Jeff Sullivan’s recent enjoyable trot through San Diego Padres statistics and history led to a number of commentors thinking about San Diego’s park factors. The Padres changed the outfield dimensions of Petco Park in the off-season, and since park factors are backwards looking and rely on multiple years of data, changing dimensions can throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the calculations. So, it’s possible that our park factors are now somewhat behind the times, and we need to keep this in mind when looking at the park adjusted numbers (such as wRC+, ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-, WAR, etc…) for San Diego players, both hitters and pitchers.

It’s not quite so simple as noting that the changing dimensions have made the old park factors useless, however. Moving in the fences helps home runs, yes. This is undeniable. But it also can decrease triples and doubles, as well as effect the more odd elements of park factors, such as walk-rates, strikeout rates and pop-up rates.

It’s too early in the season to construct terribly useful park factors for the new dimensions, but we can do some harmless back-of-the-napkin mathematics to at least determine if the recent numbers suggest at least the early signs of serious run environment changes.
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Luis Valbuena struggles against fastballs, and is Michael-Jackson-bad against all other pitches. In an alternate world in which the Cubs actually cared about the difference between 61 and 65 wins, Luis Valbuena does not get 303 plate appearances last season. But in this world, where the Cubs are suppressing arbitration clocks and dropping bench players into starting roles, Luis Valbuena gets 303 PA. Barring something magical, do not put Luis Valbuena on your fantasy team in 2013.

That was me. I wrote that very review of Cubs third baseman Luis Valbuena for his 2013 FanGraphs+ fantasy profile. At the time, Luis Valbuena had a career .224/.292/.343 slash and a 73 wRC+. On the merit of some impressive defensive output in 2012, he had managed to increase his career WAR to a sterling -0.3 wins through 1109 PA.

Nothing outside of some solid PCL numbers suggested Valbuena could be a solid third baseman in 2013. So far, I’ve been quite wrong.
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If you are similar to me, then you spend more than a trivial amount of time on the teams leaderboard page. I find myself sorting the wRC+ column for my daily Ottoneu, The Game, and game preview needs. But, like a suspicious man at a bus stop, BABIP lurks just a few columns away. It haunts my well-crafted insults hurtled brazenly towards the Miami Marlins from the comfortable solitude of my home office.

I have spent the past year or two studying BABIP, in part because it has shown the power to unlock a fielding independent hitting metric I so cleverly and regrettably titled ShH or Should Hit. But other than confusing friends during spoken conversation, Should Hit can also regress offensive production based on four simple factors: walks, strikeouts, home runs, and BABIP.

We have previously employed ShH and its stepchild, the De-Lucker X (DLX), to regress players according to their previous performances. But now, let us throw whole teams into the De-Lucker vat. It will be great opportunity to kick the already over-kicked Marlins — as well as offer uncommon accolades for the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres lineups.
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He leads all rookie pitchers with 1.0 WAR, and is tied with the thus-far sensational position players Evan Gattis and A.J. Pollock. Sunday night, Hyun-Jin Ryu completed six innings against the San Francisco Giants, and though he took a loss, Ryu induced weak contact from a line-drive team. If the national audience was paying attention, they saw perhaps the best rookie in the league.

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There are few reversal of fortune so dramatic as the 0-2 home run. When pitchers corner a batsman into an 0-2 count, said batsman has hit .154/.160/.216 through the 2013 season. The following sample of at bats combine for an immaculate 1.000/1.000/4.000 slash.

Let’s take a look at them.
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Through five starts, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright has a 1.93 ERA, 1.09 FIP, and 2.13 SIERA. Of the 144 batsmen to face Wainwright, 37 struck out and just 1 walked — Bryce Harper in the 6th inning of last Tuesday’s game. Wainwright has induced a career-high 55.8% groundball-rate; he has held opponents to 8 earned runs, 9 runs total, scattered across 37 and 1/3 innings.

Wainwright is not “on fire.” He is fire. Butane lighters hang pictures of him on their bedroom walls. Local volunteer firemen warn children about Wainwright during school visits.

