Twins Don’t Sign Jarrod Washburn
The terror was palpable among intelligent Minnesota baseball fans yesterday as reports surfaced that the roster spot opened by Bobby Keppel‘s departure to Japan would be filled via a signing of Jarrod Washburn. That roster spot will instead be filled by 34-year-old reliever Clay Condrey. For the moment, Twins fans can breathe a sigh of relief.
The Detroit Tigers learned last August and September what many of us, including Jack Zduriencik, already knew: Jarrod Washburn is not an ace. Despite his 2.64 ERA through July, Washburn tanked with Detroit, posting a 1-3 record with a 7.33 ERA and 7.00 FIP.
Now, of course, neither his partial season with Detroit nor his brilliant start with Seattle are indicative of his true talent. Put the two together, and you get something much closer, as Washburn’s final line resulted in a 4.58 FIP and a 4.79 tERA, and that’s with his lowest walk rate since 2004.
Given that Washburn will turn 36 in 2010, it’s not likely that he improves upon those total numbers, especially with the lack of exceptional defenders in the Twins’ outfield. As an extreme fly ball pitcher, Washburn is likely to give up an above average number of home runs, and without defenders to make to turn deep fly balls into outs, he will also give up an above average number of extra base hits.
That said, Washburn isn’t nearly as terrible a pitcher as some would make him out to be. He probably tops out at a 4.50 FIP, and a standard projection will place him in the 4.60-4.90 FIP range, which nears 2 WAR value in 170 innings pitched. A fair one year contract for Washburn would probably come in at about 7-9 million dollars.
However, in the case of Minnesota, it just wouldn’t make sense to dedicate that amount of resources. Even without considering the fact that their defense wouldn’t leverage Washburn’s skills at all, the increase over Francisco Liriano, Carl Pavano, or Brian Duensing probably doesn’t eclipse one half of a win. As such, Minnesota would only be realizing about 2 million dollars worth of value on their 7+ million dollar investment.
Clay Condrey isn’t a terribly useful piece. CHONE projects him for all of one run above replacement. However, Condrey is probably going to receive the minimum if the deal is even guaranteed. As such, this move won’t dent the Twins’ financial ability to fill their need at either 2B or 3B, where the player acquired will actually be replacing a replacement level player.
Of course, there is still time, Bill Smith. I’m not stopping you.
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Here’s to hoping GMDM offers Washburn $35 million for 4 years.
Now now, 3 years $25 million should probably get this deal done.
Is Washburn hurt or something?
I ask b/c this is literally the first time I’ve heard his name all winter. Everything in this article is true, he’s not as good as his raw stats last year, but like you said, he’s not useless.
In fact, given the seeming lack of interest, I would imagine he could end up as a huge bargain for someone. You don’t think the Mets could use Washburn on a short deal? Is he really that much worse than Jason Marquis?
That’s why I ask if he was injured.
His knee is a little bum.
He should be fine for spring training, though.
I’ve thought all along Washburn would be a perfect fit for the Mets, with Citi Field being huge and all. I had some hope that maybe they would put some stock in outfield defense and get someone competent in left, and then sign Washburn. Omar, of course, has disappointed.
Washburn has a career ERA that is 0.50 pts lower than his FIP so I might hesitate to strictly base his value (dollar amounts) on his FIP.
But as a Twins fan I do agree that this money would be best allocated elsewhere (Hudson, Lopez and Tejada (home/away splits scare me though)). But I would take Washburn on the team since you can never have enough pitching and things can go downhill fast if 1-2 starters are injured or ineffective like the Twins found out last year.
Yep. And, his career BABIP is .280. So, his established baseline is lower than league average. FIP would not capture his real value.
As a FB pitcher he is supposed to have a low BABIP and FIP generally takes that into account at least somewhat. He also has a higher LOB% for his career than you would expect. LOB% is definitely a skill, just one that is hard to isolate over a small sample.
Ignore my other post, I posted it and realized I was thinking of FIP wrong and there is no edit!
