Community Projection Review: Center Field
by Charlie on Oct 13, 2009 4:20 PM EDT
27 comments
Next up in our review of our community projections is Nate McLouth.
Community: .276/.355/.480
ZiPS: .261/.342/.459
Actual (including time with the Braves): .256/.352/.436
Bonus: We predicted McLouth would get his first caught stealing on May 21; actually, he didn't get one until June 22, although he got six overall with the Braves, including four after returning in September from a hamstring injury.
ZiPS got us good here, although it's worth pointing out that McLouth hit .256/.349/.470 with the Bucs. The closest guesser was mocasdad, who had McLouth at .260/.340/.440.
The McLouth deal will, I think, turn out to be one of Neal Huntington's better ones, even if Gorkys Hernandez never pans out. Charlie Morton alone could make the trade a good one, and if Jeff Locke makes it, well, all the better. The Bucs got three interesting players for one they didn't really need that desperately.
McLouth was perfectly functional in 2009, but he still took a large step backward--he hit for less average and power, he was less healthy, and he stole bases less effectively. UZR says his defense did improve, but those things can fluctuate a lot from year to year, and my guess there is that he's still slightly below average overall. (The very low statistical ratings he got in 2008 were a little bit ridiculous, and so, probably, is the idea that he was above average this year.)
The McLouth trade probably wasn't based primarily on a position crunch, but McLouth may have greased the wheels for a trade by balking, at least at first, at the idea of moving to a corner. This would have put the Pirates in the awkward situation of having two good centerfielders (Andrew McCutchen, who was banging on the door at AAA, and Nyjer Morgan) in the corners and a mediocre centerfielder actually in center. It's not entirely clear what McLouth's position on the matter was--Doug Mientkiewicz claimed at one point that McLouth wasn't willing to move, but then Dejan Kovacevic later wrote that McLouth might have been willing to move but didn't feel he should have to "automatically forfeit the position." Which begs the question of how exactly McLouth thought a determination should have been made--paper/rock/scissors, maybe? Anyway, McLouth has value as a sort of marginal centerfielder, but not so much to a team that has McCutchen, and as a corner outfielder, McLouth is fine but nothing special.
In any case, the Bucs immediately replaced McLouth with a much better player in McCutchen. McLouth and McCutchen actually have a fair amount in common: they're both high-percentage basestealers with a broad base of hitting skills. But McCutchen is much faster and thus has better range in center, and he also hit for better average and power than McLouth in 2009 and is likely to continue to improve. McCutchen was highly regarded before being promoted, but even so, his major-league debut was surprisingly good. Here's his community projection, which we did back in March:
Community: .264/.334/.392
ZiPS: .261/.337/.362
Actual: .286/.365/.471
Oops! I love it when we make these kinds of mistakes. Anyway, the closest guesser was Matt Bandi, who predicted McCutchen would go .280/.340/.400, so no one got terribly close. (UPDATE: Oops! Actually, Brakeman8 had McCutchen at .280/.340/.415. Sorry!)
The fact that McCutchen surpassed expectations to such a great degree (he even left his 90% PECOTA projection in the dust) might lead us to believe that he'll come back to earth next year. That certainly might happen to a degree, but I'm less worried about it than I might be in some cases. Most of McCutchen's surprising growth came from his power, which scouts have always thought he would add--it was just a matter of when. That he would suddenly add it at 22 is younger than I would have expected for a player with his body type, but the power is clearly legitimate: he belted the ball all year. And as I've written before--actually, I wrote it about McLouth back when he was a young player--well-rounded young hitters set themselves up for power breakouts by controlling the strike zone and having a broad base of skills from which to draw. The power breakouts don't always happen, but they happen enough that we shouldn't be too surprised when they do. Anything can happen, but there's really nothing to dislike about McCutchen going forward.
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+15 pounds of solid muscle over the off-season doesn’t show up in the projection formula.
by Adam Reynolds on Oct 13, 2009 5:17 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Charlie:
It’s McClouth.
Don’t you know anything?
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Oct 13, 2009 10:16 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Is there a chart somewhere that lists MLE, ZIPS and actual numbers for players and how close they were?
That would be interesting to see.
by MarkInDallas on Oct 14, 2009 12:15 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
The key
“The Bucs got three interesting players for one they didn’t really need that desperately.”
