Author Archives: ASimPerson

The Braves at the Break: Part 1

In this series, the plan is to take a look at the Braves and their players at the All-Star Break here at slightly past halfway in the season.

The Team
Overall record: 45-50 (.474)
Runs scored/allowed: 421/383
Expected record: 52-43 (-7)

Overall, this is has been a disappointing first half for Los Bravos. While suffering a litany on injuries to their starters, their main problem has been offense and bad luck. They should be well above .500 according to their runs scored/allowed and a few games closer to the top of the division. Their lineup, as we’ll examine next, is not hitting that well as a whole, though, and especially in the outfield. The Braves have suffered some really bad luck – their record in one run games is astoundingly bad, and they have not won a one-run game on the road since last August.

For the examination of the individual players, we’ll compare their current stats with Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA projections that were published at the beginning of the year. (Note: PECOTA adjusts for park factors and whatnot, and so may be incorrect for players that were not projected to be with the Braves back in January, though this mostly affects the utility players.)

Before we begin, “VORP” is “Value Over Replacement Player”, that is, how many more runs valuable a player is over an replacement-level player at the same position. So Brian McCann is 36.2 runs more valuable than a replacement level catcher with the same percentage of the Braves’ plate appearances. Since VORP is a counting stat, I’ve adjusted the projections for 95 games.

Position Players (starters listed first):

Brian McCann (C)
Projected: .281 AVG/.344OBP/.471 SLG (815 OPS), 19 HR, 17.4 VORP
Actual: .302/.377/.563 (940), 18, 36.2
McCann should have been a starter for the National League in the All-Star Game, but he lost out to the Chicago ticket. Nonetheless, he got the spot he deserved and will make his 3rd straight ASG. He’s been one of the few bright spots offensively for the Braves and is exceedingly durable, especially for a catcher. Of course, the latter may have a lot to do with the former; his backup is the very bad Corky Miller (.093/.170/.163). McCann is especially doing well in terms of his power numbers – he almost has as many home runs at the break as he was projected to have all year. Not bad.

Mark Texeira (1B)
Projected: .295/.394/.547 (941), 32, 28.6
Actual: .271/.373/.484 (857), 17, 23.0
Everybody and their brother knows the Braves won’t be able to afford the Boras-represented Texeira after this season, and so he’s been at the center for many a trade rumor as the Braves continue to flounder in the division. He got off to a slow start, but this is not unusual for Tiexeira. He got traded roughly halfway through the year last year, which gives us a good comparison. With Texas he hit .297/.397/.524 with 13 HR. After the trade, he hit 17 HR and hit .317/.404/.615. The Braves, who whichever team he gets traded to, expect roughly the same kind of turnaround.

Kelly Johnson (2B)
Projected: .279/.375/.466 (841), 17, 21.1
Actual: .272/.346/.431 (777), 8, 14.3
Kelly continues to play a good second base, but his offense isn’t where he or the Braves probably want it to be. Thankfully, the Great Kelly Johnson Leadoff Experiment is over – I maintained all along that he was not suited for this role, considering his low OBP for a lead-off man and good power potential. To give you an idea of what the Braves were expecting, though, his 14.3 VORP is still 4th highest on the team, but no where near the 33.1 he achieved last year.

Chipper Jones (3B)
Projected: .315/.410/.547 (957), 24, 33.5
Actual: .376/.472/.614 (1086), 18, 55.5
There’s little I can say here that hasn’t been said already. Though he’s not above .400 anymore and has had a rough two weeks, he’s still the best hitter in baseball so far this year. He will rightfully start at third in New York on Tuesday. Amazingly, he’s actually slightly worse in terms of VORP than he was last year. Guess the rest of the NL got better third basemen, as the rest of his independent stats are still up.

