Cameron on Bautista

From Dave Cameron's top 50 trade value series, in which the Head Nerd in Charge ranks Jose Bautista the second-most valuable trade commodity in baseball, behind only Evan "Paid in Foodstamps and a Lifetime Supply of Orange Juice" Longoria. (emphasis mine):

At just $14 million per year for each of the next four years, he’s producing at a best-player-in-baseball level while getting paid a little less than Jason Bay or Adam Dunn. The Blue Jays saved themselves at least $100 million with the extension they gave Bautista last winter, which now looks like one of the best decisions any GM has ever made.

Ummm, wow. It is crazy to see it there in black and whitegreen. Jose Bautista is ours and you can't have him, even if you're offering Troy Tulowitzki.

Some awesome stuff from Fangraphs commenters, who kept their #6org jokes at bay long enough to make a little bit of sense. Take this hot shot of comment gold from SC2GG:

Considering the number of high value deals this particular GM has made, someone in the business is due for a prettttty good raise, I’d think. Imagine the employee review meeting that AA is going to get:

“What have you accomplished this year?”

“Well, aside from giving the entire country a sense of excitement about baseball that hasn’t existed for 15 yrs, rebuilding the farm system from nearly last to in the top 5, across the board I also saved the team and the company more than $200 million which is more than you paid for the whole team only a few years ago."

Wow, it really makes you think that things in Blue Jays Land might just be okay, doesn't it?

I made a concerted effort to stay neutral and/or non-committal on the Jose Bautista contract. As much fun to have him prove me definitely wrong in every way, I don't think betting against Jose Bautista is a very good idea at all. He proved people much smarter than me wrong last year before proving the laws of physics nearly irrelevant. It is officially time to just enjoy the ride. As if we aren't already.

Reuters image courtesy of Daylife. Make sure you read the entire top 50 series, it is great stuff.

Happy New Year from the Best Jays Team of the Decade

Something to remember as you read a dozen or so "another decade of failure" articles on the local nine. The 2006 Toronto Blue Jays were a great, great ball club. In terms of WAR, they were the best team in the league that year. Better than the Yankees and Tigers, Angels and World Series Champion Cardinals.

The Jays married one of the better offenses of the decade with strong but apparently not good enough pitching staff. The Jays added a few big bats and high-priced initials enthusiasts B.J. Ryan & A.J. Burnett before the season. This was the Jays going for it, and go for it they did. (Update: little mix up there. All better.) Consider a few things:

• The Jays got 4 WAR of production out of the catcher position. Molina's .785 OPS is a career high, Zaun's 12 taters are his lifetime best.
  
• Reed Johnson's career year in the plate and the field pushed him to a stunning 4.5 wins. His wRC+ of 130 is by far his high mark, same for his UZR of 15.
  
• Troy Glaus hit 38 damn home runs and played in 153 games, including 8 at short!
  
• Lyle Overbay, Frank Catalanatto, and Aaron Hill each chipped in more than 2 wins apiece.
  
• BJ Ryan contributed 3 wins above replacement. For a reliever, that is astounding. Only Jonathon Broxton approached that level of production in 2009. This was the Beej we all knew and loved, he was at his best.
  
• Roy Halladay put forth his ho-hum 6 wins, Burnett 3 and Lily 2 more. More to the point, the only negative contribution for the season came in the form of 130 innings of Chacin & Towers, who only combined for 0.6 WAR below replacement. Obviously terrible, but B.J. Ryan managed that all by himself in just 20 innings this year.
  
• Lastly, some guy named Vernon Wells was a 5.8 WAR player. 3 runs above average MORE than Roy Halladay. According to UZR he was good in the field and of course dominant at the plate (.899 OPS, 32 home runs, 17 steals).

We should all take this into account when decrying his current contract, especially since 2006 was not his contract year. Please consider this list of 6 win centerfielders from 2009: Franklin Gutierrez, based solely on the strength of his defense. Wells had a much better track record and performed at an incredibly high level.

What happened to this 47.7 WAR juggernaut? They were 4 games out of first place on July 1st but went two games under .500 in July and 5 games under in August. The 17 games out of 27 they won in September were immaterial.

They weren't particularly awful in the clutch, they hit alright with men on base. They just didn't win enough games. A pity. But we should celebrate this fine team as we celebrate a new decade and new hope for the Jays! Happy New Year!

Update I dumped a few of the Jays better years into a spreadsheet if you want to see how they stack up. All data courtesy of Fangraphs.

You Knew This Was Coming

Ahhhhhhhh Zaun. It had to be Zaun? This might be the problem with one trick ponies like Brandon League. A wily vet who happened to catch him over four seasons isn't going to be fooled. If you bisect the plate with a fastball he knows is coming, you're in trouble.



The blue dots are League fastballs, the red his splitter. The Xs are Zobrist's single and Pena's double. Fuck breakfast.

