What We Learned In Week Five
Baseball is starting to sort itself out. The Marlins and Mariners have fallen apart after their hot starts to the season, the Angels are surging back towards the top of the American League West, and the Mets are riding Johan Santana and Carlos Beltran to victory. The standings still don’t look exactly like most people thought they would, but we’re starting to see some results that fit into preseason expectations. There were still things to learn last week, however.
Jayson Werth really wants to be taken seriously.
Despite posting a +5.3 win season last year, Werth is still considered a complementary player in Philadelphia. He’s overshadowed by Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Cole Hamels, and new acquisition Raul Ibanez stole the spotlight the first few weeks with his Ruthian start to his Phillies career. However, Werth demanded some attention this week, launching four home runs and reminding everyone that he can still swing the stick. Despite expectations for a regression, Werth is on a +6 win pace for the 2009 season. At some point, the baseball world is just going to have to admit that he’s a terrific player.
Miguel Tejada can still hit the ball over the fence.
Tejada didn’t have quite as good a week as Werth did, but two home runs in a four day span for Miggy is cause for celebration in Houston. Tejada had gone 180 plate appearances without a home run, dating back to last September, before he deposited one over the fence on Thursday. The power surge pushed his seasonal wOBA line up to .336, and Houston has to hope there’s more of this to come. There are several teams that could be in the market for shortstops this summer, and Tejada’s contract finally expires at the end of the season. If he can pull a few more fastballs, Houston might be able to ship him off somewhere else before the season ends.
Carlos Pena idolizes Rob Deer.
Pena’s having a big season with the bat so far, posting a league leading 13 home runs and a .414 wOBA for the Rays. If you’re a fan of the Three True Outcomes, you’d have loved Pena last week. He stepped to the plate 28 times, and 20 of them ended with a walk (five), strikeout (13), or home run (two). Eight balls in play for the whole week. Not one single. Pena is trying to chase down Jack Cust and Russ Branyan for the title of most TTO hitter in the game.
Yuniesky Betancourt knows how to take a pitch.
Mariner fans have been tearing their hair out watching Betancourt hit this year, as his hacktasticness continually kills rallies and lets pitchers off the hook without even trying. He’s swinging at 43.9% of pitches out of the strike zone this year. His approach at the plate is just miserable. So, you can imagine the amazement when Betancourt drew two walks last week – the first two he’d drawn all season. One of them even came off Royals all-star closer Joakim Soria, in the 9th inning of a close game no less. It has not yet been confirmed that Soria’s subsequent stint on the disabled list was due to embarrassment caused from the event.
Zack Greinke is good.
Just in case you weren’t sure. Two starts, two complete games, zero walks, 15 strikeouts. He still hasn’t allowed a home run this year. In seven starts, he’s been worth +2.9 wins to the Royals. This is just ridiculous.
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i made a bet with a friend at the start of the season
jayson werth goes 30/30.
he went like 24/20 last year in limited playing time.
The reason why I played limited last year, and for my whole career for that matter, is that I dont hit righties particularly well. You’ll notice that I had “platooned” a lot vs righties last year and thus had a skewed AB vs L/AB vs R ratio. This “ballooned” my stats bc they werent able to be dragged down when I played poorly vs righties.
Maybe I finally figured out how to hit righties this year, maybe Ive just been “lucky”, but if I were in a non keeper leauge, Id trade me as while Im hot to maximize my value.
Whoa! Jayson Werth posts here!
You are wildly overstating Werth’s platoon advantage last year.
Werth faced righties in 64.5% of his plate appearances. The average National Leaguer faced 71.8%. If you weight Werth’s split performances by the average proportion of plate appearances against pitchers of each handedness, his line drops from .273/.363/.498 to a barely less impressive .269/.362/.479.
This argument makes as much sense now as it did when I first started seeing it last year. Please stop making it.
Nah, Jasyon Werth posts here. I do think Jayson Werth’s emergence is for real though.
from BP 2008 analysis
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/pecota/werthja01.php
Wrist problems only shelved Werth for a month last year, an accomplishment given that the joint ruined his 2005 and caused him to miss all of 2006. When he played, he toasted lefties the way he had back in 2004, hitting .375/.467/.591 against them. He’s not the same hitter against righties, as he struck out in more than a third of his at-bats against them, but he did maintain his willingness to take a walk against the same-handed. This year, Werth will form a platoon with Geoff Jenkins, assuming he can stay off the DL. That caveat would be gratuitous with a lot of players, but in Werth’s case it’s absolutely necessary.
