Jose Celestino Johjima
by Jeff Sullivan on Feb 12, 2010 3:55 PM PST
in Seattle Mariners Stats
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PrintGraham made a passing comparison between Kenji Johjima and Jose Lopez the other day, and even though he was only referring to a very particular set of numbers, that sentence got my mind racing, and this post is either the finish line or the part of the course where my mind got tired and pretended to roll its ankle so it could stop and sit down.
All numbers in this post are 2006-2009 totals - the window of time during which Kenji was a Mariner, and Lopez was a full-time 2B.
PLATE DISCIPLINE
| Category | Johjima | Lopez | '09 MLB Range |
| Swing | 51% | 50% | 31-61% |
| Swing@Str | 71% | 71% | 58-83% |
| O-Contact | 68% | 73% | 38-87% |
| Z-Contact | 94% | 92% | 70-97% |
| Zone | 51% | 53% | 41-55% |
| F-Strike | 59% | 60% | 47-67% |
| BB% | 3.7% | 3.4% | 2.5-18% |
| K% | 8.6% | 11% | 7.1-39% |
Pretty obvious similarities here. Same swing rate, and same rate of swings at strikes. Lopez made better contact on balls out of the zone, but not by very much, and Johjima actually posted the better strikeout rate. Neither player walked, ever.
BATTED BALLS
| Category | Johjima | Lopez | '09 MLB Range |
| GB% | 46% | 45% | 26-63% |
| FB% | 35% | 37% | 18-57% |
| LD% | 19% | 19% | 11-26% |
| To LF | 52% | 47% | - |
| To CF | 29% | 30% | - |
| To RF | 19% | 23% | - |
Two pull-happy average groundball righties. I don't have league averages or anything from Fangraphs here, but if you go by Baseball-Reference's trajectory numbers, Lopez and Johjima each went to left field more often than the average righty, and went up the middle less.
POWER
| Category | Johjima | Lopez | '09 MLB Range |
| HR/BIA | 6.1% | 5.4% | 0-19% |
| HR/BIA to LF | 13% | 13% | - |
| HR/BIA to CF | 0.9% | 0.0% | - |
| HR/BIA to RF | 0.2% | 0.3% | - |
| Avg. HR | 383 ft | 378 ft | 378-416 ft? |
| Max HR | 422 ft | 415 ft | - |
| Avg. SOB | 102mph | 101mph | - |
| Avg. ElevAng | 29 | 30 | - |
Johjima and Lopez each demonstrated decent power - no more, no less. Neither showed any sort of ability to hit the ball out of the park to center or right, preferring instead to yank the ball down the left field line. Which isn't so bad, given that the devil's dance floor in Safeco occupies center field and the left-center power alley. Both hitters have failed to hit very impressive home runs during the Hit Tracker era, combining for exactly 15 home runs beyond 400 feet over eight combined seasons, and none longer than 422. For the sake of comparison, Russell Branyan hit 13 home runs at least 422 feet last year.
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I don't want people to get the wrong idea, here. This post contains zero opinion and 100% facts. I'm not trying to take a swipe at Jose Lopez, and the fact that this post totals four years of data ignores that Lopez has trended up while Johjima trended down. There is but one point I'm trying to make with this post, and that point is that, over the last four years, with Jose Lopez and Kenji Johjima, I don't know that the Mariners could've had two more similar hitters in the lineup if they tried. It's astonishing.
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thats kind of ridiculous, they pretty much are the exact same person
~wu tang banger
36 styles of danger~
Forgot to capatalize and use a period!
~wu tang banger
36 styles of danger~
Capitalization is good, periods are not necessary
To arbitrary rule enforcement!
by Jeff Sullivan on Feb 12, 2010 4:12 PM PST up reply actions
Really.
Why does everyone here care so much about that? I use proper sentence structure because I want to, but I’m not gonna get mad at someone for not doing so.
And maybe if we leave them alone they will just get it anyways…?
Because people need to respect others enough to make their comments as readable as possible.
Proper capitalization plays a huge role in aiding how we read and no, the masses do not get it on their own.
They would quickly figure out that it's ok to make unreadable comments should we not enforce the rules, however
by Graham MacAree on Feb 12, 2010 5:03 PM PST up reply actions
It's also a form of user quality control.
People that are incapable of adjusting and using proper grammar and capitalization are people that you do not want posting anyway. Although I’d give non-native English speakers some leniency.
I actually wonder why some people find it so difficult to do?
If you use proper sentence structure, capitalization, grammar, etc. you can pretty much post/comment anywhere without having to worry about meeting standards.
