2011 in Review: Relief Pitcher Vertical Vector Charts

Click to enlarge

Continuing with the vector charts series that I started earlier today (based on this from Athletics Nation) here are the relief pitchers stats visualized awesomely.

If you need a refresher here is how to look at the graph:

Each line corresponds to a Giants relief pitcher. The angle of each vector corresponds to the pitcher's GB percent with 100 percent ground balls as a horizontal line and 100 percent fly balls the opposite (duh) and represented as a vertical line, and the middle between the two extremes (50 percent ground ball rate) represented as a 45° angle.

The length of the line corresponds to the pitchers FIP-, where 100 is equal to league average and each point below is equal to a percent better than league average. So an FIP- of 75 means that the pitcher FIP was 25 percent better than league average. So in this chart a shorter line means that the pitcher pitched better which is kind of counter intuitive for how we would normally look at things.

Sergio Romo is the tiny, tiny line which is pretty amazing. The rest of the Giants relievers come in around 80 which is still really good and finally there are the two outliers Steve Edlefsen and Barry Zito but neither pitcher pitched many innings in relief so it didn't kill the Giants bullpen much.

Unlike the starting pitchers the relievers are not as fly ball heavy with 7 guys who were at the 50 percent mark or higher for ground balls with just Romo being the only guy who would be considered an extreme fly ball pitcher.

Up next will be the Giants hitters.

---

Become a fan on Facebook and follow the The Crazy Crabbers on twitter there is lots of good stuff going on there. Sign up for our free newsletter!

Guillermo Mota Doesn't Mess Around

In a bullpen stocked with above average arms it is pretty easy to overlook Guillermo Mota. He is the last man in the bullpen and is relegated to mop up duty and extra innings games. So when a pitcher like this does something pretty extraordinary like Mota did yesterday it is worth mention.

Mota came in during the 7th inning yesterday after Ryan Vogelsong allowed 3 straight hits. The last thing that the Bruce Bochy wanted was to let the Diamondbacks back in the game or tire out his bullpen in front of another big series against the Phillies.

Mota did exactly what was asked of him and did it with style.

He faced 8 batters and not a single one was able to put a ball in play against him. He got 6 strikeouts and allowed 2 walks. His stuff was electric as he got 5 D-Backs swinging and caught Henry Blanco looking for his final out of the day.

All said of his 24 strikes thrown 9 were swings and misses good enough for a ridiculous 37.5% swinging strike rate.

Mota may be the long relief/emergency guy but he sure didn't look the part yesterday. A tip of the hat to you on your excellent outing.

---

Become a fan on Facebook and follow the The Crazy Crabbers on twitter there is lots of good stuff going on there. Sign up for our free newsletter!

Giants Efficiency in Free Agent Signing Last Year

The Giants this off season made a decision that the would do their best to try to bring back pretty much all the players that brought back the first ever World Series Championship instead of looking out ward on the free agent market.

The only person that they went outside of last years team to sign was Miguel Tejada and well lets just say that hasn't worked out as well as they would have hoped.

I was poking around the internet and stumbled across something interesting from Royals Review that looked at the off season moves made by the Royals and I thought that it would be interesting to adapt it to see how the Giants have done with the free agents they signed over the winter.

Name	bWAR	fWAR	Total Salary (Millions)	Salary After 73 Games (Millions)
Aubrey Huff	-1.3	-0.6	10.00	4.51
Miguel Tejeda	-0.4	-0.7	6.50	2.93
Pat Burrell	0.7	0.5	1.00	0.45
Mike Fontenot	0.5	0.5	1.05	0.47
Guillermo Mota	0.3	0.3	0.93	0.42
Ryan Vogelsong	2.6	1.5	0.42	0.19
Total	2.4	1.5	19.89	8.96

Overall things don't look too bad, the Giants are paying $3.7 million per WAR based on the baseball-reference measure and $5.9 million per WAR based on the fangraphs measure. The $3.7 would be slightly below average and the $5.9 slightly above average.

The two biggest acquisitions have essentially been busts with both producing at below replacement level but luckily for Brain Sabean he was able to find a gem in Ryan Vogelsong who has been excellent while also being a bargain after only signing a minor league contract before the season.

If we take away the Huff deal Sabean looks like a genius, if way take away Vogelsong he looks like a doofus. I guess that is the fine line the general managers walk in Major League Baseball.

---

Become a fan on Facebook and follow the The Crazy Crabbers on twitter there is lots of good stuff going on there. Sign up for our free newsletter!

The Giants Confounding Bullpen Utilization

The Giants have a very good bullpen but so far this season, Bruce Bochy has taken an interesting approach to deploying it. Interesting may be a kind word because in reality, it's downright maddening and in the long run, it could cost this team wins with the number of close games that this team plays.

In a perfect world, you would use your best relief pitcher in the most important spot, your second best reliever in the second most important spot, and so on. This is a difficult task because you don't have perfect information and the future is unknown and you can't know for sure what the importance of latter events will be.

