Monthly Archives: May 2010

Progress

By Jack Moore on May 31, 2010

Despite today’s 10-4 loss to the New York Mets, the Brewers are winners of two straight series and have won 5 out of their last 7 games. Let’s take a look at how that has impacted their playoff odds, courtesy of Coolstandings.

St. Louis has gone 3-3 over this time period. More importantly, Cincinnati has gone 5-2 as well. Simply keeping pace is not enough for Milwaukee. With the hole they’ve dug, they need both to win games and for other teams to start losing. The Brewers play this last week was encouraging, but they’re arguably farther away from a playoff spot than they were seven days ago.

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Capuano Up, Vargas Out

By Jack Moore on May 29, 2010

According to this tweet from Tyler Barnes, the Brewers will indeed be adding Chris Capuano to the roster. To make space on both the 25 and 40 man rosters, Claudio Vargas will be designated for assignment.

Chris Capuano has put together some very good starts for the Brewers down in the minor leagues. In three starts for Brevard County and four starts for Nashville, Capuano allowed eight runs (seven earned). He struck out 33 batters and only walked four. His FIP of 2.53 between both levels is certainly fantastic, but it’s also heavily boosted by the fact that he didn’t allow any home runs – something he likely won’t be able to do in the majors. Capuano’s success will be determined by his ability to keep the ball in the park. He won’t strike out a ton of guys, but his control appears to be there.

As encouraging as the minor league results are, don’t expect Capuano to set the world on fire – he never posted an FIP below 4.00 as a major leaguer and there’s no reason to expect him to do it now, after all of his injury issues. As a starter, something between 4.50 and 5.00 would be gravy.

Nobody is disappointed to see Claudio Vargas go. He’s allowed 16 runs in under 20 innings, and there’s no reason to think that he’ll be any better. He walks too many guys and can’t keep the ball on the ground. He’s a below replacement level pitcher now, and certainly doesn’t deserve a roster spot.

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Introducing The George Kottaras Walk Rate Tracker

By Jack Moore on May 28, 2010

As I mentioned in today’s post on our catchers, George Kottaras entered today leading the majors in walk rate among players with as many PAs. Kottaras had walked 20 times in 78 PAs, for a 25.6% walk rate, leading players with at least 70 PAs. With his one walk in 3 plate appearances tonight, he increased his walk rate to 25.9%. On our sidebar, I will be debuting the George Kottaras Walk Rate Tracker:

Behold!

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BREWERS 2, Mets 0: A Short Summary

By Jack Moore on May 28, 2010

Game48

That is all.

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Catchers

By Jack Moore on May 28, 2010

Alternate Title: Post That Quickly Turns Into Rant About How Awesome George Kottaras Is

Unfortunately, Gregg Zaun’s injury is going to be much worse than it initially appeared. Zaun suffered a torn labrum which could potentially end his season and his career.

That means that George Kottaras is going to be thrust into an everyday catcher’s role. His .232 batting average completely obscures the fact that he’s having a wonderful year at the plate. Thanks to a crazy 25.6% walk rate – tops in the majors among players with at least 70 plate appearances – Kottaras is running a .423 on base percentage, the best mark on the Brewers. Thanks to a newfound power stroke – three home runs and seven doubles – Kottaras has recorded a crazy .286 ISO. That mark is just under twice the major league average and ranks 18th among players with at least 70 plate appearances.

The chances of Kottaras maintaining a .400+ wOBA are, of course, pretty slim. However, there are some signs that suggest that he could be a very successful hitter in the major leagues. His walk rate certainly hasn’t stabilized yet – that typically takes around 200 PAs – but even if he doesn’t walk again in his next 122 PAs, he’ll still have a 10% walk rate, about a point over the league average. ZiPS projects a walk rate of 13% for the rest of the season, which is excellent.

Second, his strikeout rate is way down this season. After striking out over 24% of the time at every stint and every level since 2006, Kottaras’s strikeout rate is all the way down to 16.1%. This number screams regression ahead, as this is 78 plate appearances against 1381. However, there is reason to believe that Kottaras’s strikeout rate should remain low. Contact rate tends to stabilize after about 100 plate appearances. Through 78 PAs, Kottaras has increased his contact rate from 78.4% with Boston last season to 89.3% this season. What’s behind this change?

