Film Review: Pelotero

A quick look at the Reds' roster reveals three players from the Dominican Republic: Johnny Cueto, Alfredo Simon, and Ramon Santiago.  That's 12%, which is right around average: overall, in major league baseball, of the 1013 players to wear a big league uniform this year, 101 are from the Dominican Republic.  And yet, we rarely hear much about the journey those players make to get here, aside from the annual highlights of the latest 16-year olds to sign with big league clubs.

Pelotero, a documentary by Ross Finkel, Trevor Martin, and Jonathan Paley, tells the story of two players approaching their first day of eligibility to sign with big league clubs: Jean Carlos Batista and Miguel Angel Sano.  While Batistia is attracting some interest from scouts as the documentary begins, it's Miguel Sano who is getting the most attention.  If you follow prospects, you've already heard of Miguel Sano: he is a top prospect at third base coming off a huge year last season, and were it not for the failure of his Tommy John ligament, he'd probably be looking at a major league call-up this season.  Best wishes to him on a fast, full recovery.

Interestingly, the story of Sano's signing is far from straightforward.  Neither is Batista's.  It is their stories that make up this documentary.  It is frankly riveting: we have deception, underhanded dealings, corruption...  Some of the scouts working for MLB teams come out of this looking horrible, and I think we'd be naive to think that these are the only cases like this.  While the recent rule changes that have tightened how much teams can spend on international free agents might have reduced the profile of these signings in recent years, there's little reason that I can see to think that the cases we get to see in this film are particularly exceptional.

It's a great film, and highly recommended.  Even my wife and mother, the latter of whom was visiting when we watched it, found it engaging and provocative.  Baseball is the focus of the film, but it's really just the context in which the story is told.

The one criticism I have about the film is that of omission.  While both of these players ultimately do win the lottery and attract attention from major league teams, there are a lot of kids who basically forego secondary school in the Dominican Republic to concentrate fully on playing baseball.  And then, when they don't make it, what are they left with?  I've written a little bit about this before, but MLB's affect on the Dominican Republic really needs further investigation.

For more on Pelotero, check out Carson Cistulli's interview with one of the directors last January.  Carson's interview is what made me aware of the film in the first place.  Pelotero is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

What caused increased use of term "sabermetrics"?

Ok, first little ditty stemming from the course.  In his introduction, Andy Andres pointed out, using the Google Ngram viewer, that the use of the term sabermetrics started with Bill James coining the term in 1980, started to fade after his last abstract in 1988, but then rose again starting around the year 1998.  I've always thought of Moneyball as the major force driving the increased interest in (and thus use of the term) sabermetrics.  But it was clearly on the rise before Moneyball's release in 2003:

Why?  Well, if you look at the graph, I'm proposing one possible reason: the rising interest in fantasy baseball.  Fantasy baseball became far easier to play as the internet took off in the mid-90's.  For many of us, myself included, fantasy baseball is the gateway drug into sabermetrics.

Of course, it certainly might run the other way, too: increased interest in sabermetrics might be driving more people to be interested in playing fantasy baseball.  But I'd guess that more come from fantasy than are driven to it.

Just a thought!

edX Sabermetrics 101 is live

Andy Andres' SABR101 course is online and running!  I will be diving into the first batch of materials tonight, but I did take a look at the course discussion forums.  Wowzers.  The introduce-yourself post has 203 replies already!  I've never been in a massively open online course before, so this will be interesting if it keeps up at this pace.

In any case, there's been talk of a Red Reporter study group.  If that happens, I'll be there!  As I mentioned last month, I'm also planning to use a lot of the content at that course as inspiration for posts here.  I'm more than happy to let the comments here be used for course discussion, if anyone out there is also reading this.

Thoughts on the Reds & Chase Field

Chase Field was my local ballpark for seven years.
Photo Credit: Not That Bob James

In my series preview today of the Reds and Diamondbacks, I posted some doomy and gloomy thoughts on the current state of affairs:

So.  At the time that I write this (prior to end of the last Dodgers game), the Reds are in the midst of a 4-game losing streak.  They're 7.5 games behind the Brewers.  And thanks to a modest surge by the Pirates, the Reds now sit in 4th place in the NL Central.  Finally, the Reds' playoff odds, according to both FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus, have dropped below 10% for the first time this season.  It's a tough time.  The offense has been very poor, and the bullpen has been even worse.  Despite the strong performances by the starting pitching, the Reds have been a sub-0.500 team, in terms of both real wins and PythagenPat record. 

Is there hope?  Sure.  Latos and Votto could return, Bruce could catch fire, Frazier & Mesoraco & Cueto and the rest could keep on keepin' on, and the Reds could go on a tear.  But they're at the point that they will need to go on a heck of a run to get back into contention.