But anyway, back to the topic
Lopez and Johjima being similar hitters reminded me of a problem we had last year with both of them, plus some other right-handed hitters in the lineup.
I agree.
But it looks like Mr. cedarA was in a hurry, forgot to capitalize, and had to rush out an apology so he wouldn’t get attacked.
If your post is illegible it’s one thing, if you make an honest capitalization mistake is another. No?
He corrected himself
Jeff was just clearing up the rules for him when he asked.
by Graham MacAree on Feb 14, 2010 9:24 PM PST up reply actions
To cover some of these categories:
SOB = speed off bat
HR/BIA = home runs/balls in air
Most of you should be familiar with the Fangraphs plate discipline labels.
I'm still not sure how much value to put into some of these power numbers such as
the length and speed of home runs.
Is there much value in being able to hit the ball 500 ft with regularity when you only need to hit it 375 ft? I have to imagine a player’s distribution of hit distances is complicated and not a simple gaussian distribution for example. I can imagine seeing a distribution where you have 3 different categories of flyballs; popups, normal flyballs and ones you “got all of it”. It seems for almost all players popups would stay in the infield, most normal flyballs would stay in the outfield and the “got all of it” are the only ones that matter. For a guy like Lopez when he “got all of it” it didn’t go that far but it still went far enough to get out compared to a guy like Beltre where it would go a country mile when he got solid wood on it. It seems to me that hitters likely hit more home runs not by improving their maximum power but by getting consistent power/contact. Another example of this would be watching a home run derby. In that case they usually either hit the ball healthily over the wall or it falls at least 50 ft short because they either make good contact and it goes far since they have plenty of power or they do not make good contact and it ends up somewhere in the outfield far short of a home run. There is always a blurriness to all this so I don’t expect it to hold all the time but it would be interesting to see if this is the case overall.
by Edgar for Pres on Feb 12, 2010 4:53 PM PST up reply actions
What is a normal flyball but an instance of imperfect contact?
A stronger player doesn’t need to make perfect contact in order to hit the ball out of the park. A weaker player does. I don’t know of any good studies on the matter, but it seems pretty intuitive to me.
by Jeff Sullivan on Feb 12, 2010 5:06 PM PST up reply actions
I'll try to rephase my statement in a better way.
Hitting long home runs is a function of strength. Having a high HR/FB% is a function of skill and and strength.
Maybe Jose Lopez could hit a 450 ft HR if he swung from the heels every swing. If he did this, he’d only make contact 40% of the time and many of them would be popups. Instead he swings with more control to maximize contact and only swings strong enough so that when he hits it just right he ends up hitting a 400 ft HR. Jose Lopez probably does not have elite power but he might be doing a good job of maximizing his natural power.
It would be interesting to see some studies on.
by Edgar for Pres on Feb 12, 2010 7:50 PM PST up reply actions
Maybe this backs me up a little, probably not though
Hit chart for Jose Lopez as Safeco
I’m not really sure if that is the right interpretation. I’m also not sure if the marks on the chart are from where the ball hits the ground or where the ball ends up.
by Edgar for Pres on Feb 12, 2010 7:53 PM PST up reply actions
I love Jose Lopez!
I fucking hate you Mariners
Is there a resource that shows these maps for every stadium?
by EnglishMariner on Feb 13, 2010 9:54 AM PST up reply actions
Only if one doesn't bother thinking about it
by Graham MacAree on Feb 13, 2010 11:53 AM PST up reply actions
I don't know what you mean.
Is there a ten foot difference between the average and Safeco equivalent lines at the left field pole? Twenty-five feet? I think that’s a fair piece of knowledge to have before assigning a subjective opinion on if it presents a "significant" disadvantage or not.
T/F
1) Safeco significantly represses home runs.
2) Down the line doesn’t appear to be be very different to left field in general.
by Graham MacAree on Feb 14, 2010 9:26 PM PST up reply actions
True and true
but the magnitude of the difference is what is important. If Safeco only reduces HR down the line by 5% but reduces HR to right-center by 25% then the impact it has on a guy like Lopez vs. Beltre is a big difference.
by Edgar for Pres on Feb 14, 2010 10:17 PM PST up reply actions
It appears to be a bigger difference than that, though
You can use the 90 ft. to third base as a reference point. The difference in LF from the average park appears to be about 1/4 or 1/5 of the difference from home plate to third. So that’s like 20 ft? Which is pretty significant.
That isn't the only factor though.
So it’s a good question. The wind factor, for example, could affect the left field line less than the rest of left field.
