The Overbay Black Hole

by Mike Z

Over the last 3 game series against the Orioles, Clint Hurdle decided to sit Lyle Overbay to help try and "reignite" him for the remainder of the season. By "reignite" him, I'm fairly sure he means to help him show up for the season. The decision came because he's now hitting .227, well below his .271 career average, as well as an OBP of .306 and SLG of .351, all being his career worsts by far. I don't think even the most optimistic fan thought he was going to hit much more than his .243 last year, but the main reason for the signing was for his his defense, with the Pirates hoping his bat would be adequate. In this post, I'm going to determine how bad his bat has been, and whether his defense good enough to keep him on the roster.

First going over his hitting, it really solidifies how bad he's been. His BABIP is .269, slightly low, but normalizing by to near .300 would only bring his average up around his .243 batting average of last year. His batted ball info indicates that he just isn't making good contact anymore, so the low BABIP may be expected. His line drive percentage is 16%, lowest of his career, and well below his 21.5% career average. His ground ball percentage is 2 percent higher than his career average and his fly ball percentage is about 4 percent higher than his career average. An inflated ground ball percentage is a great indicator that a player is no longer having good at-bats or making good contact, often a telltale sign of an aging player losing his ability.

While his hitting stats are looking horrible, his defense, the reason for his contract, has been abysmal. While he only has 6 errors for a fielding percentage of .991, this stat (like always, in my opinion) tells us nothing of how he's performed. It seems that he has little range anymore, and his UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) seems to indicate that too. While most defensive metrics have their flaws, there is such huge drop here that it is very telling. His UZR/150 (divided by 150 to project over 150 games) is -14.1, meaning he's cost the team 14 runs, more than double his career worst, and 1 of 3 season in which it's been negative. Remember, this is a cumulative stat, so he's on pace to cost the team 24 runs. He's been a butcher in the field, and really did earn this benching.

Combining his offense and defense, his WAR (Wins Above Replacement, meaning playing a AAA player instead) for the season is -0.7. Sure that sounds bad, and for reference, that WAR is lowest in the league for all 1B, and only 4 players are worse in the entire league. So what do you you do with him? Here's a couple ideas I've thought of that are plausible.

1. Keep him on the team, but platoon him.
I don't really see this happening, and this would have been more likely if Steve Pearce were healthy. Pearce (right handed) is a career .300 hitter against lefties, and Overbay (left handed) hit .190 and .220 each of the last 2 years against righties.

2. Cut him, call up Matt Hague
I think this would be a nice move to make, but not sure how likely it really would be. Hague isn't really considered a prospect, as he's already almost 26, but he's been hitting well. His triple slash line is .312/.361/.435 this year in AAA, with 5 HR and 35 RBI in 70 games. Not too much going on there with the bat slugging wise, but he'd likely hit much better than Overbay and the Pirates will be able to find out what they have in the player.

3. Cut him, move Garrett Jones to 1B and call up Alex Presley
I listed this last because I feel like this would be the most likely to happen, and would be my preference. Sure Presley is 26, but he has flat out hit the past 2 years in AAA. This year, he's hitting an impressive .332 and slugging .506, along with 15 stolen bases. If they want to protect Presley, he's a lefty so the Pirates can continue their RF platoon if desired. Garrett Jones isn't the ideal glove at 1B, but he showed enough in the Orioles series that he could be serviceable there.

Any scenario with Overbay being cut will probably be a few weeks down the line at the earliest. They didn't cut Aki Iwamura until late June, about a month after it was obvious he couldn't play anymore and let Brendan Donnelly linger in the bullpen until the end of July. It's amazing to think how well the Pirates are doing now in the past few week having 4 or 5 automatic outs in their lineup (Overbay, Cedeno, Wood, Brown/Toreagas/McKenry) The Pirates need production from 1B if they want to continue hovering around .500 and cutting bait with Lyle Overbay will go a long way, as well as let the Pirates know in some of their younger players.

