Bannister in the Daytime.

Posnanski wrote his usual wrap-up of Bannister's start yesterday, and updated his log to point out this rather unusual split in Banny's performance:

Wow, as someone who claims to be one of the nation’s leading Brian Bannister scholars, I am embarrassed to say I missed this. But I did. It is brilliant reader PC who points this out:

Brian Bannister by day (this year):
– 4-0, 0.62 ERA, 29 ip, 12 hits, 3 runs, 2 earned runs, 0 homers, 7 walks, 18 K.
Batting average against: .126; OPS: .320; OPS+ -10(!)*, Babip: .156.

Brian Bannister by night (this year):
– 0-4, 8.02 ERA, 21 1/2 ip, 33 hits, 19 runs, 19 earned, 5 homers, 5 walks, 11 K,
Batting average against: .344; OPS .960; OPS+ 158(!), Babip: .350.

...Now, you can say: Well, sure, but that’s nothing, it’s a small sample size, it’s a fluke. Maybe. But as PC continues to point out … here are his career numbers:

Brian Bannister by day (career)
– 10-1, 2.65 ERA, 88 1/3 ip, 67 hits, 28 runs, 26 er, 4 homers, 23 walks, 38 Ks.
Batting average against: .212; OPS: .576; Babip .226.

Brian Bannister by night (career)
– 8-13, 4.58 ERA, 165 ip; 168 hits, 88 runs, 84 er, 20 homers, 55 walks, 87 Ks.
Batting average against: .261; OPS .763; Babip: .275.

Again, we’re not looking at a big sample by any means. But I think it’s big enough to say: “Wow, that’s kinda weird.” For whatever reason, it seems like Brian’s stuff is just much harder to hit during the day.

Those are pretty dramatic splits, certainly. But I think it's dangerous to read too much into them. Yes, this year Bannister has been much, much, MUCH better in the daytime than under the lights. But you can't say it's not a fluke simply because his career numbers also reveal a split - because those career numbers include this season.

For his career, Bannister has a 4.58 ERA at night, a 2.65 ERA during the day. But if you strip out 2008, his ERA at night is 4.07; during the day it's 3.64. A difference, but a small difference. And it's a difference which overstates the mark, if anything. Here are Bannister's career totals at night and during the day, prior to 2008:

Night: 143.2 IP, 135 H, 47 BB, 78 K, 15 HR
Day: 59.1 IP, 55 H, 16 BB, 20 K, 4 HR

His hits per nine innings during the day (8.34) is a fraction better than his ratio at night (8.46). His strikeout-to-walk ratio is significantly better at night than during the day. His BABIP - this is approximate - is .256 during the day, .266 at night.

Prior to 2008, there was no conclusive evidence to speak of that Bannister was a better pitcher during the day than at night. Do eight starts change that perception? If his start in Arlington, with 30 mph winds gusting to right field, when Bannister said he felt like he was pitching on the moon, had happened to occur in the day, how much would that skew these numbers?

I do think that Bannister is probably a little more effective during the day, in part because Bill James ran a study about 20 years ago - I think it was the 1987 or 1988 Abstract - which showed that power pitchers appear to be signficantly more effective at night. Bannister is basically the opposite of a power pitcher, so it would stand to reason that he might be more effective during the day.

But I don't think the difference is great enough to influence how the Royals use him. For one thing, he's not the only Royals' starter to pitch better during the day. Gil Meche, in a career of over 1000 innings, has a daytime ERA (3.78) more than a point lower than his nighttime ERA (4.84). Now that is significant. I suspect that most pitchers pitch better during the day, because day games tend to be clustered in the colder months of the season, and colder weather tends to lower offense. (Just a theory I have. Which means I'm probably wrong.)

If the Royals have a doubleheader and choose to start Bannister in the day game and someone like Greinke (whose ERA is 15 points under the lights) in the nightcap, great. But let's not go overboard with moving starters around to take advantage of an effect that might not actually exist.

The Intentional Walk.

Joe Posnanski wrote a typically great post about Trey Hillman's bizarre decision to intentionally walk Nick Markakis last night in favor of Aubrey Huff, which got me thinking about when the strategy should be employed. I think the intentional walk is over-utilized by some managers, but there certainly is a time and a place for it - for instance, when Casey Kotchman bats with a man on third and one out in a scoreless game in the ninth inning, as happened the other night.

As I see it, there are three primary advantages to the intentional walk:

1) To gain the platoon advantage;
2) To set up the double play;
3) To bypass a specific hitter in favor of a significantly inferior one.

Of the three, #3 is certainly the most important, but really, if you want to order an intentional walk at least two of the three conditions should be in effect, and ideally all three.

For instance, when Gil Meche intentionally walked Justin Morneau on April 11th, the game was tied, a man was on third base with one out, and Delmon Young was at the plate. Walking Morneau gained the platoon advantage and set up the double play. You could argue whether Delmon Young is "significantly" inferior to Morneau with the bat - certainly Young has tremendous potential, but he hit .288/.316/.408 last season, and he's doing worse this year.

He also hit into 23 double plays last season, which doesn't hurt. And after Morneau was walked, Young did just that to end the inning.

The amazing thing about Hillman's decision to walk Markakis last night is that the situation didn't meet any of the three criteria above.

Markakis, while an outstanding young hitter, isn't significantly better with the bat than Aubrey Huff. Last year Markakis hit .300/.362/.485, while Huff hit .280/.337/.442. This year, Markakis is at .279/.404/.473 to Huff's .271/.340/.474. Markakis is better, but not that much better.

Both Markakis and Huff bat left-handed.

There were two outs.

With two outs the only time you should consider an intentional walk is when 1) the pitcher or Tony Pena Jr. is up next, or 2) the batter is an extreme high-average hitter like Tony Gwynn or Ichiro Suzuki.