Between the low BABIP and the high LOB% it doesn’t surprise me his ERA is better than his FIP. Add in the fact he has pitched in pitcher parks his entire career and you see even a bigger gap comparing xFIP to ERA.
FIP is going to be off on flyball pitchers, since they are penalized for their giving up more home runs, but don’t reap the benefits of their lower BABIP’s they post from the increased number of flyball outs. Likewise, it will tend to be off on extreme ground ball pitchers as well (who will post higher then normal BABIP’s)
For another example…see Ted Lilly.
For a groundball extreme example, see: Joel Pinero
Actually, ground balls and fly balls turn into hits at similar rates. Ground balls are usually singles, though, while FB are typically XBH. Also, FB BABIP ignores HR, so the batting average against FB isn’t properly captured by BABIP.
Also, Washburn pitched in front of excellent defensive teams three of his final four years in Anaheim, and Safeco is a left fly-ball pitcher’s best friend.
I don’t follow. The MLB average BABIP for ground balls last year was .237. For fly balls it was .138. And, the batting average and OBP for ground ball hits were also higher.
Fly balls go for extra base hits more and that explains the large OPS discrepancy between the two batted ball types. But, fly balls go for hits less.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&lg=MLB&year=2009#traj
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/groundballs-flyballs-and-line-drives/
This article (and other research) shows that fly balls are more often recorded for outs then ground balls.
We’re not talking about batting average against flyballs, but BABIP. Those home runs which aren’t included, are already penalizing the pitchers FIP, the remaining fly balls that are factored into the BABIP are less likely to fall for hits, and that’s being ignored by FIP.
Your point about XBH is a good one, however, it stands to reason that those extra bases, and sac fly’s that come from more fly balls should offset at least some of the benefit of the fly balls being less likely to be outs. And the defense certainly plays a role as well.
Yeah, if you use something like wOBA on BIP instead of BA on BIP, the difference between GBers and FBers in BIP value is a lot less noticeable.
There was a lot of talk about Washburn throwing different pitches the beginning of last year, and the data was somewhat convincing. Would be nice to know if his approach continued with the Tigers or what might have changed.
I think what changed with the Tigers is that his knee went from bad to worse and then to terrible. Reading thru the rotoworld news links his knee started hurting around June.
Virtually every mediocre or worse pitcher comes to spring training camp with talk about new pitches, adjustments to deliveries, increased focus, changes in offseason training routines, etc.
Just do to ordinary variance, a certain fraction of those pitchers will start off the year with improved success, which success is immediately attributed to the offseason changes that were discussed. When those players regress to more normal production, those changes are suddenly forgotten, and a new set of issues are identified that are the cause of the decline in performance.
Few people ever stop to think that, in the end, the pitcher is simply performing as he always has.
A lot of the mystique of Washburn comes from the one year he flukily led the league in ERA, the last year he was in Anaheim. That seems to have cemented in many people’s minds that he’s a better pitcher than he really is. And when that perception is in place, people are much more desirous of explanations for why a pitcher has faltered.
Check out my THT article tomorrow Sku
That should obviously read Sky.
I’ll add on that he threw a “flipper” which is just a slow curve. It was a pretty crap pitch for him. He changed his arm angle and hung the pitch like a motherfucker… didn’t get hurt on it though.
Startrib reporter is calling this contract offer false. http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/neal/2010/01/06/twins-add-a-pitcher-but-its-not-who-you-think/
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Washburn: I know there was a report yesterday that the Twins have offered a contract to lefthander Jarrod Washburn. I have spoken with several people in the organization and received NO indications that an offer has been made. (Smith declined to comment). The Twins have had interest in Washburn but, again, there’s no evidence that an offer has been made.
If that changes, I will let you know and I will give props to the CBSSportsline report. The responsible thing in these cases is to verify facts on my end before hitting the publish button.
And, as one person with the club told me, Brian Duensing might be better than Washburn right now.
Condrey is a good cheap option for a middle reliever.
He goes multiple innings, gets a lot of ground balls (helpful when you’ve got a good defensive infield like the Twins) and eats low leverage innings.
