Do Inning Limits Help?

Do Inning Limits Help?

            This is going to be a short one but one that is going to be more and more relative.  With the injury to Matt Harvey this week it’s bringing up the question again that limiting the innings of a pitcher, not just young arms, to save their arms for the future.  The question really is not if they should do it or not since a team is going to do it if we want them to or not, the real question is does it do anything?

            When it comes to my opinion, I believe that we should always stand on the side of caution and doing what we can to limit the injuries of all players not just pitchers.  In an interview done by Ben Lindbergh of Baseball Prospectus, Glenn Fleisig of the American Sports Medicine Institute had this to say

            “Trying to keep things simple, our science and our medicine here at ASMI has shown some things. It’s not just the velocity, but the pitcher with better mechanics and sharing the load more with the whole body, whereas the pitcher with worse mechanics is putting a bigger share of the load on your elbow or shoulder. So not all 90-mph fastballs are the same. A 90-mph fastball with proper mechanics is less stressful on the elbow and shoulder, so mechanics is definitely one factor.

The other thing is—this is a big concept that people are overlooking—the arm, the elbow, the shoulder of any of these pitchers—these are living people, they’re not pieces of metal or plastic or whatever. So you can’t just count things up. In other words, you’ve heard the analogy: people say ‘You have so many bullets, and you don’t shoot all your bullets,’ you shouldn’t always just blow it on one game or season or this or this or that. That analogy works with bullets, because if you had a case of bullets and you shot them all, you would be out. But an arm, or pitches in an arm, is not a proper analogy, because a pitcher doesn’t have a certain number of throws in his arm. That’s true because pitchers are living, breathing, and their arm is repairing. The arm is breaking down and repairing.”

I like what Fleisig says here.  Pretty much saying that its not just a it’s not so much that the player throwing over and over and over that hurts a player.  Yes this plays a factor but the more important thing is the mechanics of the pitcher that will determine his health.

            In the end it’s going to be the teams who decide what they want to do with a pitcher.  Me I think there’s no “harm” in watching a pitchers innings but if he is properly managed by the manager and bullpen coach I don’t see the harm in letting him go.  If you’d like to see more of the interview, after all that is a small bit of a larger interview but I didn’t want this post being another novel, here’s the link.  http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=17517

I suggest taking a look if your interested.

Dipoto vs Scioscia: Who's to Blame?

Who’s to Blame: Jerry Dipoto or Mike Scioscia?

            It has been one disappointing season for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.  After signing Josh Hamilton this last offseason to a 5 year $125 million (that’s 25 mil. a year) and signing both CJ Wilson and Albert Pujols to a combined 15-year 317.5 million contracts the Angels have just been average or worse.  Sure they’ve had their moments but most came from young superstar Mike Trout, to be fair though Pujols had a fine season the slow start makes things scary moving on.  In the end who’s to blame for the lackluster seasons the last 2 years even with all these “star” players.  The GM who picked the players?  The coaches who are unable to bring out the potential of the players?  Is it the players themselves not playing to the potential and not making adjustments?  Well I want to look at the rumor that either Jerry Dipoto or Mike Scioscia is going to be fired at the end of the season and I want to see who the real problem is.

            To start this off the person to blame for the Angels problems is actually quite simple to spot and name but no way to get rid of, mainly cause he is the boss.  Arte Moreno is very much the Jerry Jones or George Stienbrenner of LA, very active and very destructive at times to the team at times.  As a quick example before we move on to Moreno, back in 2011 it has been reported that Arte Moreno told GM at the time Tony Reagins that he was to be fired if he didn’t finish the deal for Vernon Wells in 24 hrs and we know how that deal went.