The strategy that managers have developed over time is there are roles for their pitchers. The relief ace is the closer who pitches the ninth inning of close games (or comes in for the last couple outs of the eighth inning) and then in descending order of talent, every other pitcher has his inning. There are some exceptions with specialist pitchers that excel at getting out lefties that face just a batter or two or a long reliever who is their to eat innings for a struggling starter.

For the most part, this system works. Leverage increases (here is the leverage table) as the end of the game nears so the best pitcher pitch in the highest leverage spots but there are certain times that this is not the case and a team employing the normal strategy would have a suboptimal pitcher pitching in a very important time in the game.

Here is the list of the Giants relievers and the average leverage when they entered the game along with the ZIPS projections for ERA+, FIP, and k/9:

Name	gmLI	Rank	ERA+	FIP	K/9
Guillermo Mota	1.88	7.3	101	3.88	6.98
Brian Wilson	1.84	1.7	146	2.69	11.02
Dan Runzler	1.05	6.0	102	4.05	8.77
Sergio Romo	0.78	1.3	148	2.48	10.31
Ramon Ramirez	0.74	4.3	118	3.54	7.21
Jeremy Affeldt	0.63	3.7	118	3.78	8.26
Javier Lopez	0.6	6.7	108	3.86	6.02
Santiago Casilla	0.49	5.0	111	3.79	8.06

The first thing that jumps out at you (or should jump out at you) is that Guillermo Mota and Dan Runzler so far this early season have entered the game in some of the most crucial spots for the Giants while being arguably the worst pitchers in the bullpen. (Side note: Mota and Runzler are still good pitchers as you can see from their numbers, but they are not as good as the other guys in the Giants bullpen.)

If Bochy optimized his bullpen better, Mota and Runzler would be down at the bottom, with more of their opportunities going to Ramirez and Affeldt. These guys have been utilized as the first to come in to replace a struggling pitcher who is in a jam and that really shouldn't be the case if Bochy wants to maximize the Giants chances of winning games.

I can understand Bochy wanting to save Wilson and Romo for the eighth and ninth innings because of uncertainty of what's to come, but I think that he can do a much better job of using his second-tier guys in those early crucial situations to get a better pitcher to get out of jams.

---

Become a fan on Facebook and follow The Crazy Crabbers on Twitter. There is lots of good stuff going on there.

Miguel Tejada and Aubrey Huff's Market Value

What is the best way to determine the Market Value of the Giants free agent signings? Probably not this.

The average shortstop salary for this years free agents is $6.41 million. Miguel Tejada received a one-year $6.5 million contract from the Giants. Which means GM Brian Sabean was on his game with this contract.

Now the first base position is a different story. The average free agent signing thus far at first base has signed for $6.53 million. The Giants re-signed Aubrey Huff for a two year $22 million contract. Huff will make $10 million in 2011 and 2012 (2013 club option or $2 million buyout).

I saw this from the King of Cali at SFGiantsBaseball.net and to me it leaves something to be desired. Looking at the average salary misses out on a quite a bit, a better measure would be looking at the marginal value of each of these players. What do we say we dig a little deeper.

This offseason has seen some inflation in the salaries of free agents especially in the big money deals of guys like Carl Crawford, Jayson Werth and Cliff Lee. The marginal value of a win has increased from about $4.5 million to just under $5 million.

With this as our baseline we can look at what the market value was for the Giants free agent signings.

Aubrey Huff, two year $22 million deal

Miguel Tejada, one year $6.5 million deal

Mike Fontenot, one year $1 million deal

Pat Burrell, a one year $1 million deal
Guillermo Mota minor league contract

For Huff I would expect that he comes down from his career year last year and produces at around 2 to 3 wins above replacement, lets call it 2.5 WAR over 2 years. That gives him a market value of $12.5 million so the Giants paid full price but didn't really overpay.
For Tejada I would expect around 1 WAR but if he stays healthy and doesn't do horrible on defense he could easily get into the 1.5 to possibly 2 WAR range. With my projection he has a market value $5 million but if he plays a full season and does a half decent job could be worth $7.5 to $10 million. This is a bit of an overpay but not horrendously.

Fontenot is going to be the back up infielder and with the limited playing time will be in the 0-0.5 WAR range giving him a market value of about $1.25 million so again this is right in line with what is expected.

Burrell is very easily a huge bargain. In his 96 games for the Giants last season he was worth 2.7 WAR so even if you expect that he has half as good of a season he is a 1.5 WAR player and worth $7.5 million on the open market. So the Giants got a huge hometown discount from Pat the Bat.

Bringing back Mota on a minor league contract again looks like a smart move. Mota was a decent guy in the pen and could be again next year. However he is pretty close to replacement level and was given a contract that reflects that.

Overall it looks like the Giants didn't have any bad overpays and maybe got a good deal for Burrell.

---

If you're on Twitter you should definitely follow the The Crazy Crabbers. If you're not you should really consider joining, lots of good stuff going on there.