Differential Madness!

No, not the kind of run differential madness that drives most Jays fans to drink. That kind of differential madness shows the Jays as the sixth best team in baseball (by Third-Order wins), still only good enough for fourth in their own division.

Nope, I'm taking about strikeout-walk differential. We're all familiar with strikeout to walk ratio as a decent measure of a pitcher's worth. The good men at The Book blog (aka Tom Tango) believe K-BB differential has a stronger relationship to both same year success as well as future performance.

One of the biggest troubles with striker per walk is it overvalues eliminating walks relative to adding strikeouts. From the comment section of that very post, we see that if a pitcher strikes out 6 per 9 compared to 3 walks, his ratio is 2. Drop a walk per nine and poof! you're a 3 K/BB and feted as a king. Add one strikeout but keep your walks the same, you're marginally better with a 2.33 K/BB. That just ain't right, especially since guys who miss bats are rack up Ks are harder to come by than guys who limit walks.

Another problem with K/BB is it doesn't stand up to the asymmetry test. If you invert the numbers, the results aren't the same. 3/1 gives a ratio of 3.00, 1/3 gives 0.333. These two numbers aren't the same "distance" from one, which makes them pretty flawed. Another reason home run per fly ball is a much better rate than AB/HR (a ratio.)

Anyway, lets look at the numbers. Which Jays stand to benefit the most for looking at their numbers this way (hint: Brandon Morrow.)

Name	K/9	BB/9	K/BB	K-BB
Brandon Morrow	10.48	4.11	2.55	6.37
Casey Janssen	8.27	2.19	3.77	6.08
Shaun Marcum	7.5	2.06	3.64	5.44
Scott Downs	7.08	1.86	3.8	5.22
Kevin Gregg	9.66	4.53	2.13	5.13
Marc Rzepczynski	7.29	2.69	2.71	4.60
Jason Frasor	8.8	4.2	2.1	4.60
Ricky Romero	7.65	3.26	2.34	4.39
David Purcey	7.71	3.51	2.2	4.20
Shawn Camp	5.67	1.83	3.09	3.84
Brett Cecil	6.41	2.81	2.28	3.60
Brian Tallet	6.07	4.55	1.33	1.52
Jesse Litsch	3.09	2.89	1.07	0.20
Dana Eveland	4.23	5.44	0.78	-1.21

Pretty logical stuff. Guys like Gregg and Morrow get away with much, much more than a Jesse Litsch, and this differential method really shows it. By K/BB, Litsch and Tallet don't lag too far behind Morrow and Gregg. A better valuation of strikeouts makes the differences that much more striking.

Thinking about it another way, consider we flipped the rates used. Instead of strikeouts per 9 innings, we used K per batter faced. A pitcher may walk 12% of the hitters he faces but strike out 25%. His K/BB is 2 to 1, just like a pitcher who walks only 6% and strikes out 12%. Using the differential method, we see a much better representation of the qualities of a good pitcher.

If you click through and read The Book post, you'll see that not only are these "the qualities of a good pitcher" as I just wrote, they're also consistent with better pitching performance. Which is good, right?

Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wife

There are few things in life more satisfying than taking two out of three from the California Angels. While the soft underbelly of my fandom is frequently exposed by all manner of benign American league foes, the Angels are one of the few clubs that still feel my rancor.

I hate the Angels. I strongly dislike Mike Scioscia and his Mike Scioscia face. I don't like Erick Aybar or anything named Izturis. I like Mike Napoli mostly because Scioscia clearly doesn't. First K-Rod and now Fuentes. Hate.

Which makes it all the most satisfying when Ricky Romero strolls into his home park, mere hours after doing right by his parents, and shuts their sorry asses down. It's great stuff.

Just like the great stuff Marc Rzepcynzki had on Friday night. As per a request in the comment section, I'm going to take a closer look at what made R-Zep so awesome that night. Hopefully in time for his next start.