So what happened? How could he be so bad so soon after being so good? Location and getting ahead is one. Recall his Yankee outing, how everything was down in the zone? Sunday, not so much. Throwing strikes? That always helps. Against the Yankees, League started batters off like this:

1. Fastball called strike.
   
2. Fastball grounded to center for hit.
   
3. Fastball flown to centerfield.
   
4. Splitter high and wide, ball. ( runner is subsequently picked off by Raul Chavez's "works once in a liftime" snap throw)
   
5. Splitter flown to right field.
   
6. Fastball called strike.
   
7. Fastball called strike.
   
8. Splitter low and inside, ball.
   
9. Fastball grounded to second for out.
   
10. Fastball inside, ball.

So he threw the fastball for strikes or for converted outs while throwing the splitter outside the zone. Seemed to work. Against the Rays League went fastball fouled off, splitter swung and missed, fastball off the plate away, intentional walk (playing with fire!), splitter low and away, fastball low, and finally a fuck you fastball to BJ Upton's back. In the only two at bats that really hurt him (Pena and Zaun) he got behind 2-1 and couldn't recover. He did have Zaun 3-2, but served him up an old man gopher ball. So is that it? Perhaps not.


This image shows the speed of League's pitches graphed against their vertical movement. The blue dots are Sunday's Rays outing, red is the dominant outing against the Yankees. First thing you'll notice: the gas. League fired with reckless abandon against the Yanks, averaging 96.4 mph on his fastball. During Sunday's catastrofuck League checked in around 94.4 mph. According to Fangraphs, 95.3 is his average fastball this season, a number I'll trust as I believe Fangraphs uses the same data I steal. Also, League's fastball averaged 95.25 on Saturday night in Tampa and 95.45 in New York in July, so it isn't necessarily a difference between two parks/guns. So for Brandon League; speed is something but not everything.

One problem that League may experience from time to time is the flattening of his fastball. Again from Fangraphs, we see League's average amount of "rise" this season is 3.4 inches. Sunday he checked in at a much flatter and bangable 4.5 inches. Against the Yankees? Closer to 1.75 inches of "rise" or much more sink. More sink on his fastball is a good thing, as it already sinks more than the law allows. Less sink is just a high speed batting practice delivery, especially when you're his old catcher and you're looking fastball in.

I can't even pretend to explain why his splitter seems straighter, flatter, yet faster and more effective in that now quasi-famous outing against the Yankees, it was just one of those days when everything works. My hopes were sky high for Brandon League to emerge as a revelation during this dreary second half, and despite my excuse-making he seems to ALWAYS end up giving up the biggest of big hits. Relief pitchers who dominate meaningless appearances but struggle when it counts have a very limited shelf-life, and I wonder how long the love affair with Potential will last. He's obviously a gifted athlete and a pitcher with unique skills, but in that situation you simply can't make a poor pitch, one Gregg Zaun (!) can bang out of the park, and expect to keep your job forever.

I feel dirty insinuating such awful things about Brandon League, but I don't know how many more chances the team will give him. If Arnsberg's voodoo doesn't work on him and the Zen of Citocity doesn't work on him, what's left to try?

Erectus Interuptus

The Brett Cecil love is coming fast and furious, but "win two tomorrow" Cito had to go and ruin it:

Don't forget, Cecil was a closer in college, so he can pitch out of the bullpen, too....But I can't say enough how (Cecil) pitched," Gaston continued. He went out and threw strikes. You hope it's the start of something good for him.

Seriously Cito? IT IS a good START for him, in his career as a potential number 2 STARTER.

Never mind that your bullpen is already one of the best in the game. How can you advocate wasting a talent like Cecil's in the bullpen? Just look at the Jays bullpen, for example. All scrapheap finds and reclamation projects. No place for a highly-touted draft pick. The last thing I need in my life is play Canadian J from 3:10; explaining over and over (and over again) how much more valuable an arm like Cecil's is in the starting rotation. 140 innings versus 60 innings, not a debate.

Perhaps you'd move Cecil into the bullpen after the all star break, as an anonymous commenter suggested. Acting under the assumption the Jays will still be contending at that time (p!), the team simply doesn't benefit for a list of reasons. Adding another lefty back there serves no real purpose. I love the way Tallet's pitched; but if the choice is between him and Cecil I'll take the kid until the numbers tell me other wise. If you are simply going to showcase another of the fringe starters, I guess I'll understand. Once again it comes back to skills and ceilings. Right now Cecil's is higher than any of the young pitchers, he deserves the best shot to succeed.

Awesome Stuff from the Fangraphs Institute of Baseball & Divorce

Who knew? The good people at Fangraphs recently added two new features to suck your life away. Firstly, they've added in-season ZIPS projections. Adding the rest of season projection to what Aaron Hill's already done, you get a line of .311/.358/.466 or a .824 OPS. So he'll slow down but only drop 80 points from his current OPS? Sold. ZIPS figures Alex Rios will pick it up and OPS .809 over the remainder of the season. Sold again. Check out each player's ZIPS on their individual pages.

You'll also notice they added Bill Jame's speed score to the advanced stats tab. The speed score is "an average of Stolen Base Percentage, Frequency of Stolen Base Attempts, Percentage of Triples, and Runs Scored Percentage." Unsurprisingly, the Jays speediest players this season have been Vernon Wells and Alex Rios. Somewhat surprising to see very, very large man (or Manmountain) Scott Rolen rank fourth this season and fifth in 2008. This isn't a baserunning metric remember, a distinction clearly embodied by the Blissfully Oblivious Gazelle's (TM Tao) speed score ranking significantly higher than his "do you have any idea what you're doing out there" metric. The oft pinch-run-for and slightly wooden Adam Lind once again ranks as a great Jays baserunner.