However, don’t ever expect him to pitch in anything resembling a pressure situation. He doesn’t have a swing and miss pitch…its just 2 seamer after 2 seamer till you either kill it or ground out.
That said, he gave Philly a good low-cost option for several years. And he was a great clubhouse/team guy from all reports.
“The terror was palpable among intelligent Minnesota baseball fans yesterday as ”
“what many of us, including Jack Zduriencik, already knew: Jarrod Washburn is not an ace.”
I think I understand why the casual fans are resistent to the messengers of sabermetrics. Just read what you wrote. It’s ridiculous. The tone comes from a self-awarded place of high-authority that no one at THIS site has earned within the baseball establishment.
[1] Most fans probably don’t even know who Washburn is. That’s tells you right there what kind of “ace” he is. Are there even fans that consider him an “ace” or did you construct that Strawmen on your own? Serioiusly, when have Washburn and Ace ever been combined in a meaningful way?
[2] Does FG REALLY have to mention Jack Z in EVERY damn thread? Hey look, Kenny Williams didn’t sign him either. Real Men of Genius. Sheesh.
I don;t think I’ve heard Washburn’s name mentioned a single time in contract talks, not with the “good” GMs, not with the “bad” GMs. That’s not very indicative of an “Ace”.
I’m not saying this in an angry way or attacking you intentionally. But many of the comments here are from a (possibly unintentional) Holier than Thou tone that we never tolerate from others (even chastize them for it), and use flimsy methods based on bias such as strawmen construction, marginalizing accomplishments of other players, cherry picking data (while ignoring other relevant data) for analysis of players/GM’s, etc. I would REALLY like this site to increase it’s humility and integrity and become THE awesome analytical website I thought I was coming to.
“[2] Does FG REALLY have to mention Jack Z in EVERY damn thread? Hey look, Kenny Williams didn’t sign him either. Real Men of Genius. Sheesh.”
Um…it’s not like Jack Z is a random pull in this case, as you seem to be suggesting. Washburn pitched for the Mariners last year and was traded at exactly the right time to a team that apparently *didn’t* know Washburn isn’t an ace. So yeah.
True enough. The accumulation of frustration over lazy research, sensationalism, marginalization, wearing of blinders, bias, and generalization is really bothering me.
But, I haven’t heard of ANY GMs really being interested in Washburn. I’m not going to give extra points to the GM that *should* know him best. StL isn’t really pursuing Pineiro, and no other team is. That gives me a decent indicator of what teams think of his ability. I’m not gonna praise StL for “knowing their player”.
Once again the most relevant statistical analysis comes from FG Readers (Kirk, career ERAvFIP & Scottwood, career BABIP), rather than just looking at an isolated season (and/or isolated metrics) as a predicitive element for future performance (Didn’t we just have a “2009 is not a constant” article here?).
Did Twins fan really feel ‘terror’ or did they even notice with all of the attention in MIN being on NFL playoffs? I, mean, seriously.
You are basically backing the original point by constructing a strawman, i.e. that the Tigers thought Washburn was an “ace”.
You seem to be implying that no team will ever make a deadline deal for a pitcher that is not an ace. Which is, of course, absurd.
To take it one step further, if the Tigers indeed thought he was an ace, than the logical conclusion would be that the Mariners received a return commensurate with that assessment. Which they did not.
So yeah.
I don’t care if they considered him an ace or not (they considered him worth trading for as help down the stretch, which intelligent Minnesota baseball fans, Jack Moore and Jack Zduriencik all would have known seriously overvalued him). The only point was that CircleChange ripped him for bringing up Jack Z. in a post in which Jack Z. was directly and obviously relevant.
I don’t really see any “lazy research, sensationalism, marginalization, wearing of blinders, bias, and generalization” on this site (check SI.com for that), but whatever. I’m a Twins fan, and I know I was feeling some “terror.” It’s exactly the kind of move Smith seems likely to make, and it would be an utter disaster with the Twins’ OF defense.
I don’t really see any “lazy research, sensationalism, marginalization, wearing of blinders, bias, and generalization” on this site (check SI.com for that), but whatever.
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Really?