In the situation last night, with a man on second and two out, the only reason to walk Markakis and pitch to Huff is if you think that Markakis is much more likely to drive that runner home from second base, i.e. he has a much higher batting average in that situation. But Markakis is a good hitter because of his secondary skills, i.e. power and plate discipline, not because of his batting average. Over the last two years his average is, what, 15 points higher than Huff? And for that you put another man on base?

(Interestingly, John Gibbons' decision to walk Pena to face DeJesus met the first two criteria. But the decision went so far against the third one that it was still a dumber decision than Hillman's last night. By a factor of about a hundred.)

In addition to the three criteria above, a fourth factor is context. Namely, an intentional walk should only be used when the marginal impact of a single run being scored outweighs the marginal impact of additional runs. Even though the situation last night didn't meet any of the criteria above, you could make a case for the intentional walk if, say, the game was tied in the bottom of the ninth inning. In that case, the impact of a single run scoring is exactly the same as the impact of three runs scoring - you lose either way.

Again, the context here didn't make any sense for an intentional walk, because the game was in the fifth inning. And in the fifth inning, even in a tie game, there's no way to know how important the next run is. Sure, your offense might struggle to score the rest of the game, but they also might scratch out a few runs, as the Royals did last night. Walking Markakis to face Huff may have reduced the Orioles' chances to score at least one run in the inning, although even that is debatable. But there's no question that the walk increased the Orioles' chances to score at least two runs in the inning.

The only way pitching to Markakis leads to two runs is if he hits a homer, while Huff can drive in two runs with any extra-base hits (especially since the runners are going on contact with two outs.) Obviously, the latter is more likely than the former - Huff has averaged 62 XBH per 162 games in his career, while Markakis has averaged 22 HR per 162 games. There's also no way Marakis can drive in three runs, whereas (as we found out) there was a way for Huff to do so.

The irony is that that these are the only two walks Hillman has ordered all season, putting the Royals on pace to order 9 IBBs all year. The lowest total of IBBs in franchise history is 20, back in 1984. Based purely on quantity, it would appear that if anything, Hillman isn't using the IBB enough. There's the example of Casey Kotchman, when Hillman called on Jimmy Gobble to pitch rather than walk Kotchman and leave Ramon Ramirez in to pitch to Torii Hunter with the double play in effect, but I'm sure there are a few other situations when Hillman may have put the tactic to good effect.

But last night, he used the tactic in one of the worst possible situations, and the result illuminated his error in a very harsh light. I hope the negative feedback Hillman received won't make him even more reluctant to put up four fingers in the future. But man, I hope it makes him pick his spots a little better.

Stat Nugget of the Day: 5/9/2008.

(As always, dissemination of the SNotD with attribution is welcome.)

Despite a terrific start to his season, including a 1.25 ERA in his first five starts, Zack Greinke was not dominating opposing hitters in the strikeout category; he struck out no more than six batters in any of his starts, and more than four hitters just once.

That all has changed in his last two starts. Last Thursday, The Baseball Jonah whiffed 9 Texas Rangers in seven innings, but was sunk by two solo homers and the Royals' typically impotent lineup. This Wednesday, Greinke struck out eight more hitters in seven innings of work, and walked away with the win.

Striking out eight batters or more in consecutive starts is not a big deal. Or at least it shouldn't be. But if you're a Royals fan, you know how rare this can be for the boys in blue.

In point of fact: Greinke has become the first Royals pitcher to strike out at least 8 batters in consecutive starts this century. The last Royal to turn the trick was Jay Witasick, on September 17th and 22nd, 1999.

If Greinke strikes out 8 batters his next time out, he will become just the third Royals pitcher in history to do so in three straight starts. The first was Dennis Leonard, who did so in his last three starts of the 1977 season. (He would strike out just four in game 3 of the ALCS, but beat the Yankees anyway, bless his heart. Let's not speak about game 5.)

The second was Kevin Appier, who did so three times, once in 1995, once in 1996, and once in 1997. In 1996 Appier struck out 8+ hitters in five straight starts, and started that streak with three straight starts of double-digit strikeouts, the only such streak in team history. (In fact, only two other Royals - Bret Saberhagen in 1989, and Bill "Don't Call me Billy" Butler in 1969 - have struck out 10 batters in consecutive starts.)

Housekeeping...

Wherein I weigh in on some of the debates taking place in the comments section, while wondering why Barack Obama doesn't just end this thing by naming Joakim Soria as his running mate. Because no one closes the deal like Jack.

- Should Soria have come in to pitch the 9th last night? I said no at the time, for the simple reason that he had pitched two nights in a row, and I really don't like the idea of using a reliever three nights in a row unless it's absolutely necessary. He did so once already this year, pitching on April 26th after pitching on both the 24th and 25th, but in that case he came in to protect a one-run lead.

I do think that teams do not use their closers in tie games nearly enough, and as a general rule of thumb that's an ideal situation to use your closer. Especially at home, because when a home game is tied after the 8th, it is physically impossible for a save situation to occur in the game - if the home team takes the lead, the game is over.

If memory serves, this is the first time the Royals were tied after eight innings since Opening Day, and Soria didn't come into pitch the ninth that time either. Of course, Leo Nunez did, and his two scoreless innings set Soria up to pitch the 11th with the lead. If Yabuta had pitched the ninth last night we'd have a legitimate beef, but let's be real: as good as Soria has been, both Nunez and Ramirez have been outstanding as well, and I'll take either of them in the ninth inning of a tie game without hesitation.

Credit Hillman for at least thinking about bringing in Soria (and regretting not doing so): "I could have made a better decision. I didn't put Soria in. Typical rule of thumb simply because it would have been three days in a row," Hillman said. "Ramirez has been pretty effective. Unfortunately, he left a ball out over the plate."

Talk is cheap, but if this means Hillman won't hesitate to use Soria the next time he's faced with a tie game, that's certainly good news.