Yunel Escobar (SS)
Projected: .287/.348/.402 (750), 7, 11.0
Actual: .286/.355/.383 (738), 6, 13.7
Escobar has been hampered over the last month by a shoulder injury, which is unfortunate for the Braves. While he hasn’t been hitting like he did last year (not a surprise), he’s still better than the cast of utility men tasked to take his spot. The Prospectus said that he should watch out for Brent Lillibridge, who struggled at the start of the year at AAA and has been filling in for Escobar the last couple weeks at short. (Of course, as I type this, Lillibridge hit his first big league home run Saturay night and was 2-4 on Sunday. Nonetheless, he really does need to finish the year in AAA.) They were right about his average probably falling off, though, has his batting average on balls in play (BAbip) is down by 50 points so far this year, to .314. (In other words, less of the balls he hits are falling in for singles.)

Matt Diaz (LF)
Projected: .297/.338/.466 (804), 11, 9.0
Actual: .250/.270/.311 (581), 2, -5.2
Diaz is not the greatest LF to walk the Earth. It was hoped he’d improved enough last year to break out of the platoon the Braves had been employing in left, but the evidence before he got hurt was not in his favor. He was 3-16 before he hurt himself sliding into a wall in foul territory in Milwaukee on May 27, and is expected to be back after the break.

Mark Kotsay (CF)
Projected: .258/.325/.358 (683), 15, 6.2
Actual: .279/.329/.394 (723), 4, 5.1
The Braves needed a new center fielder with the departure of Andruw, and they got one from the A’s in exchange for head-case Joey Divine. The trade worked out for both clubs, as Devine has his head back in straight with the A’s and Kotsay’s doing about what the Braves expected him to. The thing is, the corner outfielders aren’t doing a lot to make up for the lack of power in Kotsay’s bat. He’s fine defensively, but his back acted up again a few weeks ago and he missed a whole bunch of games, which the Braves expected but didn’t really have an adequate answer for – Blanco moved from covering left to play center, and they forced former 1B/DH to play left. None of this helps the offense at all.

Jeff Francoeur (RF)
Projected: .284/.331/.474 (805), 22, 10.7
Actual: .234/.285/.375 (660), 9, -9.0
Francoeur has been struggling mightily at the plate this year, so badly that the Braves sent him down last week. Of course, the Monday after they did that they had to put 3 guys in the DL and so they recalled Jeff. Since being recalled he’s played a little better, but it’s too early to tell if he’ll get back to form. Also, he’s been hitting into some bad luck. His batting average on balls in play (BAbip) for his career is .305, .337 last year, and an astoundingly unlucky .262 this year. He’s on pace to walk as many times this year as he did last year (and more than he did in 2006), and his home runs aren’t that far off last year’s total (neither are his doubles). That said, his slugging percentage his way off his career pace, which should be less affected by his BAbip than his OBP. As a result, his OPS+ is 76 right now (that is, he’s 24% worse than an average RF), and he has a -9.0 VORP.

Gregor Blanco (OF)
Projected: .264/.355/.352 (707), 4, 5.5, 506 PA
Actual: .257/.356/.314 (670), 1, 2.4, 307 PA
As mentioned above, with all the outfield injuries Blanco has been playing more than expected for the Braves, filling in for both Diaz and Kotsay. He’s hitting .271/.372/.684 versus RHP, which isn’t great but will probably earn him continued playing time in a platoon with Matt Diaz once he returns. Overall, he’s actually playing better than Diaz so far this year, and has played more, which makes the value of Diaz’s return highly questionable unless he has a brilliant second half.

Ruben Gotay (PH/IF)
Projected: .261/.329/.408 (737), 5, 5.6, 228
Actual: .216/.310/.324 (634), 2, -1.6, 86
Ruben’s mostly been used as a pinch hitter, something he doesn’t do particularly well. Of course, his splits as a starter (9 games, .212/.278/.333) aren’t much better. But that’s sort of the breaks with light-hitting utility infielders, I suppose.