            Arte Moreno purchased the Anaheim Angels back on May 15^th, 2003 from the Walt Disney Corp for $180 million.  His first move, as owner was to reduce ticket prices and beer price and showed his willingness to improve the team/spend big money by signing Vladimir Guerrero.  The next major move was to change the name from Anaheim Angels to the Los Angels of Anaheim, a change that to this day is mocked openly and in my opinion is the worst name change in history of sports.  In 2006 he signed a very lucrative deal with Fox Sports West for broadcast rights to the team.  Since Moreno has taken control the team has been very successful on the field with Western Division Champions in 04, 05, 07, 08, 09 and 3 consecutive winnings seasons (07-09).

            That is an abridged history of Moreno ownership of the Angels, up to this point he’s successful but the cracks are showing.  Moreno does not have a baseball mindset and doesn’t fully understand the game as people that he hires to do the job.  With the example I gave with Wells all signs pointed to it being not just a bad idea since Wells has never played well in Anaheim.  He forced the deal, and in the process taking one of the worst contracts in sports, to get him costing money.  There is some evidence to say that similar things were said about Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols but nothing so concrete.  So that’s my feelings about Moreno and my problems I have with him but lets get to the heart of the question.

            Jerry Dipoto took the job on October 28^th 2011 after being the intern GM for the Diamondbacks the previous years.  He has a very little track record so it’s hard to say that he’ll get better or get worse.  What values he has for his teams and what is his philosophy when it comes to building teams.  I feel that he hasn’t had a lot of time to really make the team what he wants as much as what Moreno tells him to do.  But that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen things I didn’t like, as an example his decision to not sign Trout to a long term contract that could have locked him in for multiple years and cheap in the long term.  Not trying to repair the farm system with trades, international signings, etc.  The team had an opportunity to trade Howie Kendrick for prospects this previous trade deadline, this could have helped the team try and form a system since the signings of Pujols and Hamilton makes the team forfeit their 1^st round pick last and this draft.  That’s what I see of Dipoto, so lets look at the other half.

            Mike Scioscia has been the manager of the Angels since 1999 and has proven to be one of the smarter and better managers in baseball.  Winning a World Series back in 2002 against the Giants and winning multiple Western Championships in the over 10-year career.  He’s always favored small ball to power hitters which is one thing that I don’t knock him for but his inability to change over time with the new style of game has started to worry me.  He doesn’t rely or use (to my knowledge) advanced scouting tactics to try and play the numbers on a batter and leans more old school tactic.

            I wanted to give each person on his post an equal show of what I see and believe; I wanted to represent them as best I could so you could make a choice yourself.  In the end the question is still the same, if one of these guys has to go who would I say is “more to blame”?  While I don’t like saying things like this I’d still have to say Dipoto is probably the guy I’d say is hurting the team more.  Scioscia is just as much to blame but losing a good manager is harder on a team when the new one may not be any better.  Then again we never know since if the Angels had 20/20 hindsight they could have had Joe Maddon as their coach and we wouldn’t even be having his conversation.

Scouting Report: Prince Fielder

Scouting Report: Prince Fielder

            At this point I’ve mostly looked at players having a good year, and not always the big named players.  Chris Davis, Hunter Pence, Jean Segura and Domonic Brown are all having a good season or better from when I did my report of them.  But lets take a look at someone that is a big name in the sport and, more importantly, is struggling this year even if you don’t see it.  Today let’s take a look at the big time slugger Prince Fielder and see what the stats can tell us about him.

            Prince Fielder is easily one of the best hitters in baseball and even if he’s having a bad season this year.  There have been signs that something like this could happen; last year we saw his BA rise while his SLG and HR numbers go down slightly from what we expect from Prince.  This year he’s hitting a dismal .260/.348/.436, now granted the OBP is still good which is a good sign that his could be just a bump in the road but his SLG being almost 100 points lower than his career is a disturbing thing.  Well let’s stop the talking and let the stats say what’s going on so here we go.