If I could veer off-topic for a brief moment, I just want to take the opportunity to say how proud I am of the comments and commenters who frequent Ghostrunner on First. From the amazing insight added by radar in the previous post to the "support" shown when a rare hater wandered into our midst. It is pretty rare that the like minds who congregate around here get to have our fun pretty much by un-interrupted by trolls. There might be some changes afoot but I have faith that nothing will change in that department.

I just want to give a big thank you to everyone who comments and contributes to this site. From the long-time guys like Ian, Navin, Joanna, and The Ack; to the Mattts and Gils and Tys and everybody else. Thank you. It means a lot.

AP image of the loud-mouthed boob from Daylife.

A Note for the Cibians

The Star's Richard Griffin took a lot of heat on Twitter last night when he posted a throwaway comment about Aaron Cibia's catcher ERA (It isn't good, unlike Griff's Jamaican flag twitter background, which is amazing.) While this tweet was surely accompanied by a knowing smirk, a small part of me worries he might not be all wrong.

Above is a screen grab (from Gameday, holla!) of Arencibia's target as Marcum prepared to deliver to J.D. Drew. The pitch, I don't think I need to remind you, traveled some 450 feet and put a sweet dent in the facing of the second deck. If you look closely you'll notice the target provided by Arencibia is no target at all.

The San Francisco Giants held can't-miss stud Buster Posey out of the big league lineup for far too long this season, citing his unpolished defensive skills. While the Giants generally operate on a "don't do what we do" basis, maybe they were on to something.

Scouts praise Arencibia's improved defense and the Jays don't seem too worried about it. Providing a strong target is a tiny, mostly insignificant piece of the defensive puzzle; but you do tend to hear ex-catchers and pitchers in the broadcast booth rave about certain catcher's ability to provide a big target.

Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's something. But given the results and the photographic evidence, this should be an easy fix to eliminate at least one possible cause of consecutive bad outings.

Scott Downs Joins the Chain Gang

During the late innings of last night's tilt with the Red Sox, Scott Downs pitched about as well as you can ask. He faced four hitters; striking out one and inducing three ground balls from the others. One man reached on an error but was quickly erased via a double play. Scott Downs is really, really good at his job - this much we know.

During my liveblog of the game, the question of re-signing Downs arose. We pondered what type of contract he might be offered (I prefer to think of Scott Downs as a gentleman of modest means. He wouldn't demand a big deal, he'd simply accept one of the many offers for his services.) Considering that, insanely, Brandon Lyon got a 3 year, $15 million dollar deal to not close for the worst team in baseball last winter, just about anything is in play. Lyon's pitched well enough this season (credit his wacky low HR rate), though not as well as Downs. How valuable does that make Downs? To the right team in the right (read: wrong) situation: very valuable. To the 2011 Blue Jays? Not so much.

The topic of reliever value is much debated around the nerdier end of the internet and known as bullpen chaining. I'll attempt to nutshell it: if you lose a reliever, his replacement doesn't come "off the street" in the form of a true replacement player.

If Kevin Gregg does down with an injury, you don't call up a Brad Mills or a Marc Rzepcynzki to be the closer, you call up Rommie Lewis or (God willing) Jeremy Accardo. When you call up that bullpen arm, they don't slot directly into the closer's role. Everybody just moves up the chain into a slightly higher leveraged role and you make due until the big man returns.

As such, unless the team finds itself requiring the extra boost a sure-thing stopper provides and is willing to pay for it, you have to let Scott Downs walk at the end of this season. The team is grooming David Purcey for a role similar to Downs' with a few other internal options and scrap heap finds lurking in the shadows. Even if a guy like Purcey comes in and doesn't pitch as well, the greater impact on the success of the season is minimal.

He's been a great Blue Jay for 5 years, but asking him leave big bags of money on the table is foolish and unlikely. He's 34 years old and this is his last deal. He might hang around for some Orosco years as he approaches 40, but his time in Toronto is nearly up.

