Someone who agrees with me about Andrew Miller

During my time of Buy Low/Sell High recommendations, I've usually tried to focus on people who others wouldn't think about. Finally someone else suggests the same thing I've suggested.

Marc Normandin from Baseball Prospectus wrote this today about Andrew Miller:

If Miller's still around in your league thanks to the ugly overall numbers, make sure to pick him up or trade for him.

I suggested Andrew Miller for a Buy Low on May 30th so it appears that it just took a little extra time for other people to pick up on this. Marc explains his reasons for recommendation, focusing on qERA as I do (I did get that idea from him) and BABIP. I recommend reading the whole article as it helps explain my methodology, although I do focus on other stats as well.

Mark Buehrle

The inaugural pitcher for my new pitching feature will be Mark Buehrle.

First his true pitching line:

Year Team INN GS W L S K BBI HA ERA WHIP 2008 CHW 42.3 7 1 4 0 27 11 52 5.32 1.49 He has also given up 4 HR.

I know, not good at all. 1-4 is never good. Nor is the ERA or WHIP. In order to decide which pitchers are "unlucky" I've decided to use QuickERA and BABIP from Baseballprospectus.com

To sum up QuickERA uses BB rate, SO rate, and GB% as stats. These stabilize much faster than other statistics and thus are much better used for analysis when the IP isn't very high. BABIP measures how many batted balls fall in for hits. Voros McCracken and others have shown that the average is .290 and a range of .270-.310 is part of the "normal" distribution.

So applying those stats to the above line I get the following changes:

Hits allowed decreases from 52 to 44
QuickERA decreases to 4.27, a difference of 1.04
WHIP decreases to 1.30, a difference of .12

Are these earth shattering changes? No. They absolutely would help a fantasy team though. Especially considering the other options out there in most leagues, Mark clearly looks to have a disadvantage in the luck department so far.

I recommended picking up Buehrle immediately if he is on the wire. If he is on your team keep starting him. If he is on another team see if you can trade for him, as other people likely value him as a 5th or 6th starter.

Currently owned in 77% of CBS leagues and only 33.7% in ESPN leagues.

Is Sabathia on the up and up

Watching baseball tonight reminded me of C.C. Sabathia and how good he was last year and how horrible he was this year until the last few games.

My belief is that release point is usually critical to a pitcher's success or failure. Major league hitters are freaks of nature in terms of eyesight, recognition, and reaction to pitches thrown at you close to 100MPH at times. Pitch F/X data thankfully has begun to fill the void that was missing from staticians, scouts, managers, pitching coaches, GMs, and even the players themselves.

I decided to take a look at Sabathia and his release points so far this year. Below are closeups of his 6 starts:


Based on the real life results, one would expect that there would be a large difference in the release point from the first four starts where he was absolutely horrendous and the last two where he was lights out. But that's not what I find. His release points were essentially identical throughout all of the starts.

Where does that lead us? Why was he so ineffective in his first four starts and so amazing in his last four starts. Let's look at BABIP in each of his starts to see if it can provide an answer.

	H	HR	AB	K	SF	BB	BABIP
1st start	6	2	22	7	0	3	0.308
2nd start	6	1	22	2	0	4	0.263
3rd	12	0	21	4	2	2	0.800
4th	8	2	20	1	0	5	0.353
5th	4	0	21	11	0	2	0.400
6th	4	1	28	8	0	1	0.158
SUM	40	6	134	33	2	17
					Total		0.351

The average BABIP is approximately .290 according to many people including those at Baseball Prospectus and Voros McCracken. Sabathia's overall BABIP is above it at roughly .350. What is of real note to me is how much that one horrible start factored into his BABIP. Remove that one start and you come back with the following:

	H	HR	AB	K	SF	BB	BABIP
1st start	6	2	22	7	0	3	0.308
2nd start	6	1	22	2	0	4	0.263
4th	8	2	20	1	0	5	0.353
5th	4	0	21	11	0	2	0.400
6th	4	1	28	8	0	1	0.158
SUM	28	6	113	29	0	15
					Total		0.282

Overall numbers that are perfectly within normal parameters. So with the BABIP at normal levels, his struggles in the first several games cannot be attributed to bad luck. in this department.

