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me about post navigation older posts bryce harper and the three true outcomes posted on may 9 2015 by ouij 1 as of this writing bryce harper leads the national league in walks he leads the national league in home runs he is fourth in the national league in strikeouts these we know are the three true outcomes of a plate appearance true because they involve only one interaction the pitcher and the batter with no intermeddling defense they are the bedrock of fielding independent pitching analysis thus far in 2015 56 6 of bryce harper s plate appearances have ended in a true outcome that s getting up into numbers we haven t seen in dc since adam dunn was a nat yet surprisingly doesn t lead all baseball in what i m calling true outcome percentage walks plus strikeouts plus homers all divided by plate appearances as of the morning of saturday may 9 2015 your top ten in baseball joc pederson dodgers 623 bryce harper nationals 566 chris davis orioles 546 leads al steven sousa jr rays 534 colby rasmus astros 532 chris carter astros 531 kris bryant cubs 511 adam laroche white sox 490 george springer astros 479 pederson gets the top spot although harper has 15 more plate appearances there s not a lot to separate harper and pederson harper has 2 more walks one less strikeout and 1 more homer the other thing that should jump out at you in this quick list is that the astros dominate the true outcomes rate leaderboard but not in a good way the strikeout is the true outcome of choice in houston now all this got me to thinking where would harper s current 566 true outcome rate put him among the all time true outcomes leaders bryce harper s current three true outcomes rate if sustained for his career would put him atop the all time three true outcomes leaderboard and what kind of rarified company would harper join if his batting approach stays the same let s go down the top ten jack cust 530 long time journeyman al designated hitter dave nicholson 514 preferred outcome strikeout led al in strikeouts 1963 russell branyan 505 russell the muscle another strikeout machine chris carter 504 yes the same chris carter on the astros above adam dunn 499 the man who made the three true outcomes famous in dc rob deer 491 led al in strikeouts 4 times melvin nieves 486 preferred outcome strikeout mark reynolds 486 and dropping milt pappas 482 a 2 time all star pitcher and bonus as a batter his most frequent true outcome was a strikeout which was also his most frequent true outcome as a pitcher jim thome 476 another archetypical true outcome slugger which leads us to an important point although true outcome rate brings joy to the baseball nerd it does not tell us that a batter is good at batting the all time leaderboard is dominated by strikeout machines jim thome dominates the war standings here with 68 9 war over a career that began while we were all reading president george herbert walker bush s lips because al gore hadn t yet invented the internet and ended sometime during the bazillionth time i watched gangnam style only adam dunn has double digit war 25 7 mark reynolds might eventually get there 9 9 jim thome only managed 8 6 over a career that began in the george herbert walker bush administration and ended last season russell branyan s untrue outcome slugging got him 6 2 war below that it s replacement level or worse batting still it gives you some perspective as to one possible career path for harper a kind of super war donkey play us out spandau ballet edited because distinguished senators pointed out that i got thome s war total wrong by a full order of magnitude i am an idiot posted in uncategorized tagged adam dunn adam la roche batting bb bryce harper chris carter chris davis colby rasmus dave nicholson george springer home runs hr jack cust jim thome joc pederson k kris bryant mark reynolds melvin nieves milt pappas nerdity rob deer russell branyan so spandau ballet steven souza strikeouts three true outcomes walks 1 reply natstradamus projections for 2015 reply hazy try again posted on april 4 2015 by ouij 1 and now the moment you ve all been waiting for the natstradamus projections for the 2015 season this year the projection comes with a major caveat if ryan zimmerman is no worse than a league average defensive first baseman the washington nationals are projected to win between 95 and 98 games just to refresh your recollection because lord knows i need to refresh mine every year i use a pretty simple projection system to come up with the nats won loss totals for the year the whole thing is based off bill james s pythagorean expectation and it s a satisfyingly intuitive way to figure out how good your team is in baseball you win if you score more runs than you allow the pythagorean win expectation model reflects that imagine the whole baseball season compressed into two halves of one inning at nats park first we need to fill up the lineup card of players then we need to know who these