            I mentioned that the OBP of Fielder is actually good, his estimated OBP is sitting at .088, which is good, but not great, he’s not walking as much as he normally does.  It’s not great but it’s also not bad; his BB% is sitting at 11% and his career BB% is 13% so not a massive dip but it is a drop.  While I don’t think this is a major issue it is something to watch since it has been slowly dropping the last 2 years.  On the other end his K% is sitting nicely at 17.5%; which matches his career numbers.  This is actually a good thing to see since, while still higher than his last few years, it’s in line with his career and I don’t see it rising.  Last but not least his K/BB% is currently at 1.5 meaning he’s getting about 2 K’s for every BB and that’s a good pace.

            Lets look at his BA and Contact% next since that’s where we’re seeing the biggest dip from previous season to his year.  Fielder is batting .260 right now which is 20 points lower than his career line, he’s only batted this low 1 other time back in 2010.  1 good place to at least get our start is the BABIP; Fielder’s career BABIP is .301.  As a reminder BABIP stands for Batting Average on Balls In Play and works much like a “luck factor”.  As of right now Fielder’s current BABIP is .288, 20 points lower than his career line.  It’s his lowest since 2007 but I’m not to worried about this after all the idea of BABIP is to kind of gauge things that he doesn’t have a tremendous amount of control over.  His LD%, GB% and FB% are all in line with his career normal’s, in fact his LD% is up by 2 points which is interesting when we start looking at the power.  Fielder is swinging outside the zone more than he normally does at 30% and makes contact with those pitches 65% of the time its not great and may be one cause of his troubles but there’s not trend showing this is the new Fielder so I’m not to worried, his contact% in the zone is currently 83% and a swing% of 68%.  Again good but you would rather see him swing more in the zone than outside the zone.  Prince is swinging overall more than normal but again there’s no evidence of a trend developing.

            Most of Prince Fielder’s value on the field, and fantasy for that matter, is in his power and that’s down this year so lets see what we can find.  The first thing that we can see is the HR/FB rate is not just down but way down; normally Fielder gets a HR every 5.2 FB’s in his career that’s roughly 19% of his total AB’s.  This year he’s hitting 1 every 8 FB’s, which is roughly 12%, this is well below average for him and the one this that can at least shed light is the LD% I mentioned earlier.  His high LD% can actually mean he’s not getting enough lift on the ball and the ball is staying straight.  This is just my opinion on that one but it is something to note.  Fielders ISO is way down from career totals; currently sitting at .179 and his career is .244.  This could support my lift theory a bit; Fielder is not that fast so the fact he’s not getting the ball over the fence this year means his LD’s are actually dropping in and he isn’t getting the XB hits he normally could have gotten if he was lifting the ball more.  The lack of speed would make him limited to singles and that would lower his ISO while keeping the SLG looking like its decent.  The only thing I can say for the lack of power can be attributed to the more swinging and swinging out of the zone combined with not getting the ball up more; I don’t think these are going to be normal for Fielder moving on with his career but it is something to keep in mind.

            So we see Fielders hitting and power and today we look at his defense.  As I learn more stats and learn to translate them better I like to add in more to the scouting reports so today we look at defense for the first time.  UZR or Ultimate Zone Range helps rate a players fielding ability and how many balls he gets in the “zone range” he gets and translate that into how many runs that its cost the team.  Prince Fielder has a UZR of -4.3 and his UZR 150 is -5 (150 defensive games), to give you a scale 0.0 would obviously mean he’s not giving up runs for his team and a + would be adding runs to his team while – costs the team runs.  So Fielder is actually costing his team 4 runs just with his defense; which actually can make his lack of offense more hurtful.  His fielding% is currently at .994, which is good, but considering that we can see his UZR is hurt the team its kind of a lie.  Lastly we can look at the +/- stat, which shows how many runs he saves through fielding, sounds like UZR but it doesn’t take into account range just fielding skill.  Fielder has a +/- of -10 so he gives up 10 runs for his team with his fielding skills, hence we can see the FP being somewhat a lie.

