching for a way explain player value and the components of WAR (Wins Above Replacement)--batting, defense, positional adjustments, and the replacement level (essentially playing time) adjustment--to someone who didn't know the difference between a curveball and a slider. As I mentioned before, I'm usually thinking about baseball. But after that, food is a close second. And food is what this post will be about.

I used the following analogies to explain to my friend the different concepts associated with WAR. Feel free to use this as a guide if a sabermetrics newbie ever asks you to explain wins above replacement, and/or the value section of a FanGraphs player card.

Batting

The first thing you have to realize in batting is that an average hitter has value. If you look at the batting section of a FanGraphs player card, you'll see numbers that are both positive and negative in this section, depending on the player. Mark Teahen of the Kansas City Royals has both positive and negative numbers on his card, but is usually around zero batting runs. However, in every year since 2006, he has provided his team positive value, despite just an average glove. How is it possible for zero to be positive? Think of it like a plain turkey sandwich (I know, 5 paragraphs in I finally get to the title). If you had a plain turkey sandwich for lunch and dinner every single day of the year, you wouldn't be saying, "wow that was fantastic!" after every single meal. Chances are, you'd feel that each meal, taken in isolation, was pretty decent, but nothing too special and nothing too bad. A turkey sandwich scores about a 5 out of 10 in terms of deliciousness, assuming you don't get sick of having it every day. It will keep you from being hungry and dying of starvation, but let's be honest...it's not #1 on your list of things to eat before you die. The fact that a turkey sandwich will satisfy and sustain you is why it has value despite being just average. 

Replacement Level

What is replacement level? In baseball terms, it's the AAA minor league scrub who you can get for the league minimum. In food, it's the simple bread and water. You can't get much worse than bread and water and expect to survive for very long. Essentially, this meal is the minimum level of food you can expect to have in your diet. The 2003 Detroit Tigers were the bread and water of baseball, and even they seemed to skip a few meals. Despite being horrendously bad, the Tigers were still considered major leaguers, just as bread and water would still be considered a diet.

Remember the plain turkey sandwich from before? An average turkey sandwich has value because it is more valuable than bread and water or a AAA scrub. Bread and water is the minimum, and every turkey sandwich you have instead of bread and water increases your level of satisfaction and overall health. The replacement level adjustment found on FanGraphs player cards accounts for playing time. A replacement player's offense is expected to be around 20 runs below average for every 600 plate appearances. So for every 600 plate appearances, we add around 20 runs to a player's contribution to measure value versus replacement level instead of versus average. This is why a player who is average on offense, average on defense, and doesn't play any position especially well has positive value. One such player can be said to be Mark Teahen. And this is why Mark Teahen is like a turkey sandwich. A turkey sandwich won't be anything special on offense or defense, and it can serve various purposes--at the beach, a picnic, dinner, etc.--but the more times you eat a turkey sandwich instead of bread and water, the more positive value you will have in your life.

Positional Adjustment

This one took some thought, but I eventually came up with something that I think works pretty well. Again, we'll stick with Mark Teahen and the plain turkey sandwich as examples. Here's why we actually use positional adjustments in baseball: Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), the fielding metric used at FanGraphs, measures fielding versus the average player at the same position. Zero is average, plus-15 is very very good, minus-15 is very very bad, and it's all measured in runs above or below average. Mark Teahen in 2006 played primarily at third base, and was about average there (zero runs above average). In 2007, Teahen moved to right field, which is an easier position to play, and was 8 runs above average. All UZR numbers are calculated specific to the position a player plays. So Teahen was zero runs better than the average third baseman in 2006, but 8 runs better than the average right fielder in 2007. The average player is expected to add about 10 runs to his UZR rating when moving from third base to right field. This makes sense, since it should be obvious that right field is easier to play than third base. That statement is easier to understand when looking at more similar positions, so think about it this way: most second basemen became second basemen because they weren't good enough to play shortstop. Those players got a boost in their UZR ratings by moving to an easier position, and we have to account for that when determining player value. An average fielder at shortstop is more valuable than an average fielder in right field, despite both having the same UZR. All of the positional adjustments can be found at this link. Now let's get back to food.

I said before that a turkey sandwich would rate about a 5 out of 10 for most people. But how would that rating change depending on who you asked? If you ask a world-class Italian chef what he thought of it, he'd probably give you a lower rating than, say, a homeless person desperate for food. Depending on the situation a turkey sandwich is eaten in, its rating would change; depending on the position a player plays, his UZR will change. It's the same turkey sandwich, it's just playing a different position. The positional adjustment accounts for this. Just as it's easier to get a 7 out of 10 rating from someone who's used to eating scraps than it is from a world-class chef, it is easier to save 5 runs in right field than it is in center.

Final Thoughts

I didn't give defense its own section, because it's pretty much explained throughout the rest of the article. I hope this can serve as a guide to anybody trying to explain the basics of win values to someone who doesn't have a clue what they're all about. While you're busy doing that, I'm gonna go get something to eat.