...and now I'm here
I think Graham is still overstating the effects of hitting the ball down the line
The average LF pole distance is around 331 ft which is exactly same as in Safeco. The article Graham has in his visual HR factor article says the HR factor for a HR to LF is 94 (100 is average). I would claim that since LF gets deeper than normal compared to other stadiums as you go from the LF pole to LCF we should see a higher park factor for HR straight down the LF line in Safeco than the 94 quoted above however I am not that worried about any difference here.
A park factor of 94 really isn’t that extreme though. As long as a right handed batter doesn’t try to hit the ball to LCF (PF = 89) or CF (PF = 64!) he will probably be ok. This tells me that extreme pull RHB shouldn’t see a huge hit in their home run totals. If they hit all their home runs to LF, using the above park factor we should see a decrease of about 3% in their home run total or about 1 HR for every 30 HR hit over a full season playing half their games in neutral parks.
I also think the diagram Graham has is deceptive since you don’t know the magnitude of differences but that’s ok because I know the point he is trying to get at with it. The thing about it that is a little unusual though is the HR park factor for LF was 94 and the park factor for RF was 131 but when you look at the figure, LF is about as far in as RF is pushed out. This is strange to me. It might be interesting to have a figure where the dimensions are scaled by the park factors also to compare. It could be that this LF park factor is off but it makes sense to me that it should be closer to 100 than LCF or CF.
On final quick note. The average fence height is 8 ft however the average height at other parks was 11/10/11 (LF/CF/RF). I’m not sure how much this matters because but I’m sure it makes at least a small difference even though an OF can jump high enough to catch a ball 8 ft off the ground if he has time.
by Edgar for Pres on Feb 15, 2010 10:06 AM PST up reply actions
So why did Johjima suck so much as a catcher
And Lopez was right about average as a second baseman. They are both equally sucky at defense.
Lopez isn't sucky at defense.
And no one thought Kenji sucked, necessarily, he just made too much money.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 13, 2010 9:53 PM PST up reply actions
I was under the impression that Johjima was generally considered a poor defender
And that Lopez was worse than UZR gave him credit for.
by vivaelpujols on Feb 14, 2010 12:11 AM PST up reply actions
I see no reason to believe Lopez is worse than UZR gives him credit for.
I’m convinced that people think Lopez is bad at defense because he’s fat.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 14, 2010 12:45 AM PST up reply actions
Lopez looks worse to me than UZR says
To my eye, he doesn’t look all that adept at second. I tend to not trust UZR too much for him.
Johjima looked alright. Not particularly good, not particularly bad. His CS% was always good, and judging from the work a couple of people have done looking at passed balls/wild pitches, he seemed to be competent.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 14, 2010 1:55 AM PST up reply actions
If you trust UZR for other players then you have no reason to distrust it where Lopez is concerned.
He has a large sample of UZR data that says he’s average. +/- likes him.
There’s reason to believe he won’t age particularly well, but there is no reason to believe he’s not adequate at the moment.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 14, 2010 10:13 AM PST up reply actions
I think Lopez actually does pretty good at turning double plays
and has more range than his chubby frame would make you think. That said, he is a little heavier than you’d like a 2B to be and makes too many errors.
by Edgar for Pres on Feb 14, 2010 10:23 AM PST up reply actions
Sure, I don't question the reasonable criticism of Lopez
I just cannot fathom how people that are typically more than willing to accept advanced metrics choose to ignore them in the case of Lopez. He drives me crazy as well, but he’s easily an asset yet people seem to hat him irrationally and want to trade him for peanuts.
But we’ve had this discussion before.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 14, 2010 10:26 AM PST up reply actions
I don't necessarily trust UZR for any player.
I see it as good information, but not definitive for any one player. The problem for me when it comes to Lopez is that my eyes are telling me one thing and the defensive metrics are telling me another, so I’m left with not knowing what to believe.
My opinion of him has been formed by years of watching him play and what I see is a player that’s substandard for a second baseman. I’m perfectly willing to say that UZR and other defensive metrics are probably more reliable than what my eyes can tell me, but still, I’m left with the suspicion that he’s not as good as what UZR is telling us.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 14, 2010 4:29 PM PST up reply actions
She loves me, she loves me not.
I don’t like Jose Lopez very much. From all the subjective stuff, he bothers me. I’ve always felt like he has not lived up to his ability, he doesn’t seem too interested in staying in shape, and his approach at the plate is ridiculous. When he doesn’t get to a ball, I roll my eyes.
