Power Rankings: April 14-28

Power Rankings: April 14-28

            Another 2 weeks have passed and its time for this weeks Power Rankings.  As a reminder these are my opinions based on stats and my predictions.  So lets get started.

1)   Milwaukee Brewers

2)   Atlanta Braves

3)   Oakland A’s

4)   St. Louis Cardinals

5)   Detroit Tigers

6)   Los Angeles Dodgers

7)   New York Yankees

8)   Texas Rangers

9)   Anaheim Angels

10)         Toronto Blue Jays

It’s such a tough call between Atlanta and Milwaukee now but I gave the edge to the Brewers due to the fact that the offense was a bit better but with the loss of Braun that could be a big factor moving forward.  St. Louis seems to be the odd man out in this list but I just can’t bring myself to take them off the list just yet, the pitching saves them but that offense needs to step it up.  Texas really stepped it up big time both offensively and pitching.  Next week they play like this and they will be higher on this list.  Anaheim is here by virtue that they offense was so good and the bullpen is just so not good, if they can pick it up it could be very interesting.  And last but not least is the Blue Jays who weren’t the most dominate of the list but they also did very well and have slowly crept into my eyes as a true contender for their division.  Though sadly it’s not due to talent as much as the rest of the league is falling to their level but when their injured guys come back they could be a serious threat.

Bottom 5

            26) Houston Astros

            27) New York Mets

            28) Philadelphia Phillies

            29) Chicago Cubs

            30) Arizona Diamondbacks

Houston actually did decent this week, well enough not to be the second to last at least.  New York and Philadelphia are just here at this point but at least both are doing far better than I expected and could be off the list by the next rankings.  Cubs, I don’t think I really need to explain.  Oh the Diamondbacks what can be said?  Well enough to make a blog post about this and one I have written up.  But in short offense is struggling to score the runs while the pitching and defense struggle to keep the opponents from scoring.

Prospect Watch

Prospect Watch

            Prospects are a pain to actually scout.  It’s more of how I scout that gives me issues versus real scouts but since I can only go off what I see in the numbers I have to borrow heavily from others work.  As you’ll see with the three I plan on doing today I don’t have many of the stats you’d see me quote to make points and show how efficient a player is in some aspects.  With that said I plan using the Baseball Prospectus: Futures Guide 2014 to help fill in some of the gaps that I can’t do myself.  With that said here’s my look at Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa and Noah Syndergaard.

Byron Buxton:

            This kid has talent and has already been elevated to the ranks of Mike Trout and Bryce Harper in talent alone.  On the 20-80 scale Buxton rates as a 60 Hit, 70 Power, 80 Run, 70 Glove and 60 arm.  This is what scouts look for when they’re looking for a 5-tool player.  There has been some question if the Hit skill will match up as a 60 but he wouldn’t fall any further than a 50.  The speed though is legit and game changing, look for him to be a potential 30-40 SB guy in the majors.  That speed is why he has such a large BABIP sitting just south of .415; speed tends to aid a player’s BABIP and his speed will aid him quite a bit.  While he hasn’t played above the singe A level in the minors he has already shown a decent eye for hitting and he is improving his skill ending last year with a K/BB of 1.50 which isn’t amazing but its an improvement form the previous season.  The HR’s will come with time and training; at his best he hit a HR every 33.75 AB giving him roughly 15 in a MLB season.  As a quick look this guy look like he could be the next big thing in baseball and we’ll be more intrigued with Trout and Buxton play than when Harper and Trout meet up.

Carlos Correa:

            He may be one year younger than Buxton but that doesn’t mean he’s any less the champ that Buxton can be.  First though he’s not nearly as fast and he’s bigger than Buxton.  Why does this matter?  Well Buxton plays OF and Correa is a SS and there’s a good chance that Correa actually out grows position.  Most assume he’d move to 3^rd but that’s not a huge loss.  Correa has a good eye having a K/BB of 1.59 and its getting better as he plays already showing that he can hold his own against MLB pitching this last spring.  Correa rates on the 20-80 scale as a 60 Hit, 65 Power, 50 Run, 60 Glove and 70 Arm.  All of which put him safely as an All Star potential talent.  The speed isn’t going to get any better but he can still steal bases but he needs to work on his actual ability on the base path.  Stealing 11 bases last year and being caught 12 times is not going to win any favors.

Noah Syndergaard:

            A kid with a lot of talent at his fingertips, having 3 plus pitches in his arsenal and having one of the minor’s best fastballs helps.  He has a 80 fastball, a 70 curveball and a 65 changeup and has good feel for all three but wouldn’t hurt to add a 4^th pitch if he wants to be a frontline starter.  Syndergaard has been able to limit the BB’s in his career so far never having a season averaging over 2.7 BB/9.  He also has a great talent in K’s; last year having a 32% K rate and a 11.50 K/9 in 11 games in the Mets AA.  Now the things that I see that is worrisome; a pitcher that has this much talent shouldn’t have a BABIP against at over .300 in all levels of play last year.  Way to high and could lead to issues.  His strand rate dropped in the AA level as well but that could be a problem of the team not him.  The BA against also went up from his previous seasons, which could be cause of his bad tendencies of throwing the ball up in the zone catching up to him.  Overall he has good talent and should be in the majors soon, given the Mets struggles I would had suggested giving him a bullpen role or even closer role but the Mets seemed determined to see him start and nothing else.

Lineups: The Sabermetric Way

Lineups: the Sabermetric Way

            When you think of a lineup how do you imagine it?  You put the fastest guy batting first, your number 3 hitter is the best overall hitter, 4^th is the best power and the 5-9 slots are the best to worst remaining right?  Well baseball has evolved with advanced stats leading the way in more than just scouting players and plotting trends on hitters and pitchers; lineups can now be analyzed and we can see what is the most effective lineups.  More importantly we can see what spot in the order is the most important.