So how does an excellent pitcher produce results like a deity pitcher? For Wainwright, the tactic appears to be: (a) Throw a full spectrum of fastballs, (b) select from that fastball spectrum at an increasingly unpredictable rhythm, and (c) pitch against the right teams.
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Yes, well obviously Roberto Hernandez is not Fausto Carmona. The name Fausto Carmona belongs to someone else, and though the history of Cleveland Indians starting pitcher “Fausto Carmona” belongs to Roberto Hernandez, the two pitchers (the one pitcher) are not the same.

What I’m saying is: Roberto Hernandez is striking out batters.

He has a 22.5% K-rate right now. His previous career high was 17.1%, but that was mostly as a rookie reliever. As a starter, his highest K-rate was 15.6%. In fact, if we dig even deeper, we find his 22.5% K-rate is the highest strikeout rate he’s ever posted over a four game period:

His recent success — underscored and even underappreciated in his 3.75 FIP and 3.60 SIERA — appears to be the product of deliberate changes. That suggests he could maintain a new level of success.
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After a hard-fought, closely-followed battle, Bryce Harper beat out former relief pitcher Micah Owings for the starting left field position in Washington. Okay, Owings was never really in competition to take playing time from the reigning Rookie of the Year, Jayson Werth or Adam LaRoche — the three players in positions accessible to Owings’s limited defensive upside.

But here is the deal:

A) Pitchers do not consistently practice hitting. (Simple fact.)

B) The more time between at bats, the more a hitter struggles. (The Book.)

C) The more times a player faces a certain pitcher, the greater the advantage for the hitter — both in a game and in a career. (The Book Blog.)

All three of these elements suggest pitchers should hit, let’s say, about .145/.180/.190, or -10 wRC+ (that is, 110% worse than league average). Micah Owings — a pitcher — has, through 219 PA, hit .283/.310/.502 with 9 home runs and 14 doubles, a 104 wRC+.

Micah Owings is a good hitter. Possibly a great hitter. The Nationals have a bunch of those. But surely someone else out there could use a bench bat — or a starting outfielder — with the ability to pitch a 111 ERA- every now and then.
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Note: Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

Update: Boy! What a difference park factors make! In the original iteration of this article — the one where we thought the park factors were park factoring, but they weren’t — the distribution of DH talent appeared skewed left. Now, not only have the teams shifted closer together, but teams from hitter-friendly parks — such as the Yankees and White Sox — have slunk to the rear while those in pitcher havens — the Mariners and Rays — have edged to more prominent slots.

Because I attempted to weave together these rankings into a grander sort of narrative, much of my original text requires revision. I am happy to report, however, the majority of my in-post complaining about the rankings became validated by the fixed park factors. However, in lieu of covering this article with strike-throughs, I am going to just update the test (as minimally as possible) to reflect the updated rankings.

Originalish post: These rankings are fun. They do not affect the results on the field or the players ranked in them or the GMs glowering over the players. But we are inexorably drawn to these sorts of rankings. With egos invested into our teams, rankings give us pre-season bragging rights or grinding axes.

In all this fun, however, it is important to remember the function of our list. As we are wont to do at FanGraphs, we have attempted to make our lists in the most clinical, mathematical and unbiased ways as possible. Whereas many MLB power rankings are based on gut judgements or broad, basic analyses, we have computed a scientific power ranking system that requires human input only when it is an improvement over an algorithm.

This means, however, the space between each team is discrete. The distance between No. 1 and No. 2 is much greater than, as you will see, between No. 13 and No. 14:

Two are clustered near the top, others are rounding errors apart, and two teams appear clustered near the bottom. But an ordinal ranking does not represent that accurately.

And even despite our best utilization of projection systems and playing time predictions, the season is unpredictable. Not just hard to predict, but unpredictable. If it weren’t, who would watch it? But as of now, as of our best playing time estimations, as of the best projection systems, this is how the DH world settles. This is how the big and sluggerish stand.

Without further ado, I present the Slow and Sluggering Show:
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Can you believe it!? Friday night, tonight!, the World Baseball Classic commences with an 11:30 p.m. ET game between Chinese Taipei and Australia!

For those of us who spent the snowy preceding months watching grainy online feeds of Australian and Latin American winter ball, this day — this meaningful day — is precious. But precious also describes the amount, the scarcity, of WBC enthusiasts in America. Tragic, but true: America and Canada do not share foreign fervor for the WBC.