- A lot of you have complained about Hillman using Gobble to pitch to Casey Kotchman with the go-ahead run at third and one out, given that Kotchman has hit LHP better (.313/.383/.403) than RHP (.268/.341/.438) over his career. It's a fair point, but not all LHP are created equal, and ever since Gobble went three-quarters against LHB last May, he's been much tougher on lefty hitters than their righty counterparts. Lefties hit .241/.325/.398 against Gobble last year, righties hit .319/.377/.532. Prior to facing Kotchman, Gobble had held LHB to one hit in 14 at-bats this year. Just as importantly, six of those ABs ended in strikeouts, and with a man on third, one out, and a great contact hitter at the plate, Gobble may have been the one guy who had a shot at keeping the runner on third. It didn't work out, but I understand the thinking.

The argument that Hillman should have bypassed Kotchman entirely, given him the free pass and tried to get the GIDP with Hunter...yeah, I can see the point. I generally hate the intentional pass, but if ever there was a situation that called for one, it was this: winning run at third, a great contact hitter at the plate, just one out, and nobody on first base (i.e. the DP wasn't in order.) Hillman would have been better off leaving Ramirez into pitch to Hunter with men on first and third, betting on either a strikeout or a groundball.

Hopefully Hillman will consider an intentional walk the next time he faces a similar situation. But don't bet on it. Last year, Buddy Bell ordered 54 of them, or one every three games. You know how many times Hillman has called for the free pass in his first month on the job? Once. In fact, of all the tendencies that we label managers with - likes to run, likes to platoon, likes to use 7 relievers a game - I think this might be the one tendency that we can definitely pin on Hillman after just one month on the job: he's not a fan of the intentional walk.

Hey, if the alternative is the John Gibbons approach - the dumbest intentional walk of modern times - I'll take Hillman's approach, thanks. Tony Pena has as many intentional walks as all the Royals' opponents combined.

But about that one intentional walk...it came with Gil Meche on the mound on April 11th, and Hillman held up four fingers with Justin Morneau, a tough left-handed hitter, at the plate with a man on third and one out. The next batter, the right-handed Delmon Young, hit into a double play. I'm just saying...

- About Bonds...too soon. Signing Bonds only makes sense if you're playing for this year. As much as I love our pitching, and as much as I think Bonds can completely change the complexion of our offense, I'm not sure that adding Bonds makes us a contender. I am sure that adding Bonds will bring a level of media scrutiny to the Royals that they haven't had in a long time. That might not be a bad thing, in all honesty. But it's too soon. Plus, Bonds really only helps you if he can DH, and the jury is still out on Butler's glove.

Now, if the Royals are still 2 games out at the end of June, and if Billy Butler continues to play first base well enough that the Royals think he can play there every day...the calculus changes.

- Craig Brazell is leading Japan in homers? Good for him. That doesn't change the fact that he was a longshot to ever be a productive first baseman in the majors. Akinori Iwamura hit 44 homers in Japan in 2004. He hit 32 homers in 2006. For Tampa Bay in 2007, playing in 123 games, he hit 7. Baseball is different in Japan; the parks are smaller, the ball is smaller, and translating numbers from Japan to the United States is a job that bedevils even the brightest of analysts. Brazell wouldn't hit 7 in the majors; he'd probably hit 20 homers if the Royals gave him the everyday first base job. With a .250 average and no walks. I'll pass, thanks.

- One commenter wants Buck to sit in favor of Olivo, which I disagree with vehemently. I have a feeling that Buck is getting closer and closer to figuring things out. He looked terrible yesterday, but he might have won the game for us on Sunday with his approach - he walked in his first two plate appearances even though he was down 0-2 his first time up and 1-2 his second time up. His second walk enabled Olivo to score when Casey Blake threw Pena's grounder into right field. Buck is tied with Gordon with 11 walks, behind only Teahen's 14, even though he has about 75% of the playing time of those two. He's made incremental improvements in his plate discipline pretty much every year he's been in the majors. I remain hopeful that eventually the improvement in plate discipline will lead to an improvement in power.

- The lack of a left-handed starter has never even crossed my mind. This is a classic example of conventional wisdom harping on "balance" for no clear reason. There is no evidence that dropping a southpaw in between two right-handed starters makes the right-handers more effective when they pitch. I'll go a step further and point out that the lack of a left-handed reliever is not a major impediment to winning. The 1994 Expos had the best record in baseball without one. The Angels won the World Series in 2002, and the only left-handed reliever they had was the immortal Scott Schoeneweis, who moved to the pen after bombing out of the rotation at the end of June.

Platoon splits are important, but they're not important enough to overcome the simple fact that good pitchers get hitters out more often than bad pitchers do. The idea that you can't win without left-handed pitching stems, I think, from the fact that the Yankees have won 26 championships, and they won all of them playing in Yankee Stadium, a park that was death on right-handed power hitters for so long (and is still tough on them today) that left-handed pitchers thrived there, from Herb Pennock to Lefty Gomez to Whitey Ford to Ron Guidry to Andy Pettitte. The Yankees may benefit from having left-handed pitchers; ordinary teams in symmetrical ballparks do not, or if they do, the benefit is minimal.

- Just FYI: I'm supposed to be on with Nate and Steven over at 810 WHB tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 7:30 CDT. Assuming I wake up in time. If I sound like I just rolled out of bed, well, I did.

- I don't know where else to put this, so I'll put it here. I bought my brother Roukan the Nintendo Wii last summer - it took forever to find one - but Roukan is a hard-core gamer, and the Wii just doesn't hold much appeal to people who need the hyper-realism of Call of Duty or the insane graphics of Halo 3. So it collected dust for six months until he gave it to me to play with my kids - Cedra, my oldest, is five and was clamoring for one. It's been a huge hit with my family; I came home from work the other day to find my wife battling Cedra in Mario Kart while our two-year-old Jenna looked on, which is the first time I've ever witnessed my wife playing a video game of her own free will.