So ruling out release point and BABIP, only leaves us with more questions than when I started. One final thing that I decided to look at was a statistic of Baseball Prospectus called stuff. It is defined according to their website as:

"A rough indicator of the pitcher's overall dominance, based on normalized strikeout rates, walk rates, home run rates, runs allowed, and innings per game. "10" is league average, while "0" is roughly replacement level. The formula is as follows: Stuff = EqK9 * 6 - 1.333 * (EqERA + PERA) - 3 * EqBB9 - 5 * EqHR9 -3 * MAX{6-IP/G),0}"

His Stuff rating was 15, while in the previous 2 years it was 28 and 29 respectively. This is the first thing that I saw that lead me to believe that his control, his location of pitches were what was really causing him problems.

Looking at the location of pitches with the pitch FX data, (courtesy of Dan Brooks and his online web based tool for evaluating pitch fx data). Please click on the charts for a zoom view.

Game 1 - Horrible control of fastball and slider











Game 2 - Horrible control of fastball in the zone and out of the zone.










Game 3 - His horrible start. He hung any a sliders and changes to the hitters.





Game 4 - Another horrible outing. Once again he hung many sliders, left too any fastballs in the zone that were hittable, and hung any changeups in the zone as well.







Game 5 - His first very good game. His slider was down in the zone
or out of the zone as was his changeup. While his fastball was still
somewhat erractic, it was not nearly as bad, and it was also not in the zones where right handers could get their arms extended to drive the ball.





Game 6 - His last game. He had amazing break on his pitches and
was once again able to locate his pitches well. He mixed his speeds
well and he had a lot of success.








From looking at everything above, I'd say the culprit was just missing his locations. Once he was able to regain that touch and control he was once again dominating.

I would recommend him in all formats except I still have this nagging worry about his workload last year. Yes, he is a big boy and might be able to handle the stresses more. If his release point is similar throughout the entire previous year, then it's likely this is the case. I would monitor him for at least 1-2 more starts prior to trading for him but I think that he has clearly recovered from his early season woes.

Miggy and Carlos

With the news that Carlos Guillen and Miguel Cabrera switching position fantasy players everywhere are weighing their options regarding what to do and how to value these players. Some so called experts feel that this move does nothing for your fantasy team, I beg to differ and could not possibly disagree more. I am a fir believer in position flexibility and having this is key.

Miguel Cabrera is one of the top hitters in the game no matter what position her plays in the field. Having position flexibility is a key component of championship teas, expecially when the flexibility is in your best hitter. Cabrera now has or will have very soon eligibility at 1b. If you are one of those luck owners to get him in the first or second (I can't imagine how) round, then you have got to be very pleased to have someone who you can slot in at 1b, 3b, or Util. Imagine the production if Ortiz played several games at 1b and 3b in the beginning of the year and you now have Miggy C.

Unfortunately, Miggy has to move to a new position this year and not last year. That means that there is an increased chance of injury that Will Carroll at Baseball Prospectus as explained about as well as anyone I have ever heard. You can read this more about this here. So, will Miggy "produce" more? Probably not. Are you going to reap the benefits of this move, absolutely. It's a question of degree.

Now onto Guillen. Gaining position flexibility is nice, but not at the increased risk of injury. Bill James described the defensive spectrum as the order from easiest to hardest as this:

Designated Hitter
First Base
Left Field
Right Field
Third Base
Center Field
Second Base
Shortstop
Catcher
Pitcher

Will Carroll however has shown at Baseball Prospectus that injuries tend to occur more frequently to those who switch positions and have an increased risk moving up the defensive spectrum to the harder positions.

So what do you do? Whats the right "price" for these guys? In my league I stacked up on offense early and switching out my 1b or Util for Cabrera is not necessarily a step up. Neither is Guillen, who wouldn't replace my 3b since I was able to sneak in a great one. However if you have Beltre at 3b or if you have a mid-level 1b, I would definitely examine this further.