Introducing "Dirty, Nasty, Filthy"

I've been considering a numerical ranking system for pitchers on a 100 point scale, but I get really bored with numbers some times, and would rather have a more entertaining ranking system. So, for now on, when I write about a pitcher, I will rank him as either Dirt, Nasty, or Filthy depending on how good he is. Each ranking will be used in place of a number grade and the following chart explains what each term means numerically:

Term -- Score

Filthy -- 90-100
Nasty -- 80-89
Dirty -- 70-79

I'm still considering which terms to use for pitchers that score a 69 or below, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

Just Another Chris Davis Post...

I know some of you all are really tired of the Chris Davis up-dates, but I'm fascinated by this guys power potential. Today (Friday) he hit his 6th home run of the year with the Rangers in just his 52nd plate appearance. His average is now back up to .250 from below .200 just a few days ago. This guy could be a beast.

Josh Vitters

After being drafted #3 overall by the Cubs in 2007, there were a lot of high expectations for Josh Vitters, a highly regarded high school All-American third baseman out of Cypress High School in Cypress, California.
Scouts raved about his advanced bat, overall approach at the plate, and projectable power. It was rumored that Vitters' eye sight was tested previous to the draft, and his score was higher than any other ball player not named Barry Bonds. But after 55 disappointing plate appearances in rookie ball and lower A ball in 2007, Vitters had a total of just 6 hits, with 14 strike outs and 3 walks. Obviously, it wasn't the start to his career that Vitters and the Cubs had envisioned.

The 2008 season didn't start out much better for Vitters, as he bounced around between extended Spring Training and A ball, hitting just .214 in 14 at-bats. Tendinitis in his left hand forced him to return to extended Spring Training before being moved back to lower A ball, where Vitters has been able to reestablish his swing and crank out a .322 average in 98 plate appearances. Though he is still posting a 16% K%, Vitters has 10 extra base hits, including 2 home runs, and he has posted a 16% BB% rate and a 30% line drive rate in July.

While the sample size is still extremely small, I have a feeling that the Vitters of 2007 and early 2008 is not the same Vitters we'll see rise through the minors over the next few years. He's obviously worked through whatever issues were holding him back, and everyone in the Cubs system continues to rave about his sheer talent and raw ability. Going by just his last 98 plate appearances in low A ball, Vitters projects as a .300+ career hitter with 25-35 home run potential. His closest recent comparable player is Delmon Young, who finished his time in the minors as one of the most highly regarded prospects in several years. However, Vitters is posting a GB% significantly lower than Young posted throughout the minors (Vitters is around 39%, while Young was consistently in the 50% or higher range), suggesting a better swing plane, which could translate into higher line drive rates, and even better power numbers.

Like I said previously, we don't have a lot to work with here, but I really like what I've seen from Vitters over the last 2 months. Any 18 year old that can hit over .300 in A ball (I really don't care that it's low A) and post a slugging percentage over .500 deserves some respect, and Vitters is still improving in almost every facet of his game. At 6'3" and 200 pounds, there's a lot of projection left in his frame, and his splits look very solid (.299/.368/.478 against righties, .450/.476/.650 against lefties), so I'm having a hard time finding anything about Vitters that makes me second guess his recent success. I would like to see a reduction in his K%, but as long as he keeps it around or below 15%, I'm not really worried about it.

If Vitters finishes out the year at the same pace that he has established since June, he'll be a lock for a top 20 spot in the off season prospect rankings, and the Cubs will probably have him on the fast track through their minor league system, with an ETA of 2011. There's always a chance for regression, but I'm going to stick with a positive projection for Vitters.

Early Career Projection: .300 average, 25-30 home runs
Prime Projections: .320, 35 home runs ...Read more

Congrats to Evan Longoria

A very deserving Evan Longoria won a last minute All-Star vote-off yesterday by receiving 9 million of the possible 47.8 million votes cast, ultimately beating out Jermaine Dye and Jason "The 'Stache" Giambi. At his current pace, Longo could reach 30 home runs and hit close to .300 (maybe more like .280-.290) and is a front runner for the A.L. Rookie of the Year Award. I also think he has a shot at a Gold Glove.

Since the beginning of June, Longoria has 9 home runs and is hitting .346. I don't think he'll sustain those numbers through the end of the season, but he's got some mad skills on both offense and defense, and he's going to get a lot better very quickly. This will be the first of many All-Star appearances, and he'll likely add several MVP awards to this year's ROY.

Liriano Getting Loose and Dirty

Last week Francisco Liriano posted his best start since undergoing Tommy John Surgery with a 6 inning performance that included 7 strike outs, 1 walk, and a 50% GB%. Thursday night he posted another stellar outing, going 7 innings with 8 strike outs, 1 walk, and only 3 hits. I'm not sure what his GB% for the night was, but I'll update this post as soon as I find out.