Anyway, Cedra figured out the Wii Sports bowling game that comes with the console pretty quickly, and this weekend my in-laws came over. We thought it would be funny to let Cedra embarrass her grandparents by beating them in a video game - granted, she had practice, but it's funny anytime an adult loses to a five-year-old in any endeavor. But I was a little worried she might be nervous, playing in front of so many people, with her parents egging her on.

My fears were unfounded. She shot a 224.

Two twenty-four. She nailed five strikes in a row at one point. No subtlety, no spin, just a grip-it-and-rip-it approach - and she shot a 224. Granted, the game is not particularly challenging, but the next morning I felt compelled to play on my own for half an hour, working on different spins and ball placements, and the best I could do was a 205.

Is this unusual? Is there some trick to this game that I haven't figured out, or should I be signing my daughter up for the Junior Wii Bowling Championships (and if they don't exist, create one)? I thought I had another 7 or 8 years before I faced the specter of losing to my own progeny in a video game, but now I'm already feeling like I'm washed up.

On the other hand, I can totally obliterate her in Mario Kart.

Royals Today: 5/5/2008

So it's come to this: the Royals start the longest homestand of the season by getting seven brilliant, shutout innings from their fifth starter...and it's completely wasted. For the fourth time in their last 23 games, the Royals were shut out. They've scored one run four times in that span, and two runs four times. Which means in 12 of their last 23 games, the Royals have been held to two runs or less. They're 2-10 in those games.

It's driving me nuts, because a month into the season, it's possible to argue that the Royals have built a championship-caliber pitching staff. The team has a 4.37 ERA, but that number is a little deceptive because they've given up only 5 unearned runs all year, tied for the fewest in baseball. Unearned runs are partly the responsibility of the defense - and the Royals have made just 12 errors, also tied for the fewest in the majors - but also partly the responsibility of the pitchers - good pitchers surrender fewer unearned runs as well as fewer earned runs.

More than that, if you just look at the 10 key pitchers on the roster - the current rotation and the five most important relievers - those guys have pitched 85% of the team's innings, and more than 90% of the team's relevant innings. The combined ERA of those 10 pitchers is 3.51, which is sensational. The fact that John Bale, Yasuhiko Yabuta, Joel Peralta, and Hideo Nomo have allowed 42 runs in 41.1 innings is almost irrelevant. One of those guys is gone, one is hurt, and the other two are pitching in strictly low-leverage situations (or will be, given how Peralta pitched after entering a 1-0 game in the ninth tonight.)

But the offense is still on pace to score 559 runs, and nearly a fifth of the season has been played. The pitching staff is good enough, and the division is weak enough, that if the Royals had an offense that ranked, say, 10th in the league in runs scored, they ought to be in contention all season. Instead, they're still struggling to keep pace with the Giants on offense, and they're struggling to stay out of last place (though still just 2.5 games out of first.)

Dayton and Trey have to do something. I propose:

- Fire Mike Barnett. Immediately. I haven't discussed the performance of the hitting coach that much because I'm not really sure how much impact a hitting coach can have.

I have rarely been more excited as a Royals fan than the day the Royals hired Jeff Pentland, famous for turning Sammy Sosa from brain-dead hacker into a patient power hitter. Here are Sosa's unintentional walks, from 1996 to 2002: 28, 36, 59, 70, 72, 79, 88. His home run totals over that span went 40, 36, 66, 63, 50, 64, 49.

We used to think that the former begat the latter, but 1) Nate Silver's PECOTA research has shown that many times it's the latter that drives the former, i.e. as a hitter hits for more power, pitchers are less willing to challenge him, leading to more pitches out of the strike zone and more walks; and 2) the general consensus is that the key to Sosa's power surge lay in something other than improved plate discipline.

In retrospect Pentland's impact on Sosa may have been overstated. Anyway, Pentland was a bit of a flop in Kansas City, although among the Royals of that era it's impossible to tell who was a legitimate flop and who was simply a victim of awful circumstances.

Hitting coaches may or may not be able to significantly help a team, but I believe they are able to significantly hurt one. Barnett is hurting the Royals. He was hired as hitting coach on May 1st, 2006, and the Royals finished that season 12th in the league in runs scored. Last year they were 13th. This year they're 14th. If Barnett stays around another year I'm convinced they'll find a way to finish 15th.

Managers are, for the most part, not wholly good or bad - they all have strengths and weaknesses, and the man who is a poor fit for one team might be a good fit for another. I suspect hitting coaches are the same way. Barnett was the Blue Jays' hitting coach from 2002 to 2005, and they finished in the top five in runs scored twice in those four years. (On the other hand, they still fired him after the 2005 season anyway.) Regardless, this is a results-based business, and someone needs to take the fall here. If Jose Guillen's contract wasn't guaranteed, I'd vote for him. But it is, so Barnett needs to go.

- Can we get Callaspo and Gload more playing time? Please? Callaspo is on pace for 199 AB, and German is on pace for 94 - all season. Yeah, he's 1-for-18; who cares? Do you trust 18 at-bats of data, or two seasons worth of evidence that says he's the best on-base threat on the team? I've talked about platooning Callaspo and Pena based on who the Royals' starting pitcher is, and stand by that still.

I think Hillman is coming around to the fact that Gload is not an everyday first baseman - tonight's the first time in five games he started over there - but platooning Gload and Olivo isn't enough. Why not start German at first base against RHP? German has only played one game at first in his career, but he's played all over the infield and outfield, so I hardly think it would be a difficult adjustment. (Jose Offerman, like German an OBP fiend who played a marginal second base, was moved to first base by the Royals and was an absolute defensive stud over there.) Who would you rather see at the plate in a tough situation - Gload or German?

