Baseball Cube has current stats (beta)

While Baseball Reference has been getting a lot of the press this season thanks to its new Play Index features, '07 stats, and organization depth charts, The Baseball Cube is still the site I use most often when looking up individual player stats. The reason? Minor league stats. Many of the new players we see on the Reds have a longer track record in the minors than in the majors, and those stats can help us understand how they'll perform in the big leagues. And until another site starts publishing major and minor league statistics in their player records, I don't see myself moving on from the Cube for this purpose.

That's why I was particularly excited to notice that the Baseball Cube is now posting updated 2007 stats to its player records! This includes not only current major league statistics, but also minor league statistics. This is incredibly helpful when trying to understand mid-season deals like the the Cantu deal this evening (more on that in a bit). So kudos to Gary at the Baseball Cube for this addition--it is "only" in beta right now, but seems to be working great...and is just insanely helpful.

Encarnacion Smiles!

Earlier this week, in his Q&A column, Hal McCoy wrote:

Q Can Jeff Keppinger unseat Edwin Encarnacion at third base? Luke, Sophia, W.Va.

A Unseat? Don’t you mean put Encarnacion into a seat in the dugout? I don’t see Keppinger as an everyday player. He is good at moving around — two starts at third, one at second, one at third. Just once wouldn’t you like to see Encarnacion smile or act as if something excites him that isn’t green with Benjamin Franklin’s picture on it?

So when I saw this picture in the Enquirer from yesterday's game, I just had to post it!

STOP THE PRESSES! EDWIN ENCARNACION IS SORT OF SMILING!!!!

Well, at least he looks excited. So Hal McCoy's wish has been granted! Woohoo!

Update: With a hat tip to Doug, Eddie showed emotion once again tonight when he hit a game-winning single! Hal must be beside himself!
Updated again: From C. Trent's blog, Pete Mackanin on Encarnacion: "It was good to see Encarnacion hit that moon shot home run and the big hit. I’ve never seen anyone so happy." (emphasis added)

Top Photo by AP/Tom Uhlman, with a mild bit of doctoring by me
Bottom Photo by AP/Tony Trimble, untouched and prestine


Updated AGAIN: Redlegnation noticed Eddie smiling AGAIN! And this time, it really was a smile! No question about it!

Link Dump: Enhanced Gameday, etc.

I never seem to get around to doing link-dump posts any more, but there's a lot of fantastic stuff out there worth mentioning. Here's a few things that I've saved in bloglines for a grab-bag post like tonight's.

Enhanced Gameday is What The Cool Kids Are Doing

The biggest thing to come up in the baseball statistics world this season is the use of MLB's Enhanced Gameday pitch location data. With techniques pioneered by Joe Sheehan at Baseball Analysts (not the one from BPro), and now taken up by many of the top analysts from around the web, it's resulted in some really wonderful descriptive work. Here are some highlights:

• John Beamer took an early look at the reliability of these data. This continues to be a major issue (see Walsh's most recent article below), though there's still enough to the data to be very useful.
  
• Dan Fox did one of the nicer overviews of the sorts of information you can get with these data in this article.
  
• John Walsh has investigated pitch types and tried to identify different pitches by the their velocity and movement in-flight.
• Fox took a closer look at the Tim Wakefield's knuckleball, and then followed it up by examining whether certain hitters or pitchers get the benefit of the doubt from umpires (answer: yes, they do).
  
• Sheehan did a fascinating study on Jake Peavy and Danny Haren, and showed how the enhanced gameday data could be used to show how their pitch selection varied between low and high leverage situations (no shocker, but they throw more offspead/breaking stuff in high-leverage situations).
  
• Most recently, Walsh has looked at umpires and their accuracy in describing the strike zone (they actually do better than I expected).
• Just today, Fox followed up with a second look at umpires, this time breaking down how much variation exists among umpires (probably about +- 6 pitches), and then documenting that umpires tend to call many more strikes than is appropriate when a hitter has an 0-2 count.
• Sheehan wraps up my highlights by posting a graphic depicting how BABIP (batting average on balls in play) varies on pitches hit in different parts of the strike zone. Great stuff--looks like you can often bust lefties up and in, but righties are probably better pitched down and away.
  

Analysis of Pitching Mechanics

Carlos Gomez has continued to post interesting analyses of pitching mechanics. My favorite is the one from today on the D-Train--check out, especially, the second graphic showing that Willis's speed to the plate has steadily decreased over the past two years. I don't know how meaningful that is, but given how much he's struggled, one has to wonder...

Coles Back in Baseball

Ex-Red Darnell Coles is now managing in the Nationals system, and did a nice interview with BPro earlier this month. Coles was an interesting case of how a prospect can miss:

• Imagine that you have a 23-year old third baseman who was a former #6 overall pick, and had put up huge numbers in AAA (0.318/0.426/0.607) two years earlier before being derailed by injuries the previous year.
  