Greg Norton (PH/LF)
Projected: .242/.341/.394 (735), 6, 2.8, 223
Actual: .202/.298/.330 (628), 2, -3.0, 124
Greg Norton began the year with the Mariners. After appearing in 6 games as mostly a DH or a pinch hitter, the Mariners cut him despite him being 7/16 with 2 walks. Of course, in terms of percentages that looks great, which created the initial impression that the Braves were getting a good deal. He saw limited action in May, mostly as a pinch hitter and occasional first baseman, but Diaz’s injury caused someone to think he should play in the outfield, which he had done 76 times previously in his 12 years. Depending on which defensive stats you like, he hasn’t embarrassed himself, except at the plate. Since coming to Atlanta, he’s had 226 plate appearances and has hit .202/.298/.330, which is bad no matter what position you play. He’s actually on a bit of an upswing for the past few weeks – in his first 35 games (84 PA) he hit .178/.286/.288 but is .250/.325/.417 since then. Still no homers, though. I suppose this is the real utility of Diaz coming back – by any measure, we’d expect him to be better than Norton, and we can go back to having him be a questionably okay pinch hitting specialist.

Omar Infante (3B/LF)
Projected: .261/ .315/.401 (716), 6, 3.4, 252
Actual: .282/.344/.427 (771), 1, 4.6, 124
Infante, unlike the other Braves utilitymen, hasn’t been forced into service as much this year. Unfortunately, he fills in for Chipper, which is a decided loss in run production for the Braves. They’ve also put in him the outfield a few (or rather, 14) times but it’s not really his natural position, but he’ll go back to being a pinch hitter/utility guy after the break for the reasons stated above.

Hopefully tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the pitchers and wrap this thing up. Later.

Stanford Football: We Are Totally Not Desperate for Your Business

So I’m looking attending a football game at least of one of the Bay Area’s 3 Divison I-A programs this fall. The main criteria are that Tech has to has to have the Saturday off, or at any rate, there aren’t any interesting games going on concurrently.

As you may recall, Stanford has the all of five home games (apparently they got San Jose State to switch) this year, which at any institution that actually cares about football would probably result in their athletic director getting fired for gross incompetence. At any rate, I noticed this on the header of their website:
Yes, that’s right folks, it’s the Stanford Cardinal Gridiron Guarantee! If you are unhappy with your season ticket purchase, you can just ask for your money back! Also, season tickets are only $130, which is $26 per game! Hell, I’d buy them if it didn’t involve possibly going to more than one Stanford game.

Any I thought Tech season ticket packages were cheap.

Rating the 2008 Non-Conference Slate, Part 6: SEC

Sorry for the delay, but real life and its associated things got in the way of me finishing this. So let’s wrap ‘er up.