I love Adrian Beltre for all being the opposite of Lopez (except for the plate approach). When he doesn’t get to a ball, I trust that he did everything in his power to get there.
Our opinions of players color how we perceive them. That’s why data is great. The defensive metrics available that use different methods agree that Lopez is around average. It’s fine that you don’t like him, but pardon me if I choose to trust the data instead of your eyes.
by abender20 on Feb 14, 2010 8:55 PM PST up reply actions 2 recs
Except that the "data"
Isn’t unbiased, or even a perfect description of what has actually happened. If you think of the possible error bars of UZR like a distribution (some players are going to be within 2-3 runs of their past UZR, and others will not even be 15), then it’s entirely possible that UZR has simply overrated Lopez, even over a few seasons.
The best example of this is regarding Andruw Jones. With UZR using STATS data, he’s an average defender. With UZR using BIS data, he’s one of the best defenders of all time.
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/suzr_v_buzr/
Ditto with Carlos Beltran, and probably others as well.
The point is that UZR isn’t necessarily this stat that you can automatically trust over a large sample size. If nearly everyone thinks that Lopez is a bad defender (which seems to be the case), but UZR says he’s average, that doesn’t mean you should throw out all of your observations. It’s very possible that UZR could be overrating him in this case.
by vivaelpujols on Feb 14, 2010 9:32 PM PST up reply actions
John Dewan had him as the #8 ranked 2B in baseball between 2006-2008.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 14, 2010 9:33 PM PST up reply actions
Dewan uses the same data and a similar methodogy to UZR
Total Zone also has Lopez as roughly average, though.
This, of course, still doesn’t mean that we should ignore observation data, but I do agree it’s less likely that he is actually a bad defender.
by vivaelpujols on Feb 14, 2010 9:41 PM PST up reply actions
"he just made too much money."
Well, yes and no.
No, because he was about average as a player, and he was paid about what an average free agent player would make (unless you just think his defense was sucky). Yes, because for the M’s to compete for the playoffs with a $90 million or so budget, they need to get a little more than average production for their money. But he wasn’t really being paid more than what he was worth.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 13, 2010 11:51 PM PST up reply actions
The extension was fucking stupid no matter how you want to slice it.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 14, 2010 12:45 AM PST up reply actions
Stupid?
How so?
He was basically about an average player, and he was paid about an average wage for a free agent. And it’s not like he was taking time away from a promising young player that would be the Mariner’s catcher of the future.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 14, 2010 1:42 AM PST up reply actions
Jeff Clement?
Yeah, it didn’t turn out for the best but at the time he looked to be a star in the making. And Johjima was coming off a season in which he had been Godawful and wasn’t looking much better at the time.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 14, 2010 10:09 AM PST up reply actions
Catchers don't age well, and he wasn't performing like an average player at the time he was given the extension
Maybe Bavasi knew something we didn’t and was aware Clement wasn’t going to be an MLB catcher, but it sure seemed like the contract blocked Clement at the time. Even if you discount that, there was no reason to give him so much money and so many years. It was inexcusably stupid.
Stupid is signing Carlos Silva. Stupid is trading Asdrubal Cabrera for um....whatsisname.
Johjima should have been expected to provide us decent value. And I’m pretty sure that they had figured out by that time that Clement wasn’t going to be their future everyday catcher, or they wouldn’t have re-signed Johjima. The signing certainly wasn’t particularly insightful or shrewd or anything, but it also wasn’t particularly bad. It was an average contract for an average player.
And do we really know that catchers age poorly as compared to other players? Is there compelling empirical evidence to believe this is true? It seems like there’s always plenty of old catchers around. I’ve seen reference to a study by Nate Silver on B-Pro, but it’s behind a wall. Does anybody have a subscription that can give us an encapsulation?
Top ten catchers are hard to find. I bet there’s only a few of them.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 14, 2010 1:40 PM PST up reply actions
It was appallingly dumb.
There was absolutely no reason at the time to suspect that Clement wasn’t the guy, and he was the starting catcher for a long stretch after the extension. It was fair market value, but it was a bad move. Just because it wasn’t as bad as Silva doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad.
by Aaron Campeau on Feb 14, 2010 2:39 PM PST up reply actions
There was a lot of reason to believe that Clement wasn't going to be the guy.
We’d been hearing for years (from the time that he was drafted) that he probably wasn’t going to improve his defense to Major League levels, and he had already suffered some injuries that further enforced that idea. Scouts weren’t high on his defense behind the plate or his future there. Most thought he was going to have to move off the position over to first base.