McCutchen: in the midst of a breakout

by Mike Z

So when I decided to do a post on Andrew McCutchen, I was planning to write how I though that he's striking out way too much to begin the season, which is keeping his production down. After looking at his stats, I realized he's probably having the best season of his career. Sound weird for a guy with a batting average of .246? I'll break down what I found to try and prove that he is having a very good season so far, and that it should only be getting better.

The first thing that jumps out to expain the low batting average is his low BABIP of .259. His career BABIP over his first two years was .319, so it's reasonable to expect it to regress back over .300, causing his average to jump as well. That said, I wanted to look into his batted ball statistics to see if there is a reason why the BABIP is low. It looks like batting in the 3 spot and trying to hit more HRs has a lot to do with it. The first 2 years had a fly ball percentage of about 39% and this year it is 46.9%, which in turn dropped his ground ball percentage from 43% to 36.7% From him trying to hit for more power, he's had fewer batted balls that he hasn't had the opportunity to run out for an infield single. But has this swing helped his power output?

A great indicator for power is ISO (isolated power), which is calculated by slugging percentage minus the player's batting average. In a nutshell, it takes out singles and measures the player's ability to hit for extra bases. McCutchen's ISO is .207 , good for 5th among all CF. The leauge average this year for ISO is .137, and McCutchen's highest ISO before this year was his rookie year when it was .185, which is a huge difference.

His plate discipline has improved greatly from the beginning of the year when he struck out 27 times in April, but only 9 times so far in May. His K% is down to 17.9% which is still a tad high for him, but it's well below league average of 20.7% His BB% is a great 12.6%, 4% over league average. Combined, his BB/K ratio of 0.81 is 2nd among all CF (Denard Span leads with 10.7). He's really putting it together now. His triple slash line for May is .277/.368/.494 which is much more like the McCutchen we expect.

Switching over to his fielding, he is drastically improved from last year. Anybody who's into sabermetrics will tell you how flawed all the defensive metrics are, but UZR seems to be the most reliable, although it doesn't take into account how hard a ball is hit. Last year his UZR/150 (ultimate zone rating over 150 games) was a miserable -12.9 but this year it's a respectable 7.9, good for 10th among CF. For fun, gold glover Nate McLouth is dead last at -29.1.

Putting everything together, his WAR is 1.8, tied for 27th in the league and tied for 7th among all CF. For as much as Pittsburghers tend to say he's only having a decent season and for the few people that drive me crazy saying he won't be as good as Jason Bay (he already is). If he continues on this trend through June like he produced in May, he'll be all over Baseball Tonight and MLB Network before you know it.

Should the Pirates have kept Jose Bautista?

by Mike Z

In the past couple weeks, a few people in the media and radio talk shows started tearing into the Pirates again for trading away Jose Bautista. Sure, it's simple enough to say "look at what he's doing now" to blast the trade, but very little is being brought up about his statistics at the time to determine whether the transaction was justifiable. That said, I decided to look at Bautista's statistics before the trade, and to provide some other "failed prospects" over the last couple seasons with the Pirates. This should hopefully provide some context over the moves.

With the statistics provided by Fangraphs, I compiled and calculated totals from the beginning of their careers (whether or not they began their career in Pittsburgh), up until the last game they played for the Pirates, as well as their age when the Pirates parted ways with them. The categories I used were Plate appearances (PA), batting average (AVG), on base percentage (OBP), slugging percentage (SLG), home runs (HR), runs batted in (RBI), and cumulative Wins Above Replacement player over the time span (WAR). I added in WAR because it also takes into account the player's defensive metrics as well. Here's my list of 5 players, in order of most plate appearances and let's see if you can guess who they are. Also, from not knowing who these players are, decide which, if any, of these 5 you would keep around.