John Fay and C. Trent Rosecrans are already starting to talk about the Reds' potential trade chips.  Cueto's at the top of the list, of course.  He's cheap for his value, and there's not a team in baseball that wouldn't love to have him.  None of us are privvy to the Reds' true financial situation, but they are facing what could be a major escalation in payroll next year.  First-time eligible arbitration players Todd Frazier, Devin Mesoraco, and Zack Cozart are in line for big raises.  And other salaries are going up, while very little salary is scheduled to go off the books.  It could be that the Reds are set up to absorb that hike in payroll, which could allow them to field much the same team next year as they did this year (hopefully in good health!).  But it just seems like a lot of money.  I'm not sure what the coming few months will bring, but if the Reds don't rebound, I think we could be looking at some significant roster changes.  Of course, maybe that's what this team needs...

But, I also took some spent a moment to reminisce about Chase Field, which was fun:

The Reds return to my old haunts.  I spent 7 years in Phoenix (hence the AZ in my username), and for a lot of that I lived only about 10 minutes away from the ballpark in South Phoenix.  As a result, I've probably seen more games there than any park other than Riverfront.  It's a really nice place to take in a game.  I never thought I'd like indoor baseball.  But when the heat is blazing outside, it was an incredibly comfortable, pleasant place to kick back and enjoy a ballgame.  It's the place where my oldest "saw" her first ballgame as a two-month old (the night of Carlos Quintin's debut, when he hit his first major league home run), and where I got to watch live games in the first World Baseball Classic.  I also got to see a 2007 playoff game there (Cubs v. Dbacks), which was the only playoff game I've ever attended in person (go ahead, make fun of me).  I have pretty great memories of that ballpark.

Prospecting the Altoona Curve, Part 2: Pitchers

Continuing my look at the Altoona Curve, I'm turning my attention to pitchers today.

As with the hitters, the projection is the pre-season Oliver projections.  I like to use Oliver for minor leaguers, in particular, because of its emphasis on minor league equivalencies, and because it usually reports more players than anyone else!

Top Prospect: RHP Nick Kingham
Kingham was a 4th-round selection out of high school in 2010.  Now in his age-22 season, the 6'5" Kingham posted the best season of his young career last year with a 2.89 ERA across high-A and AA last year, and with peripherals to match.  This year he hasn't looked quite as strong, at least in terms of his peripheral numbers.  His strikeout rate has been down, and his walk rate has been unimproved from last year.  Entering the season, Tim Williams reported that he'd been adding velocity, while Marc Hulet was talking about him needing to learn to use his height and pitch in a downward angle.  He's obviously the guy that I'm most interested to see pitch...although I don't think the schedule matches up.

Top Performer: RHP Adrian Sampson
Sampson was drafted in the 5th round in 2012 out of community college.  He had a very nice season in low-A that year, but struggled a bit last year at high-A; his strikeouts took a big hit, even as he demonstrated exceptional control.  Perhaps as a result, he was left off all but the deepest Pirates prospect lists.  This year, now pitching in AA, his strikeouts are back up to mostly-respectable rates, and he's continuing to show good ability to avoid the walk.  He is listed as 6'3", 200 lbs, so he has good size.  Beyond that, the best info I've found on him was here: high-80's to low-90's fastball, good curve.  If I'm reading the schedule right, he should be in line to pitch on Saturday when I head to see the Curve.  I'm looking forward to watching this guy.  The Pirates have been aggressive in promoting him, and this year it seems as if it's paying off.

The Other Name: LHP Joely Rodriguez
Calling Rodriguez a "name guy" might be overstating things, but he managed to be ranked right along with Adrian Sampson in the pre-season lists that were deep enough to include him.  Rodriguez's 2014 stat line makes him look like a soft-tossing lefty.  Interestingly enough, despite his low career strikeout rates, Rodriguez actually was featured in a Nathaniel Stoltz profile as a power lefty.  He throws hard for a lefty, sitting in the low-to-mid-90's, and, thanks to the Pirates emphasis on it, is showing a good change-up.  Still, at some point, the stuff needs to play up and result in performance.  While he hasn't been bad, he's been the weakest of the Pirates' trio of 22-year old starters thus far.

The Veteran: LHP Brandon Mann
The top strikeout rate on the team actually belongs to Brandon Mann, who has largely thrown out of the bullpen.  He's also 30 years old, apparently did not play in organized baseball last season, and before that spent two years in Japan.  He last appeared in the affiliated minors in 2010 with the Dodgers after being cut loose by the Tampa Bay Rays, who drafted him as an 18-year old in 2002.  He's not a prospect, and is undoubtedly pretty far down on the depth charts.  But he's left-handed, so you never know, right?  Kudos to him for working his way back into affiliated baseball.

Joey Votto's Injury

Get well soon, Joey Votto.
Photo Credit: Keith Allison

John Fay's article this morning on Joey Votto's injury was a little disturbing.