That’s the key phrase in my view. Having a bunch of talent lets you make trades to build a team. Once there’s a decent option in view for a couple of positions, being a GM gets a lot easier.
Viva Clemente!
by Roberto on Oct 14, 2009 12:46 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Good point
I was always of two minds about the McLouth trade: to me, it represented a white flag on 2009, which is hard to take on a team playing over .500 ball in May*; at the same time, it was a great trade in the big picture. Even though I’m still not completely sold on Morton, it’s a lot of talent for one redundant player.
Indeed, the biggest frustration about Pearce failing this year is that he would have been a nice, expendable trade piece. Not that we would have gotten 3 good players for him, but he could well have netted a Ronny Cedeno-level 2B. Hard to see surplus at any other position (well, C and OF, but only in the best cases of Tabata and Gorkys succeeding or Doumit returning to form while JJ, Diaz, and Sanchez all come on strong).
- I don’t recall their actual record at the time, but their pythag record was well over .500
by JRoth95 on Oct 14, 2009 5:58 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Nobody should have needed a white flag on 2009.
I’m confused by people who see it as some kind of surrender on the season – the season was already lost in spring training. Hell, if you’re going to be technical, the season was as good as lost three years ago, thanks to Creech’s poor drafts.
If you were lying to yourself about their chances, in the teeth of the evidence, then I have trouble having much sympathy for your disappointment. You should’ve known better.
by Vlad on Oct 15, 2009 10:21 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
So why not forfeit all 162?
I mean, seriously, wtf? They should just literally not try to win any games because they were (overwhelmingly) unlikely to make the playoffs?
How many projected wins should a team have before they should try to win? 85? 90? 108?
by JRoth95 on Oct 18, 2009 12:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I don't appreciate...
…that level of intellectual dishonesty in responses to my posts. If you keep it up, I’ll just stop talking to you.
In order to act like a contender and be treated like a contender, a team should have the talent on hand necessary to contend, for whatever value of “contend” you use. Unless your value was “might break 70 wins”, then the 2009 team never had that kind of talent on hand, and if you thought they did, you were gravely mistaken.
Teams should always, up to a minimum level of commitment, TRY to win games… but only legitimate contenders should be willing to compromise long-term goals in order to improve their short-term chances.
by Vlad on Oct 19, 2009 10:30 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Sorry
I actually had a longer comment that was less snarky, but seemed too longwinded, so I ditched it. I’m not trying to be a dick, but frankly your “If you were lying to yourself about their chances […] then I have trouble having much sympathy for your disappointment” didn’t exactly strike me as respectful.
That said, I’m not sure what you think “running up the white flag” means. The 2009 Pirates started the season with 6 100% MLB position players (all but Moss and Andy), 3-4 100% legit MLB SPs, and 3-4 100% legit relievers. A team like that is making a good faith effort to win baseball games, even if it doesn’t have the talent to win 80 or 90 games. If you add, say, a ROY-grade prospect to that team, you may even be approaching an 80-win club (remember, the team had a Pythag record above .500 at the time of the Morgan trade, halfway through the season).
In contrast, the post-July Pirates roster did not represent a good faith effort to win games. It featured no more than 3 100% legitimate MLB position players, 3-4 100% legit SPs, and 2 100% legit relievers. Their .250 record was earned, not a fluke.
My point was that you don’t seem to be distinguishing between those two cases – either way, by your logic, the “season was lost in spring training.” I’m saying there’s a difference, and that the McLouth trade signaled that they were headed towards the latter.
by JRoth95 on Oct 19, 2009 2:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I object to the premise...
…that they aren’t even “trying” to win if they send out a lineup that doesn’t include numerous established major leaguers. Yes, the team performed worse after the trade deadline than before it (playing at a .305 clip, with a slightly better Pyth – not .250), but that doesn’t mean that the team wasn’t trying to win games. Quite honestly, I saw significantly more effort down the stretch than I expected, given the position of the team in the standings.
From what I can tell, you seem to be assuming that the team’s pre-Nate trade record was representative of their true level of ability purely because it was supported by their Pyth up until that point, and I think that’s incorrect. Pyth record just tells you whether a team is winning more or fewer games than they “should” based on their offensive and run-preventative outputs – it doesn’t tell you whether those rates of production and prevention are accurate representations of the team’s true ability, or whether they can be sustained going forward.