            “To understand the impact of your possible choices, you have to understand the environment in which you are working.  Context.  Whenever you are trying to figure out what to do, take a step back, and ask yourself, “What’s the context?””  This is a quote form “The Book” by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin.  This is a great quote to remember as we move forward.  Take a look at the chart coming up, this is a chart of the average number of PA given the position in the lineup.

Batting Order	AL Parks	NL Parks
1	4.83	4.80
2	4.72	4.68
3	4.61	4.56
4	4.49	4.46
5	4.39	4.35
6	4,26	4.23
7	4.14	4.10
8	4.02	3.98
9	3.90	3.86

As expected the person at the bottom of the lineup bats less than the guy on top, but we expected this.  Each batter getting roughly 2.5% percent more PA’s than the batter after him and with that logic we should have the best hitter on the team batting leadoff since they’ll acuminate more PA.  This is why I brought up the context quote, if this WAS the case we would see guys like Paul Goldschmidt and Robison Cano leading off not batting 3^rd.  Context.

            The next factor to look at is the number of runners potentially on base.  Baseball is a game of percentages; the way to win is to put the odds in your favor (insert your Hunger Games joke here).  While it seems obvious the lead off hitter is going to see the bases empty at a higher percentage than the rest of the team, roughly about 64% of the time in fact.  Right here we can see why you would never want to have your best hitter batting 1^st, he’d never see many men on base.  What position in the order sees the most batters on base?  According to tradition it’s the 3^rd batter; according to the stats it’s the 4^th and 5^th.  Odd how we put guys like Pujols and Cano batting when they statistically see batters less then that clean-up spot.

            So did anyone notice what I said above, that the 5^th batter is just as valued as the 4^th and more than the 3^rd?  Well its all do to a simple sabermetric stat called 24 base/out state.  To simplify it this the odds of a run in a specific scenario; example, the value of a single with a man on 1^st and 3^rd with 2 outs is 0.94 while the same scenario with 0 outs puts the value at 0.74.  The run became more valuable when the situation became more important IE the number of outs to play with decreased.  Now back to the 4^th and 5^th batters, I’m now going to show you 2 charts that have relevance the first is the runs value by event and batting order.

Batting Order	1B	2B	3B	HR	NIBB	HBP	K	Out
1	.468	.733	1.019	1.291	.350	.373	-.299	-.298
2	.478	.743	1.023	1.349	.340	.369	-.300	-.301
3	.469	.742	1.013	1.384	.319	.352	-.302	-.300
4	.504	.802	1.090	1.436	.337	.368	-.323	-.319
5	.513	.809	1.106	1.438	.348	.381	-.324	-.323
6	.494	.782	1.077	1.411	.344	.377	-.314	-.314
7	.489	.777	1.068	1.407	.340	.372	-.312	-.312
8	.488	.772	1.060	1.398	.337	.368	-.311	-.309
9	.485	.766	1.053	1.388	.336	.366	-.309	-.308

From this chart we can see that the runs value is higher with the 5^th batter than the 3^rd or 4^th.  The 5^th batter runs into more scenarios to score more often making him have higher run values overall.  But this chart doesn’t include a valuable detail; it doesn’t include PA in the formula and remember there’s a 2.5% difference from the batter to the man on deck so lets see how this affects the look of our chart.

Batting Order	1B	2B	3B	HR	NIBB	HBP	K	Out
1	.515	.806	1.121	1.421	.385	.411	-.329	-.328
2	.515	.799	1.100	1.450	.366	.396	-.322	-.324
3	.493	.779	1.064	1.453	.369	.369	-.317	-.315
4	.517	.822	1.117	1.472	.377	.377	-.332	-.327
5	.513	.809	1.106	1.438	.381	.381	-.324	-.323
6	.482	.763	1.050	1.376	.368	.368	-.306	-.306
7	.464	.738	1.014	1.326	.353	.353	-.296	-.296
8	.451	.714	.980	1.293	.340	.340	-.287	-.286
9	.436	.689	.948	1.249	.329	.329	-.278	-.277

            Notice the changes?  This is the chart that helps show the value of each event by each position in the batting order and according to the stats the most important and best hitters should bat 4^th, 5^th and 2^nd.  Didn’t see that one coming did you?  In fact the one spot in the lineup which most people use as the “get the runner over” guy is way more important value wise than the 3^rd batter commonly thought to be the best hitter.

            Now there is a lot more stats an info that can be used to further this argument but lets cut it here for now and ask another important question; why is Tony Gwyn Jr. leading off?  Or even more important why was B.J. Upton batting 2^nd for so long!  Coaches don’t seem to notice the data actually is pretty clear that these players shouldn’t be in these roles; Tony Gwyn Jr. owns a career .245 BA and a OPS+ of 75 (25% worse than the rest of baseball) and he lead off for the Phillies.  B.J. Upton had as many strike outs this year than most of the team combined, not counting how terrible he was last year and still batted second.  Coaches seem to want to hold to the old ways on lineup creation and not look at the stats.  While this isn’t the case for every team, the Houston Astros have been batting Jose Altuve 4^th; he owns a .257 SLG but Altuve is their best hitter and since his call up George Springer has been batting 2^nd and 4^th.  This is an example of an unconventional lineup creation but statistically sound.

            Every time I see Billy Hamilton batting lead off or 2^nd I shack my head; every time I see Xavier Nady bat 4^th I shack my head; every time I see Kole Calhon bat lead off I shack my head.  There are always new examples every day and it makes me wonder why this info isn’t being used!  Teams could be doing so much more with the lineup to get more production.