I'm going back to the Anthony Vasquez well again. Sometimes I get stuck looking at Barry Bonds' statistics because they're so unbelievably amazing. Sometimes I get stuck looking at Anthony Vasquez's statistics because they're so unbelievably amazing in a different way. One might say the exact opposite way. Anthony Vasquez allowed a 1.140 OPS. Barry Bonds, as a Giant, posted a 1.143 OPS.

I feel bad when I write about Anthony Vasquez. I don't feel bad about the material - the material is fine. I feel bad because, what if Anthony Vasquez is reading this? Anthony Vasquez knows full well how terrible he was as a Mariner. He was there. I'm just piling on. Opening old wounds. Anthony, if you're reading this, understand that I mean nothing personal. I'm sure you're a great dude, and I hope you bloom into an ace. It's just that the numbers you put up are quite literally among the worst numbers ever posted. It's interesting to look at them and write about them.

For this exercise, I wanted to pinpoint Anthony Vasquez's top play. You know, find a diamond in the mud, or at least a part of the mud that's a little less muddy. I didn't conduct a search for Anthony Vasquez's best pitch, because I don't know the definition of "best pitch", and looking at Anthony Vasquez's best pitch would probably just bum me out. Rather, I looked for Anthony Vasquez's best individual result. I sorted all of Vasquez's plays by Win Probability Added and looked at the play at the top. It came on September 23, in the second inning of a start against the Rangers.

Allow me to set the scene. The Mariners were bad. The Rangers were good. Vasquez came in with an 8.25 ERA, while opposing starter Matt Harrison came in with a 3.42 ERA. Going into the bottom of the second, the game was scoreless. Then Michael Young singled. Then Adrian Beltre homered. It was 2-0 Texas.

Mike Napoli followed with a line out that looked like this:

Then Nelson Cruz singled. Then David Murphy walked. Vasquez got ahead of Craig Gentry 0-2, but then he beaned him. The bases were loaded with one out for Ian Kinsler. The game was on the verge of getting out of hand.

Vasquez started Kinsler with a curveball for a strike. Then he missed with a changeup. Then he missed with a fastball. Then he missed with a curveball. Vasquez was behind 3-1 to a dangerous hitter with one out and the bases loaded in a hitter-friendly ballpark.

Treading desperately in hot water, Vasquez went after Kinsler with an 84mph fastball.

It worked. Something worked.

Continue reading this post »

I refer to this as Today's Other Fun Fact instead of Today's Fun Fact because I already posted Today's Fun Fact over here. It was not on this website and it does not have anything to do with the Mariners. The Mariners do not have a monopoly on fun facts. If they did, they would have a lot more fans, because they would be a lot more fun! Although in fairness I guess a lot of the fun facts I write aren't "fun" in the normal sense of the word. They're frequently more like Today's Interesting Facts, but people are more likely to read Today's Fun Fact than Today's Interesting Fact. People like fun. People are fun-loving people.

We were talking about Trayvon Robinson earlier. When you think Trayvon Robinson, you can't help but think about strikeouts. I can't help but think about strikeouts, anyway, and I'm the one writing. This is a fun fact that in part has to do with strikeouts.

Back in 2009, we had a little section along the left-hand sidebar. Within this section, we tracked the running walk totals for Yuniesky Betancourt and Jamie Moyer. That last sentence put the word "running" right next to the word "walk". Haha, English. The reason we were tracking this was because it took a long time for Yuniesky Betancourt to pull away from Jamie Moyer. In walks drawn, as a hitter. Yuni didn't draw his first walk until May 4^th. Moyer drew his sixth walk on May 25^th. Yuni drew his sixth and seventh walks on May 24^th. Yuni ultimately won, but they were neck-and-neck for two months.

On Jamie Moyer hitting: when you imagine Jamie Moyer hitting, you might imagine Mr. Burns hitting. This is because Jamie Moyer is old and it's weird to consider that Jamie Moyer was ever not old. Moyer's certainly never been much of a hitter, even for a pitcher. He's batted 485 times in his career. To his name he has 44 singles and five doubles. He also has 34 walks and 142 strikeouts. This is good enough for a BB/K ratio of 0.24.

Miguel Olivo has a career BB/K ratio of 0.15. Exclude intentional walks and that drops to 0.13.

Okay, so maybe Olivo took a little while to get comfortable in the Majors. Maybe he was overwhelmed at first, or something. Over the last five years, he's posted a BB/K ratio of 0.15. Nevermind.

Now take Moyer at his most feeble. For our purposes we'll say that Moyer at his most feeble is Moyer at 40+ years of age. A 40+-year-old Jamie Moyer has posted a BB/K ratio of 0.22.