Dayton blew it by not foreseeing the traffic jam of talent in the middle infield before the season began and not trading German when his value was at his highest. He can't compound it by letting one of the game's best utility players scrap for playing time all season.

- Add another hitter. I'm sorry to keep saying things I've said before, but the Royals don't seem to be listening, so...why do we need 12 pitchers? Hillman has so little faith in Yabuta that he has openly talked about optioning him to Triple-A. The rotation has averaged 5.99 innings per start, 6.08 innings per start if you take out Bale's three starts. Last year, by comparison, the Royals' starters averaged just 5.48 innings per start; in 2006 it was 5.24 innings per start.

So compared to the last two years, Royals' starters are getting roughly two additional outs per game - an extra 100 innings a year. A 12-man pitching might make some sense when your starters are going five-and-dive, but the current rotation might be the best one the Royals have had this century, especially if Cool Hand turns out to be for real. Jimmy Gobble is still on pace to throw fewer than 30 innings all season. Do we really need a 12th pitcher that bad?

The problem is that whoever the Royals call up won't do the team any good unless Hillman adjusts his roster approach to take advantage of the guys he already has. If he can't find a way to make use of German's talents, fat chance he'll use some Triple-A lifer in the right role. In an ideal world, the Royals would call up Mike Aviles, who's hitting .347/.375/.694 for Omaha, and can play shortstop badly and second base and third base passably - he's German with fewer walks and more power. Or they would call up Shane Costa, who's hitting .330/.368/.591 in Omaha, the third straight year he's absolutely raked in Triple-A. In an ideal world, the Royals would pinch-hit for Pena at every opportunity, sit for Jose Guillen against hard right-handers, find a way to get Callaspo's bat in the lineup every day.

The Royals are dead last in the league in runs scored, and the 14 hitters who are on the roster today are the only 14 hitters who have played for the Royals all season. Common sense dictates that when your hitters aren't hitting, you might want to try new hitters.

When the Royals score 3 runs or more this season, they're 12-7. Hell, they've won two of the four games in which they've scored just *2* runs. It's criminal to waste this much good pitching. If Dayton shakes things up a bit, if he can just coax the offense into scoring a few runs in every game, the pitching staff could keep the Royals in contention well into the summer. But hope is not a strategy. And neither is playing Tony Pena every day.

State of the Royals: May 2008.

I had this idea of doing a summation of where the Royals stand at the end of each calendar month, only to find when I woke up yesterday that Sam Mellinger had pretty much the same idea. Which goes to prove that great minds think alike. Also, that Sam can be very annoying. (On the other hand, his take on the Bissinger mess was excellent. If you guys aren’t Buzzed out by now, I might give you mine at some point.)

Anyway, I figured I’d go ahead with one anyway. The Royals are 12-16, a .429 winning percentage virtually indistinguishable from last year’s .426 mark. Moreover, whereas last year’s team scored 704 runs and allowed 788, leading to a Pythagorean record of 74-88, this year’s team has scored 101 runs and allowed 131, which over the course of a full season would lead to a 60-102 record.

I wouldn’t be overly concerned. The Royals are not outperforming their Pythagorean record because of a flukish performance in one-run games. In fact, despite an excellent bullpen (and teams with excellent bullpens have been proven to do better-than-expected in one-run games), the Royals are just 3-3 in one-run games. They’re 1-5 in two-run games, so they’re record in games decided by two runs or less (4-8) is worse than their record otherwise (8-8).

The downfall of the team is that they’re 0-6 in games decided by 5 runs or more. That is a meaningful stat – the mark of good teams is that the ability to clobber the opposition – but the Royals’ inability to blow out their opponents may have more to do with their inability to score enough runs to qualify as a blowout no matter how good their pitching is. Twice the Royals have lost by 10 runs or more – take out those two games, and the team would be 12-14 with 98 runs and 103 runs allowed. In other words, the Royals are two games away from actually having a Pythagorean record that’s better than their actual record. Meanwhile, the Royals can’t have won any games by 10 runs or more, because they haven’t scored 10 runs in a game yet.

And that’s the crux of the problem. The Royals have scored 3.61 runs per game, and you can’t aspire to even .500 with that kind of an offense, no matter how good your pitching is. Put it this way: the sweet spot of run production is between 3 and 5 runs in a game. So far in 2008, the other 29 teams are 163-175 (.482) when they score between 3 and 5 runs per game. The Royals are 9-4. That’s an amazing record, and a testament to the quality of their pitching. The problem is that they’ve already played 10 games in which they’ve scored fewer than 3 runs, and they’re 1-9 in those games. (Also, they’re just 2-3 in games they’ve scored more than 5 runs, which is probably a fluke.)

You might remember, the Royals scored between 3 and 5 runs in each of their first 8 games, and were 6-2. Well, they’ve now gone 10 straight games without scoring between 3 and 5 runs; their runs scored have gone 1, 1, 6, 0, 8, 2, 2, 9, 9, 1. In six of their last ten games the offense has given the pitching staff no margin for error, and not surprisingly the Royals are 3-7 in that span.

- The pitching staff ranks 11^th in the league in runs allowed per game, and despite what you might think, that’s not all Hideo Nomo’s fault. (If Nomo had given up 2 runs instead of 9 in his Royals stint, the Royals would still rank 10^th in the league.) The pitching staff has been more schizophrenic than Sybil. Fourteen pitchers have toed the hill for Kansas City – five of them have ERAs under 2.40, seven of them have ERAs above 5.90, and only two (Bannister and Gobble) are in the middle.

Behold the power of the small sample size.

Taken as a whole, the team’s pitching staff gives reason for optimism. In 245 innings, the staff has walked just 81 batters (2^nd in the league) with 181 strikeouts (7^th in the league) and 25 homers allowed (7^th in the league). The team ranks as poorly as it does in runs allowed because the staff has allowed 261 hits, ranking only 9^th in that category, despite the fact that the Royals have played the fewest games in the league.

