Trevor Cahill Mechanical Analysis

For those of you interested, there's a nice article breaking down Trevor Cahill's mechanics at DriveLineMechanics.com. While it seems Cahill doesn't have the most ideal motion, it doesn't look like he's high risk either. There are a few indications that he could increase his velocity with a few adjustments, but hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Jaime Garcia and What Could Have Been

I was a big fan of Jaime Garcia this past year, and it really dissappointed me when I heard that he was undergoing Tommy John Surgery back in September.  While it certainly does not signal the end of his career, it's always unfortunate to watch a young, talented pitcher waste his years away on the DL.  Hopefully he'll recover quickly and make his way back for the 2010 season.  

There's an interesting article on ChrisOLeary.com that was written back in July breaking down Garcia's mechanics and some of the potential arm and shoulder problems he could face over time.

Had he been healthy for the 2009 season, I would have projected something along the lines of a 1.25 to 1.35 WHIP, with an ERA in the 3.50 to 4.00 range.  Along with the help of a decent Cardinals offense, Jaime might have been able to win anywhere from 10 to 15 games.  Oh, what might have been.

David Price 2009 Projection: A.L. ROY?

This will be short and sweet.



After cross analyzing pitchers with similar minor league stats at a similar age to David Price, I'm going to go with the following stats for Price's 2009 season:

K/9 = 6.5 - 7.5

BB/9 = 3.25

GB% = 52%

WHIP = 1.25

ERA = 3.75

I feel like those stats are somewhat conservative, but realistic.

If the Rays offense and defense remain consistent with last year, the above numbers would likely put Price in the 12 to 14 wins range, with 8 to 10 losses. He'll be a solid starter, and will likely pitch in the #4 or #5 spot, depending on how Edwin Jackson and Andy Sonnanstine pitch during the first half.

So, the big question on everyone's mind is whether Price has a shot at the A.L. ROY. My answer, in short, is not likely. But (and this is a big but), if Price out performs the above projections, or if 2009 happens to be a weak year in terms of rookie player production, Price could find himself in R.O.Y. contention by years end.

Thoughts?
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TPC Stock Pick of the Day: ACTS

Hey guys, it's time for the TPC stock pick, so get out your pens and pencils, and let's do some math.

Actions Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (ticker symbol ACTS), is a Chinese based semiconductor manufacturer that has seen it's stock price fall from $4.40 down to $1.67 at the present time of writing.

Market Cap: $142.04 m.
Total Cash: $258.25 m.
Total Debt: $1.50 m.
Price/Book: 0.48
Trailing P/E: 3.17
Forward P/E: 15.45
Profit Margin: 40.71%
Operating Margin: 26.11%
Gross Profit: $59.71 m.
Qtrly Rev. Growth: 0.90%
Operating Cash Flow: $55.96 m.
Levered Free Cash Flow: $23.45 m.

ACTS really pops out to me simply because they have so much cash on hand. With over $3 cash per share, the $1.70 price tag per share seems like a steal, and it's always nice to see very little debt on a company's financial statement. While revenues aren't growing right now, the current state of the world economy means that a company that isn't seeing it's income shrink should consider themselves quite fortunate. The forward P/E suggests that while ACTS might not be a fantastic short term gainer, once sales pick up in a few years, this could be a very profitable investment.
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2008 Draft in Review: Buster Posey

There were a lot of great college hitters taken in the first round of the 2008 MLB draft, and I think many of them have bright futures ahead of them. One player I'll watch especially close is Buster Posey, the talented catcher from Florida State. While perhaps not he most polished college hitter, I think the Giants made a smart choice when they drafted Posey.

Before we address what the future may hold for Posey, I want to first state that I don't see much power potential in Posey, and I don't think he'll be a dominant offensive player. Despite hitting 26 home runs with 21 doubles in 2008 with FSU, Posey had just 7 home runs (using a metal bat) over 500+ plate appearances between his freshman and sophomore years in college. Translated into wood bat numbers, Posey isn't the most awe inspiring hitter.

