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Monday, February 17, 2020

WEEK ONE: Tough Weekend for the BirdsofStray...: and me (TOTO Edition)

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JACKSONVILLE, FL - It could have been worse. Maybe a walk-off balk call from walking away from the series 1-2 instead of 2-1 (It was a balk!! Watch the replay, he flexes the back knee twice, plus other balky moves prior.) The week starts with projections, prognostications and watch-lists, so that's as good a place as any to start. I agree with the "best news" analysis from Baseball America about Eddie Miller.

from Baseball America:
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2020-atlantic-sun-conference-college-baseball-preview/
The best news on the mound for UNF is the return of closer Eddie Miller (1.31, 8 saves), who set the single-season ERA record for the program with his performance last year. The return of catcher Tanner Clark (.306/.407/.398), who was an effective part of the lineup in a limited role last season, will help, but UNF’s offensive success will likely be closely tied to the success of power-hitting junior college transfers in first baseman Trey Spratling-Williams and third baseman Ricky Presno.
I also agree with the assessment of Tanner Clark and the afterthought about the infusion of talent from the JUCO ranks, but first let's flesh out the analysis from graduation of last year. The Birds of Stray lost five productive mainstays from last year lineup due to graduation.



Gory Math details:
Based on their OBA/SPct and # of AB's these five hitters produced almost 18 Wins above Replacement (WAR). Replacement being the "next man up" or next best available bat after the first nine starters (since we DH). WAR is calculated by multiplying (OBA * Slugging Pct * # AB's) to come up with Runs Created attributable to that players production. Approximately 9 Runs Created equals 1 Win, so RC / 9 = WAR. You can adjust each hitters raw RC (and therefore WAR) by adjusting AB's to 200. 
So, losing Wesley Weeks, Alex Reynolds, Chris Berry, Tanner Murphy and Jay Prather sets the 2020 Ospreys back about 18 wins, but creates the opportunity of about 1,050 AB's or five new lineup slots open to competition.


Presumably, returning upperclassmen from the prior year scarf up the spots. But five is a lot of slots. The best RC or WAR values from returning players are shown above and after adjustment to 200 AB's, we see what appears to be 14 of the 18 wins coming back except for two things. Maberry is gone to parts unknown, for reasons unknown, taking 3.60 WAR and a productive RH bat with him. The 3.60 WAR gets replaced, but at ~ 1.95 replacement level. So now, we're down 5.65 because of some stupid childish shit or a lack of leadership. Self-inflicted wounds are the worst.

But wait, there's more.

As Baseball America alludes to, Tanner Clark blah, blah, blah "in a limited role"  presumably with Hurwitz, also a C, also a LH hitter, so it's not a pure platoon role that limited him. I'm not sure they aren't questioning why one can't DH while the other C's so you can share the catching workload while not losing a productive bat. Don't know what other factors might be in play, but in a perfect world they both get 200 AB's in a season rather than 200 in total. Doubling both of their AB's this year would recapture about 3 of those lost wins. That's a simple lineup optimization fix. Once again, avoid self-inflicted wounds, your opponent will make enough of them for you.

So, five lineup openings, Marabell and May plus either Clark/Hurwitz or Clark and Hurwitz, gives you at worst two, maybe only one JUCO that must step forward and produce. More AB's flowing to Hurwitz and Clark starts to tip the lineup a bit to the left side. Given that the three most prominent JUCO hitters (Presno, Spratling-Williams and West) are also LH poses a bit of a lefty-righty dilemma.

Given that a) runs will be harder to come by this year versus last and b) it's hard to see too many instances of subbing for defense, it seems that lineup optimization to squeeze out as many runs as possible is Priority 1 ahead of platooning or defensive substitutions.

Last years team missed Win Expectation by 2.50 Wins last year based on the RC formula from above and applying the Pytagorean Theorem for Baseball to calculate Wins Expected. The difference there could arise from a couple of blowouts skewing the data or optimizing your lineup to produce the most runs possible.




If we assume that the pitching staff holds opponents to roughly the same numbers (ceteris paribus) as last year, which is not unrealistic, We get the following numbers as far as RC -> opponents RC -> Est. Win Pct -> Est. Wins. We did lose quite a bit of talent on the pitching side, but the returning pipeline of talent seems to be there to replace the graduates.


Pitching has some runway to regress back to 2019 numbers while hitters will have to improve into the teeth of opposition pitching that gets tougher as the schedule gets longer. Same is true for the pitchers about batters faced, but they have some breathing room for now. I thought we would fatten up the hitting statistics in this series, but that's in the past. If the staff can hold the fort on their side, especially early in the season, the hitters don't have to do as much early and the talent has time to acclimate.

And yes Virginia, there is a difference between JUCO and D1 Baseball. If you don't believe me see Jeff Zimmerman's FanGraphs article from 6/28/2016 on the subject where he found that transitions from JUCO to D1 averaged:

-.063 AVG,  -.057 OPB,  -.067 SLG, K's +4.5% of ABs and BB% -0.6% of AB's

Those numbers would be acceptable off a weekend where our JUCO hitters posted two hits in 25 AB's. It's still early and anybody can be almost anything over the course of 40 AB's, even in the major leagues. You need to see where everyone stands after 400 AB's.







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