players are i use a four year trailing average as the basis for these calculations then we need to figure who plays where and when this is the greatest acknowledged weakness of my system as i have somewhat arbitrarily assigned playing time based on my impressions of injuries etc at the top of the inning the visiting teams come to bat the result of that half inning will be runs allowed any upper deck crank will tell you that there are two ways you can allow a run generally by pitching badly giving up tons of walks and homers or by fielding badly not getting to balls hit in the gap dropping fly balls committing errors the same upper deck crank will tell you that you can get out of the inning with good pitching striking everyone out and great fielding robbing home runs showing ridiculous range gunning down runners with your arm in my model base pitching runs allowed off a pitcher s fip i also use xfip as an alternative which normalizes pitcher home runs allowed to a league average home run fly ball rate defense is handled by uzr which handily expresses defense as the number of extra runs allowed or saved at the bottom of the inning the nats come to bat time to score some runs i use weighted runs created for each batter since that s a counting stat i divide that by the number of plate appearances over the last four years to get the number of runs created per plate appearance i multiply this by the number of projected plate appearances an everyday player will get about 600 plate appearances that s the number of runs on the board when that s over i come to some conclusions the 2015 nats pitching staff is projected to allow between 530 using fip and 562 using xfip runs the 2014 nats actually allowed 555 runs and we were already amazed at how good the pitching was last year this is a good thing because there is too much uncertainty about the defense to have any real confidence uzr is notorious in that it needs a pretty big sample size to stabilize the rule of thumb is that 3 years worth of data for an everyday player is what you d need for the stat to be of any real use unfortunately ryan zimmerman first baseman is a relatively new creation his limited time at first base resulted in a comically bad uzr 150 i e what uzr would be if he played 150 games at first base for a year of 109 1 if true it would mean that ryan zimmerman s first base defense would be costing the nats over 20 more runs than he would stand to get them at the plate 88 by my calculations that s hard to stomach if we follow the model blindly though we end up with the defense costing the nats excellent pitching just over 97 runs if we back off and assume ryan zimmerman is at least a league average first baseman the defense improves significantly actually saving just under 12 runs so if you think ryan zimmerman is a 100 run liability at first base and i doubt very much that this is the case the pitching and defense combined concede between 627 659 runs totals not seen since 2011 when the nats allowed 643 runs if you think ryan zimmerman is a league average first baseman the pitching and defense combine to allow between 518 and 550 runs as good or better than the 2014 nats turning now to the batting things are more straightforward the model projects the nats will score 652 runs this is lower than last year s observed total of 686 runs the projection reflects my pessimism regarding rendon s playing time and the speed at which span and werth can return to the lineup i will be very happily proven wrong on this point though add it all together and you end up with 95 to 98 wins if zim is at least a league average first baseman if he is the nightmare that the tiny and highly unreliable sample of data uzr has to work with things are much less rosy with the nats winning between 80 and 84 games and likely missing the playoffs posted in uncategorized tagged defense fip offense pitching projection ryan zimmerman small sample size uzr wrc xfip 1 reply saying hello to max and goodbye to stras and jz posted on march 24 2015 by ouij reply the nats have named max scherzer their opening day starter which makes a lot of sense after all they nats are paying him an ungodly amount of money he s the only one on the staff that actually won a cy young award strasburg the incumbent number one has been down with an ankle injury so that knocks him out but what makes this all so interesting is a recent post on hardball times about success rates after tommy john surgery the article looked at major league pitchers between 1979 and 2009 that underwent tommy john surgery breaking them down by age when they underwent surgery the prognosis for tommy john surgeries isn t that great for pitchers that underwent surgery between the ages of 16 and 23 the article finds a median post surgery mlb contribution of 93 appearances for a starting pitcher that s maybe four or five years worth of starts what does this all have to do with scherzer and strasburg and zimmermann first it puts scherzer s seven year deal into