Well, in an effort to correct that, I have offered studies of some Taiwanese sluggers, and today I will conclude that cultural and statistical foray. For the previous pieces, see:

INF Ngayaw Ake
1B/DH Yi-Chuan Lin

Today, let’s examine Taiwan’s likely starting left fielder, Szu-Chi Chou.
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The World Baseball Classic nears like an orange and pink dawn, a dawn that breaks once every three years — so like an Alaskan dawn. But Americans, in general, are not setting their alarm clocks. We and our brother Canadians have not taken to the tournament with the equal fervor of many foreign baseball fans.

I suspect one reason is limited knowledge of the foreign rosters. Outside of the main North American teams — the USA, Canadian, and DR rosters — we struggle to recognize more than a handful of players.

So let’s try to wrest away some passion from these non-American, non-Canadian types and learn a bit more about the other teams! Particularly, let’s examine Taiwan’s three best sluggers. Why Taiwan? Your humble author speaks a little Mandarin. Taiwan speaks a lot of Mandarin. It’s like a match!

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Let’s talk World Baseball Classic.

I believe one of the key impediments preventing American and Canadian baseball fans from true excitement about the WBC has to do with limited knowledge of foreign players. We are, as some economists might say, rationally uninformed. To learn the necessary statistics and fun bits about the teams and players would take too much time and effort, considering the difficulty language barriers present.

Lo and behold! I happen to speak and, to a lesser extent, read Chinese! Allow me to act as your conduit; your semi-skilled cultural guide for, if nothing else, the Chinese-speaking teams. Allow me to not only translate some of their more useful statistics, but also present some slices of their personalities.

Let’s examine three of Taiwan’s best hitters: (1) Ngayaw Ake, (2) Yi-Chuan Lin, and (3) Szu-Chi Chou:

Top wOBA+ Numbers*, 2009-2012

*Not park adjusted.
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Predicting the ability to steal bases is not something you think you need to do. You did not say to yourself over breakfast, “I wonder if Michael Bourn can steal bases?” You already knew he could. And maybe that’s what made breakfast so delicious.

But if we want to push the frontier of base running, if we want to see the end of the home run era become the beginning of the efficient base running era, we have to do this thing we thought we did not need to do. We have to be able to predict stolen bases.
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The Yankees, Mets, Braves and Phillies were all in pursuit of Scott Hairston, and it wasn’t until last week that it appeared the Cubs even had a chance. Now the oft-wanted role player is joining the Chicago Cubs on a 2-year deal worth up to $6 million after incentives.

Hairston’s well-documented ability to hit left-handed pitching (119 wRC+ against lefties, 86 wRC+ against righties) has earned him quality playing time in the majors, but never a starting gig. That trend should continue as he joins a Cubs outfield alignment already featuring a pair of lefties in David DeJesus and Nate Schierholtz.

Schierholtz has a career 96 wRC+ against righties and 90 wRC+ against his brother southpaws. On the merit of two consecutive strong seasons against right-handers (123 wRC+ in 2011, 126 wRC+ in 2012), Schierholtz figures to earn a hearty 500 PA as the Cubs anti-righty platoon mate.

DeJesus, meanwhile, owns a much more pronounced platoon split. His strong defense across the outfield and 117 wRC+ against righties keeps him in the lineup most days, but his 80 wRC+ against lefties may make him — despite being the more proven hitter — a possible platoon partner for Hairston as well.

All told, Hairston and his surprise suitors together make an increasingly interesting team, rich both in flaws and talents. With Hairston and a few other Scotts — Scott Baker, Scott Feldman, Kyuji Fujikawa (“Scott,” to his friends, I believe) — the Cubs look like they may need a hunting cap in 2013. The playoffs may not be out of reach.
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Leafing through an old Sports Illustrated, I recently happened upon this stellar article by Mr. Albert Chen entitled “Revenge Of The Base Stealers,” in which Chen analyzed the league’s continued shift towards base-pilfering over base-trotting.

With the whimper-death of the Steroid Era, league strategies have swung towards old-school baseball. Most winning teams now employ some combination of great defense, strong base-runningitudes, and notable pitching-miraculosities. As such, wise teams have found employs for otherwise marginalized speedsters.

The net result has been an uptick in the value of a stolen base, according to linear weights:

This chart shows how the cost of a caught stealing (the red line) is trending towards zero (meaning a caught stealing is costing less — in fact, much than its .400 runs high point in 2000) while the gains from a stolen base (0.161 runs in 2012) have remained strong.

