# Bryce Harper and the Three True Outcomes

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.

# This has to be the year.

I’m not going to write about how Washington beat the Nats in the home opener yesterday. I already went ballistic about that on twitter.

So, instead, I’m going to write about why you should be “all-in” (God, I hate that expression) on the 2014 Nats. No, it’s not because my projection has them winning 96 games.

Rather, it’s because of this article in the Post. In it, Adam Kilgore talks to Nats principal owner Mark Lerner. What Uncle Mark says  about the Nats payroll going forward is not very encouraging:

“We’re beyond topped out,” Lerner said. “Our payroll has skyrocketed to like $140 million. It’s in the papers. I don’t think we can go much further with the revenue streams that we have.” * * * * “We take it one at a time,” Lerner said. “We’ll look at it after the season as far as what we can do. We went into this thing, it’s a business. We’ve got to run it smartly. We’re not going to do something where we’re losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Anybody can understand that. We’re going to be smart.” First of all, the Nats payroll is not “like, 140 million.” According to Baseball Reference, in 2014, the Nats have committed$135.8 million in guaranteed salary in 2014. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not 140 million. The difference of $4.2 million could have gotten you another Nate McLouth, say. Or one year of Hyun-Jin Ryu as a left handed starting pitcher. So it’s not chump change. But things start getting hairy, fast. Let’s look at the young core and see where the trouble might come from: • The Nats bought out Ian Desmond’s remaining arbitration years this offseason in a two-year,$17.5 million dollar deal. That means, barring an extension at the end of 2015, Ian Desmond will hit the open market in 2016.
• Likewise, the Nats bought out Jordan Zimmermann’s arbitration years. He’s under contract for 2014 and 2015, for a total of $24 million. Barring an extension, he will also become a free agent in 2016. • The Nats have opted instead to go year-to-year with Stephen Strasburg. In 2014, he’s owed$3.975 million. He would remain arbitration-eligible until 2017, at which point he, too, will become a free agent.
• Drew Storen is also year-to-year, and still arbitration-eligible after this year. He’s making $3.45 million this year. He will become a free agent in 2017. • Bryce Harper’s free agent days are a long way away. In 2014, he’ll make$0.9 million. (That’s right, less than one million dollars) He’s under contract through 2015, after which he’d be eligible for arbitration. He won’t become a free agent until 2018, by my count.

What’s it going to take to keep all of these guys around? I don’t know. But we can make a few guesses.

Desmond is the second-best shortstop in the National League, behind the Rockies’ Troy Tulowitzki and ahead of the Braves Andrelton Simmons. Both of those guys are under long-term contracts, so it’s worth looking at them. In 2011, the Rockies gave Tulo a 10-year, $157.75 million dollar contract. The Braves just extended Andrelton Simmons for 7 years at$58 million, heavily back-loaded. It’s not unreasonable to think that Desmond would demand Tulo-type money on the free agent market. So, 10 years, $160 to$170 million. Call it $16.5 million a year for 10 years. That bill comes due in 2016. Jordan Zimmermann is likely going to hit the open market. What’s he worth? It’s harder to find comparables for pitchers. But recent research over at Beyond the Box Score tells us that a Win Above Replacement is worth about$7 million a year these days. Jordan Zimmermann is a pretty good pitcher. He’s worth about 3 wins above replacement a year. Fine. That’s $21 million a year right there. That bill also comes due in 2016. We can do the same for Storen. He’s worth about a third of a WAR every year. So call it$2 million a year, coming due in 2016, too.

Same deal with Strasburg. He’s worth anywhere between 3 and 4 WAR a year. Say we believe the hype. Fine. That’s anywhere between $21 and$28 million a year, starting in 2017.

And Harper? His West Coast analog, Mike Trout, just signed a 6-year $144.5 million extension with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in Orange County California. The new contract takes effect in 2015, comes with full no-trade protection, and works out to an average annual value of$24 million a year. Harper’s going to want that kind of money, and if the Nats won’t give it to him, the Yankees probably will (thus fulfilling Harper’s lifelong dream of wearing Yankee pinstripes) .