            Fielder is having one bad season the more you look at him; his overall value to the team is actually hurting the team at his point.  His WAR is sitting at 1.1 and for reference that puts him as a role player or bench player value.  I don’t think this is Fielder, not at all, and from what we’ve seen this just seems like a bad year.  But the thing we have to remember is that this isn’t the first year we’ve seen the power take a dive.  Take away the field factors and Prince has been the HR threat he was in Milwaukee.  Only time can tell if this is going to be a consistent problem for Prince Fielder or this year is just a fluke.

Power Rankings: August 21st

Power Rankings: August 21^st

1)   Los Angeles Dodgers

2)   Atlanta Braves

3)   Boston Red Sox

4)   St. Louis Cardinals

5)   Detroit Tigers

6)   Cincinnati Reds

7)   Texas Rangers

8)   Pittsburg Pirates

9)   Oakland Athletics

10)         Kansas City Royals

The Dodgers have been dominating with a capital D this last 2 weeks; being only 1 of 2 teams that have a team BA of over .300, the other is the Yankees.  A GPA of .292 is very strong and is the highest in the last 2 weeks, even thought the team has been without Ramirez who they just got back recently they still have been hitting.  The Pirates have slipped a bit and the RP have struggled while the Reds have started to looks strong again.  The only major change is the Royals who have been the 2^nd best team in the last 2 weeks and one of the best teams in the last month!  I can see them taking a wild card spot away from the Rays or A’s.

Power Rankings: Bottom 5

            26) San Diego Padres

            27) Chicago White Sox

            28) Milwaukee Brewers

            29) Miami Marlins

            30) Houston Astros

The only real thing to mention is just how bad the RISP has been for the Padres in the last 2 weeks.  They have a .154 with RISP in 13 games and some how have at least 5 wins?  That’s such an odd thing to see.

Scouting Report: Chris Davis

Scouting Report: Chris Davis

            Baseball is a numbers game, the stats can tell me and other scouts a lot about a player.  But that doesn’t mean there are players that can break the mold that they casted for themselves.  Jacoby Ellsbury hitting 30 HR’s, Brady Anderson hitting 50 HR’s, Jeff Bagwell being the first (and only) 1B to have a 30/30 season.  There are more but many of these guys were 1 time only deals so when we start to see players in this day and age do something we don’t expect we start to take notice.  Chris Davis is this year’s case of taking that step forward in talent and has become a giant in baseball and fantasy baseball.  So today I want to take a closer look at this HR monster and see if he really is as good as he seems.

            The first thing we should look at and the first thing most people are going to notice; is the power legit.  In short yes, this is very legit and he has shown lots of power his short career.  Davis has a .679 SLG at this point and an OPS of 1.054, which is very good and to prove that his power is legit his ISO (Isolated Power) is .379 an amazing half of his SLG is power and the rest is based on his BA.  He is currently hitting a HR every 9.7 PA; this doesn’t seem sustainable.  Davis hitting a HR every 3-4 games does seem like a lot to keep up.

Davis touts a wRC (weighted Runs Created) of 101; which puts him in the top 90% percentile.  That means not only has he been scoring runs he’s created many opportunities for his team to score runs.  His wRAA (weighted Runs Above Average) is at 47.5 meaning he is worth 47.5 more runs than the average player at this point.  There is one thing that I will say that to temper the excitement; Davis has a HR/FB rate of 33.3%, which is 11% higher than his career total.  To put that into perspective; Barry Bonds has a career 25.1% HR/FB ratio and never had a season better than 29.6%.

            Now that we’ve talked about Davis’ power we need to discuss the other aspect of hitting the BA.  Before the All Star break Chris Davis had a BA of .315, a very solid number.  He is currently batting .300 which doesn’t sound bad until you realize what he has to bat to get that number, since the All Star break Davis is batting .238 which is bad to say the least.  This is what I ment when I said earlier we take notice, sometimes there’s something that just does quite fit and with Davis, this year, it’s the BA and OBP that worry me.  Lets take a close look at what this guy has been doing and why I tend to caution people about him.