  1. Florida (2 legit, 1 DI-AA): Hawaii, Miami (FL), The Citadel, @Florida State. Thanks to rivalry games, this is probably the most intriguing OOC schedule of any SEC team. Other schools (UGA, Auburn, Tennessee) have a single intriguing OOC game (well, for most folks) which puts them further down the list. Also, it’s interesting to see that Hawaii can get teams to schedule them now.
  2. Georgia (1.75, 1): Georgia Southern, Central Michigan, @Arizona State, Georgia Tech. Georgia Southern fans are, of course, licking their chops for another shot at the in-state favorites. While I’d love to see it, I’m not nearly as optimistic as them. I’ve said a million times in this space how amazing it is to see UGA travel further west than Fayetteville, Arkansas for a regular season football game – again, the first time since 1965. And, of course, there’s that pesky contest two days after Thanksgiving…
  3. South Carolina (1.5, 1): North Carolina State, Wofford, Alabama-Birmingham, @Clemson. NCSU is a good OOC choice, and Clemson is, of course, the rivalry game. A little meatier than the fare The Visor typically puts on his OOC plate, but overall still pretty mediocre.
  4. Arkansas (1, 1): Western Illinois, Louisiana-Monroe, @Texas, Tulsa. I always like seeing the old SWC rivalries renewed, Texas-Arkansas being the chief among them. I don’t know if Arkansas fans consider LSU or Texas a bigger rival at this point, but it’s always a treat regardless. The rest of the schedule is a joke.
  5. Auburn (1, 1): Louisiana-Monroe, West Virginia, Southern Mississippi, Tennessee-Martin. As most folks probably now by now, Southern Miss fired their long time coach after last season. I expect to see morale fall off the table at USM and it will probably be a long time before they start scaring the heavyweights again. UL-M and UT-Martin and the typical joke options here, but it was a real toss-up for me whether to put West Virginia ahead of Texas or not. Either way, WVU is not typical SEC fare so this should be an extremely interesting game on the Plains.
  6. Tennessee (1, 0): Alabama-Birmingham, @California-Los Angeles, Northern Illinois, Wyoming. Tennessee once again schedules a Pac-10 team, and also manages not to play any DI-AA teams. A commendable thing to be sure, because while UAB, NIU, and Wyoming may not be much more likely to beat the Vols than the Samfords of the world at least they have something of a chance.
  7. Alabama (1, 0.5): N-Clemson, Tulane, Western Kentucky, Arkansas State. Huge neutral site matchup versus Clemson at the Georgia Dome to open up the season for ‘Bama. Fun fact: did you know that Tulane was one of the original 13 members of the SEC? Indeed they were, leaving the conference in 1966 due mostly to being terrible. (The other original members were Suwanee and Georgia Tech.)
  8. Vanderbilt (0.75, 0): @Miami (OH), Duke, Rice, @Wake Forest. Vandy schedules to their level, but also lacks DI-AA teams. A good job here. I would expect them go to 3-1 against this schedule, but I don’t know for sure how they’re going to fare this year.
  9. Mississippi State (0.75, 1): @Louisiana Tech, Southeast Louisiana, @Georgia Tech, Middle Tennessee State. Remember how I said GT used to be in the SEC? And that only 3 schools have left? So, you may be thinking that GT-MSU will be restoring some ancient rivalry that dates back to the very beginnings of college football, having been in the same conference all those years. And you would be wrong. Georgia Tech and Miss State have played each other twice, in 1908 and 1929, while both were still members of the Southern Conference. (Tech won both games.) How was this possible? Until relatively recently, SEC teams could set their own conference schedules. Tech gained nothing by traveling to Mississippi to play Miss State or Ole Miss, and so they simply didn’t schedule them.
  10. Mississippi (0.75, 1): Memphis, @Wake Forest, Samford, Louisiana-Monroe. We’re starting to get into joke schedule territory, but at least Ole Miss is terrible. Also, the sports writing world misses you, Coach O.
  11. Kentucky (0.5, 1): @Louisville, Norfolk State, Akron, Temple. Kentucky was pretty bad for a long time, so they probably set their schedule accordingly. Nonetheless, when your OOC rival provides your only legit game you may want to re-examine your scheduling philosophy.
  12. Louisiana State (0.25, 1): Appalachian State, North Texas, Troy, Tulane. And I’m looking at you LSU. Seriously, who are you trying to fool here? App State (last year’s DI-AA champs) may actually be the toughest team on this schedule, depending on if Troy can recover from their last game collapse last year. Looking at this slate too long makes me physically ill, so let’s move on.

So that’s all for now. If I can get the numbers worked out, I’ll get you the hardest OOC schedules on a subjective and objective basis, at least as much as I can. This may take awhile (as in, a month). So, until next time folks.

Vindication!

I’ve been saying since the beginning of the year that Yunel Escobar should be leading off, since it was generally the only thing Escobar did better than Kelly Johnson last year.

So finally Escobar is leading off for the first time all season while Johnson is in the lineup. And lo and behold, he singled, stole second, and advanced home on another hit by Chipper. I don’t really know about Mark Kotsay hitting second, but he has the hot hand right now and Johnson isn’t, so I’ll allow it.