Obviously, there's a lot more to hitting than walks and strikeouts. Namely, power. Miguel Olivo has power. Jamie Moyer has drank milk before. In terms of productivity, it's no contest.

But in terms of approach? I'm pretty sure what the numbers are telling us is that Miguel Olivo has had a worse approach to hitting than Jamie Moyer, who is a soft-tossing pitcher who I can't even picture holding a bat. Olivo has a worse career BB/K ratio than Kirk Rueter and Barry Zito too. He has a better career BB/K ratio than Jim Abbott but Jim Abbott had one hand.

Miguel Olivo batting can be such torture on the eyes, but he's captivating on paper.

I remember that a lot of us were thrilled when the Mariners traded Erik Bedard this past July. Granted, part of that was because we weren't sure if Erik Bedard would be traded at all, and part of that was because the initial Erik Bedard trade rumor was less than impressive. And many of us liked Erik Bedard the pitcher. But then when we heard about the three-way deal, we were pleased. Not only were the Mariners getting a diabetic 23-year-old making mincemeat of double-A; they were getting another 23-year-old by the name of Trayvon Robinson who was lighting it up a level above. Not bad for two months of an unreliable starting pitcher who wasn't coming back.

There was a lot to like about Robinson. He was young. He was performing at an incredibly high level. He was laden with tools. Reports said he had decent discipline. He could play center field. He could switch-hit. Robinson was an exciting prospect to receive.

But there was this one thing. This one big flashing yellow caution light. This one big flashing yellow caution light that didn't just flash but also repeated "HEY, CAUTION" through a speaker. Robinson had trouble making consistent contact. With Albuquerque, he had 122 strikeouts in 416 plate appearances. And with Albuquerque, he had a contact rate of 65 percent. The average contact rate in the Majors is about 81 percent. In between his line drives, Robinson was whiffing in triple-A.

That was a cause for concern. And, unsurprisingly, Robinson brought his contact issues with him to the bigs. Over 155 Major League plate appearances, he struck out 61 times, with a contact rate of 66 percent. He had a .586 OPS. There were good moments, but there were many more bad moments.

When you have a prospect who swings and misses too often, the automatic suspicion is that he swings at too many bad pitches. An interesting thing about Robinson is that, with Seattle, his judgment wasn't bad. Here's Robinson against the league average:

In Zone

Robinson: 70% swing
Average: 62%

Out Of Zone

Robinson: 30% swing
Average: 29%

Trayvon Robinson posted a higher swing rate than the league average, but the majority of those extra swings were coming against strikes. It's not like he was going fishing all the time. He wasn't Carlos Peguero. The trouble was that he still couldn't make much contact. He posted one of the lowest contact rates in baseball against pitches in the zone. And he posted the very lowest contact rate in baseball against pitches out of the zone. Be wary of small samples, and all.

Truth be told, I'm really just trying to build this post around the following chart. Here you will see a chart of Trayvon Robinson's swings as a Mariner, grouped into contact swings and missed swings. The gray box is an approximation of the strike zone and is not to be taken as gospel. It is not to be taken as gospel. Please do not take the gray strike zone approximation as gospel.

Robinson didn't chase a whole lot up high. He didn't chase a whole lot to either side. Then you look down. Robinson chased down low. He chased down low and whiffed almost every time. This was a clear vulnerability of his, and while I don't expect Trayvon Robinson or any player to have a perfect eye, this could stand to be improved, lest it be exploited.

And, of course, there are the misses within the zone. It's not impossible to succeed as a hitter with Robinson's 2011 in-zone contact rate. Mark Reynolds, for example, posted a lower in-zone contact rate. But Trayvon Robinson doesn't have Mark Reynolds' power. Robinson's power potential is real but limited, only increasing his need to make more contact.

In a sense, Robinson was raw. In a sense, he showed some polish. He didn't chase as many bad pitches as a lot of rookies do. But Robinson didn't make enough contact in the minors in 2011, and he didn't make enough contact in the Majors in 2011. This is what is currently holding Robinson back. It's a significant thing and not an easy fix. I don't know what's at the core of Robinson's contact problems but until or unless he gets them sorted out at least in part, he's destined to be no more than a 25th or 26th man. A guy like Robinson needs to hit the ball more than Robinson hit the ball.

Charlie Furbush may not be able to rely on his home run rate regressing thanks solely to the law of large(r) numbers. Based on his trouble with hitters pulling the ball*, Furbush might need to make some sort of improvement to cut down his park-adjusted rate to normal. Or he might not because it could be that it's actually his pull% that's a fluke due to regress and when it does so, it'll drag his home run rate down as well like some sort of Italian cruise ship.