Image courtesy of Reuters via Daylife

The PNC Park Experience

Ballpark review? Hardly. What, you think I was wondering around taking notes and posing for pictures beside statues? No thanks. There were ales to enjoy and keyboard cat t-shirts to witness with mine own eyes.

Why belabour the point that the Rogers Centre is grim concrete toilet bowl; more suitable for a mass grave than playing host to the Massholes? PNC utter destroys the RC with its interesting and diverse food selections (of which I tried none), excellent beer list (of which I tried many) and jaw-dropping view of the Pittsburgh core and bridge system. You don't need to hear that.

But that doesn't make the ballpark experience on its own. Not even a crazy four-hour game — with an insane win probability chart that look like/gives me a boner — is enough to make a trip to the ballpark an experience. Making a herd of new friends is a great place to start but still; something special needs to stick out in your mind.

Cue the top of the 9th inning. The Pirates stage a dramatic (for the Pirates) rally, bringing up pinch hitter (and erstwhile Blue Jays target) Ryan Doumit. On-hand Pirates blogger and source Pat of the great Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke (who put up with not only my Jose Bautista ribbing but my Montreal Canadiens razzing too) mentioned earlier that Doumit's walkup music is Mother by Danzig.

Up strolls Doumit and the Mother riffs crash down on sold-out PNC Park. While most bob their heads or nervously clap, three rows strong of Walkoff Walk associated degenerates proceed to SCREAM Mother at the top of their collective lungs. Rockies manager Jim Tracy took the opportunity (winning run on first base) to stage a mound meeting. Which meant a little more Danzig - which meant more singing. The entire first verse and chorus, thankyouverymuch. The music actually stopped but the HEIST crew rolled on, much to the delight/horror/disdain of Yinzers on the first base line.

That, my friends, is a ballpark experience. Wins, losses, expensive sandwiches, face-melting walkoff homers, all eventually fade away. But 30 like-minded goofs singing a hilarious and/or great rock song released in 1988 is the kind of thing you tend to remember. Forever.

Fault and Fracture

It wasn't long ago that I seemed to have an impressive ability to walk my way into near-no hitters. I'd wander around Deadtown Nowhere for a while, come home, and find some guy making the minimum facing the minimum through 5 or 6 innings. Of course there's no connection and jinxes and stuff aren't real, but then again....

Yesterday afternoon I'm mere steps from returning to Canada after a weekend in Pittsburgh doing all manner of #Heist-ey activities (more on that belowlater). After Wilner's interview with a disconcertingly accented Aaron Cibia, the game was on! Morrow mows down the Rays through the first few innings, I make a brief stop, all is well.

With a spouse suffering from inevitable baseball fatigue, the game went off for a while until she dozed off. Back to Jerry and Alan, I am shocked by what I hear. "Did he just say Brandon Morrow has 13 strikeouts???" Not only that but he hasn't allowed a hit? Zounds!

Morrow keeps rolling but so does my fine German automobile. Overmanagin' Joe Maddon drags his feet and screws around, trying to disrupt the Morrow express. Right about this time I realize I'm going to reach my destination before Morrow reaches destiny. I feel sick. I slow down as subtly as possible. Making the turn onto rural sideroad X as the top of 9 starts, I think I might be okay. Zobrist walks. Sickness once again.

We pull into the baby sitting in-laws place and there, after her first weekend at somebody else's place, is my kid. All cute and little and fun sponging. Oh shit, this is really going to happen. The kid's mom dives from the moving vehicle, desperate to smush the punim of her spawn. I dawdle in the driver's seat, opening the windows while leaving the radio up loud. The child chases into the house, Crawford lines out.

I'm defeated. I'm getting justified death eyes from a patient wife. The Kid cries out for me to come in, the very understanding grandparents —who disrupted their very busy lives for a weekend so I could drink Yuengling and shout my phone number at Troy Tulowitzki— eye me warily - this is it. I turn off the car, head inside to grab my offspring; confident in the knowledge that my actions have no impact on Brandon Morrow's slider.