To me, it seems pretty clear that the team was playing over its head in approaching .500, which is why I found the trades of veterans to be relatively unsurprising. If the team had interpreted that record as genuine, they would’ve been trading guys like Lincoln and Tabata for veterans to shore up the roster, moves that in the long run would be counterproductive as far as getting a legitimately .500+ roster together in the future.
by Vlad on Oct 19, 2009 4:21 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Did I say "established"?
No I did not. In fact, I included Nyjer Morgan among “100% legit MLers.” I even thought about whether to include Andy in that category for the second-half team, but I can’t do so in good faith. If you squint just right, he could be a legit MLer, but he’s simply not in the category of guys who would be in the running for a starting position with a plurality of ML teams (at any given position, some chunk of teams already have an All-Star, and another chunk are happy with what they’ve got, even if it’s not All-Star grade).
I completely understand and agree with your point about Pythag record – I know it’s not a secret indicator of a team’s “true” talent level. But I also think that RS and RA over ~80 games indicates something about a team, and so I bring it up to preempt claims that the pre-June team was indistinguishable from the post-July team (a claim that is made, implicitly, in basically every thread here). The pre-June team featured exactly zero players outperforming their expected talent; indeed, it was missing Doumit, and Adam was doing his standard slow start. Do I think they should have traded prospects in June and July? Of course not. And, as I said, I thought, then and now, that the McLouth trade made sense. But it was a clear signal that the FO viewed 2009 as nothing more than a formality.
As for “trying,” I’m not talking about individual efforts. If Neal Huntington put me on the field, by God I’d be trying as hard as humanly possible, but no sane observer would say that NH was “trying” to win games with me on the roster. Playing Delwyn Young at 2B every day is not trying to win games. It’s an experiment to see whether DY could, someday, be 2B for a major league team that wins games. A lot of people think that’s what the minor leagues are for.
by JRoth95 on Oct 19, 2009 11:12 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
It's not that the two teams were indistinguishable from one another.
It’s that neither team had a realistic chance of contention. It’s like the difference between a PowerBall ticket for this week’s drawing and a PowerBall ticket for last week’s. The former has a better chance of making you rich than the latter, but the chance of success for either is tiny enough to make both poor investment strategies.
If people think that there’s no place for experiments in the majors, then those people are wrong. Just look at the Cardinals, who spent the spring “experimenting” with an OF-to-2B conversion for a guy with significanlty less 2B experience than Young. It worked, and they won the division title. Furthermore, any team trying to build through young talent is going to have to try tons of “experiments”, as almost all young players require an adjustment period before becoming productive veterans. That’s the whole reason for the post-deadline roster expansion (and the restrictions on service time accumulated during it): To let teams that are out of the race experiment and thus better themselves for next year.
I have a hard time believing that LaRoche wouldn’t start for a good number of teams in baseball. He ranked 15th among ML 3B in WAR this year, which in and of itself means that he was better than the best available option for 16 teams (us and the 15 teams with starters worse than him), without even including the ROI from him being a minimum-salary player. To keep him out, you have to use an awfully strict standard for “legit”.
by Vlad on Oct 20, 2009 10:44 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
WAR
WAR – for better and for worse – places a lot of weight on just showing up. Andy started 150 games, which means that 2.1 of his 2.6 WAR came from staying healthy and not having anyone viable behind him. Now, if he truly sucked, he’d have dragged that down, instead of bumping it up a bit, but let’s be clear about where his value came from. For example, ARam has the exact same WAR, because he played about 2/3 as many games – think the Cubs would swap straight-up?
Put it this way – when you look at qualified players, Andy is 9th from the bottom*, or 15th of 23. That makes him a 33rd percentile 3B among 3Bs who played the position (basically) all year. As I said, I considered him in my list (note that it’s “100% legit” – I’m going for a relatively strict standard, because I’m trying to distinguish between, say, a Maholm, who’s 100% legit, a Gorzo, who’s legit, and a JVB, who’s simply not a MLB player) for the end of season group, and he’s close. I just don’t think he’s a guy who, if he were cut loose, would have a line of suitors (to the extent that he did, it would be based mostly on price and potential, not present production). He’s a cheap, young, healthy guy who doesn’t hurt you in the field.
Anyway, if you want me to include Andy, then the pre-trades team had 7 MLB position players (with #8, Cutch, waiting in the wings) and the post-trade team has 4. I’m not sure it really hurts my argument
- And should be lower – Cantu, frex, is below him, but only played 1/3 of his games at 3B. I’m not going to check all these guys, so let’s agree to ignore it.
by JRoth95 on Oct 20, 2009 12:40 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I don't think you can just overlook...