*Minor data drop: so far, Furbush actually has a lower pull% from right-handed hitters than left-handed, 67% to 69%. Those are both bad though and the sample sizes are even smaller.

Seeing as I am totally a positive person, I decided to see what pitchers Furbush would resemble should he manage to hold his other stuff stable and simultaneously see a drop in home run rate. Or more precisely, what pitchers is he similar to judging only by his contact, swing, ground ball and strike zone rates? I cribbed this idea off of Dave Cameron's posts that focused on hitters John Jaso and Mike Carp. I enjoyed that and when reading this question on what pitchers Charlie Furbush could resemble if his home run rate were to regress, I thought a similar strategy could be effective.

Continue reading this post »

Earlier, Jeff:

[I]f Charlie Furbush is unusually homer-prone, then that's bad... I know it's strange to talk about someone being "unusually homer-prone" since a lot of writers tie themselves into knots trying to find exceptions to batted ball theory that mostly don't exist, but it isn't out of the question that Furbush could have a problem. Pitchers don't share the same level of ability to prevent fly balls from leaving. Maybe Furbush is below-average in that regard.

Maybe he is, Jeff. Maybe he is. We'd like for him not to be because then he would be a pitcher likely to allow fewer home runs. Since he pitches for the Mariners, allowing fewer home runs is a goal we prefer. Dingers! actually only applies to our hitters. Jeff went on to pose two questions following from the notice of Furbush's continued elevated home run rate. Is it a fluke? Observationally that is difficult to prove or disprove, but there is possible supporting evidence from a step forward in the baseball community's understanding of home run rates.

Mike Fast: The other big issue that I have is that directionality of air balls matters a lot, and pitchers have been shown to have a repeatable skill for this. Pulled air balls go out of the park quite frequently, and opposite field air balls almost never do.

In the linked post, Jeff took that quote and looked at Michael Pineda, noting that Pineda appeared to limit the number of pulled batted balls quite a bit. However, Jeff didn't have the data available to do a systematic evaluation. I now do thanks to a pitch-by-pitch database and in light of the Charlie Furbush discussion highlighted above, I went investigating.

Continue reading this post »

Good afternoon. All right, let's get started. No time to dick around. I've got things to do and bagels to eat. I guess that should count as a thing to do. I've got things to do. Slowly but surely I'm going to make this blog all about snacks.

Courtesy of the awesome StatCorner, we have some pitch-by-pitch data on Hector Noesi stretching back into 2010, covering his time in triple-A and the Majors. In all, we have data on 1,626 pitches. A little less than half of them were thrown as a starter, mostly in triple-A. A little more than half of them were thrown as a reliever, mostly in the Majors. Let's check out Noesi's strike rates:

Starter: 66.6%
Reliever: 66.9%

On their own, maybe those numbers don't tell you very much. But know that those strike rates are well above the average. The average strike rate in the Majors is about 63 percent. The average strike rate in triple-A is probably roughly the same. Noesi has been a superb strike-thrower at the highest two levels, and based on his impressive numbers from double-A and single-A, I'm guessing he was a superb strike-thrower at those levels, too.

That's good. Strikes are good! It bodes well for Noesi's future as a starter in the bigs that he's able to throw so many strikes. Here's a list of the Major League starters from last season who posted strike rates between 66 and 67 percent:

Rodrigo Lopez
Brad Bergesen
Kyle Lohse
Matt Garza
Bronson Arroyo
Blake Beavan
Roy Oswalt
Dan Haren
Phil Hughes
Ian Kennedy
Carl Pavano
Javier Vazquez
Michael Pineda
Jon Niese
CC Sabathia
Tim Wakefield

They're not all good and they're not all bad, but, combined, those 16 starters averaged a 4.15 ERA and a 3.97 FIP that's pretty much right on the average mark. If you're familiar with FIP-, the group had an average FIP- of 100. Average.

Of course, a starting pitcher doesn't only need to be able to throw strikes. And Noesi has never been much for groundballs, meaning he will allow his homers. But he doesn't exactly go out there tossing hittable slop. Noesi has a legitimate repertoire, and his contact rates have been perfectly acceptable. You see Blake Beavan up there on the list of strike throwers. Beavan isn't a groundballer, either. But Beavan allows contact rates in the mid- to high-80s. He is, or at least he has been, a one-skill pitcher. Noesi has flashed a second skill that gives him real upside.

Not spectacular upside, but upside. And this isn't even taking into account Noesi's possible velocity gain. He started 11 games in winter ball and didn't allow a single dinger. John Halama allowed three dingers. John Halama was in winter ball with Hector Noesi.