Early in the season I pointed out that the Royals ranked near the top of the league in defensive efficiency, despite no defensive upgrades that would explain such a ranking, and that the team’s defensive performance might be a fluke. Well, we have our answer: it was. The team’s Def-Eff is now .687, which ranks 3^rd from the bottom in the majors, ahead of only the Pirates and Rangers. I didn’t believe the Royals top-five ranking was legitimate then, and I don’t believe their bottom-five ranking is legitimate now. The defense should do a better job of turning batted balls into outs as the season goes on, which means that we can expect the pitching staff to hold steady or possibly improve even as the weather warms up.

- The offense is similarly schizophrenic, just at a much less ambitious level. Nine guys have played in 15 or more games this season. Four of them (Grudzielanek, Gordon, Teahen, and Butler) are hitting close to league average (OPS+ of between 97 and 114). Two guys (Buck and Gload) are doing poorly but not egregiously so (OPS+ of 82 and 83). Two guys flat-out suck (Gathright and Guillen, OPS+ of 52 and 46). And one guy is threatening to redefine offensive suckitude as we know it – Tony Pena’s OPS+ is 1, and he needed a two-hit game on Wednesday to get it out of negative territory.

Guillen’s performance to this point is the single most worrisome development of the season. He’s hitting .176/.212/.333. I realize he’s a streaky hitter, and you can argue that since starting the season 6-for-49 that he’s been on a hot streak the last 16 games. If .220/.258/.475 is Guillen’s idea of a hot streak, Dayton Moore just flushed 36 million dollars down the drain.

- You may not be happy with how the Royals are performing, but Guillen notwithstanding, if you’re a Royals fan you have to be happy with who is doing the performing.

Of the 13 men who have batted for the Royals this season, here’s how I would have ranked them at the start of the season in terms of their future importance to the Royals:

Gordon
Butler
DeJesus
Guillen
Teahen
Callaspo
Buck
Gathright
German
Gload
Pena
Olivo
Grudzielanek

The first seven guys all project as starters in 2010; the other six are either free agents or probable backups at that point. So if you’re simply judging the Royals on how well they’re building a lineup for 2010, then you look at those top seven and you see two guys hitting extremely well in a small sample size (DeJesus and Callaspo), three guys hitting roughly as expected (Gordon, Butler, Teahen), one guy who’s a little disappointing (Buck), and then an outright disaster in Guillen.

Here’s the same thought experiment with the pitchers:

Bannister
Meche
Soria
Greinke
Hochevar
BIG GAP
Bale
Nunez
Ramirez
Gobble
BIG GAP
Yabuta
Mahay
Tomko
Peralta
ENORMOUS GAP
Nomo

(Greinke ranks as low as he does simply because he’s a free agent after the 2010 season. If Moore hasn’t already broached the subject of a long-term deal with Greinke’s agent, he’s not doing his job.)

As much as I love what Nunez and Ramirez have done this year, the reality is that middle relievers are fungible – the fate of the Royals’ pitching staff rests in the hands of the first five guys on that list. Meche has been a disappointment. The other three guys have, each in their own ways, vastly exceeded what most people thought they were capable of, Bannister because everyone thought his rookie season was a fluke, Greinke because people questioned whether he had the mental toughness to succeed, and Soria because it was hard to imagine that Soria could pitch any better than he did last year.

Bannister has a 4.04 ERA and Greinke has a 1.47 ERA, but there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference in their real performance this season. Against Bannister, opposing hitters are batting .224/.273/.343; against Greinke they’re at .215/.262/.348. The difference is that Bannister had to pitch in Arlington the night there were gale-force winds blowing to right field, and that with runners in scoring position this year hitters are 8-for-22 against him. (Against Greinke, they’re 3-for-34.) They’re both on pace to be among the 15 best starters in the league this year.

It’s hard to judge Hochevar so far, but in five starts between Triple-A and the majors, e was outstanding in four of them. And quietly, he has shown excellent groundball potential; in his two starts in the majors, 24 of the 38 balls put in play against him have been grounders, which is outstanding.

As important as performance is health. And none of the pitchers (or hitters for that matter) have suffered any kind of serious injury.

The Royals may only be 12-16, but would you be happier if they Royals were 16-12 but they were doing so because Grudz was hitting .380 and Miguel Olivo had won the starting job behind the plate and had banged 8 homers and Brett Tomko was pitching out of his mind? I think not.

If you’re focused on the Royals’ chances of winning this year – and given how wide-open the division has been so far, I can’t blame you – then they’re performance this season, purely in terms of wins and losses, is disappointing. But if you evaluate the team with an eye to the future…well, the future of the Royals is, by and large, playing well.

***

Other subjects…Bob Dutton got some choice quotes from Hillman on the subject of pitch counts, and many thanks to Bob for following up on the topic. At this point, I’m not concerned. Hillman said, “I thought pitch counts are very relevant; I just think we hold onto them too closely.” In all honesty, he might be right. Baseball’s position on pitch counts has moved so rapidly over the past decade that it might be time to take a breather and re-evaluate.

I have no problem with a pitcher hitting 100 pitches regularly, and I have no problem with a veteran pitcher throwing 110-120 pitches regularly. Beyond 120, I do get nervous. But the reality is that, as Bob pointed out, aside from Meche’s long outing no Royals pitcher has thrown more than 111 pitches in a start. We’ll have to see how Hillman handles the staff as the weather warms up. But if the Royals’ pitch counts continue to resemble their April numbers all season, I will have no objections.