I’m not making a judgement on whether it was the right move or a good move, it’s just hard for me to see how anyone would think it was terrible and appallingly dumb and fucking stupid. It was just kinda like, well, whatever — not the move I would have made, but not likely to turn out terribly for the M’s. I think he’d be an upgrade right now over what we have.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 14, 2010 3:58 PM PST up reply actions
The contract extension was terrible.
Our organization clearly signed Johjima to an extension based on what he’s done in the past, not for what he’s projected to do in the future. It was just assumed that he would continue to produce without accounting for risk. It’s the same rational used to sign Carlos Silva. And never mind that they inked the extension right as Johjima was falling off the cliff. They clearly made up their minds on the future of the catching spot early on (read: “Keep that cagey veteran”).
.
Clement wasn’t going to be their future everyday catcher, or they wouldn’t have re-signed Johjima.
We also had Adam Moore and Rob Johnson. We had many players blocked by the signing. Not to mention that it appeared Kenji was having some considerable problems hitting the ball at the time of the signing, and he was displaced by Jeff Clement during the season he signed his extension. You have to factor that into his playing time estimates as well, which makes him worth even less. Even if he was a 2 win player, he was getting his playing time cut, making him not a 2 win player.
Not to mention that while I’m not sure I have the tools to prove it, I would bet that the $$/Win of catchers has always been less than the overarching $$/win. Catchers get an almost retarded positional adjustment, so getting to 1 win involves very little, and it seems hard to believe that teams pay full price for that first win. But don’t quote me on this since I’m not entirely sure.
It seems like there’s always plenty of old catchers around.
Veteran presence, backup catchers, etc. And they also sign for like 1 million. They are not 9 million dollar catchers as you can see from the linked article above. Also, while they’re around, they’re not that good. They, too, collapsed.
Does anybody have a subscription that can give us an encapsulation?
No, but in this article, Silver does imply that it is more fatiguing, and from an injury standpoint I think it is safe to say that holds a lot of merit. Hell, catchers still only play like 120 games a year due to the fatigue they get during the season alone. It seems safe to assume that older dudes have worse knees and greater risk of injury. Players like McCann and Mauer are a virtual lock to be moved off C before they reach 34, 35.
...and now I'm here
Silver's article basically says catchers tend to decline about a year earlier than any other position on average
And they also have a tendency to fall off a cliff around age 34 much moreso than players at other positions. I don’t want to quote the whole thing because it’s behind their pay wall, but here’s a small excerpt:
Catchers are one of two positions—we’ll get to the other in a moment—at which the divergence from normal aging patterns is unmistakable. There is no good news here; these guys take a long time to get ready and decline very quickly once they do
What's the other?
Centerfield?
...and now I'm here
CFer's peak a little younger than other players
But I think he was referring to second basemen, because they seem to peak very early (Around age 26 according to his graph) and decline faster than normal. He thinks that has more to do with those players typically just not being very good and not having a lot of value to build upon (There are a lot of guys who couldn’t cut it at SS playing 2B), rather than the rigors of the position.
Any chance you could give a rundown on his methodology, criteria, dataset,
anything like that that we could try to judge whether this was a good study and good conclusions?
And yeah, I know it’s behind a wall, so there’s only so much you might want to share with us. It would be nice to know if there’s good reason to trust his conclusions.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 15, 2010 11:52 PM PST up reply actions
All numbers used were league averages adjusted for park and league from the PECOTA database
There were some issues with small sample sizes in playing time skewing the data for very young players (like the curve for second basemen was pretty weird for age 21 to 22 players), but that doesn’t really affect the conclusion about catchers: The difference between them and every other position is just so blatantly obvious, they have a much shorter period of usefulness in the major leagues. I think this has been confirmed in studies elsewhere, as well, by Tango and Bill James, but those are not published online from what I can find. Plus, it jives with common sense, catchers can’t play every day because the wear and tear on the body just from playing the position necessitates a couple days off a week. I don’t see any reason not to trust it.
Was the period of usefullness for catchers a product of actual increased decline rate?
Or were they not as talented at their peak and lost playing time at an earlier stage? Did he incorporate defensive ability (not just positional adjustment) to determine the players’ total value? Did he only used offense? Did he use rate stats or counting stats to determine value?
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 16, 2010 3:20 PM PST up reply actions
Just pay the 5 bucks if you're so curious, jesus
by OlSalty on Feb 16, 2010 5:31 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Yeah, I realize....
But I thank you for what you were able to share.
by nathaniel dawson on Feb 16, 2010 7:05 PM PST up reply actions
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