Rating the 2008 Non-Conference Slate, Part 5: Pac-10

Today, we take on some of college football’s strongest schedules in everyone’s favorite 3 OOC game league, the Pacific 10. As a conference, the Pac-10 has the best average scheduling and they also have the fewest number of games versus DI-AA opponents with two.

  1. Southern California (2.75 legit, 0 D-IAA): @Virginia, Ohio State, Notre Dame. This is probably the best OOC schedule in the country this year. While we have no reason to think that Virginia or Notre Dame will be very good this year, they’re still better than, say, your average WAC team. Oh, and yeah, there’s that whole “Ohio State” thing that makes for probably the most interesting inter-sectional game of the year. USC deserves props for putting together this schedule at any rate, and using their OOC games as a national power should.
  2. Washington (2.5, 0): Brigham Young, Oklahoma, Notre Dame. While no one is exactly jumping with joy over playing Washington, this is still a pretty good schedule. Two legitimate games and BYU usually isn’t a pushover. Unfortunately for Washington, they’re entirely likely to go 0-3 against this schedule. Oh, and also they’re apparently trying to change their awesomely out-of-date fight song. I mean, how can you go wrong with lines like The boys are there with bells / Their fighting blood excels / It’s harder to push them across the the line than to cross the Dardanelles. (Just to make it clear, I am not being sarcastic here.)
  3. Oregon State (2.25, 0): @Pennsylvania State, Hawaii, @Utah. We’re taking a break from the 2 BCS team schedules here to bring one that’s still pretty darn strong. Two road games, one surprising at Utah, but still. While OSU should still win 2/3 of here, it’s not a terrible schedule by any means.
  4. California-Los Angeles (2, 0): Fresno State, Tennessee, @Brigham Young. Did Fresno regain their mojo last year? While an early test at Rutgers will tell a lot, they also play the boys from LA which should be a demonstration of whether either team made progress. UCLA also has Tennessee’s Annual West Coast Road Trip and a date in Provo that makes this a darn good schedule.
  5. California (1.5, 0): Michigan State, @Maryland, Colorado State. While this schedule lacks the sex appeal of some of the earlier schedules without a “name” big conference opponent, it’s still got plenty of meat, especially if CSU doesn’t suck this year.
  6. Oregon (1.5, 0): Utah State, @Purdue, Boise State. This is where it starts to go a little downhill, but for most conferences that usually happens much earlier than at 6th place. Still, good inter-sectional matchup over in West Lafayette and a BCS team playing Boise State is always intriguing. Still, Utah State pretty much sucks.
  7. Arizona State (1, 1): Northern Arizona, Nevada-Los Vegas, Georgia. Nothing to write home about here, except for, oh, yeah, the first time the University of Georgia has traveled west of Arkansas or Louisiana or north of the Ohio River for a (regular season) football game since 1965. Should be interesting, at any rate. The rest of this schedule sucks, as ASU is one of only 2 Pac-10 teams to play a DI-AA team.
  8. Washington State (1, 1): N-Oklahoma State, @Baylor, Portland State. And here’s the other! While this technically features 2 BCS teams, one of them is Baylor. The OSU game will be in Seattle as well, presumably to sell more tickets to Oklahoma State fans. I’ve put the “N” next to it, but I suspect the game will technically a “home” game for Wazzou.
  9. Stanford (1, 0): @Texas Christian, @San Jose State, @Notre Dame. Fun fact: Stanford managed to have a schedule with only four home games on it. Stanford football, catch the fever! (Just not in Palo Alto.) Maybe I should try going to the Stanford@SJSU game just for the heck of it.
  10. Arizona (0, 0): Idaho, Toledo, @New Mexico. This is usually where I rail against terrible schedules, and well, I’m going to do it again. This schedule is terrible. Even though they play no DI-AA teams, and Toledo and New Mexico aren’t terrible, every other team in this conference managed to play at least one BCS team from somewhere on their schedule, and the best you could do was this? Shame you on, Arizona.

Next, we’ll wrap up the detailed overview part of this series with the SEC.