In Baseball the Sophomore Slump is generally referred to as a player’s second season or sophomore effort that fails to live up to the performance displayed by the said player during their rookie season. Since the Astros fielded a total of 20 different rookies at some point last season and thus have several potential candidates who could experience a sophomore slump I decided to take a closer look at how a player’s rookie season and sophomore season compares to each other. In this article we will look solely at position player’s offensive production, and I plan on hopefully getting something similar for pitchers posted later in the week.

A few details about the sample

I chose to sample rookies who debuted during the time frame of the years 2000-2010, and compare that to their second season in the majors. According to MLB's official rules a player is considered a rookie as long as they do not exceed 130 major league at-bats or accumulate more than 45 days on the active 25-man roster during previous seasons. Because determining the amount of days spent on the active roster was difficult, I chose to determine rookie status based on players who have not previously exceeded 130 at-bats during a season. I also chose to use the season in which the player broke the 130 at-bat plateau as their rookie season and not the season in which they first experienced the majors. As an example Lance Berkman played in 34 games in 1999 and accumulated 106 plate appearances, but did not surpass the 130 at-bat mark until the following season, therefore that season is used as his rookie season for this exercise.

2000-2010 Rookie/Sophomore Season Comparison

There were a total of 607 position player rookies who appeared in the majors from 2000-2010. The chart below lists the accumulated averages of each year’s rookie class’ walk percentage, strikeout percentage, batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Stats highlighted in yellow represent which season’s performance (Rookie or Sophomore) was more productive, and stats highlighted in blue represent no change from the first season to the second season. All stats used for this year were gathered from the Fangraphs database.

Continue reading this post »

"Today they hit for ridiculous averages, can't bunt, can't steal, can't hit-and-run, can't place-hit to the opposite field, and you can't call them ballplayers....Where's our integrity? Where's baseball?"

--Attributed to Ty Cobb by Al Stump, his official biographer

Baseball has not always been about power. In the past, the greatest ball players were those who excelled at many things. Most of all, a player was considered great if he played hard, regardless if he hit hard. Ty Cobb was the first man elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and he never hit more than twelve home runs in a season. Towards the end of his career though, a young man nicknamed George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Jr. gave baseball fans a new model of what the ideal hitter is - one who hits as many home runs as possible. Over time, baseball adapted. Only rarely are hitters considered stars who do not hit dozens of home runs every season.

These days, how does one actually define a slugger? When a player has good power, what does that mean, other than he should hit a lot of home runs? Is that even what it means? In a previous post, I explained the skill of fielding as simply as I knew how. In this one, I will try to break down slugging in simple terms and relate that to the 2012 Astros.

Disclaimer: I am not a statistician. There are a zillion little details I have intentionally ignored or glossed over in the interest of presenting a clear overview. It's a big picture thing.

Continue reading this post »

There's a question that's been nagging at me ever since Houston signed Jack Cust and Chris Snyder. It started when I read this article over at The Platoon Advantage on how historically bad a defense with Jack Cust and Carlos Lee could be.

What I thought at that point is, could Houston potentially have a below-average defensive player at every spot on the field in 2012?

I know, scary thought, right? But, it's not too far off. Walk with me through this lineup:

C Chris Snyder (-3 DRS)

1B Brett Wallace (-3.5 UZR)

2B Jose Altuve (-2.9 UZR)

SS Jed Lowrie (-4.9 UZR)

3B Jimmy Paredes (-2.3 UZR)

LF Carlos Lee (-10 UZR)

CF Jordan Schafer (-2.1 UZR)

RF Jack Cust (-7.7 UZR)

Now, I had to play around with Carlos Lee's UZR numbers in left, since he actually had a positive 2011 number there. But, honestly, is that predictive of how he'll do this season? The rest have very real sample size issues with those numbers, but most are not far off than past experience. Schafer could be above average, as could Altuve, but...

To find another Astros team that could be this bad, we have to go back to 1968. It was a different metric, but that team had none of its fielders who had at least 500 innings with a Total Zone rating above zero.

That's historically bad, and that could be where Houston is heading in 2012.

Continue reading this post »

Heading into the 2011 season the Astros starting rotation was expected to be the backbone of team. After all, the same cast of characters that led the team to a better than expected finish to the 2010 season were returning. Brett Myers and Wandy Rodriguez were able to parlay their 2010 performance into shiny contract extensions, Bud Norris’ swing and miss stuff left fans hopeful that he could turn the page, J.A. Happ made the Roy Oswalt trade hurt a little less with a solid start to his Astros tenure, and Nelson Figueroa’s strong end to the season netted him his first guaranteed contract. Unfortunately only Wandy and Bud were able to meet expectations. Myers struggled to keep the ball in the park, Happ struggled to throw strikes, and Figueroa just plain struggled.

The starting rotation was less of a sure thing this offseason as trade rumors surrounded both Myers and Wandy in the early going. Since the winter meetings there has been less and less trade chatter involving both players, and it is starting to look more and more likely that both will be Astros to start next season. Assuming this is the case Brett Myers, Wandy Rodriguez, Bud Norris, and J.A. Happ look to once again anchor the first four spots. That would leave rotation hopefuls Jordan Lyles, Aneury Rodriguez, Henry Sosa, Kyle Weiland, and Lucas Harrell to compete for one spot in spring training. Below is a brief look at the five candidates for the 5th spot in the rotation.