Ten seconds later, my pocket vibrates. I grab the phone, hoping for the best. I don't finish reading the text before my daughter grabs the phone from my hands. The best is a relative thing.

AP Photo via Daylife.

Life Sucks and Then You Die

Yup, that is your Toronto Blue Jays ranking 4th in Beyond the Box Score's mathematically-derived power rankings. Ifs, buts, candy, nuts.

Credit to Alex Anthopoulos and his team for doing their best to avoid the candy & nuts aspects of his job. As he told John Lott (after mentioning that Aaron Cibia will get the bulk of the playing time):

"We want to create depth at premium positions,” he said. “At shortstop and catcher, we feel like we have that now. Even in centre field, although it’s lower down the rungs, there are guys like Gose and Jake Marisnick [a third-round draft pick last year].

“From a position-player standpoint, those seem to be the most difficult positions to either draft or acquire in a trade.”

More than depth, they have ceilings. They have two players who, if they're tools develop into skills, could become high-end major league baseball players.

Which brings me back to the Mop Up Duty piece I linked above. Of course scouting is important, more important than ever as the cost of doing business is now so very high. The biggest driver, in my eyes, of this approach isn't a Scouts versus Stats, Us versus Them battle. It is about the difference between being a good team and a great one.

If you look at the numbers compiled in the aforementioned Beyond the Box Score post; you'll see the Jays are either a good team or an average team playing over its head. The debate could go all night long, but nobody would ever argue the Jays are great. And that is what they need to be to sate the playoff!!!1 lust of this fine city.

The Jays traded up this year, building progressively to improve pieces and solidify the team moving forward. But plugging holes with league average guys like John Buck or Fred Lewis is one thing, the Jays needs are going to change in the next few years. The days of replacement-level scrubs popping up here and there are, or should be, nearly over. Now¹ is the time to write some checks and install high-end players into important places.

And for that, they must pay. Upfront or down the line, the marginal value of a scrap heap finds and somethings for nothings compared to the value of securing top-line talent is the next challenge. Obviously free agency is a fool's errand with far more risk than reward. So it comes to the kids. Gose or Marisnick or the next toolsy kid they find in Cuba or Venezuela or Japan, somebody needs to develop into a 6 win type player.

It is a similar story in the rotation. The common refrain "there isn't a number one in this group" might be tired but there is something to it. With only 25 spots on a big league roster, having two 3 win guys isn't as good as having one 6 win guy. So you have to pay for the privilege. A staff of four 4 win guys is pretty good (damn fine actually) but finding an true stud — and his extra three wins — is the kind of upgrading Alex Anthopoulos stays up nights thinking about.

It isn't that building an 85 win team on a budget is easy, it surely isn't. Building a sustainable 85 win core then building on those extra 6 or 7 wins is the real challenge. I think AA and his team are on the right track but the hard work is still very much ahead of them.

¹ - Now is relative. Not now like today, but now like whenever you plan to make the next step.

Image courtesy of Beyond The Box Score

Your 2011 Blue Jays Managerial Shortlist

Sure he lacks any experience and kinda sorta might want to still play. Carlos, your highness, I'm here to tell you that your playing days are over - you have a higher calling.

Managing a baseball team is all about managing egos and personalities while not driving your team straight into a mountain. Manage the bullpen, let good hitters get more at bats than bad ones, etc.

Carlos Delgado is an erudite, thoughtful guy with a strong humanitarian background. He's Latin (but not enough to scare away the Dougies of the world) and played the game (at a high level for a long time coughcoughClarencecough) so, failing an upset of everything that is good and just in the world, he'd instantly earn the respect of the clubhouse.