• And then, in his first full season with your club, he hits 0.273/0.333/0.453 with 20 homers, 45/84 bb/k in 521 AB's. Decent little debut for a 24-year old, right? I'd be modestly excited about him.
  
• Well, he then goes on to hit so anemically (0.181/0.263/0.309) that he loses his job as a starter the next season, and you ship him off to Pittsburgh mid-season.
  
• He gets a shot at starting only one more season over his career (at age 27), and hits badly (0.252/0.294/0.359).
  
• He never again secures a starter job, except for one fun jaunt in Japan at age 34 before returning to Colorado to end his career.

Anyway, it's good to see him back in the game. Hope he does well, even if he has to associate himself with JimBo.

Jacobs Field Adding Solar Power

While the actual impact of this on their ecological footprint might not be huge, Jacobs Field announced last month that they are adding a large solar array to their parks' electrical power systems. This array will be sufficient to power the 400-some television sets scattered around their park. I'd be more excited if they could use it to power the lights on the field, but still, kudos to them (and Ohio's Department of Development) for ongoing efforts to become more "green."

Reds Minor Leaguers Having Success

Doug Gray has been doing some terrific work on Reds minor leaguers of late, pointing out recent surges by Danny Dorn (who I'd never heard of...), as well as '06 first-rounder Drew Stubbs. What I really love about those two articles is their use of graphics to help depict changes in performance. This sort of analysis, coupled with ongoing reports of minor league games, continues to make his site the place to go for insights on Reds' minor leaguers (with supplements from Redleg Nation, of course, especially for their exciting spotlight player series).

Meanwhile, Jay Bruce is widely considered among the top 5 (or better) prospects in baseball (could he make the big league team out of spring training next year?). Furthermore, Josh Roenicke (crazy-high strikeout numbers) and Justin Turner have recently gotten some attention from BPro's Kevin Goldstein. Finally, in injury news, Travis Wood's shoulder problem is apparently nothing more than tendonitis (thank goodness), though Homer Bailey's groin pull was bad enough that it was causing him to shift his mechanics enough to "feel it" in his shoulder (eek!).

The Linebrink Deal

I was thinking about this Linebrink deal, in which the Padres netted talented pitching prospect Will Inman, among others.

Linebrink has been very good out of the pen over the last many years with San Diego. But there's a way in which this deal reminds me of the Cormier deal last year. I'm not the only one either, though Nate Silver's comparison is a bit more harsh. Here are Linebrink's peripherals over the past four years:

2004 (28 yrs) - 9.9 k/9, 3.1 bb/9, 0.95 hr/9, 32% GB
2005 (29 yrs) - 9.3 k/9, 3.1 bb/9, 0.53 hr/9, 38% GB
2006 (30 yrs) - 8.4 k/9, 2.7 bb/9, 1.11 hr/9, 39% GB
2007 (31 yrs) - 5.2 k/9, 2.9 bb/9, 1.88 hr/9, 39% GB

Ok, so the surge in his homer rate might just be a matter of being lucky earlier in his career, as he's consistently been a fly ball pitcher in his career. But his strikeout rate was waaay down this year after a modest drop the year before. In case you're wondering, here's his ERA, FIP, and BABIP over those seasons:

Year - ERA - FIP - BABIP
2004 - 2.14 - 3.17 - 0.257
2005 - 1.83 - 2.56 - 0.265
2006 - 3.56 - 3.76 - 0.285
2007 - 3.80 - 5.64 - 0.234

From everything I'm seeing here, Linebrink has declined this year, even though his ERA has barely shifted--mostly thanks to that shiny 0.234 BABIP this season. If I was a Brewers' fan, I'd be hoping that Melvin has some really good scouting data that is leading him to believe that the strikeout rate will get back up to its levels last year...or else the Brewers may have just given away a fine prospect--plus two other players--for a guy that is substantially worse that the relievers they already have. Will Carroll says that they're banking on pitching coach Mike Maddux's ability to repair pitchers--I wish them luck, but needless to say, I'm a bit skeptical.

Edit: Apparently, Linebrink is a Class-A free agent. That shifts the deal a bit more back in Melvin's direction. But it may be that the two draft picks the Brewers receive when Linebrink leaves at the end of the year will be the primary benefit Milwaukee gets from this deal. Not really what you're looking for when you're trying to win your division.

Update...

I've been working on a lot of stuff related to the site lately, but unfortunately that hasn't resulted in as many posts here as I like. Here's some of what I've been up to:

• Trying to master the techniques used to regress statistics to the mean, especially how to determine how much one should regress any particular stat, relearning things like intraclass correlation coefficients, etc.
  
• Trying to apply those techniques to create detailed, regressed park factors that I'm working up for all MLB stadiums. I want to go beyond the typical runs and home runs park factors we see usually, and have them be more sophisticated that what is posted at ESPN.
  
• Having some really interesting and in-depth e-mail conversations about which I'll be talking more about in the coming days.
  