Here’s some examples from the past 2 days …
[1] Kenny Williams is a bad GM.
[2] Edgar’s LDS game is comparable to Morris’s G7 of WS heroics.
[3] Touting Gar’s LDS stats while ignoring his LCS stats.
[4] Ignoring all of the other stats that don’t work in Egar’s favor, while only bring up the 1 or 2 that place him among the upper eschelon.
Seriously, #1 I spent 15 minutes to discover that KW added about 50 WAR to his team for just “peanuts” (3 WAR + $15M). I had never looked it before. I’m glad I don;t take people’s word for things that ‘don’t seem right to me’.
#2 is just ridiculous, as is #3. #4 is intentionally misleading.
I don’t like it. I’m not 12yo, I don’t need mislead to arrive at the “right” conclusion. I do prefer being given all the information, and being educated on how to go about making a fair conclusion.
It’s all there, if you want to see it. I have found the reader’s comment to be tremendously valuable as they routinely contain valid and required information that was, for whatever reson, left out of the author’s article. I really don;t like being the “jerk” (really, I don’t), but I feel like somebody has to say something, otherwise the same old stuff just continues to happen until the misinformation just becomes accept as a given, or worse … a fact.
FWIW, I NEVER read the name of the author. I just want to read, understand, and evaluate/compare the information, without any preconceived ideas or opinions of the author based on previous articles or comments. So, I don;t want any of this to be interpreted a personal attack on any single person.
“Kenny Williams is a bad GM” is an opinion, and one I happen to share. That by itself is none of those things you mentioned.
Same thing with comparing Edgar’s LDS moment to Jack’s WS moment. Totally subjective opinion (I guess I don’t have an opinion on that one — either is a horrible basis for a HOF case). Again, none of those labels are applicable.
#3 is essentially the same as #2, and is perfectly reasonable in context. Dave is calling out the voters who (idiotically) voted for Morris based in large part on one WS game. Those voters didn’t look at Morris’ pedestrian overall postseason record either. Neither Edgar’s ALCS or ALDS performance makes is large enough to be worth discussing, unless you want to give a tiny bit of extra credit for carrying his team through in 1995. (I see now that you had a whole huge, profoundly silly discussion over this on the other post. Well, attack away.)
#4- no idea what you’re talking about here. Edgar was a legendary hitter, one of the best of his time. There are THINGS that don’t work in his favor–all the games at DH, for instance, but stats? What, lack of stolen bases?
The Mariners were mainly out of contention at the time of the trade and Washburn would be gone after the year, so the trade was a no-brainer. It doesn’t take Jack Z to notice that a 36 year old soft tossing lefty with a recent history of mediocrity having a good first half might be a good regression candidate.
Constructive criticism, I would venture to guess, is always welcome here. But a couple of things – (a) no one needs to *earn* any particular level of “high authority within the baseball establishment” to offer commentary on, or criticism of, a transaction. If the “baseball establishment” means actually earning a living either playing, coaching, or managing the game itself, or as an executive for some team, that circle would be a very small one indeed. If that circle is widened to include traditional journalists providing baseball coverage (Gammons, Olney, Stark, Neyer et al) then I’m not sure what makes those folks any more qualified to offer a ‘better’ or more well reasoned opinion just because they work for the 4-letter. Certainly, the work of many baseball journalists would seem to confirm that working “within the baseball establishment” doesn’t confer any sort of magical reasoning or logic skills.
And, too, if the tone continues to rub you the wrong way, and it’s something you simply can’t get past…well, there are plenty of other resources for baseball information and analysis, from the whimsical to the stat-based, from the light-hearted to the mean-spirited, from the sage old scribes to the johnny-come-lately bloggers. There should be something out there that scratches your itch. =)
Again, not at all saying that constructive criticism isn’t helpful or warranted, but you may be tilting at windmills to change someone’s writing style. People tend to develop their “writing voice” pretty early and I would imagine it can be tough to fundamentally change.
“Constructive criticism, I would venture to guess, is always welcome here. But a couple of things – (a) no one needs to *earn* any particular level of “high authority within the baseball establishment” to offer commentary on, or criticism of, a transaction.”
