Things I learned on the flight to Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS — While wrapping my ears around Chinese Democracy, replaying Snow Patrol’s addictive new album and, for kicks, spinning ZZ Top’s cover of “Viva Las Vegas” on the trusty iPod, I also brought along a little research for this trip to the Baseball Winter Meetings. You never know what golden nugget of information you’ll find from one page to the next on the latest edition of The Bill James Handbook.
Picked up the 2009 edition, with Brandon Webb on the cover, before jetting west, and painted the book with blue highlighter on the flight. Where else can you learn that St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa issued one intentional walk that “blew up in his face,” while Bobby Cox had 20 such IBB bombs? Who knew? Before giving you a sampling of the real gems I found, there are four statistical feats to ponder. You may know the answer right away, but it took the organization that James’ uses in the handbook to really illuminate what is remarkable about the answer to these four statistical questions:
- Who led the NL in slugging percentage vs. LHP?
- Who led the NL in slugging percentage vs. RHP?
- Who led the NL in on-base percentage vs. LHP?
- Who led the NL in on-base percentage vs. RHP?
The following is only a survey of the book. There are many other neat stats and anecdotes that I won’t repeat here. Like any of The Fielding Bible discussion (who voted Cesar Izturis as the third-best shortstop in the game? how many votes did Rick Ankiel get for center?). Or, the detailed projections for all of the Cardinals, would-be Cardinals, were Cardinals and could-be Cardinals. Also, the managerial records are just fascinating. For example, Charlie Manuel, manager of the World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies, used only 77 different lineups this season. The leader, for a second consecutive year … La Russa.
Some tidbits from the book:
The 2009 Bill James Handbook
A year after he led with 150 different lineups, La Russa upped the ante with 153 different lineups used in 2008. … Back in the 100-win seasons of 2004 and 2005, La Russa put runners in motion more than any other manager: 158 and 153 times, respectively. … The Handbook offers up a managers tendencies averaged over a complete season. It also averages his win-loss performance. La Russa’s average: 86-76, or exactly the record the Cardinals had in 2008. … The Cardinals rank right in the middle of James’ Young Talent Inventory, at No. 14. …
Todd Wellemeyer had the 10th-highest average velocity in the NL on his fastball this past season, at 92.3 mph. … Of the seven pitchers Baseball Info Solutions charted as throwing a pitch faster than 100 mph, Jonathan Broxton led the NL with 28 such pitches. No Cardinal is listed. … Wellemeyer had the 10th-highest percentage of sliders in the NL (23.4 percent), and Kyle Lohse’s changeup had the seventh-best OPS against. His .564 was better than Cole Hamels’ .596. …
The Cardinals appear to be open to the return of Adam Kennedy at second base, having been unable to trade the infielder and unlikely to double-up on the salary to fill the second base position. Were they, say, able to find a way to bring Felipe Lopez back as the starting second basema, the addition of Khalil Greene could mean a dandy amount of double plays. Or, at least a good percentage of possible double plays turned. That according to percentages of DPs turned in DP opportunities, in the Handbook:
- Lopez … “2B Pivot %” … 7th-best, 0.583
- Greene … “SS Pivot %” … 2nd-best, 0.621
- Lopez … “2B DP %” … 8th-best, 0.437
- Greene … “SS DP %” … 2nd-best, 0.629
- Troy Glaus … “3B DP %” … best in the NL, 0.500
New to The Handbook this season is a detailed look at bullpens. It’s worth picking up to see how the Cardinals’ bullpen is picked apart. Will Ohman, the free agent lefty still on the market, had the most “clean outings” in the majors with 64. Of course, he also had the second-most relief appearances in the NL with 83. … Also, new to the Handbook this season is a projection for Colby Rasmus. As usual, James and Baseball Info Solutions go through their hits and misses with last year’s projections. One of their bigger misses: Ryan Ludwick. The Handbook had Ludwick pegged for 40 RBIs. He finished with 113. Rasmus, The Handbook predicts, is good for a .246 average, a .422 slugging, 18 homers and 22 steals in 135 games. Note that the projections are immediately off because there won’t be enough at-bats to go around as predicted for Cardinals’ outfielders. … Rick Ankiel is set for 31 homers. … Greene, even before the trade, was primed for a bounceback year, The Handbook says: 19 homers, 36 doubles, 135 strikeouts, 75 RBIs, .708 OPS. … Aaron Miles’ OPS prediction? .706.
Only one player in all of the grids of numbers and predictions is projected to have an OPS of better than 1.000. That player is Albert Pujols. The Handbook has him down for a .337/.443/.633 season with 41 homers. But is there an easier player in baseball to predict? His seasons read like old computer code:
10 Home
20 Hit around .330
30 Hit more than 35 homers
40 Drive in more than 110 runs
50 Strike out less than 60 times
60 Goto 10
So rather than look at the numbers The Handbook predicts for Pujols, check out what became apparent by how The Handbook presented Pujols’ numbers from 2008. If you guessed that the answers to the above four questions (the leaders mentioned at the top) are all Pujols, you’re close. As the iPod settled in for the umpteenth playing of The Hold Steady shuffle mix — fitting no? see what I did there? — here is how Pg. 407 answered the above questions:
- Who led the NL in slugging percentage vs. LHP? … Pujols .715
- Who led the NL in slugging percentage vs. RHP? … Pujols .626
- Who led the NL in on-base percentage vs. LHP? … Pujols .518
- Who led the NL in on-base percentage vs. RHP? … Lance Berkman, .444
But Pujols was second, at .437.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Did you really just write BASIC pseudocode? In the programming world, that’s the equivalent of using RBI to build an MVP case.
Give him a break — he was also listening to Guns ‘n Roses. BASIC and GNR were popular at about the same time (and for about as long).
Interesting stuff, DG.
I would say those are pretty fair projections on the projected stats for 2009 on Khalil Greene. If the Cards can get 20 HR and 80 RBI type production from Greene, and when you add in the fact that he is one of the top five defenders in the league, then I think that we’ll look back on this and say “Mo made a good low risk-high reward deal”. Remember, it is not like the Cards are locked into this guy long term, and he is in a “contract year”, therefore looking for a big paycheck heading into the offseason of 2010.
I wasn’t impressed by Mark Worrell. Obviously, not a lot to go on, after all he did throw only 5.7 innings in the big leagues, but still…with the many RHRP’ing arms currently within the Cards system, I don’t think Worrell had much of a future in St. Louis… DG, looking forward to your work, as you cover the happenings at the Winter Meetings.
I realize that the increased possibility of Adam Kennedy returning to StL and the fact that you can only realistically count on so many players bouncing back to top form per year, but here’s a thought on some more “low-hanging fruit” for 2009: Josh Barfield to push Kennedy at 2B. I realize he had a horrible and injury-plagued ‘08, but he was solid in ‘06 and always looked promising in SD’s system–averaging .299 w/ 15 HR, 99 RBI, and 19 steals per 150 games in the minors, plus solid defense. The Indians don’t have a lot for him w/ A. Cabrera starting ahead of him. Not saying this is much of a long-term solution, but in light of the Cards’ bargain-seeking ways, it seems there’s A LOT of upside here with relatively minimal risk. Is he a good insurance possibility with an outside chance to start?