Player A - age 24

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	RBI	WAR
1665	0.269	0.327	0.394	33	167	1.4

Player B - age 27

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	RBI	WAR
1562	0.234	0.332	0.361	43	97	-0.3

Player C - age 25

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	RBI	WAR
1228	0.225	0.341	0.338	22	108	1.3

Player D - age 25

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	RBI	WAR
779	0.258	0.317	0.393	17	81	0.8

Player E - age 25

PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	RBI	WAR
743	0.238	0.303	0.385	15	78	0.7

OK class, pencils down. Here's who they are:

A=Lastings Milledge

B=Jose Bautista

C=Andy LaRoche

D=Delwyn Young

E=Brandon Moss

Anybody else as surprised as I was that Lastings Milledge out-performed Bautista with only about 100 plate appearances separating the two? With Milledge, Bautista, and LaRoche having a comparable number of plate appearances, I feel they make for a great comparison. I think these numbers make a great case that the Bautista trade at the time, is not only defensible, but almost surprising that anybody would trade for him at all.

Watching Bautista while on the Pirates, it was pretty obvious that he had the capability to hit for power, but the only person who he had a higher slugging percentage than on this list was Andy LaRoche, which in itself is pretty remarkable (I re-checked my calculations 3 or 4 times because I didn't believe it either!)

With 1500+ plate appearances, it looked like Bautista wasn't going to approve much more, and already being 27 at the time, there was every indication that at that time, he looked like nothing more than the 25th man on a roster. The WAR is glaring for him because over 2004 to 2009, his overall play actually cost the team about a win. This is mostly driven by his defense. Although he could play 5-6 positions, he graded only below average at RF, and downright awful at everything else but 1B.

You could make a great case that Milledge would have been projected to have a better career that Bautista. Regardless, there was no way anybody would have predicted THIS. Remember, he was a waiver claim by Toronto, so Every NL team passed on him before he passed through the AL. Even then, Toronto threatened to non-tender Bautista if he took contract negotiations into arbitration (he signed a one year deal instead). Sure, it sucks seeing the guy you had have possibly the greatest career turnaround in MLB history, or maybe even professional sports. There's no way of knowing, or even anticipating, Bautista doing this with the Pirates if he weren't traded. There have been reports that the mechanics of his new swing were suggested by the Pirates coaching staff but that he only decided to accept the changes when he realized that he would be out of the majors otherwise.

It is completely unfair to judge this trade based on Bautista's current production. Almost nobody cared, let alone were upset, at the time of the trade. He was that replaceable at the time and Andy LaRoche was coming in to try his hand as the next 3B. It doesn't look like there was anything else the Pirates could have done, and we just need to accept that, and just enjoy the show that Jose Bautista is putting on. A story like this may not happen again in our lifetime.

Stop with the bunting Hurdle before I hurt someone

by Mike Z

/RANT ALERT - hide the small children

I was able to watch the last two innings of the Pirates-Astros game as a study break, and did I make a mistake with that. Unless it's the pitcher hitting, I very rarely agree with bunting people over. ESPECIALLY when you're taking the bat out the hands of your best hitter.

In the 8th inning last night, the Pirates were down 3-2, with the pitcher's spot due to hit. Wilton (yes, Wilton) Lopez has relieved Wandy Rodriguez. Xavier Paul pinch hits and takes a walk on 4 pitches. So with a pitcher that isn't hitting the strike zone and McCutchen coming up, Hurdle decides he wants to just hand them an out. It doesn't matter if he's slumping or not. Considering his statistics as well as Lopez, do you want to know what it did for the Pirates? It DECREASED their odds of winning by 4%. Who cares if Paul is on 2nd with 1 out? I don't know about you, but I'd rather have first and second with no out from a single/walk/error, or if he hits a double, the game could likely be tied.

Hurdle trying to decide if he should bat Maholm 2nd.

The chance of hitting into a double play with an average hitter, let alone your best player, usually statistically hurts your chances to win, let alone break even. For every double play, there's a ground ball out to the right side of the field that advances the runner anyway. If McCutchen wants to try to bunt for a hit and not a straight sacrifice, that I have no problem with. The Pirates are not good enough to overcome their manager making it tougher for them to win games. So far, he's had McCutchen, Tabata, Walker, Overbay, Doumit, and also Alvarez who wasn't able to get his bunt down (which I could rant on for a few more hours with that decision alone).