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IMO, you do. You earn the credibility by being accurace, unbiased,and professional. ANYONE can offer commentary on ANYTHING. We see that rampant on the internet. However, if I am not mistaken this site is assumming a different niche, where it is a valuable resource of high quality analysis based on statistics, no?
Everyone has an opinion and everyone has the right to voice their opinion, but not all opinions are equally valid.
Seriously, look at some of the articles written in the past week. Read the reader comments for easily found “missing” information from the author analysis, that drastically changes the outlook of the “main point”.
Increasingly I feel as though I’m attempted to being brinwashed, or being mislead by selected statistics, or as if I am hearing about a divorce from ONLY one person in the scenario.
“And, too, if the tone continues to rub you the wrong way, and it’s something you simply can’t get past…well, there are plenty of other resources for baseball information and analysis”
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I agree. I thought I would first attempt to voice a concern, and perhaps mention some of the flaws I see, and ask humbly that the standard is raised. That’s all I can control or influence. I am not trying to sound as if I am THE best person around, because I’m a Pleb among the Sabermetric Empire, but lately I notice HIGH bias, WEAK generalization, INTENTIONAL marginalization, presenting only HAND-PICKED stats/evidence, while IGNORING all of the other information that runs counter to the main point (i.e., often nothing more than an opinion), and I find it very disappointing and unprofessional. It’s the type of stuff one can get at any old “Baseball Site”.
I am looking for an incredibly in-depth website that features non-biased, highly-analytical and stats-based discussion of baseball aspects, without all of the “Make the news, instead of just reporting the news” crap that pervades seemingly every source of information.
My big complaint with the tone of MANY articles is the INTENTIONAL and NEEDLESS classification of fans as “intelligent” or “not” based on hand-picked criteria or by information that is assigned to those groups whether they deserve it or not (Strawmen). Again, it feels like “constant and subliminal” messages that seek to little-by-little brainwash someone into accepting an idea that may or may not be accurate. IMO, it’s just w-e-a-k and resentful … childish.
For example, rather than just accepting that Kenny Williams is bad GM, and being reassured by how often it is repeated here (it’s non-stop), I decided to spend 15 minutes looking at the players on the 2009 Sox roster, and discovered that KW has traded 3 WAR for 30 WAR, claimed 7 WAr off waivers, and signed 8 WAR for 10M. It took me 15 minutes, that no one else seemingly felt required to invest. That’s just one example, look at the week’s past articles for numerous other examples.
In the end, I know my choices, and I don’t generally invest my time in areas that bring frustration (Life’s too short, brother). But, I love this game, and I’m invested in this game, and I’d rather talk off-season baseball stuff than in-season anything else. But, I also want my source of information and discussion to be of the highest quality, highest integrity, and professional tone and intent … and MOST importantly to be informational and educational in the professional sense.
CircleChange, if you’re going to do that much quoting you should learn to use the blockquote tags. It makes things far more legible and makes me (at least) more likely to wade through a long comment.
Joser,
I would definately use the quote features if I knew what they were. I’ve looked and I don’t see a “how to” on how to do it. It can’t be that difficult to do, I just don;t see info on how to do it. I’m more accustomed to forums that have a “quote button”.
I also notice far to much frequency and redundancy in comments that essentially say the same things. If it isn;t already, it’s going to turn into “annoying” very quickly. I don’t want that.
[QUOTE]CircleChange, if you’re going to do that much quoting you should learn to use the blockquote tags. It makes things far more legible and makes me (at least) more likely to wade through a long comment.[/QUOTE]
Does this work?