According to Rotoworld.com, the Twins have allowed Liriano to revert back to his old 3/4 slot delivery form with a few minor adjustments. (I assume that said adjustments are intended to prevent future injuries.) It seems that the Liriano of old is beginning to emerge, and the return to his old form should allow him to create better downward movement on his pitches and consequently increase his strike outs and ground ball rates. His control has obviously returned as well, and there seems to be no reason why Liriano couldn't start for the Twins following the All-Star break.

As a side note, for those fans out there worrying that Liriano could re-injure his elbow, don't bother. The success rates for Tommy John surgery are very high, and the ligament that is used to replace the torn one is considerably bigger and stronger once rehab has concluded. The following image should help illustrate what Tommy John surgery accomplishes, and why it's so successful.

Reinjuring his elbow is not impossible, but I don't expect it to happen (at least not anytime in the near future). The Twins are going to treat that arm like all the gold in Fort Knox, and I doubt they'll allow Liriano to use the restroom without having someone wrap his elbow first.

Anyways, I think Liriano is ready for a call-up and he'll only improve as the season progresses. By next spring he'll be as dominant as ever.

**Update: Liriano's GB% for his outing Thursday night was somewhere in the 30% range. Not exactly a good sign, but it seems to be the only area he really needs to improve on.

Tracking "True Home runs"

Derek Carty has an article he posted at The Hardball Times that elaborates on a system he uses to track hitters "true" power numbers by measuring fly ball distances and adjusting for weather and atmospheric conditions. Carty finds that by doing so, it is easier to determine what a hitter's home run totals should bu from year to year, and it becomes possible to explain why some highly regarded sluggers experience significant drop-offs in their home run totals on occasion.

I like the idea of Carty's system, and I think as more information becomes available from computerized monitoring programs used at MLB games we'll see a lot more applications like the the "True Home Run" Tracker. I would like to see a system that utilizes ball speed off of the bat, spin, and initial trajectory angles since home runs and fly balls are part horizontal vector and part vertical vector. There may be some hitters that create better spin and traject hit balls at more favorable angles with higher speed, and those types of stats could help create a baseline of data for analyzing which hitters have more true power regardless of weather and atmospheric conditions.

As for minor league players, we might have to wait a while for such systems and consequent data to be available to the public. There is a significant initial investment in the software and equipment needed to perform accurate and detailed in-game measurements, but I wouldn't be surprised if some teams already have them in place at some of their minor league parks and we just don't know about it. Either way, there are some very interesting things going on in baseball right now, and it's quickly changing the way the game is tracked and understood. I guess some purist might think that such changes are subtracting from the game, but I think it will only add to the overall appeal and entertainment value of baseball as a whole.

Don't Look Now...

Chris Davis has 5 home runs in 41 plate appearances, 4 of them at home. Even if that rate drops closer to 1 home run every 15 plate appearances, he could have 20+ home runs by the end of the year. But since he's hitting near the bottom of the Rangers order, pitchers aren't going to pitch around him and risk facing Josh Hamilton and Milton Bradley, so Davis will probably continue to see pitches to hit, and consequently we'll see his home run totals continue to climb.

David Price Projection and Call Up Speculation

In a previous post, I did some estimating and said that I thought David Price would end up posting a K/9 in the minors around 9 or 10, and a ground ball rate in the mid-50% range along with a BB/9 of about 2. Those projections were made about a month ago after his first 18 innings at high A ball, and Price has since made the move to AA, so I thought now would be a good time to revisit the subject, look at some stats, and see what else we've learned about the highly regarded hurler.

Price's AA stats are only based off of 18 innings, but overall we have about 54 innings of work from him to analyze. It's not a very large sample size, but Price has been fairly consistent and I think we have a rough idea of what to expect from him in the next year or so. If he maintains his current pace, it looks like he'll finish AA with a K/9 of 9, a BB/9 of just over 2, and a GB% of about 50%. At his age, that puts him in with Roy Oswalt, Mike Pelfrey, and Justin Verlander (here's a chart of each player's AA stats at the age of 22 to see how they compare against one another).

(For player's whose GB% rates at AA were unavailable, I used their career averages.)

Price probably best compares to Oswalt and Verlander, who went on to post ERAs of 2.73 and 3.63 respectively in the majors at the age of 23. Since Price will be pitching in the A.L. East, he'll probably come out on the high side of that range, and there's a good chance that he could struggle if he gets called up to make several starts before the end of the '08 season. However, the Rays have a very good group of pitchers at the front of their rotation, so it would make more sense if Price came in for bullpen duty or the occasional spot start against a lower tier team. Either way, he'll probably spend part of August and September with the Rays, and will probably get carried on their post-season roster if they make the playoffs.