However, Posey has made great strides at catcher, and if he can manage to hit .280-.300 with 15-25 home runs, he'll be considered one of the premier players at his position. While the Giants have decent prospects at other positions, they're desperately thin at catcher, and anytime you can fill a premium position in your farm system with a high quality draft pick like Posey, it's hard to say no.

So, for the Giants, Posey made sense at #5 in the draft. But what I think really made it impossible for the Giants to pass up Posey actually had as much to do with their young pitching talent as it did their need of a solid catching prospect. With Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Tim Alderson, and Madison Bumgarner all under the age of 25, it will greatly benefit the Giants to have a dependable, talented catcher that can grow and develop along with their pitching staff. It makes total sense, and I think the Giants investment in Posey should pay some great dividends down the road.

TPC Preliminary Projection: .280-.300 average, 15-25 home runs
TPC Comparable Player: Jason Varitek
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Baseball Card Freak!

While I prefer stats over cards, I have been known to look over a checklist now and again to see what kind of autographed prospect cards are out there.  While drifting around the baseball blog-o-sphere, I ran across a site called the Baseball Card Freak, only to find that it is run by several individuals that I had become familiar with when I began writing posts for the Beckett Baseball Forum back in the day before it went all nutz-o and turned into one of the biggest flops ever.

The Baseball Card Freak is a nicely run site, so check it out, and as always, I wish everyone there the best of luck!

Chris Davis Projection Combos for 2009

I've watched Chris Davis for a couple of years now,knowing that one day others would see the potential in him that I saw. After a spectacular power display with the Ranger's in '08, it looks like the Crush Davis Bandwagon is about to overflow with believers.

Below are the 2009 estimates for Davis according to various projection systems:

Bill James: .302 Ave/ 39 HR/ 115 RBI
CHONE: .265 Ave/ 29 HR/ 102 RBI
Baseball HQ: .285 Ave/ 36 HR/ 104 RBI

So, the general consensus is somewhere around a .280 average and 35 home runs with 100+ RBIs. My biggest concern with these projections is that over his last 200 plate appearances in '08, Davis had just 7 home runs, with a strikeout rate of about 30%. I expect Davis to perform a little bit better than that throughout 2009, but I also think the Rangers will probably try to hit Davis higher in their batting order, and he won't get the same meatball pitches he was getting while hitting lower in the order. The Rangers might also suffer from the loss of Milton Bradley, and their entire offense might struggle to match its production from 2008.

With that in mind, there's 3 different levels of production that I feel we could see from Davis in 2009:

High Range: .310 Average, 41 HR, 125 RBI
Mid Range: .280 Average, 35 HR, 105 RBI
Low Range: .255 Average, 21 HR, 70 RBI

Obviously, that's a very wide range of production, and I haven't really convinced myself that any of them are absolutely the best combo to go with. So, I'll have to go with my gut on this one, and give the following combo as the official TPC 2009 projection for Chris Davis (based off of 600 plate appearances):

.285 Average, 31 HR, 103 RBI, .915 OPS

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Notes on Madison Bumgarner

I just wanted to pass on what I came across while reading up on some of the post-2008 minor league awards.

Going into 2008, Mad-Bum didn't have much of a breaking ball, and relied heavily on his fastball to get batters out. However, according to an interview with mlb.com posted on November 25th, Bumgarner said:  

"My slider and curve got a lot better. I didn't really have a breaking ball coming into the instructional league last year. It just got better and better [as the year went on]. It just kind of clicked."

I haven't been able to find any recent scouting reports that indicate whether Bumgardner's breaking ball pitches have improved as much as he thinks they have, but his 71 strike outs over his last 53 innings while allowing just 5 walks suggest that there is some truth to his ascertations.  From July to August his strikeout rate went from a respectable 23.8% to an astounding 41%.

An interview with Bumgardner's A ball  pitching coach Ross Grimsley that was posted on September 2nd contains the following:

Q: Can you break down what he throws and what he’s working on?
A: He’s worked on a slider. He had a curveball in the spring but it was erratic. It seemed more like a knuckle curve to me and he wasn’t consistent with it. The slider has gotten better. He’s around the plate with it. It’s got a sharper break and more tilt.