• Trying to keep track of all the trade rumors involving Reds players. ... And yet at the same time ignore them until we hear an official announcement.
• Trying to remain calm as Jeff Keppinger--a guy I really like as a reserve infielder--is given AB's that should be going to the still-struggling and yet still very talented Edwin Encarnacion. I just don't get what the Reds are doing with that kid.
  
• Reveling in the clutch-god that is the Latin Love Machine:

Photo by AP/David Kohl

Brewers Profile

I probably shouldn't be posting this, as it just went live last week. But since they're in town, I thought I'd post another link to my profile on the Brewers at The Hardball Times.

Go Reds!

June/July UZR Splits - Check out Eddie!

Earlier this week, Mitchel Litchman was kind enough to update his UZR defensive statistics through the All-Star break. By comparing them with the previous set he released at the end of May, we can get an idea of how Reds have performed since May defensively.

Why is this interesting? Well, a few reasons. One, I've never had the chance to look at how player defensive performance varies over the course of a season. Players sometimes say that defense doesn't go through slumps like offensive performance does. Is that true?

The other reason is that some Reds players got off to horrendous starts this year defensively, most particularly Edwin Encarnacion. Since his return, however, we've heard that he's been better. Do the numbers show that? Let's look at the data:

Reds defense since the end of May:

Name	Pos.	Expected Outs	Range Runs	Error Runs	Total Runs
Conine, Jeff	3	9	0	0	1
Hatteberg, Scott	3	26	-1	2	1
Castro, Juan	4	5	2	0	2
Phillips, Brandon	4	88	-3	1	-2
Freel, Ryan	4	0	0	0	0
Keppinger, Jeff	5	0	0	0	0
Castro, Juan	5	3	-1	0	-1
Freel, Ryan	5	3	0	0	0
Encarnacion, Edwin	5	44	6	-1	5
Castro, Juan	6	9	0	0	0
Gonzalez, Alex	6	83	-1	1	0
Hopper, Norris	7	13	4	0	4
Hamilton, Josh	7	0	0	0	0
Dunn, Adam	7	61	-3	1	-2
Hopper, Norris	8	19	2	0	2
Wise, Dewayne	8	6	1	0	1
Hamilton, Josh	8	76	-1	0	-1
Freel, Ryan	8	5	-2	0	-2
Hamilton, Josh	9	0	0	0	0
Hopper, Norris	9	12	0	0	0
Griffey, Ken	9	75	-8	1	-7

Notes:

• Edwin Encarnacion leads the team in defensive runs saved since May!!! Let me say that again. Edwin Encarnacion leads the team in defensive runs saved since May!!! Eddie's totals in the first half come out as -1 range runs, -3 error runs, for a total of -4 total runs saved above average. Given that he was at -9 runs (last in baseball) at the end of May, that's just fantastic progress. As someone who really likes Eddie, this is thrilling to see. The data indicate that he's doing it with range, which gives me confidence in these numbers. It doesn't contradict the fact that he still has work to do on the consistency of his fielding, but he's finally showing some real progress out there. I don't know if he can keep it up, but I'm finally feeling some hope again that he can at least be average at the hot corner moving forward.
• We've talked about what a great defensive season Norris Hopper has had thus far. According to UZR, most of that excellence has happened since the end of May (-1 overall before May, +6 since). As I mentioned in the redlegnation thread, he probably wouldn't keep up his pace in left if he were to play there every day. But even so, I really like Hopper as a 5th outfielder.
  
• Phillips, on the other hand, hasn't been as good as he was during the first two months, preventing fewer than average runs (though not severely). Maybe he needs more consistent rest? Or he just had a few bad days.
  
• Ryan Freel continues to get beat up by UZR, even though ZR has been pretty pleased with Freel this year. I think the overall message is that he's basically average out there. Which is disappointing.
• Hamilton's actually held his own in CF since May (-1 runs--and he's likely made up for that one run with his arm), and he had the bulk of the playing time out there in June and early July. That's encouraging. I'd still rather have someone with superb range out there, but an average defensive CF with the offense that he has brought to the table is pretty dang valuable.
  
• Griffey was rated at -3 range runs through May 31, and -8 range runs in June and early July. I had hoped he'd be better out there than he has been. I'm sure this is still better than if he were playing center, but his -13 defensive runs in the first half cuts pretty deeply into his 31.7 VORP on the season... Doesn't negate his offense, obviously, but it definitely hurts.

I'm hopeful that we'll continue to see periodic updates to UZR so that we can continue to look at defensive splits over the season for Reds players. I'll also look at THT's ZR stat splits in the in the July review. We'll see if the improvement for some Reds players seen here are reflected in those data as well.

Remember, these are small sample sizes, so use them in the same way that you use monthly offensive splits. They indicate how players have done, and can sometimes be used to indicate a change in player performance that might continue...but at the same time, they're probably less reliable for prediction than seasonal totals.

Photo by AP/Alan Diaz