Continue reading this post »

Well, thanks to the crack research team at Baseball Reference, we can see every Hall of Fame ballot and voting percentages for players going back to 1936.

Here's the good news: only two players since 1972 have not been elected to the Hall of Fame after reaching at least 50 percent on a ballot. The first was Gil Hodges, who got to 50 percent on his third try at the ballot in 1971 and then fell back below the next year. Hodges spend the next decade vacillating between 50 and 60 percent of the vote before failing to get to 75 percent by his 15th season in 1983.

The other so far is is Jack Morris, who still has two more years on the ballot left and got up to 66.7 percent this season. It looks likely that Morris will get over the hump in the next two years to be elected.

Two more players, Nellie Fox and Jim Bunning, reached 50 percent during that time frame and failed to be elected during their 15 year eligibility. However, both were inducted through the Veteran's Committee eventually.

Does that mean Bagwell is a lock to get in? Not necessarily, but the increase is very encouraging. I know there are plenty of big names becoming eligible next season, but the way the voters are trending, don't expect many votes to be stolen by Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Next year will be just as crucial, with Bagwell needing to see an increase to avoid ping-ponging around like Hodges did. If he gets above 60 percent then, there's a good chance Cooperstown will come calling eventually.

Continue reading this post »

The day of reckoning is upon us and sadly it appears we're in for a bit of disappointment today. Astros County has been tracking all of the yay and nay votes for Jeff Bagwell, which currently sits at 60.3%. Chris Jaffe at The Hardball Times recently made his annual prediction on Bagwell's percentage which he predicted would be 54%. So there you have it a small bump from last year but not quite there yet.

Today on a day when we should be honoring those that do get in I wanted to do something a little more fun. So, this isn't another piece about the travesty of Bagwell not being elected to the Hall. Nor is it an article bemoaning the inconsistencies of BBWAA writers. No, instead I want to take a different more entertaining approach to Bagwell and the Hall. I wanted to compare him to the other Killer B's in the Hall of Fame.

What I did was look for all Hall of Famers with last name's that started with B. In all, I collected 19 Killer B's currently in the hall, and since I found this information via Baseball Reference we'll be using their their Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic. In terms of WAR Bagwell comes in 5th with 79.9 right behind Dan Brouthers (83.7) and ahead of Johnny Bench (71.3). The top three Killer B's starting at number three is George Brett (85), Wade Boggs (89) and Bert Blyleven (90.1). It took the top Killer B in terms of WAR 14 tries to get into the Hall of Fame; and we complain about Bagwell not getting in on his second try.

I next decided to breakdown the offensive numbers that so many voters tend to look at and compare. This obviously eliminated pitchers Blyleven, Jim Bunning (60.1), Mordecai Brown (56.1) and Chief Bender (38.5) from the discussion, but it also eliminated one position player, Willard Brown.

Now I didn't want to just gloss over Williard Brown who only produced -.8 WAR, so I did a little research. If you haven't guessed by now Brown was a Negro League player. He helped the Kansas City Monarchs to six pennants between 1937 and 1946. He spent two years in the Army during World War II. His -.8 WAR came from 1947 when he batted .179/.179/.269 in 21 games for the St. Louis Browns.

He was a star in the Negro and Puerto Rico Winter League, dubbed Home Run by Josh Gibson and earning the nickname Ese Hombre (The Man) in Puerto Rico. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Negro League Committee in 2006. If you want to read more on Willard Brown I've included the sources for this information after the jump and at the bottom of the article.

Continue reading this post »

Monday David kicked off the new year with a post about Wandy Rodriguez's trade value. He made an interesting point that I only glossed over at first, but begged the question: Has Wandy already peaked?

The general consensus around TCB seems to be that Wandy is a mid 3 pitchers in both earned run average (ERA) and field independent pitching (FIP). David pegged Rodriguez's future Wins Above Replacement (WAR) value in the 2's for the next couple of years, but I'm beginning to wonder if he'll be posting numbers in the sub 2's.That would certainly be a concern for teams and may be a reason why the trade rumors for Wandy have been light. Especially considering Rodriguez's option year will become permanent if he is traded.

2009 was arguably Rodriguez's best year. He posted a 4 WAR, a 3.54 FIP and a shiny 3.02 ERA in 205.2 innings. He followed that up with a similar campaign in 2010 with a 3.50 FIP and 3.6 WAR. His 3.60 ERA and 195 innings pitched were down but was probably attributed to his left on base percentage (LOB%) which dropped from 79.4% in 2009 to 69.4% in 2010.

This past season he posted a 1.5 WAR, which is his worst showing in WAR since 2006, when he posted a 1.1. His LOB% did jump back up to 2009 levels at 79.2% but his homerun flyball ratio spiked from 9% to 13%. He still pitched 191 innings and posted the lowest batting average on balls in play (BABIP) at .289, but the homerun rate really hurt him. His 3.49 ERA doesn't reflect the down year, but his FIP does with a 4.15. xFIP which normalizes homerun rates to league average gives a more positive outlook with a 3.72. xFIP is considered one of the better statistics at predicting year to year ERA for a player, so there's hope Wandy will bounce back next year. However there are some concerning trends with Rodriguez peripherals .

Continue reading this post »