It doesn't matter if bunting the man over is tradition strategy. I understand doing away with the sac bunt is more of a sabermetric thought process, and I probably wouldn't have as much of a problem if a position player like Cedeno is bunting, but this is inexcusable to me. Hurdle's showing so far he has no problem having anybody on the roster bunt. I think he's done a lot of things right this year, but if he keeps this up, I'll (almost) want John Russell back.

/END RANT

Death Metal Voice Exercises

Pirates Profitable with Last Place Teams

The Post-Gazette reported yesterday that the Pirates have had a $34.8 million profit over the last three seasons. Additionally, the Pirates paid out $20.8 million to the team's ownership group in 2008. Approximately half of that covered taxes on profits and the other half was interest on a loan made by the Nuttings to the Pirates. I realize that some of this money was used to pay taxes and reduce debt, but when you combine these two figures the Pirates have actually managed to make $55.6 million in three years with last place teams. Now here’s my first question, should Bob Nutting and the Pirates organization be faulted for running a business well? Would you rather see that they are just scrimping by and spending every dollar they have on the team or does it comfort you to know that they will not have a gun to their head any time soon to unload a player like they did with Aramis Ramirez.

Here’s the next question, what is the motivation for the Pirates to compete if they are making huge profits with a last place team? It’s common sense that trying to win is a much greater financial risk at this point. A reasonable salary range that a Pittsburgh Pirates fan could hope the team would spend is about $70 million. This will not happen next year, but it should happen in the next few years if management has any confidence in their plan.

Another way of thinking about this (and I know this has been said many times before), is you can build a winning team with less than $80 million. Look at the Padres ($38.2 million, 2^nd lowest), Rangers ($55.2 million, 5^th lowest), and Rays ($72.3 million, 12^th lowest). These teams are pretty much locks to be playing this postseason and there is still a month of the season left. It’s obvious that this CAN be done, but the Pirates just don’t seem to be able to have the same results. Now look at the Cubs ($146.6 million, 3^rd highest), Mariners ($86.9 million, 14^th highest), and Orioles ($81.2 million, 17^th highest). All of these teams spend a lot of money and all of them are atrocious. How are these teams able to waste so much money on players that aren’t helping them win games? In fact, that might be a better question. What is worse for baseball, the payroll habits of the Yankees or the Pirates? In a recent poll on ESPN.com, it looks like people feel that they are each pretty bad for the game. This is kind of a hidden poll so it only has 1300 total votes so far, but the Yankees received 52% and the Pirates received 48%. I really think each side is very troubling. The Yankees spend insane amounts of money each year to do their best to put a winning team on the field (they have contributed over 95% of all luxury tax payments since it began in 2003). I’m sure they also look at their bottom line, but it comes second to winning. The Yankees are putting their hard earned money right into Bob Nutting’s bottom line (he doesn't accept a salary so I can't say his pocket), which is not the intention of a luxury tax. On the other hand, how are the Pirates supposed to compete with teams that put up $10 million per year for an average pitcher? The Yankees have signed a few busts to large contracts over the last decade, but take Jason Giambi’s contract for example. If the Pirates signed a player to a 7 year, $120 million deal and he hits like crap, it would set our franchise back ten years.

This is my message to Pirates ownership. You have a marketing strategy this year with the theme of, “Pride. Passion. Pittsburgh Pirates.” This accurately describes what the Pirates once were. From Honus Wagner to Roberto Clemente to Willie Stargell to Barry Bonds, some of the greatest players in MLB history have worn a Pittsburgh Pirates jersey. That was then and this is now. Is anyone in Pittsburgh proud to be a Pirates fan right now? I know I’m not. The Pittsburgh Pirates have an amazing 123 year history. They have accomplished many things that few other teams have. But for the last 18 years (14.6% of their history) they have been an embarrassment. Put a winning team on the field or sell the team. It’s that simple. The people of Pittsburgh deserve a team that we can be proud of as fans. Respect the game of baseball and stop running a fireworks and bobbleheads business.

DVE Morning Show - Hey Pittsburgh Pirates