But the biggest thing is the changeup. He’ll need that for the higher levels and he understands that. Down here, he’s just throwing the ball by guys. The closer to home plate they get, the more he reaches back and goes after them. For 19, he’s a very mature, smart kid. He knows he’s got some things he’s got to work on to make himself a more complete pitcher, not just a thrower.

Though none of the above information is definite, there are very good indications that Mad-Bum is developing very quickly and could be developing his secondary pitches much more quickly than anyone expected.  If that's the case, the Giants could have a very talented young major league ready pitcher on their hands within the next 2 to 3 years. 

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New TPC Feature: Stock Pick of the Day

Over the last several months I've been following the stock market and watching it choke and spasm its way down to some incredibly low levels. As a biology major in college and a current dental school student, I've never spent a lot of time learning the deep intricacies of Wall Street, but I've always found it fascinating and thought that current conditions might offer up some great opportunities for making money.

So, the first thing I did was to start reading up on the history of stock prices, what made them surge upward, plunge downward, and remain constant for years at a time. Here's a chart I found that I really liked.

Dow Jones Industrial Average Over 100 Years

As many of you probably have realized by now, I'm into numbers and charts and quantifying potential, so the above chart really got me thinking.  There are some incredible patterns that pop out, and if the last 50 to 75 years are any indication of the future, we could be in the middle of an 18 to 20 year bear market, with the beginning of a new bull market showing up in about 10 years.  

I don't want to spend too much time discussing the chart because it doesn't really teach us a whole lot, other than the fact that the market has some basic cycles that it works through that seem to be on a generational scale.  My main purpose in this post is to point out the fact that at my current age (26 years old), it's time for me to put some of my brain power to work in learning how to identify investment opportunities so that I can retire at a decent age in the future.  

So, over my winter break, I've been reading anything I could get my hands on that helped me understand how to best take advantage of the market, and what to look for when doing so.  I've read through most of The Intelligent Investor, and am currently finishing up The SnowBall, a bigoraphy about Warren Buffet.  I've also spent many hours digging through Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance, Fools.com, and any other investment oriented website I thought was worth my time.  Next week I'm going to order Security Analysis and work my way through learning how to identify and value good business investment opportunities.  

I won't spend much time on TPC explaining or regurgitating things I've learned, but I am planning to periodically identify stocks that I've come across that I think are good values and worth investigating.  I won't do so on a daily basis, but I hope to post the stock of the day once or twice a week depending on circumstances.  Let me know what you think of the whole idea.

Thanks

Adam G.

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Freddie Freeman 2008 Stats Revisited

Hey guys, I wrote a post several months ago highlighting some of the achievements of Freddie Freeman, an 18 year old power hitting first baseman in the Braves farm system. At the time of my first post, Freddie had somewhere around 350 plate appearances, and since the 2009 season is just around the corner, I thought I'd take a moment to reanalyze Freeman's full season stats and compare them to some other players with similar minor league numbers.

Below is a chart including Freeman's A ball numbers as they compare to other hitters' overall minor league totals.

Obviously, Freeman still has to make it through AA and AAA ball before we can make some definite projections for him, but the fact that his numbers (especially his power numbers) match up with this group of hitters is worth consideration. Ryan Klesko, while not a superstar, usually hit in the .275-.300 range, with 25-30 home runs; Justin Morneau is currently entering his prime and has hit .300 or better twice in his career and topped 30 home runs twice; and Ryan Braun has a .301 average and 71 home runs in his first 2 major league seasons (Josh Reddick has shown the potential to be a similar hitter, and I discussed his numbers in a previous post this week).

With those comps in mind, I think we can attach a rough projection to Freeman as a potential .300/30+ home run hitter and an OPS in the mid .900 range. Once again, projections are subject to change according to future performances, but at this point in time, I'm very comfortable with the above basic projection.
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