Whither belongs the blame for this change? Simply: Home runs. And where do we wander from here? In short: Deep into the heart of Speedster Kingdom.
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Remember when the Playstation 2 came out, and then Sony released a newer, smaller version of the original Playstation, called the PSone? After that, people started calling the original Playstation console the PSX, or Playstation X. Today, we are going back to the original console version of the De-Lucker, so grab your nearest mint copy of Final Fantasy VII and buckle in!

Why DLX?

FanGraphs recently re-did how we calculate wOBA for all the players. In an effort to give base-running its own stand-alone category and run/win value, we reduced wOBA to a hitting-only metric and took out SB and CS. That’s where the problem with the De-Lucker 2.0.

DL 2.0 used the Fielding Independent wOBA formula, which includes stolen bases. In order to keep things parallel, we now must revert back to the Should Hit formula — essentially:

The De-Lucker part comes in when we plop an xBABIP in the place of yonder true BABIP. Jeff Zimmerman and Robert Boden (slash12) have been working on and promoting what I believe is the best xBABIP formula out there, so let us once again use that.

Beneath the jump: More caveats! All sorts of data! Downloadable Excel spreadsheets! Fewer video game references!
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The Tampa Bay Rays may be great at pitching and defense, but they do not score many runs… Right? MLB Trade Rumors thinks so:

The Rays could address multiple needs by dealing a top-of-the-rotation starter. Their offense ranked 18th in MLB in runs scored, so there’s clearly room for improvement.

-Ben Nicholson-Smith, 10/31/12

ESPN suggested just as much:

…[Justin] Upton would give Rays a badly needed presence in the middle of their lineup.

-Buster Olney, 11/11/12

And even in the sabermetric sphere, we tend to hold that axiom:

Alas, the Rays’ hitting was an entirely different story, as they finished just 11th in the league in scoring. Yes, they certainly were undone by crummy luck in close games. But the crummy luck might have gone largely unnoticed if the Rays had scored 30 or 40 more runs.

-Rob Neyer, 10/27/12

But the consensus does not gel with the very leaderboards that ranked them the No. 8 MLB offense in 2012, according to wRC+. The disconnect between popular perception and the reality of their past and future production comes from two key sources: (1) Three especially cold months of run production in 2012 and (2) the under-appreciated pitcher’s haven, Tropicana Field.
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What if former MLB knuckleballer Joe Niekro taught a 7-year-old how to throw a knuckleball for strikes? And what if that seven year-old stuck with the game and the knuckleball — threw two perfect games in Little League and got named to five consecutive all-star teams heading into a high school career?

In general, there is no such thing as a knuckleball prospect. The fingernail special is the go-to pitch for normal prospects or pitchers who have to reinvent their careers. That is what makes predicting the next great knuckleballer a near impossibility. Last night, R.A. Dickey became the first knuckleballer in history to earn a Cy Young award, but Dickey himself pitched several seasons with the Rangers before adding his deadly knuckler, and even then, it took years to get to a Cy Young level.

There is a reason Dickey was the first Cy Young knuckleballer, though. The man has in some ways reinvented the knuckleball, throwing two versions of it — fast and slow versions — which allow for a 10-mph range on his flutterball. If youngsters learn Dickey’s Bugs-Bunny-pitching-style, then they could perceivably position themselves as knuckleball prospects, but it still seems unlikely.

Who would willingly throw a knuckleball in high school when scouts are looking for fastballs and curveballs? Well, for a 15-year-old native of Plant City, Florida, knuckleballs have been the key pitch to a young successful repertoire — ever since Joe Niekro taught the fluttering pitch to her.
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Earlier this week, the great NPB prospect maven, Patrick Newman, ran down a list of the 2013 NPB free agents of interest. He identifies five free agents as likely candidates for impact in the MLB:

1. RP Kyuji Fujikawa
2. SS Hiroyuki Nakajima
3. SS Takashi Toritani
4. 2B Kensuke Tanaka
5. RP Hideki Okajima (who is poised for his second tour of MLB duty)

Newman — a Japanese speaker and a far more qualified scout — offers about the best scouting and contract analysis for which one could ask. But today, let us study the coin’s tail and examine the stats of these players in context with their leagues.

