Papelbon gets his money

Just before the deadline the Red Sox signed Jonathan Papelbon for the 2010 season at $9.35 million dollars. With a contract value like that it's highly unlikely Papelbon is trade material. He has 2011 still under arbitration and with another raise I can't see him going anywhere. His contract this year looks like a solid deal. He has been worth 3.2, 2.2, 3.0 and 1.9 WAR over the past four years. Those values have resulted in values of $12, $9.1, $13.5 and $8.8 million in value to the team. That all makes $9.3 million seem like a very good deal. This doesn't leave any expected value over his contract though. In other words he is being paid his value and makes trading him a difficult proposition. The next step is looking ahead to his next arbitration case. As long as he maintains his health he can expect a raise again in 2011. Likely to the $12-14 million dollar range. That number makes his value a bit tougher to take. This fact also makes his trade value right now even less. Not many teams can afford to take a $9.3 million dollar closer let alone one due $12-14 in another year. This is why the Papelbon trade rumors have gone away and never had much interest from the beginning. There are plenty of teams interested in adding a proven closer, but when you have to pay full value and give up players it's not likely to get much interest.

Minor League Prospect List

The rankings are rolling in and the Red Sox are entering 2010 with their best two prospects having yet to play a game at Double-A yet. I'm speaking of outfielder Ryan Westmoreland and confirmed starting pitcher Casey Kelly. I want to look at what the rankings are telling us and how we should value these two. Baseball Prospectus and Minor League Ball have Westmoreland as the Red Sox number one prospect. John Sickels gives him a grade of B+ and gave the following comments.

Measuring Defensive Metrics

I don't want to use this as another debate about how good or bad Jacoby Ellsbury is or anything, but this is a chance to look at the different metrics and where they come from. I'm going to center on four major metrics and what they attempt to measure as best we know. First up is John Dewan's plus/minus measurement from The Fielding Bible. Only leader boards are available for free and the rest is in the yearly Fielding Bible. This has to be one of the most involved as each players ranking involves video scouts watching every play a player makes and grading him against his peers. The resulting plus or minus value is based on how many more or less plays he make than the rest at that position. This system has a less direct effect on scoring, but how to compare players defensively. Taking a look at 2008 you have Adrian Beltre as the best third basemen in baseball with a +32. On the other end you have Edwin Encarnacion who was a -21. This number is not a run value as I understand it though and more of a comparison tool. It intends to say that Beltre made 53 more plays defensively than Encarnacion in 2008. The plus/minus system plays into another Dewan system called DRS or Defensive Runs Saved. It takes the the plays that added or subtracted to their plus/minus and assign run values to them. This gain or loss of run values results in a total value based on expected runs. Let's see the explanation straight from John:

Exploring the Matsuzaka injury

Recently we learned that Daisuke Matsuzaka admitted to hiding a leg injury that occurred in the World Baseball Classic from the Red Sox. Matsuzaka said the injury caused him to overwork his shoulder to maintain velocity and that by admitting to his injury, cause a limit in his training that would have made him not available to the Red sox in his expected full capacity. Matzusaka also claimed the injury was not so much a physical problem but more a struggle mentally to prepare for his starts and overcome the nagging pain he would be forced to endure.

But I couldn't use my lower body well, and I could not use my full body to generate the power. My fastball was not effective, therefore I lost effectiveness of my other pitches.

This definately can be seen in his first two starts, but looking at his full season there is less evidence that there was something different in his approach. The big numbers show a similar Matsuzaka in both season with a K/BB of 1.64 last year and a 1.80 in 2009. He was actually a bit better at avoiding walks, but a 4.55 BB/9 is still pretty bad. Let's look at his arm strength to see if there was any difference. His fastball dropped slightly from 91.8 to 91.0, but nothing to drastic and only his changeup also dropped more than 0.5 mph to match the fastball. Perhaps he was right that he was able to keep his speed up by relying on his shoulder strength, but we should be able to see some changes in his movement charts.