To wrap things up, I would like to point out that there are several pitchers in AA posting better stats than Price at a younger age. In my opinion, Price is not the #1 pitching prospect in the minors, and had he been signed out of high school instead of college, there would be very little hype surrounding him. I've read several articles by well known analysts touting Price as the next Kazmir, Gooden, King Felix, etc. But what such analysts fail to consider is that by the age of 22, each of those pitchers had already established themselves as dominate #1 starters in the majors, while Price is still putting up above average stats in AA. He'll be a solid middle of the rotation starter with a chance to develop into a good #1 or #2 starter, but I'm not really excited about him at the moment. However, he was a very safe pick for the Rays, and can provide some immediate benefits to the club.

Francisco Liriano Update

Here's what you need to know:

July 5th -- 6 IP, 7 K, 1 BB, 50% GB%

Liriano still isn't back to the same level he was pre-Tommy John, but his K% is consistently floating around 30% (it was at 32.2% in AAA in 2005), and his GB% has gone from 32% in April, to 41% in May, then 45% in June, and now 50% in July (compared to 57% with the Twins in 2006).

Everything looks to be going very well for Liriano. The increased K% and GB% indicate that he's beginning to let loose in his motion, and moving closer to the same mechanics that made him such a dominate pitcher. He's not quite there yet, but very close.

The Curse of the Cubs Will Continue

Let's put on our imagination caps for a second, and pretend I offered to make you a deal. You've been lost in the desert for weeks, and you're tired and hungry, and you've been eating bugs and lizards with very little water to drink. In fact, a few times you thought you saw a nice, big pool of crystal clear water, but turns out it was just a mirage. And out here in the middle of the desert you and I have crossed paths at the top of yet another sun scorched sand dune, and the first thing you say to me is, "Hey, got anything to drink?"

From the tone of your voice and the look of your burnt and blistered skin, I get the feeling you're a little bit desperate, and the longer I talk to you, the more I realize that you'd give anything for just a drop of water. I'm a little thirsty myself, but I've been living in the desert for years now, and I've learned a lot about surviving in this harsh environment, including the best ways to avoid extreme sun exposure, which snakes to eat, which snakes not to eat, and most importantly the exact location of everywhere oasis in a 300 mile radius. Any one of these bits of information would be enough to get you out of the desert and safely back home, but the only thing you keep asking me is, "Hey, got anything to drink?"

At first, I feel sorry for you. After all, you didn't ask to be dropped out here in the middle of this unforgiving desert, it just happened by mistake one day and here you are. I can empathize with your plight, and really want to help you, but every time I begin to tell you any valuable bit of information, all you want to know is, "Hey, got anything to drink?"

After a while, I get the point. You don't care about anything else, you just want water. And I just so happen to have a small canteen with enough water in it to last about half a day, but if I give it to you I'll have to make the 3 hour walk to the small oasis just north of here, and I really hate walking out here in the middle of the day. So, I decide that I'll give you my water, but only if you make it worth my time and trade me some decent stuff. At the sight of my canteen, you begin to offer me every valuable item on you, including some expensive jewelry, a nice watch, a wallet full of cash, and the keys to your car and home.

This could be a really profitable deal for me, but I quickly realize that if you ever manage to crawl out of this desert, you won't have any money or valuables to buy a plane ticket home, and even worse, you won't even have a home. But you are very belligerent, and pretty soon I give in and hand you the canteen. Without saying a word, you fling all your valuables at me, grab the canteen, and proceed to pour it's contents down your throat. You can hardly swallow the water fast enough, and it pours down your face, onto your dirty chest, and into the sand, as you gasp and choke between gulps.

As I gather up your cash and jewelry, I attempt to tell you which direction to walk to reach the oasis I'll be heading to, but by then your sucking the water out of your shirt and putting wet sand in your mouth, trying to squeeze out every last drop. You aren't paying a bit of attention to me, and it's obvious you don't care what I have to say. You got what you wanted, and it's time for me to go. After walking a few hundred yards, I turn to see you on your knees, licking the surface of the dunes, desperately hoping that you can soak up just a little more water, but by now the hot, dry sun has evaporated everything you spilled, and there's nothing left but hot sand.

I shake my head, and turn towards the nearby oasis, never to see you again.

What's the moral of this story? I think you know, but it's something the Cubs obviously haven't learned yet. Don't make desperate trades, don't throw away your future, and most importantly, don't let Billy Beane know that you're willing to do both.