Kottaras has pretty much stopped swinging. His swing rate – which tends to stabilize after only 50 plate appearances – is all the way down to 31.1%. That’s second to only Nick Johnson. And he really isn’t swinging at anything out of the zone – his 10.9% O-Swing rate is the lowest in the league, 1.8 points lower than Tony Gwynn Jr.’s second place mark. That doesn’t really tell the whole story – check out this graph from Texas Leaguers’ Pitch F/X database

George Kottaras this year has been kind of like jazz music – it’s not about the pitches he swings at, it’s about the pitches he doesn’t swing at. By swinging at fewer pitches out of the zone, he’s hitting far more of the pitches that he actually does swing at. That’s why his O-Contact% is up so much – from 59.4% to 73.7%

Finally, some of his power appears to be for real. His double rate (7/56, or 12.5% of ABs) is probably not sustainable, but he does have legitimate home run power. Hitters who can hit a ball 430 feet generally have some real power, and his 399 foot was also hit very hard. Unsurprisingly, hitting the ball very hard is the key to hitting home run.

Basically, George Kottaras is turning himself into Nick Johnson, but at catcher, which is essentially the sabermetrician’s dream. Surely, some components of his game will regress, but his .217 BABIP is also likely to regress by the time the season is over, too. Yes, it’s only been 78 plate apperances, but there’s a good chance that there’s something special with George Kottaras, and I eagerly await the rest of his season.

According to the Journal-Sentinel, the Brewers will stick with Jon Lucroy as the backup catcher, at least for now. That means that they won’t pursue a trade for a veteran. That, I feel, is a good decision, as stealing playing time from Kottaras would be a poor choice, as the Brewers need to truly evaluate what they have in him. However, Lucroy has only caught 21 games at AAA and we really have no sense as to whether or not he is truly ready for the majors. I feel that the best course of action with him would be to play him every day at AAA and find some cheap backup for Kottaras who can catch every fifth day or so. The player in question will likely find his way on to waivers soon, and a cup of coffee for Lucroy won’t be the worst thing for his development. I just don’t feel that an extended period of time as a backup would be prudent at this point in time.

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BREWERS 4, Astros 3: What The Hell Was That?!

By Jack Moore on May 27, 2010

Game47

I’m told that this was a Major League Baseball game.

I’m told that Major League Baseball managers generally understand strategies, especially with regards to roster management, that should be employed in a major league baseball game.

Therefore, I’m forced to conclude one of the following things.

1) This was not a Major League Baseball game.
2) Major League Baseball managers do not, in fact, understand these strategies.
3) Ken Macha and Brad Mills aren’t Major League Baseball managers.

I’ll take a little of number 2 and a lot of number 3.

Ken Macha pinch hit a pitcher with a career wOBA of .223. He left a catcher – somebody whose career is to hit baseballs – sitting on his bench out of some fear that if George Kottaras got injured, the Brewers season would be over. Casey McGehee is the emergency catcher and was still in the game. Not only that, but he pinch hit Randy Wolf over Yovani Gallardo, who was a career wOBA of .244 AND put up .300+ wOBAs in the minor leagues at every level.

That’s not even the most egregious part of this decision. Randy Wolf swung at the first two pitches. Matt Lindstrom threw just over 50% of his pitches for strikes – and that includes at least 3 pitches out of the zone that Ryan Braun waved at in the bottom of the 9th. Lindstrom was struggling with his control – at least try to work the count a little bit. Wolf should not have been allowed to swing until there was at least one strike, if not two.

Luckily, Matt Lindstrom is not good. He’s legitimately pitched pretty well this season, but he’s been mostly helped by a ridiculous 92% LOB rate, which will tumble once the data is updated tomorrow. ZiPS projects an FIP around 3.70 – which is basically LaTroy Hawkins level. Not terrible, but certainly not a shut down closer. This was Lindstrom’s 3rd multi-inning appearance since 2008. Even if he was going well in the first inning, it seems inadvisable to put him out there for a second, as he threw 19 pitches in the 9th. Given that they were a bad 19 pitches, it seems downright stupid.

Somehow the Brewers won this game, John Axford picked up a well deserved win, and the Brewers finally won a series at home. After all, if a 2-1 series victory at home against the worst team in the league where you outscore them by one run including an extra innings victory can’t turn around a season, what can?

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Patience

By Jack Moore on May 27, 2010

Braun’s at bat in the 9th against Lindstrom.

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Negativism And Poppycock

By Jack Moore on May 26, 2010

On NBC Sports’s baseball blog, Hardball Talk, there is a post from Aaron Gleeman titled “Brewers manager Ken Macha tired of ‘negativism’ and ‘poppycock’”

Aren’t we all tired of negativism and poppycock? Here’s Macha’s full quote:

Sunday was an exceptional day and to have any negative questions in this meeting today is poppycock. Because we had a tough game on Friday, a game where we battled back on Saturday against a team that’s leading its division in the American League, at their ballpark, had a blown save, played extra innings and had everybody on the staff come in and volunteer to pitch innings, then come back and beat them Sunday.