Noesi still needs to be stretched out. He's started all of eight games in triple-A and two games in the Majors. Last season in New York, his high pitch count was 71. He needs to build up his stamina. And Noesi's no guarantee to find success as a starter, just as no one's a guarantee to find success as a starter. We'll see how Hector Noesi turns out. But he's shown pretty good pitches. He's thrown a lot of strikes. He's missed enough bats. He's avoided a major platoon split. Noesi has positive indicators, and like Dave said, as much as all the focus has been on Jesus Montero, Noesi's a potentially significant second piece. He turns just 25 on Thursday, and he could be a cost-controlled starting pitcher for a long time.

Given the pronunciation, "Noesi" has been twisted by some into "No acey". It could just as easily be twisted into "No easy". Actually wait, this is stupid, let me come up with a better conclusion. One minute.

A week ago - seriously a full week ago - the Mariners agreed to send Michael Pineda and a guy to the Yankees for Jesus Montero and a guy. The trade still isn't official, in part because of the Seattle-area weather, and in part because Montero hasn't been able to take a physical, but Montero cleared up a visa issue and should take his physical soon, if he hasn't already. He should pass. You almost have to be a dog not to pass. Literally a dog.

So the Mariners are adding a bat. Hooray! Losing a pitcher (boo), but adding a bat (hooray!). And adding a cheap bat, to boot. A bat so cheap that the Mariners still have spending money, if they feel like spending money to spice up their offseason even more.

On whom might the Mariners spend that money? People have talked about the team adding a starting pitcher, since the rotation's been depleted. Michael Pineda's a pretty big loss, and he leaves a hole Hector Noesi probably can't fill. Hell, people have been talking about the rotation all offseason. But one name I haven't seen that often is Charlie Furbush. What's the deal with Charlie Furbush? This was all a really terrible way to lead into a blog post about Charlie Furbush but hopefully, as you're reading this sentence, you've forgotten about the other sentences that preceded it.

Last year, Furbush was a 25-year-old rookie. He appeared in 28 Major League games, but what I want to talk about are his starts. He made 12 Major League starts, including ten with Seattle. Here's what he did in those starts:

• Post a higher strikeout rate than Edwin Jackson
• Post a lower walk rate than David Price
• Post a lower contact rate than C.J. Wilson
• Post an average strike rate
• Post a lower xFIP than Chad Billingsley

You look at that and you can't help but be impressed. Not bad for a rookie southpaw. Really quite good. Sure, Furbush didn't have his arm built up and he isn't a potential workhorse, but what this suggests is that he can deliver some quality innings.

Of course, that list above doesn't tell the whole story. Here's the rest of it:

• 6.83 ERA
• 5.15 FIP

Oh, right, Furbush wasn't good, because he allowed a ton of runs. And he allowed a ton of runs in large part because he allowed 12 homers in 12 starts. Charlie Morton allowed six homers in 29 starts. Matt Cain allowed nine homers in 33 starts. Roy Halladay allowed ten homers in 32 starts. And so on. Charlie Furbush allowed 12 in 12.

Not a big deal, right? I mean, it looks bad in hindsight, but these things regress going forward, don't they? Elevated HR/fly ball ratios. It's a sample of only 12 starts, and isn't a sample of 12 starts a small sample?

A sample of 12 starts is a small sample. We wouldn't think that Charlie Furbush might have a home run problem based only on 12 starts. But this goes beyond Furbush's 12 Major League starts. He's allowed 16 homers in 102.2 innings in triple-A, which is well worse than the league average. He allowed five homers in 33.1 innings in double-A, which is well worse than the league average. He allowed 17 homers in 188.1 innings in advanced-A, which is well worse than the league average. Charlie Furbush has been allowing home runs for three years.

We're still talking about a sample under 400 innings, which isn't that big. Small sample sizes can be bigger than you think. But this is evidence that Furbush's homer-proneness might not have been a fluke. This establishes a history.

And, as you could guess, if Charlie Furbush is unusually homer-prone, then that's bad. That would make him worse than his xFIP. That would make him worse than his K/BB ratio. I know it's strange to talk about someone being "unusually homer-prone" since a lot of writers tie themselves into knots trying to find exceptions to batted ball theory that mostly don't exist, but it isn't out of the question that Furbush could have a problem. Pitchers don't share the same level of ability to prevent fly balls from leaving. Maybe Furbush is below-average in that regard.

There are two main questions, I think, one coming from the other. The first is, has Charlie Furbush's true talent level involved allowing more home runs than you'd expect? We can't answer this conclusively. Furbush's track record suggests that his true talent has involved more homers, but it doesn't prove it. Sample size.