Lars Anderson looking like a younger Casey Kotchman

I think Casey Kotchman should be a warning to any long term success we might expect from Lars Anderson. This is also just a discussion of their offense as Kotchman has a much better glove. Kotchman was a much higher draftpick going in the first round of the 2001 draft while Anderson was an 18th round pick. So what is it that makes these two have anything in common? First is that they have excellent plate discipline. Even at the minor league level they both have between a half a walk to a full walk for every strikeout. Anderson strikes out quite a bit more, but he walks a lot more too. All things being equal Kotchman would probably have a better average, but their OBP would be close. An interesting comparison is how Baseball America viewed them. In 2005 BA ranked Kotchman #6 and had this quote from a scout. "He's such a good hitter and he's still developing. I think he'll easily hit 30-plus homers in the majors. As we have seen that power never came and now Kotchman is more of a 10-15 homer guy at a power position.

Adaptation and working the market

Since Moneyball was published in 2003 there has been a clear misunderstanding of what the book meant. I'm sure much of this is by people who never read the book, but perhaps some who missed the message. The message that is spread and widely understood is that Billy Beane was a huge proponent of OBP and that that wins games. If you ask anyone at a baseball game or on a sports talk show what was the point of Moneyball 90% will say OBP. Of course that 90% will also say that Billy Beane wrote the book. So what was the point in a cliff notes version? Learn what the market has failed to value and use it to your advantage. As of the writing of the book OBP was a largely ignored stat and teams were viewing players like Adam Kennedy as quality players for a solid batting average. This made a market for Beane to attack and he did so effectively. The problem is teams adapted and not only followed his model with greater finances, but also stole his staff.

Red Sox deal Casey Kotchman for Bill Hall

It's been spread on Twitter that Casey Kotchman is headed to the Mariners for Bill Hall, a minor league PTBNL and cash considerations. When I first saw this deal I was curious to what this accomplished, but after looking at the numbers this makes a bit more sense. The cash is likely the money that Seattle got from the Brewers when they got Hall to cover some of his 2010 contract. So they are probably not adding contract and could be dropping some.

Terry Francona confirms Jacoby Ellsbury move to left field

According to Dan Roche on Twitter, Terry Francona has confirmed that Jacoby Ellsbury will be our starting left fielder in 2010. This also means Mike Cameron is in center field and Jeremy Hermida is either the fourth outfielder or on his way out of town.

Ignoring conventional wisdom

Since the introduction of Sabermetrics many concepts and terms have started to enter the main stream. OBP is now a regular on the NESN broadcast and OPS is often a common term in any presentation. That has not lead to a change in much of the conventional wisdom that we have started to be seen as not true. Just watch a few minutes of the ESPN Wednesday night game and by the third time you hear Joe Morgan call for a bunt you'll know what I'm talking about. One common misconception to me that would make player analysis much better is the understanding of streaks and slumps. To put it quite bluntly there is no such thing as a streak or a slump. There may be peaks and valleys in any given season, but that doesn't mean your doing anything different. Bill James wrote about this in one of his earlier papers Understanding the Fog. He said that there was no hot or cold streaks, but simply a cluster of events that made it appear to be on or the other. The point was the placement of them was completely random.

Manny Delcarmen’s arm troubles

It was brought to the Red Sox late this season that Manny Delcarmen was experiencing arm fatigue and had to be given a cortisone shot, but after a car crash he was removed from the postseason roster. This "fatigue" was an attempt to explain his 7.27 ERA in his last 29 appearances of 2009, but there is some doubt if this was his only problem. He was never as good last year as he had been in previous seasons. I looked back through his 2009 season and right from the start he was having trouble as his K/BB was below 2 for the first month or so and then crossed 2.0 for a short time before it fell again. His ERA was sparkling early on though as his BABIP was extremely lucky.