perspective the nats bought seven years of max scherzer a pitcher who did not undergo the surgery they did not yet buy five years of jordan zimmermann almost five years removed from surgery they have not yet decided to buy five years of stephen strasburg four years removed from surgery maybe we ve been thinking about the nats pitching contracts all wrong maybe it s not jordan zimmermann s distaste for dc traffic that s keeping him from accepting a contract extension with the nationals it seems to me more likely that rizzo and the nationals are unwilling to pay what they consider to be an inflated market price when they have extracted as much value as anyone is likely to get from a post tj pitcher as for zimmermann so too with strasburg who does not suffer the indignity of having his opening day duties taken because of an in convenient injury again there s reason to believe rizzo will be unwilling to pay scherzer money when strasburg has maybe a 50 50 chance of providing any value remember he s coming up to that median survival time besides rizzo already paid scherzer money for max scherzer this is how it is nats town given all this my advice is to enjoy every zimmermann masterpiece make every day strasmas because at this rate i m pretty pessimistic about the chances that either of those two guys stays around from the organization s perspective it might be that that this window is closing posted in uncategorized tagged contracts jordan zimmemann max scherzer mike rizzo opening day pitching stephen strasburg tommy john surgery leave a reply sign kang jung ho posted on december 15 2014 by ouij 2 i m going to make this short and sweet the nats need a second baseman the best middle infielder in the korean baseball organization kang jung ho of the nexen heroes is available the washington nationals should sign kang jung ho look at that highlight reel this is the greatest baseball hype film since the yoenis cespdes hype video kang is 27 years old in the prime of his career plays great defense from the highlights we learn that he can hit hanging sliders a long way and punish fastballs that are too far over the middle of the plate does that make him a hall of famer not yet but those are the skills you expect to see in a competent major league batter so that s a good start the next objection he played in the korean baseball organization a demonstrably inferior league to the national league fine let s do some comparisons shall we the nats sold ryan tatusko s contract to the hanwha eagles of the kbo last year tatusko was the other pitcher that came from the rangers in the deal that sent cristian guzman to texas and brought tanner roark to the nats organization tatusko was a promising pitcher and a fine blogger and human being but injuries slowed his development let s use him as a rough proxy for the competitive level of the kbo during his time in the nats organization tatusko bounced up and down between the harrisburg senators of the aa eastern league and the syracuse chiefs of the aaa international league he ended up in the kbo let s say for the sake of argument that the kbo represents a level of competition that s better than the eastern league and maybe not quite as good as the international league if that s how we set our proxy level how does kang jung ho stack up against the league leaders no fancy stats here just the old stuff in 2014 kang put up a slash line of 356 459 759 he collected 149 hits 36 doubles 2 triples and 40 home runs ok here are the 2014 batting leaders for the international league kang would have led the il in batting average he would have led the il in obp he would have led the il in slugging beating out zach walters and stephen souza jr kang s 149 hits would have been good enough for fourth in hits in the il despite the fact that kang only collected his 149 hits in 501 plate appearances over 117 games the il leaders in counting stats appeared in 130 games each despite that kang s 40 home runs puts him ten homers ahead of 2014 il hr king andy wilkins with 30 here are the 2014 batting leaders for the aa eastern league kang s 356 batting average isn t so great in the eastern league he doesn t win the batting title here t j rivera of binghamton takes it barely with a 358 ba but you know what kang s 356 is just better than portland s mookie betts a highly touted middle infield prospect in the red sox organization kang s obp of 459 would top the eastern league ahead of you guessed it mookie betts 443 kang s slugging 759 demolishes the eastern league leader ryan schimpf 616 kang would be second in hits but he got them in fewer games ditto homers where kang s 40 is five better than eastern league leader erie s steven moya who hit 35 so nats town this is what you ve got an international free agent that s as good or possibly better than mookie betts he s much better than anyone the nats have in the organization or in the pipeline he s available now and the only thing he costs is money come on rizzo sign kang jung ho poste...