            Davis is batting .300 and an OBP of .375 which both are very above average for many players but Davis in particular this is stunning.  Again lets look at the splits; I mentioned his BA has dropped significantly since the start of the second half but how is the OBP?  First half we ended with a .392 OBP, which even I admit is amazing for anyone this day and age.  His OBP for the second half is currently sitting at .302, at this point his OBP has dropped 90 points from what he was doing before the break; that puts the 20 point overall drop into perspective.  Another sign is how he gets his OBP is based more on his BA then BB but its not as big of a difference as you’d think, his eOBP is currently at .075 meaning he’s more BA than BB.  Another interesting thing to note is that his BABIP is roughly 10 points higher than his career numbers, .345 this year and .337 career.  This tells me that he’s not getting super lucky he’s just hitting close to normal; his BA could drop though when this averages out and his BA of .300 would become .292 not bad for Davis.

            Now what are the chances that he does start declining?  There’s no way of telling when this can happen but we can see very clearly if it will; if we take a look at his swing rate we can see his habits and can take a guess.  Looking at his swing rate he’s swinging at about 36% of pitches out side the zone; which sounds good right?  Well not at all in fact that puts him in the bottom 10% of players in swinging out of the zone.  He is swinging at a lot of pitches in the zone as well; roughly 76% of the time he swings in the zone.  Though here’s part where I get worried, Davis’ contact rate out of the zone is 53% and that’s very low.  He’s swinging to much and not hitting enough of the pitches to make it worth while which could come back and bit him near the end of the season or next year.  As you’d expect he makes a lot of contact in the zone at 80%; which is very good.  His overall contact rate is a miserable 69% putting him in the bottom 10% again in contact rate and pitchers are taking notice of this only throwing 40% of pitches he sees in the zone.  The last thing to note is that his K/BB% is sitting at 3.56; he’s K just over 3 times before he takes a walk with is not beyond redemption but if it wasn’t for his power numbers it would be hard to overlook.

            I drafted Chris Davis with the 189^th pick overall and ran with him until the trade deadline.  I traded him straight up for David Wright who, as of right now, may very well be out for the season.  I say this because this shows how much I worry about him.  But through all I’ve said I see great things for Davis, yes I didn’t sound to high on Chris Davis but that’s because I don’t see him as the player he’s playing like right now.  Davis is a .270 hitter but he does have massive power potential and I can see 50 HR’s yearly and wouldn’t blink an eye at it.

Power Ranking: August 14th

Power Rankings: August 14

1)   Atlanta Braves

2)   Detroit Tigers

3)   Boston Red Sox

4)   LA Dodgers

5)   Pittsburg Pirates

6)   St. Louis Cardinals

7)   Cincinnati Reds

8)   Texas Rangers

9)   Oakland Athletics

10)         Cleveland Indians

It’s been a crazy few weeks for so many teams, if I had mad this list 3-4 days ago Cleveland would he higher.  The Royals just missed this list and are a serious threat to make the playoffs now.  The Braves and Tigers have been amazing; pitching, batting and fielding have all been very good in the recent stretch for both teams.  The Dodgers have moved to being the hottest team in the NL and I’m buying this team to make the playoffs and finish one of the best teams in baseball.  Pirates and Cards have been having it rough lately so they have to move down a few spots, though the Pirates are now higher than the Cards.  Texas has been capitalizing on the A’s having a rough stretch but I’m not counting them out.

Bottom 5

            26) Chicago White Sox

            27) Milwaukee Brewers

            28) San Diego Padres

            29) Miami Marlins

            30) Houston Astros

At this point the teams here have become staples of the bottom 5 though we do get to add the abysmal offense of the Padres.  In the last 4 days they own a RISP of .058 that is just impressively bad.  The Sox and Brewers aren’t going to rock the world but at this point they are what they are.  Marlins and Astros are bad teams and are working towards the bright future they hope comes around.