- When The Baseball Jonah was a rookie, I compared him to Bret Saberhagen as much for his precocity as for his pitching style, which was all about control. But I think the obvious comparison now is to Curt Schilling. I already connected the two together a few weeks ago when I mentioned how the two pitchers are among the stingiest in baseball history at giving up unearned runs. There’s a good reason for that. Greinke is on the verge of emerging, like Schilling, as a pitcher with a fantastic strikeout-to-walk ratio, but who can be beat with the long ball. Greinke’s last outing (7 4 2 2 0 9, 2 HR) looks like it was ripped right out of Schilling’s game log. Schilling didn’t become vintage Curt Schilling until he was 30 years old, but then, Greinke has always pitched with the moxie of a much older man.

The Schilling approach happens to be perfectly suited for Kauffman Stadium. Greinke lost on Thursday because he gave up 2 solo homers, because he had the misfortune of pitching in Arlington. Kauffman Stadium is one of the toughest home run parks in baseball, which neutralizes Greinke’s biggest weakness.

- It’s easy to diss Hochevar for not being Tim Lincecum or Joba Chamberlain. But on draft day, 2006, the consensus #1 player in the draft was neither Seabiscuit nor Joba. It was Andrew Miller.

Today, who would you rather have?

Hochevar was a disappointment in the minors last year, mostly because of a high ERA, but his peripherals were pretty good. Throw in his three good starts in Omaha this year, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio in the minors is 166 to 55, a tick better than 3 to 1. In 23 major league innings, he has a 3.86 ERA and has allowed one homer.

Miller, on the other hand, has a 6.57 ERA in 100 major league innings, including a 9.12 ERA this year, with 48 hits surrendered in just 26 innings. True, Miller had better minor league numbers, and no question has been hurt by being rushed to the majors. And yes, the Marlins defense has done him no favors this year.

But still…would you trade Hochevar for Miller right now? I’m not saying I wouldn’t. I’m just saying I’m not sure I would. Of course, Hochevar might get rocked by the time you read this.

- You are working on a long-term contract with Greinke’s agent, right, Dayton?

Royals Today: 5/1/2008.

Sometimes, you sit down to write a column with an idea of where the column is going, only to find that the evidence veers you off course. You had an axe to grind, a vendetta to fulfill, but the data simply didn’t cooperate.

What do you do? If you’re, I don’t know, Gerry Fraley or something, you just plow on ahead, logic and facts be damned. But the whole creed of sabermetrics is that you go where the evidence takes you.

I sat down last night planning to rip on Trey Hillman for his bizarre usage of Joakim Soria. Here’s what I wrote:

“I was a fan of the decision to hire Trey Hillman, and I still think that he has the makings to be a fine manager, the best we’ve had in a long time. But more and more I’m becoming concerned that, while he may be an asset in the clubhouse, he’s not a competitive advantage when it comes to making tactical on-the-field moves. In order to have a competitive advantage on your opponents, you have to do things differently than your opponents. Hillman has shown some signs of that, most notably his decision to occasionally play the entire outfield shallow in the hopes that the doubles and triples which get past them will be more than made up for by the many would-be singles that don’t fall in.

When Andruw Jones was at his absolute defensive peak – at which time he was probably one of the five greatest defensive centerfielders of all time – the key to his success was that because he was so good at reading balls off the bat, and had such a quick first step, that he could play 30-40 feet shallower than other centerfielders and still go back to catch flyballs hit over his head. In exchange, the combination of shallow positioning and great instincts made him death to Texas Leaguers, ducksnorts, looping flyballs in no-man’s land. In 1999 Jones made 493 putouts in centerfield, which meant he caught 96 more flyballs than any other centerfielder in the land (Steve Finley, with 397.) No amount of park factors or pitching staff tendencies or durability can account for 96 more putouts; Jones was playing centerfield on a completely different plane than everyone else.

I have no idea how much of Jones’ brilliance came from his talents and how much came from his positioning, but since then I’ve always wondered whether teams really have positioned their outfielders in an ideal manner. We now have enough data on batted balls to figure out whether moving outfielders 10 feet closer to home plate might prevent enough singles to make up for the doubles and triples. Someone who’s good at massaging that data should definitely make a study out of it. (If that study has already been done, please let me know.) But I’m glad Hillman’s at least thinking outside the box to improve his defense.

I digress. For as much as Hillman might be willing to think outside the box with his defense, his handling of his pitching staff is pure, unadulterated conventional wisdom. I speak specifically to his philosophy on using Joakim Soria, a philosophy that to this point seems predicated on extracting as little value from his best pitcher as possible.

Joakim Soria has pitched in 11 games this season. In all 11 games he came in at the start of the inning. This in itself is a little bothersome – if you’ve got a pitcher that never gets into a jam of his own, why not use him to clean up other people’s messes either? If a first-and-third, one-out jam in the eighth doesn’t call for Mr. Incredible, what does?

Anyway, Soria completed all 11 innings, and in every game he was the final Royals pitcher – 11 games, 11 games finished. He has faced 38 batters this year; not only have none of them scored, but only one of them – the aforementioned Clete Thomas – has reached third base. Aside from Thomas, the only one to reach second base is Milton Bradley, who reached on a Grudzielanek error last night. Soria has retired 33 of 38 hitters, including 24 straight at one point. He’s given up a double, two singles, a walk, and the ROE. Opposing hitters are hitting .083/.108/.111 against him this year.

So if you’re the manager, and you have the perfect fail-safe weapon in your arsenal, how would you deploy it? You’d use that weapon as much as possible, and you’d use it in the most critical situations, right?

Soria has thrown 11 innings in 26 games; he’s on pace for 68.2 this season. That’s a little lower for a 24-year-old reliever, but I’ll let that slide.

Let’s break down those innings. Nine of the 11 appearances were in the ninth inning, one was in the 11^th inning (Opening Day), and one was in the 8^th. As we said before, Soria has been used exclusively to close out games. That’s what closers do.

Now look at the score when Soria came in:

Leading by four: 3
Leading by three: 2
Leading by two: 1
Leading by one: 3
Tied: 0
Losing by one: 0
Losing by two: 1
Losing by five: 1

Twice Soria has been used when the Royals losing, including once in a pure mop-up role; both appearances were purely to get Soria some playing time after he hadn’t pitched in a while.