Annoying quote test, Part 2
There you go. Yeah, it’s a pain they don’t have any buttons to insert tags (or even a guide as to which ones work and which don’t — so far I’m sure of i, b, a, code, and blockquote, and note that you really have to manually enclose a link in b tags because the stylesheet they’re using leaves links looking like normal text). Even better would be a “preview” button so we could see what we’re going to post before it goes up and/or a WYSIWYG editor. Fangraphs is running on IIS/ASP.NET AFAICT, and components for those features exist on that platform, but I don’t know what all is going on in the guts of the site to make things like that easy or hard to add (or whether they have any plans to do so).
you cant trust Bill Smith to do anything smart. he is an idiot. if they trade liriano im going to do something crazy. BRING BACK TERRY RYAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Terry Ryan hasn’t gone very far. Still works for the team. In fact, I would doubt that Smith makes many – if any – moves without talking to Terry Ryan to at least get another opinion.
Yep. Forget Washburn. Bring back the days of Tony Batista, Rondell White and Ramon Ortiz.
I’m no fan of Billy Smith and Terry Ryan was great at a lot of things, but the one thing he definitely wouldn’t(/doesn’t) help with is figuring out which free agents to go after.
kind of hard to get good free agents when the pohlads dont spend money. once the young core of players Ryan assembled move on from the team, our winning ways are over. sad but true.
Wow, lots of strange negativity here. The team looks to spend something like 30 million more this year than last and actually has a pretty good farm system beyond the currently active young core, who look to be pretty darn good this year and for several years into the future. It’s not Boston or NY, but it’s really a pretty nicely situated ballclub.
And for all the supposed stupidity of the front office (which is hardly radically different from when T. Ryan was the top guy), I just saw a stat that they got the second-most wins per dollar spent in the 2000s (behind only Oakland). I think the FG crowd is prone to think of them as backwards because they excel by using something other than advanced statistical analysis, but excel they have.
Let me say off the bat that I agree with this article for the most part. I do have a problem with these marginal upgrade columns that have been coming out lately.
The problem is that no team goes through the year with 5 pitchers getting all of the starts. While Washburn would be taking some innings away from Duensing or Liriano, he’d also be taking innings away from guys like Swarzak and Manship when someone got hurt. Security and depth have value and cannot be ignored.
That being said, in this case, if they were planning on signing Washburn and not trading anyone, it would be a bit of overkill. Duensing, Liriano, and Perkins all look to be similar to Washburn and have upside to be better. This would only be a good use of resources if Washburn was in the 5-6 mil range, and if they then flipped a pitcher or two for an upgrade in the infield.
If they signed Washburn for 7-9 mil, and did nothing else… well then yes. This would be one of the worst moves of the off season.
The intriguing thing about washburn (which was touched on earlier in discussion) is that he’s severely out-performed his FIP throughout his career (over some eleventy-billion innings) by an enormous amount, sort of the anti-Javier Vazquez, if you will.
Whilst it’s fair to state that he’s played in pitchers’ parks (for the most part), and he had an excellent outfield defense behind him in 2009, prior to that (in the Bavasi years in Seattle and during his tenure in Anaheim) I can’t believe his defense was quite so good that it should be entirely responsible for him beating his FIP by half a run every year.
Intriguingly, he has maintained a very good LOB% throughout his career (a few % above the average, which most pitchers tend to adhere to), so I wonder if he’s not been particularly good at preventing runners from scoring. I presume part of it might be because he’s a lefty and is very difficult to steal on, although perhaps he’s able to pitch a little better than average under pressure.
It’s kind of hard to leverage this into information that can be used to accurately value him, which sort of defeats the object of bringing it up, I suppose, but I think it’s fair to say (especially if you throw in the fact that he’s generally been extremely durable) that he’s probably worth more than his FIP (or even FIP-based WAR) would probably indicate, especially if you can put a good OF defense behind him, and especially if you play in a park that suppresses HR totals or is somewhat neutral on that front (both of which may apply to Minnesota).
If Clay Condrey, who is probably barely replacement level, really is the Twins’ 5th starter this year, they could probably do worse than spend 6 or 7 mill on Washburn, and maybe grab Endy Chavez for next to nothing to give them another excellent backup OF glove. They’re in a position where they’re probably the best team in their division by a short margin, so I’d say a pretty sure-fire addition of 2 wins (Washburn) is probably more valuable to them than an addition that may add 5 WAR or nothing (I dunno, Erik Bedard).
1 year / $5,000,000 for Washburn isn’t too bad at least.