That’s an incredible win. We should come home on a high and be positive and ready to turn this thing around. If we continue the negative thoughts and negativism, it’s not going to come around. All of the Brewers’ fans should be positive. I know my staff, myself, we’re positive. We have some things happening in our bullpen now. We’re going to try to correct the difficulties we’ve had. It should be a positive mood right now.

This is almost too easy. The reason that we’re disappointed is simple. We’re not winning games. To say that winning one game should bring a positive mood suggests, to me, low expectations. This is a team that made the playoffs in 2008 and competed for much of 2009. To be 17-27, in 5th place in a weak NL Central, and already 7.5 games out of both the division race and the NL Wild Card is unacceptable.

This is where your negativism and poppycock is coming from.


2010 pace, at 18-27, a .400 winning percentage, is 64.8 wins.

Start winning games and the negativism and poppycock will be gone.

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In Honor Of Hunter Wendelstadt Behind The Plate

By Jack Moore on May 25, 2010

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Evaluating John Axford

By Jack Moore on May 25, 2010

The Brewers bullpen has been incredibly disappointing this season by any measure. The biggest bright spot, both in terms of the present and the future, has definitely been John Axford. Axford has pitched in five games so far and six innings, allowing two runs and walking four batters while striking out a remarkable ten batters. He has a 3.00 ERA so far, and an even more impressive 1.79 FIP and 2.93 xFIP. After his save on Sunday, and given the struggles of Trevor Hoffman so far this season, Brewers fans are now wondering about Axford’s future in the bullpen, potentially as the team’s closer.

Axford has shown four pitches so far this year: a fastball, a curveball, a slider, and a cutter in order of usage (it’s possible that the cutters are simply mislabeled fastballs, which is what the data FanGraphs uses indicates). According to FanGraphs’ pitch type values, the fastball, curveball, and slider are all well above average.

The key to Axford’s success has been his ability to strike batters out. His 15 K/9 is easily the highest on the Brewers staff. In the minors, Axford was striking out 12.5 batters per nine innings this season and 11.5 in 2009. The rate of 15 K/9 is certainly not sustainable, but Axford should continue to be a high strikeout pitcher. He’s drawn a ridiculous 15% swinging strike rate so far this year – just below Mark DiFelice’s 16.1% rate from 2009 and nearly equal to Joe Nathan’s 15.1% rate. Those two pitchers posted K/9s of 8.36 and 11.67 respectively. Those two probably form the boundaries for Axford’s strikeout rate – he almost certainly won’t draw as much contact as DiFelice’s cutter, and he almost certainly won’t be as good as Joe Nathan.

The main reason that Axford has been so successful is his fastball. Whereas the average major league fastball only induces whiffs on 6.03% of pitches, Axford’s 95+ heater has drawn whiffs on 22.4% of swings. That’s nearly four times the league average, is much of the basis for Axford’s hot start. It will remain to be see if that level is sustainable, but there is one thing we do know – hard throwers are typically successful in the major leagues.

* – Starting pitcher, FIP lowered a full run to align with relievers
** – No projection available, league average (4.20) used.

We certainly see a variety of guys here, but most of them are at the least marginally useful as relievers, simply because they can generate strikeouts with these fastballs. We see Axford is one of the 31 players to pitch so far in 2010 to have an average fastball velocity over 95. He actually has one of the highest projected FIPs over the rest of the season, but that’s mainly because of how much time he spent in the low minors in 2009. It’s clear that he’s a different pitcher than he was then – whether it’s location or velocity, I can’t say, but it’s important to remember that he didn’t even make his professional debut until age 24. Pitchers with a 3.97 FIP as relievers are roughly a third to a half a win above replacement, depending on their workloads. Given how many pitchers with utterly no control (Simon, Morales, Rodriguez, etc.) are on this list, there is a good chance that Axford can perform above this mark.

The question on everybody’s mind is whether or not Axford can become a great closer. I’m inclined to say no, and here is why.

Every single one of his pitches breaks in towards left handed batters. One of the keys to being a closer, as we saw in his appearance against the Twins, is the ability to get hitters of both hands out. Right now, Axford doesn’t have a pitch that can be used as an out pitch against lefties, and he simply gives up too many walks right now to be able to get around that weakness.

That said, I do believe Axford can be an important piece in the Brewers bullpen for the long term. His fastball is absolutely nasty and he has the secondary stuff to back it up, especially against right handed batters. If he can limit his walks, it’s possible that he could develop into the long-term closer that the Brewers are waiting for, but I think John Axford as a setup man is a more realistic projection.

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