He doesn't come with the built in slurp record of (clowns) like Bobby Valentine or whatever "big name" manager being drudged up as a favor to old allies. Honestly, who cares? Make him a hitting instructor or bench coach to some grizzled old battle veteran so he can "learn the game" or some such nonsense.

There are 146 million other reasons Carlos Delgado might make an interesting managerial choice: he understands the pressures and experiences of signing an insanely high contract extension. He knows, as Adam Lind now does, about balancing the pressing need to deliver the goods with what I can only assume is an overwhelming desire to coast. No Overmanagin' scrub can identify with those traits, though they're the single biggest reason Delgado won't be in a rush to juggle egos and Bob Elliott's Favrian text messages.

Whether he'd handle the pitching staff with The Manager's deft touch or just kind of sitting there in a state of perpetual shock like the previous stunt hire remains to be seen. Misguided as this may be and a sucker as I apparently am, I just want to have a classy, smart, likable guy back in the mix.

David Purcey - High Leverage Reliever

Hard to believe that this day has come! David Purcey - that big foot havin' mofo - is a viable, reliable reliever in big spots. Who knew? Clarence (who managed the bullpen like a champ last night) continues to show faith in David Purcey. Purcey repays Clarence's confidence with a string of successful appearances¹ setting him up for more and more heavy lifting.

The graph below tracks the situational leverage of the game when David Purcey enters (in blue). Quite a few mop up roles (0.00 LI) but a positive trend towards steady work in the last innings of close games. The black line represents Purcey's win probability added in each game. Obviously high leverage situation means the outcome is still in doubt, meaning Purcey can still impact the game either way. Giving up 3 runs in a mop up role doesn't really impact your WPA because, just like you can't be "more late", you can't ruin a game that's already in the bag (so to speak.)



Decent stuff, a definite trend. But wait, was that ¹ floating around from before?

Right! I said his appearances were successful, which they have been. What I didn't say was they haven't been especially good or repeatable. Trouble brews.

David Purcey sports a gaudy ERA under 2 with only one loss and one save in 21 appearances. Unfortunately, all his peripherals point to one monstrous, hideous appearance in the not-so-distant future. His .200 BABIP will swell but quick, his 82.% strand rate might not hold up for much longer either (his spotty track record is of a man with a terrible strand rate, so the real Purcey is somewhere in the middle.) His home run per fly ball is uncomfortably low, especially for a guy who gets ground balls only 36% of the time.

That doesn't mean that the 2010 version of David Purcey is the same, largely ineffective David Purcey from season's past. His swinging strikes are up, his contact rates are down. More swings at pitches outside the zone, less contact inside the strike zone. Those are harbingers of an effective pitcher.

He throws his fastball a lot more and to a much greater effect. While he'll never be confused with Shaun Marcum or Greg Maddux, getting ahead with the fastball and using his slider almost exclusively as an offspeed continues to pay dividends.

David Purcey is, shockingly, 28 years old. He's under team control for another 4 years, which is hilarious. There is no reason to believe he can't survive the coming normalization of his numbers and continue developing into a top-notch reliever, not unlike his teammate Scott Downs. Or, as previously discussed here, a cut rate closer with a heavy fastball for an up-and-coming team on a budget.

Image courtesy of Blog TO, data from Fangraphs and BR.

Screw your Holiday

Not working today? Screw you. Here are — in honor of all of us forced to toil on High Holy Simcoe Day — some exciting outfield tips from three bad defensive outfielders and patron saint Rocco Baldelli. It's old but deliciousness lasts forever.

For what it is worth:

• Matt Kemp: -17 DRS +/- this year, -9 UZR/150 for his career in center field.
  
• Andre Ethier: -10 DRS +/- this year, -12 UZR/150 for his career in right field.
  
• Jason Bay: -1 DRS +/- this year, -8 UZR/150 for his career in left field.
  
• Rocco Baldelli: +4 hearts filled this year, +30 swoons/150 for his career.

Enjoy your day off, ingrates.

Video courtesy of Seamus Baseball