The second question is, if the answer to the first question is "yes", will that continue going forward? We can't answer this one either. I bet you're glad you read this post! Let's say Furbush had a legitimate home run problem in 2009 and 2010 and 2011. That doesn't necessarily mean he'd have a legitimate home run problem in 2012 and beyond. Pitchers can make adjustments, and Furbush is still developing. He could improve. He could do less of whatever he's been doing wrong to lead to the homers.

There are things we don't know about Charlie Furbush. I think the biggest problem, though, has been his home runs, and we've been trained to be skeptical of unusually high home run rates. More often than not, they come down. There's no guarantee that Furbush's would come down, or at least come down enough, given his history, but there exists that chance. And then, suddenly, Furbush would look kind of appealing.

Furbush has a good fastball. He has decent enough stuff, overall, and he's demonstrated the ability to throw strikes and miss bats. He doesn't have particularly smooth mechanics, but not everybody does. It seems like people are forgetting about Furbush. Either forgetting about him, or writing him off as a reliever. I think he could still be an effective starter, though. He's not a starter I want to see begin the year in the Mariners' rotation, which makes the intro to this post all the more stupid, but he's a starter in whose development I have quite a bit of interest. Don't look past Charlie Furbush just yet.

When the Mariners announced that Randy Johnson and Dan Wilson were to be inducted into the Mariners' version of the Hall of Fame most of the attention shined on Randy Johnson, including here. Of course it did. Randy Johnson is one of the most talented people to have ever lucked into a professional career pitching baseballs. Dan Wilson had over half his career plate appearances come from the eighth spot in the batting order. Dan Wilson was not a good hitter, or even an average one. He was a catcher though and our bar for catchers is lower and Wilson made a name for himself by catching for quite a while, mostly with Seattle. He also was well-liked and had the good fortune to be associated with a relatively prosperous time in Mariner history. In games Wilson started for them, the Mariners went 615-539, a .533 winning percentage or 86-win pace over a full season.

Those are reasons that probably have a weighty effect on Wilson's lasting notoriety, but he also carried with him a reputation for good defense. The former hockey goalie at Barrington High (also the alma mater of current Ottawa Senators starting goalie Craig Anderson) was renowned for his movement behind the dish enabling him to routinely block wayward pitches in the dirt.

Wilson comes out comfortably better than league average in preventing wild pitches and passed balls, which supports the belief in his goalie skills.

Catcher's defense is a mostly blank map at this time. We have a notion of where the important features lay, but we don't really know the size of the map. Does a catcher's rapport with his pitchers improve them? How much scouting on the opposing hitter's does the catcher do and does that matter? There's many unanswered and unknown questions surrounding the issue that over time could change, perhaps dramatically, how we view the position. It's a Scooby-Doo mystery except with more masks and fewer giant sandwiches.

Pitch framing is one area where the obscurity is just beginning to clear. It would be stellar to be able to go back and evaluate old catchers with our new methods but alas we do not have access to a machine that can travel back — or forward fast enough, if time is actually circular — in time to install pitch F/X. And even if we did have such a device, gathering more baseball data might not be feasible since people always commandeer it to commit retro murder. SilverFox316 is seriously tired of this, guys. Read the damn bulletin!

Absent the pitch F/X data, I can make no numerical study of Dan Wilson's skill at framing pitches. My hunch is that he would grade out well. In the very limited archival video footage that I have on hand, Wilson displays a steady glove and head while catching. Those are two big indicators that Mike Fast discovered can coax strike calls from umpires. Nevertheless, while I know framing matters a great deal when judging a catcher, I unfortunately cannot color in these lines on Wilson. I know it's there but it's obscured by fog.

We can make a statement on the territory of stolen bases and nabbed runners though and again Wilson comes out ahead of the rest of baseball.

Wilson gunned down an above average share of runners but also faced far fewer steal attempts than average. Whether that was 100% because of Wilson, 100% because of reasons that were not Dan Wilson, or (likely) somewhere in between is impossible to say. It doesn't end up affecting Wilson's value much since his caught stealing rate is near the point where attempting a stolen base was a neutral move from a run expectancy perspective.

Granted this is only a faint whiff of the full scratch-n-sniff experience that probably is catcher defense, but from the two measures I do have readily available, Wilson does end up being worth about five runs better than average for each 1,000 innings caught. That doesn't transform him into a secretly excellent player or anything. These two areas are already captured by BRef and FanGraphs in their WAR calculations. Personally though, I'm glad to know that at least for now, a man who I remembered as being a stalwart at defense, actually was.