NOTE: My wOBA+, FIP+ and BABIP+ calculations are league adjusted only, not park adjusted.

RP Kyuji Fujikawa
Newman calls Fujikawa, rightly, the head of the class. I have previously examined Fujikawa’s impressive numbers and prognosticated on how his numbers would transition in the MLB. My conclusion, based on his numbers, is that he could easily be a high-leverage reliever in the MLB, starting on day one:

Two of the last three seasons have not been particularly his best years, but even at his worst, Fujikawa is an excellent NPB pitcher. I think we can expect anything from 70 FIP- to 90 FIP- from him in the MLB — at least for a season or two.

SS Hiroyuki Nakajima
I have written about Nakajima on several occasions (when the Yankees paid his posting fee, when the Yankees looked like they might execute a sign-and-trade, and when he put up another great year in the NPB in 2012), and I suspect he could be a starting infielder for a good number of MLB teams.

Newman reports Nakajima’s aging range will lead to an infield job outside of shortstop, and I have little reason to doubt that. In all likelihood, he will sign as a utility player, but I think he very well could play himself into a starting job, much like Norichika Aoki did in 2012.

I am bullish on Nakajima and think he could reasonably do as Aoki did and translate much of his offensive numbers cleanly into the MLB. If not a perfect 1:1 translation, Nakijima should still have no problem hitting in the 100 wRC+ to 110 wRC+ range, which is great for a middle infielder.

SS Takashi Toritani
According to Newman, Toritani has a better hope of sticking at shortstop than Nakajima, but since his offensive production is so walk-heavy — a trait that does not bode well for (domestic) minor leaguers since walk-rates do not translate cleanly into the MLB — teams may not offer him much in the way of either playing time or remuneration. If he can bring his strong offense and decent defense to the States (or Canada), he would make for a healthy catch:

He had a particularly good 2011 season, but the 119 BABIP+ was clearly a departure from his recent norm, so I think we can consign him to a a 115ish wOBA+ in the NPB. It is hard to say exactly how those numbers would translate into the MLB, but my developing rule of thumb is to make it worse by 20 points, which would be about 95 wRC+, which is 10 wRC+ points better than the league average shortstop.

SS Kensuke Tanaka
Tanaka may be the only second baseman of the three infielders testing the MLB markets, but he grades as the best defender. Also, Newman says Tanaka is possibly willing to sign a minor league contract, which should essentially guarantee he will be in the US (or Canada) within the year. His numbers do not suggest he would make for a suitable starter in the MLB, but given his versatility and small ball skills, he could make for a quality utility player for many teams:

Tanaka profiles much like a 75 wRC+ to 95 wRC+ infielder. If his defense is as good as Newman suggests, and if he is able to hitting in the upper levels of that range, then Tanaka will have no problem competing for a bench spot — or even a starting role on a team struggling for infielders. In all likelihood, though, he is Kaz Matsui with even less offense, but more defense.

RP Hideki Okajima
Blast from the past! Okajima has finished his one-year spirit journey through the NPB and is poised for an MLB comeback. He lasted only 7 MLB games in 2011, and then the Yankees released him in February 2012, but in Japan, he dominated like an MLB veteran should. He appears well-poised to play a valuable role out of an MLB bullpen in 2013:

Okajima’s first three seasons in the MLB were exceptional. If he is healthy and feeling younger, he could again post numbers in the 80 to 90 FIP- range.

Much of these projections are optimistic. There is always a chance any one of these players could have their leg snapped within the first month and never be the same again. They might also have certain skillset that for whatever reason just does not translate into MLB parks or against MLB hitters/pitchers. But regardless of the possibilities, the relatively thin infield market and the, as always, wealthy reliever market may be richer than we might think.

Data!

On Monday, I took a look at how the new ball in Japan’s NPB league may be affecting the predictability of Japanese talent. The first signs are good: It looks like the new, standardized baseball in Japan — a ball which mimics the MLB design, starting in 2011 — may be resulting in more direct skill translations into the MLB. This means MLB franchises will be able to identify priority athletes better and extend more appropriate contracts and posting fees.

In the comments of that article, KJOK of Seamheads.com suggested — quite rightly — that the conversion conversation should go two ways:

…I think it is important to examine the players that went TO Japan since the new ball was introduced, and see how they also performed against expectations.

Let’s do just that.
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