Six times Soria has pitched in a save situation, although two of those were when the Royals were leading by 3 runs, the softest save situation of all and one that drives us analyst types batty.

And three times Soria has pitched with the Royals leading by four runs, including last night.

I got this information from Soria’s page at baseball-reference.com, which also lists Soria’s “leverage” factor for each game. Leverage is a statistical tool that measures how much the game was on the line when a pitcher came into the game. A leverage score of 1.00 means that the leverage for that appearance was the equivalent of the start of the game, i.e. a 0-0 score in the first inning. The whole point of having a closer is that, while a closer might only throw 60-80 innings all year, he’s being used to protect small leads in the late innings, where the impact of a run allowed is huge. Typical closers will have Leverage scores around 2.

Four of Soria’s 11 appearances this year – basically, the four times he came in protecting a lead of one or two runs – have been high-leverage situations. His other seven appearances all had leverage scores of less than one. In nearly two-thirds of his appearances this year, Soria was used in a situation that had so little on the line that he would have been more helpful starting the game and then leaving after an inning.

That’s a criminal mis-use of resources. Why the hell do we need Soria to protect a four-run lead in the ninth? Yasuhiko Yabuta will protect a four-run lead 90% of the time. Hell, Hideo Nomo would get three outs before surrendering four runs 60-70% of the time. I’m not asking for Hillman to taunt the opposition by using the last man in his pen – just go with Leo Nunez, or Jimmy Gobble, and save Soria in the event they get into a real jam.

So far this year, Soria’s overall leverage – using the Baseball Prospectus measurement, which probably differs from the bb-ref stat a little – is just 1.41.”

Everything I wrote above is factually correct, but when I started looking at the facts a little deeper, I realized that as inefficient as Soria’s usage has been, I’m not sure how Hillman could have done much better.

I went through the box scores of every game this season, looking for high-leverage situations from the 7^th inning on in which Soria could have pitched. In particular, I wanted to figure out why, from April 8^th until April 24^th, a span of 14 games, Soria pitched just twice – on the 15^th and 16^th. He had six days of rest, pitched in consecutive games, then had seven days of rest again. There had to be situations in which Hillman could have made better use of his best pitcher, right?

Not really.

On April 4^th, the Royals trailed by one run from the fourth inning until the game ended. The next day they would trail by two runs in the seventh and eighth. Soria had pitched on April 2^nd and 3^rd, and would pitch on the 6^th, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t pitch in these two games.

On April 12^th, the Royals trailed 1-0 going into the seventh, and 2-0 thereafter.

On April 19^th, the Royals were tied 4-4 going into the bottom of the 7^th before the A’s scored two runs; the Royals would score a run in the ninth but fall short.

And…that’s pretty much it. The Royals have now played 27 games, and in only four of them did they have a one or two-run lead to protect in the late innings. Soria pitched the ninth, and got the save, in all of them.

Just five of the Royals’ 27 games have been decided by one run; they’re 3-2 in those games. That’s a very low total for any team, but especially the Royals, who are both scoring and allowing fewer runs than the league average, and the less run-scoring you have, the more likely you are to have a game decided by one run. There have been a total of 209 runs scored in the Royals’ first 26 games, an average of 4.02 per game per team.

To get an idea of how often the Royals should be playing one-run games, I went back to the 1985 NL, which averaged 4.10 runs per game. The 12 NL teams averaged 53 one-run games, ranging from 42 to 64 per team. So the Royals should expect to play a one-run game about a third of the time, but so far they’ve played far fewer than that.

(I ran these numbers before the mini-slugfest in Arlington last night, which increased the team’s runs per game figure to 4.24. That doesn’t change the expectations that much.)

They have now played six two-run games, but they’re 1-5 in those games. More importantly, every one of those five losses, and one of their two one-run losses, were games in which the Royals were down early and never came back to even tie the score.

For whatever reason – or more likely, no reason at all – the Royals simply haven’t had many close leads to protect in the late innings. When they have had the lead, they haven’t coughed it up, Soria or not. Do you know how many times the Royals have lost a game in which they were leading after four innings?

Twice. On April 18^th, when Bannister nursed a 2-1 lead into the sixth before coughing up four runs, and the next day, when the Royals had a 4-0 lead after four innings, but Greinke gave up three in the fifth, Ramon Ramirez gave up the tying run in the sixth, and the A’s scored the winning runs in the 7^th. That’s the only loss the Royals’ bullpen has had all season.

There are only two other games the Royals have lost in which they were tied after four innings, and in both of those games it’s because the Royals didn’t score any runs after the fifth inning. On April 27^th the Blue Jays broke a 2-2 tie with a run off Meche in the fifth, and won 5-2; on April 24^th the Indians and Royals were scoreless until the Indians got to Bannister for two runs in the 7^th.

The reason Soria hasn’t pitched more in high-leverage situations is simply that the Royals haven’t had many high-leverage situations. I mentioned before that Soria’s leverage score is 1.41. Well, Leo Nunez’s score is 1.56, which is higher than Soria’s (it’s not unusual to have a set-up man with a higher Leverage score than his closer) but not particularly high either. More importantly, every other reliever on the team has a Leverage score below one. The Royals have a great bullpen – well, a great top-half of a bullpen – and no opportunity to really use them so far.

And it’s hard to argue that Hillman’s usage of Soria has cost the Royals ballgames, because the Royals have yet to lose a game they were leading after 7, and have lost only two games were losing after 4.

It’s a lot more emotionally satisfying to throw stuff at my TV set when Hillman brought Soria in to pitch the ninth in a 9-5 game on Tuesday night. But looking at this rationally, we simply can’t evaluate Hillman’s use of his closer fairly at this point, because the season has so far conspired to give him precious few opportunities to do so.