First, this quote from Bryan Price, which appeared in another article yesterday (I think?):

"The soreness – I can't say it's completely gone – but it's much more controlled," Price said.
"But the strength deficit is still a concern. To me, it made more sense to get Joey as close to 100 percent – that may not be possible this year – but as close to it as we can and give him a better foundation on which to play as opposed to getting him back at 50 percent because we didn't give him an extra week to 10 days to get that stability back in in his leg."

I teach a human anatomy & physiology course, but I'm certainly not qualified to provide medical analysis. So take the following with a grain of salt: this just seems weird to me. If it's just a quadriceps strain, as was originally reported, it seems like this is something that should be able to heal with rest. But this sounds more like ligament/tendon/fascia/cartilage troubles, which are notoriously slow to heal because they don't receive good blood supply.

And then there's Votto's own comments on the injury:

Asked what he could do now that he couldn't do because of the injury, Votto wouldn't go into specifics.

"That's really none of your business," he said. "I'm not going to tell you that. I'm getting stronger. I don't really want to tell you what I couldn't do before and what I can do."

...

Again, it's Votto's right to keep quiet about the injury to the media. A couple of days before he stayed back on the trip, he was asked if he was healthy.

"I feel fantastic," he said.

We know that wasn't the case.

"I like to lie a lot – I usually just tell people I feel great," Votto said.

I get that he's frustrated, and that he's a private guy. But as a fan, this kind of thing is hard to read without becoming alarmed. Something about it reminds me of Albert Pujols' struggles with plantar fasciitis. While Pujols has been quite good this year, his leg issues dogged him for at least a full season...and there was talk that it might never go away.

So, I worry that Joey Votto is dealing with chronic troubles with his knee.  He's already had part of his meniscus removed, and then had a second surgery to repair some sort of additional damage.  Yes, he was healthy all of last season.  But now, he's suffering from soreness and weakness from the same general area.  Hopefully, this is just a matter of temporary inflammation that can be brought under control.  But ...well, yeah, I'm worried.

Prospecting the Altoona Curve, Part 1: Position Players

I live fairly close to Altoona, PA, which is the home of the Altoona Curve.  They are the Pirates' AA affiliate, and as such get a pretty constant stream of prospects that go through the club, only to arrive in Pittsburgh a year or so later.  I've long wanted to pay closer attention to my "local" club.  I'm heading to a game in a little over a week, so I thought I'd do a short post profiling the Curve's starting lineup.

The "Rank" I'm reporting below is from Chris St. John's consensus preseason prospect rankings.  They aren't perfect, but I'm more interested in who is on the prospect radar than who is the #8 vs. #9 prospect in the system.  All projections are courtesy of Oliver, and are preseason projections.  Bold-faced players are the team's regulars.

Top Prospect: Alen Hanson, SS

Hanson is the clear top prospect among the position players--you could argue he might be the only one--ranking in the top-10 on pretty much everyone's list.  While there are apparently some questions about his defense, his fielding projection is quite strong (though shy of Gift Ngoepe's fielding projection).  He is (along with Willy Garcia) the youngest player on the team, and yet projects with the second-best MLB wOBA of anyone on the ballclub.  Offensively, he's hit solidly thus far in his second look at AA pitching (half season last year), and is showing good improvement from last year.  But I think it's worth noting that he has the lowest walk rate on his club among the starters.  He walked better at lower levels, but has yet to do so at AA.

Top Projection: Stetson Allie, 1B

The former pitching prospect-turned position player is known as a power threat, and he has hit 8 home runs thus far after hitting 21 last year.  He apparently revamped his swing a bit from last season.  It hasn't changed his peripheral numbers, but he's continued to hit very well in AA after mashing his way through A-ball last year.  If he continues to hit like this, I think he's likely to show up in some of next years' prospect lists.

Best Start to 2014: Keon Broxton

At 24, Keon is a getting to be a bit old for this level.  But he's had a lot of fun this season, which is his first with the Pirates after spending his career with the Diamondbacks.  He has posted his best wOBA of his career (so far) along with the lowest strikeout rate of his career.  I don't know much about him, but I did find it amusing that he once beat out Paul Goldschmidt for the 10th spot on Marc Hulet's 2011 Arizona Diamondbacks top 10.  Whoops!

Two other guys

Willy Garcia is the other 21-year old on this squad, and has been a below-average hitter while piling on the strikeouts in the early part of the season.  He had a decent full year in High-A ball last year, however, so it may be best to let him fight through his struggles in AA.  

Gift Ngoepe was one of the players I got to see in Altoona last season.  He's a fun, scrappy little guy who plays great defense up the middle (last year at shortstop, this year at 2B).  He's also off to a nice start with the bat...but unfortunately, his lack of power and ample contact issues will probably prevent him from making  much of an impact at the major league level.  

A look at the Curve's pitching will come some other night!