Team Report: Toronto Blue Jays

Team Report: Toronto Blue Jays

            It’s been quite some time since I looked at a single team and gave my thoughts about them so today I’ll be looking at the team I thought had the best chance at winning the AL East, The Blue Jays.  The Blue Jays are just one of those teams that we all bought into and ranked them well above were they really should have.  The team has been a disappointment so far this season mainly because of a weak pitching staff.  I decided to take a look at this team mainly because they aren’t this bad and I think it’s a good idea to show what’s been the teams major weakness.

            The team may have some weak pitching but the hitting has average at worst and slightly above average at least.  They currently site 15^th in team BA with a .255 and a run of the mill OBP of .321 which nets them 11^th overall.  But the team does do 1 thing particularly well and that’s hit for power being 6^th overall in R’s scored and 5^th in SLG.

Lets take a deeper look into the team though shall we; a team SLG of is quite impressive, but subtracting the BA of the team from the SLG gives us the team Isolated Power (ISO) of .164 a not so impressive mark in fact if you add up all the multi base hits the team has it doesn’t even reach half as many singles.  This is why SLG can be misleading; again this is still not a terrible thing .160 is just between average and above average but its just middle of the pack unlike the SLG would suggest.

The team has an OBP of .321; which is again just middle of the road but there are underlining signs that are a little worrying.  The Jays have an estimated OBP of .067; which says the team’s OBP is more based on hits and less on walks.  This doesn’t mean the team can’t take a BB, they actually have a good BB% of 11.7% and that tells me they can stay consistent in OBP as long as they keep the hitting up.  With the team batting .262 in the last 3 months I don’t think that will be a major issue, as long as they keep getting on base and scoring runs the offense will be fine.  The team does seem to have a little weakness in scoring runs but not by much; the teams RAA or Runs Above Average is at -5 so they are 5 runs less then average so that can always improve.

Hitting has been a slight issue for the team but it hasn’t been the major factor has it, for that we need to look at the real downfall of this team the pitching.  Doing a basic look at the staff we can see one problem right off the bat a very high WHIP.  With a BB/9 at 3.2 the team is giving up way to many BB; that’s not the only issue since the teams H/9 is at 9.1.  They average 9 hits allowed a game; which is to high to when combined with such a high BB%.  This isn’t damning the team but it is a reason the pitching is struggling.  The ERA is obviously high, 4.38, driven by the high BB% and H/9.  To give you an idea what this means the ERA+ puts the team at 3% worse than league average ERA.  Is there any good news?  Well actually yes since the team seems to be actually dealing with some bad luck.  The pitching BABIP is at .303 and the FIP is .443, which is a little high and could come down.  The team still has a good K% and K/9 and the team isn’t giving up too many homeruns but at 1.2 per 9 innings it can improve.

Looking through the stats I did notice something interesting, something that I knew but caught my eye on just how bad this player was.  Josh Johnson is almost single handedly destroying this pitching staffs numbers, that’s not a joke, 1 player has that much effect.  Remember when I talked about RAA for hitters?  Well that stat works for pitchers too to see how many runs they save or are worth when pitching.  The highest pitcher not Josh Johnson on the Jays is Brandon Morrow who has been injured since early in the season at -9.  Josh Johnson is worth -22 RAA; that is just amazing to see.  He averages about 7.08 R’s a game; that is just astonishing and makes me question what the manager and front office are thinking!  Taking the other 4 starters ER’s and IP we get an ERA of 4.48; while not great let’s see what happens when we add Josh Johnson’s numbers back to the mix.  Adding in Johnson’s ER and IP we get an ERA of 4.80; Johnson accounts for nearly 30 points of their ERA for starters.  That really is amazing.