…the fact that there were a significant number of teams who didn’t have anyone capable of “staying healthy and showing up”. Minnesota, for instance, probably would’ve loved to have LaRoche on hand, since it would’ve kept them from having to start filler guys like Harris and Buscher, or work on fixing Crede’s bad back. When a team has a starting 3B who’s too fragile to play every day, or who has to be strictly platooned, or who plays badly enough to lose the job in June, then that carries a real opportunity cost with it.
Cantu is below LaRoche in part because Cantu is a terrible defensive 3B. In 2,000+ career innings there, most within the last two years, UZR has him as a -14.7/150 at third base (plus a -04.0/150 in 1,800 career innings at second base). As an everyday 3B in 2008, he had the best offensive season of his career, batted .277 with 29 HR and 41 2B… and finished only 0.3 WAR ahead of LaRoche’s 2009 because he can’t field a lick.
It doesn’t really matter much to the argument – I just hate seeing people slag on LaRoche unfairly.
by Vlad on Oct 20, 2009 3:52 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
That should've been...
…(-14.0/150) for Cantu’s career 2B rating.
by Vlad on Oct 20, 2009 3:53 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Yeah, I saw Cantu’s terrible defensive numbers; but he played so little 3B that the Marlins had another guy who qualified for the batting title playing mostly 3B.
There’s something – even a lot – to be said for a healthy, competent 3B. But not every team that failed to have a qualifying 3B would have taken LaRoche over what they had – again, the Cubs being a prime example. And it’s not like LaRoche has never been hurt – his hand last year apparently was a big deal, even though he played through it.
Anyway, I think we understand each other here.
by JRoth95 on Oct 20, 2009 11:20 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Back to my original snark
Your first para is exactly where we’re disagreeing – I’m saying that it matters to me – as a fan who listens to 150 games a year and likes to attend ~10 – whether or not the product on the field is a bunch of bums. Whether the non-bums can win the WS this year is a separate issue. You seem to be saying that, once the team falls below, say, 85 win potential, it doesn’t matter at all who takes the field (except insofar as it impacts the future).
by JRoth95 on Oct 20, 2009 12:45 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I think it matters...
…just not enought that they should be scared to cross that threshold if it means a better team in future seasons.
by Vlad on Oct 20, 2009 3:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
To put it another way
There’s a difference between serving greasy spoon-quality food and serving rotten stuff pulled from the Dumpster. Your comment strikes me as saying, “Hey, you knew it wasn’t Le Mont, so why are you complaining about the e. coli?” I didn’t appreciate the Pirates serving me shit sandwiches for 3 months.
by JRoth95 on Oct 19, 2009 2:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
The root cause of the team's struggles...
…was not the trades of veterans, but the lack of quality internal replacements at almost any position, stemming from an overall dearth of system depth. That is, in a nutshell, the weakness that the trades were meant to address.
Thus, Huntington and Co. were in effect serving you crap this year while they had the kitchen fumigated, to make sure that you’d never get poisoned again.
by Vlad on Oct 19, 2009 4:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Hey!!!!
I predicted .280/.340/.415. Although I also though he was going to do that in only 125 ABs. lol
by Brakeman8 on Oct 14, 2009 2:23 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I’m not taking any chances with Cutch. I predict:
.406/.520/.814 (I think his power will plateau a bit, as you can see).
Honestly, I’m a bit surprised that the community guesses were so low, or at least there don’t seem to have been outliers on the high end. The guy was pretty clearly ready for the bigs – not being rushed at all – and no one ever questioned any aspect of his hitting game. I’m not saying I would’ve guessed what he did – I can’t imagine what I would have projected – but, if nothing else, the AVG is so low for a guy who showed plate discipline as a teenager.
I guess I’ll provide a “low range” projection as well:
.295/.380/.450. I think he’ll avoid a protracted slump like he had this September, and I think that, as pitchers start to avoid him a bit, he’ll take all the walks they give him.
by JRoth95 on Oct 14, 2009 5:52 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Actually, Azibuck’s prediction was an upper outlier, but it was so high that it wasn’t as close as some of the guesses that turned out to be way too low.
by Charlie on Oct 14, 2009 10:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
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