I dont have the time or the desire to break down werth’s 2008 season, but i gaurentee you that 95% of the 31 games he didnt start (not counting his DL stint) were against righties. In about half of those games, he did get a PH AB, and 95% of those were probably against LHP. But to completely ignore those facts is just ludacrous.
Im not saying Werth is not good, all Im saying is in 2008, and earlier in his career, Werth is not good vs RHP, and playing full time will cause his numbers to dip bc he was facing so many LHP when he didnt play full time.
I’m not sure what you’re driving at. I already showed you what would happen to his numbers if you reapportion the percentage of plate appearances he received against pitchers of each handedness to reflect the league average. Barely a dent.
If you’d like to take half a win off his WAR based on the plate appearances you think he should have gotten, be my guest. He still had a great year.
Mr Freckles,
I think the point that he was trying to make is that in 2008 werth probably had as many ABs vs LHP as you can expect over a full season, and that if you want to poject 2008 numbers over a full season, you need to use the numbers vs RHP for the remaining 150 +/- ABs, not simply multiply his overall numbers by a factor of around 1.3.
And I dont think its proper to just say the average NLer faced LHP X% of the time so thats the % we should use to calculate werth’s #s over a full season. Obviously someone, like werth, who crushes LHP, will have a % towards the lower end of the spectrum, and some like Ryan Howard, who probably only faces LHP relievers, would be towards the higher end of the spectrum.
It doesn’t matter which way you adjust the line. Weighting the plate appearances or adding x plate appearances against righties gives you the same results.
It boggles the mind that Werth was drafted as a catcher.
I would like to complete the Greinke comparison that everyone has been making in their heads. Last year through his first 7 starts Lee was at +2.965 WPA, Greinke is at 2.215.
I cannot even fathom what it must feel like to not just be that dominant, but to know you are.
P.S.
Using 4.5MM / win Greinke is already well past the break even point on his contract for the year. And he is almost past the break even point on his entire 4 year deal (4.7+2.9)*4.5 = 34.2MM. His contract was for 4 / 38 (buying out his arbitration).
The above does not take into account that it was an arbitration deal. When that is done, he was valued at 13.6MM per season (54.4 over 4 years). Even in this case he is over half way there with 500+ possible innings left on his deal.’
Though Longoria has already lapped his original contract in straight value. I’m not going to touch the arbitration / league minimum adjustments that would need to be made in his instance.
The comparisons in my head are actually a little bit different. They go a little like this:
2009 Greinke:
10.02 K/9, 1.36 BB/9, 0.00 HR/9, 1.46 FIP.
1994 Greg Maddux:
6.95 K/9, 1.38 BB/9, 0.18 HR/9, 2.39 FIP.
1999 Pedro Martinez:
13.2 K/9, 1.56 BB/9, 0.38 HR/9, 1.39 FIP.
Greinke in all probability won’t end up with one of the 3 best seasons of the modern era, but so far, his performance is right there in line with some of the best pitching baseball has ever seen. It’s been really fun to watch.
Before I get slammed by the hyperbole police who love to clutter threads on this site, I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m not saying Greinke is a hall of famer, or that he’s going to put up one of the best seasons of all time, or that he shits gold bullion on the weekdays and diamonds on sundays. I’m just engaging in a fun comparison between the best pitching we’ve seen in baseball this season and the best pitching any of us have seen during our lifetimes.
Oh, Johan Santana’s season to date compares pretty favorably, too, checking in below Pedro but above Maddux.
I’m not sure if I’m part of the hyperbole police, but I was thinking about the same comparisons. It will certainly be fun to watch.
We also learned that all of baseball is on steroids.
And it is a sadness…
Werth did indeed miss several starts early in the season, all vs. righties. These were spotty, not clustered together. Arroyo, Lincecum, Webb and Volquez are on that list, as are Redding, Fogg and Maine. As for July-September, Jayson Werth played nearly every day (seriously, I don’t think he took more than one game off).
Dave isn’t claiming Jayson Werth to be the Pujols (though I’m sure some commentators would make that accusation), but mearly that he’s a pretty damned good player. There’s no lack of really good righty hitters who hit worse against same handed pitchers than southpaws.
‘to be the NEXT Pujols’…my bad.
If anyone deserves a “the” in front of their name, it’s the Pujols.
In the 7th today Werth singled and then stole second, third, and home.
You don’t see that very often.
getting closer to my 30/30