So what do I think of the Blue Jays going forward?  Well I can see them competing next year, yes I know it sounds like I was kinda down on the Jays this entire time but don’t get me wrong the team can compete.  I think what it needs is another Joes Reyes type or for the fact Jose Reyes himself!  Reyes was injured most of the year and just got back and has been a lifeline to the team so far.  If they could get some one like Shin-Soo Choo or Jacboy Ellsbury they could find themselves in a much better spot next year hitting wise.  As for pitching they most defiantly need help and should be the first place they look to build up.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see them go hot and heavy over AJ Burnett, Ervin Santana and/or Matt Garza this off-season.  Relief could be a nice addition and there are pieces in the Free Agency pool.  Time will tell if they can capitalize on the massive trades they’ve made to make them at least talked about and still a dangerous team to face.

PED Suspensions Reactions

I decided to do my Wednesday blog a few days early to at least get what i felt about the situation out there before we talked about it on Turdken is Tasty.

PED Suspensions Reactions

Well it finally happened, we finally got the suspensions we were waiting for all this time.  Today I want to take a quick look, and hopefully the last look since this is starting to get old to me, on the players suspended and what kind of an impact it will have on their teams.  So lets start with the person I personally feel makes the biggest impact Ryan Braun.

Ryan Braun: Milwaukee Brewers- 65 game suspension. BA-.298, HR-9, RBI-38, SB-4.  Now why do I feel he is the biggest loss out off all these guys?  He was baseball elite, unlike everyone else on this list he was considered to be one of the top 5 best players in the game today.  Not only that he still has 7 years on his deal and that’s a big blow for a team that chooses him to be the centerpiece.  Personally I have kind of hardened my view on Braun since I stated I was ready to put it behind me. Why?  Well mainly cause I’ve reread some of the comments and noticed how laid back he’s taking this and not really accepting responsibility for the people he’s just lied to.  The team itself is going to have a hard time since they put all their time and money into this guy and now they have to defend themselves for what he did.  Sad days in Milwaukee, Braun has a lot to atone for when he gets back.

Nelson Cruz: Texas Rangers- 50 game suspension.  BA-.269, HR-27, RBI-75, SB-5.  This may be the deathblow to the Rangers whose bats have been quite of late.  Nelson is a free agent at the end of the season so he’s not hurting the team like Ryan Braun is but at the same time he was one of the major forces behind the Rangers offense.  My guess, and from what I’m reading, Cruz isn’t going to be a Ranger next year because of this and at 33 he may find a pay day not happening.

Everth Cabrera: San Diego Padres- 50 game suspension. BA-.287, HR-4, RBI-31, SB-37.  This one is defiantly one that seems the biggest blow to any of these teams to me.  Its not that he’s a super star but with the speed he has he was a major game changer and was helping the Padres this season and making them look like they had a very good future.  Braun is the most disappointing by a long shot but Cabrera is the 2^nd guy on that list, really hurt his future and team.

Jhonny Peralta: Detroit Tigers- 50 game suspension. BA-.305, HR-11, RBI-54, SB-3.  This is the same deal as Cruz hence many group them together, the main difference the Tigers actually saw this coming and traded for a new SS of the future.  In the end this won’t hurt the team as much as the other teams that are competing for a playoff spot since the Tigers were smart.  Peralta is also a free agent at the end of the season and I feel he will be the same as Cruz, don’t see the Tigers needing him and he may have a hard time finding a new team because of this and his age.

Alex Rodriguez: New York Yankees- 211 game suspension. NA.  Well this is one that I wish never comes back.  Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way in all fairness this can hurt the Yankees just as much as help them.  The team has one of the worst offenses in baseball and 3B is the worst of the worst.  One of baseballs worse people and no one will miss him when he’s gone but in the end he could have helped a bad lineup.

Francisco Cervelli: New York Yankees- 50 game suspension. NA.  He hasn’t played all year but he could have helped.  Cervelli is a good catcher and a good bat and currently on the DL, so even worse than just being suspended you can’t be suspended on the DL so he has to come off the DL before he starts his time.  Very sad for the Yankees again.

Antonio Bastardo: Philadelphia Phillies- 50 game suspension. ERA-2.32, WHIP-1.27 K-47.  This guy was a surprise to me, he hadn’t been named at all as of this point and when he was suspended my first thought was “huh that’s odd”.  He’s nothing special just a relief pitcher though he comes at a sad story in a way, Dan Meyer posted on twitter today reminding Bastardo of when they competed for a job and Bastardo won.  Kinda sad but really no impact to the team, a team that’s not that good anyways.

The rest of the players suspended are minor league players and not that good of ones at that.  Its just a sad day in baseball but a bright day as well, even though we have some of the baseball’s elite are gone for cheating this brings about the change we need.  A tougher PED system will come from this and PED’s will fade into a very bad memory.

Scouting Report: Jean Segura

Scouting Report: Jean Segura

            There are so many horror stories about trading prospects for rental players at the trade deadline.  Granted they are very rare but there are just as many chances that the prospect traded may be just as good as player gotten.  The Angels are learning this lesson the hard way when they traded for Zack Greinke.  Today we look at the key piece in that trade Jean Segura.

            Jean Segura was traded from the Angels to the Milwaukee Brewers in 2012 at the deadline and was a classic case of team finding a rental player.  He was the Angels top prospect at the time and was considered blocked at his position with Erick Aybar taking SS and at the time had just signed an extension.  While his rookie year wasn’t very impressive it’s this year that has been the breakout year for him.  So without any more delays lets take a look at Jean Segura and see what the stats say.

            Jean Segura is currently batting .313 with an OBP of .349 and a SLG of .461, which is very impressive for a player in his second year.  His OPS is .861, which puts him in the 65% percentile in OPS in the league so that’s again very impressive.  When he was a prospect Segura was considered to be a 15+ HR guy so seeing numbers like this doesn’t surprise me.  One thing that stands out to me is his OBP, .349 with a BB of 4.1% a full point lower than his career total.  The thing that you have to look at is what his OBP is made of, if we subtract the .313 form the OBP we get .036.  That is the OBP that Segura has from BB’s and that means if he slumps then it takes a dive quickly.  Good for Segura that I believe he is a legit .300 hitter and it’s sustainable at least for now.  I think he can improve this but with a 36% swing rate out side the zone and a 64% in the zone with a contact rate of 85.8% overall.  What this means is he swings a little too much outside the zone and a little too little in the zone.  He has great plate coverage right now and that’s what’s keeping the BA at its current level.

            Segura has 11 HR’s on the year and at his current pace should end the season at roughly 19, with that lets take a closer look at some of his power stats.  First Segura is SLG at .461, which is 40 points higher than his career normal; this doesn’t worry me too much but lets look at the underlining numbers.  Isolated Power (ISO) is a stat that looks closer at the raw power of the player but subtracting his AVG from his SLG.  If we do this to Segura we notice that his ISO is .148, which puts him in the middle of the pack in power.  It kind of makes sense knowing that Segura swings at a lot of pitches out of the zone that he may be getting a lot of singles.  20 HR’s is nothing to shack a stick at but he also only has 12 doubles; what I see is a player that could have a lot more power if he swung less out of the zone and made the pitcher throw to him and force hitters counts.

            Segura is an above average speed and above average defense, which will grow more and more refined as he gets older and learns how to read pitchers, better.  He has 31 SB and has only been caught 6 times, with age that will get better and get caught less.

            Jean Segura is going to be a superstar in no time; all he needs is patience’s and practice.  I may have sounded negative on him in this but I can’t argue with the facts; he’s still hitting well and his speed and fielding are very good.  Segura isn’t the next Derek Jeter or anything but he could be a top 3 SS by next year.