So the young core that, all together, costs the Nats $22.3 million in 2014 will cost something on the order of$88.5 million a year, collectively, in 2018.

Seen in the context of Lerner’s “payroll limit” talk, here’s what it means for you, Nats town: if you like these nats–that is, if you like these players and enjoy seeing them on the field together, enjoy them while you can. There is no way–none–that the current ownership group is going to tolerate a payroll spike of that magnitude.

Remember, the Lerners acquired the Nationals franchise from MLB for \$450 million in 2006. I’m not aware of any details as to the club’s finances, but it’s pretty safe to assume that the acquisition was heavily debt-financed. It’s a sound business practice to take on considerable debt to buy a business, then transfer the debt to the business. So the Nationals, as an organization, probably have a lot of debt service to pay every year. That acts as a brake on profits and investment in the business (in this case, players).

This is to say nothing about the continued swindle that is the MASN deal, that sees Nats TV dollars shipped to Baltimore. Of course, it’s also speculated that the Lerners (or the Nats, it’s not clear) are getting kickbacks to prevent them from pursuing the MASN matter more vigorously.

So look out onto that field and dream big, Nats town. Dream hard. Dream as if your very ability to dream depended on it. Because soon, this team that Rizzo built, that we all came to see? It will be gone. As Denard Span so famously said on Twitter just before Opening day: it’s our time.

# I’m sorry, Nats Town.

I try very hard not to blog out of emotion. There’s a lot of feeling out there–mostly on sports talk radio–and not enough thinking. If you follow me on twitter, you know that I’m pretty emotional when I watch Nats games. Lately, most of those emotions are bad.

So I want to apologize, Nats town. I’m sorry. As winter thawed to spring, I projected the Nats for an unbelievable 98 wins and the division crown. As I write this, the Nats are 48-52, in third place behind Philadelphia, and eight games back from the division-leading Braves.

I don’t think they’re going to catch up.

When I projected the Nats to win all those games, I assumed two things: the starting lineup would be healthy, and everybody was going to perform in line with their four-year trailing averages.

By this time, my model would have expected the Nats to have scored some 448 runs. They have scored only 367 to date. The disappointments are all across the board.

Let’s look at the differences:

According to my pre-season model, Jayson Werth should have 63 wRC by now. He has accumulated only 44–a difference of 19 runs over 100 games. Given his tremendous performance since his return from the disabled list, we can safely assume that his time away accounts for the difference in runs.

Injury also robbed the Nats of nearly a month of Bryce Harper’s services. By now, according to my model, he should have accounted for 59 wRC. He has accumulated only 42: a difference of 17 runs.

More perplexing is the offensive decline of Denard Span. According to my model, he should have accounted for 54 wRC by now; he only has 40, a difference of 14 runs. Every time I see him, he seems to ground out sharply to second base–a gut feeling reinforced by the fact that his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) stands at .300, down from his career BABIP of .315. Perhaps he was due for a regression in BABIP eventually? I don’t know.

The single biggest offensive failure of the Nats in the first 100 games of the 2013 season was their stubborn insistence on Danny Espinosa. We now know that Espinosa was suffering through a number of injuries that sapped him of power–his ISO (Isolated power) numbers dropped from a career .165 to .114 this year. The power outage, coupled with his high strikeout rate (28.1% this year, slightly up from his career K% of 27.1%), rendered him an offensive black hole and an automatic “out” for opposing pitchers. Had Espinosa been at least as healthy as he was in 2011 and 2012, my model expected him to have accumulated 42 wRC by now. He accumulated 4. That’s a difference of 38 runs.

Put another way: if Danny Espinosa had been as I expected him to be this year, and if the Nats had allowed exactly as many runs as they have to this point (392 runs), the Nats would be five wins better.

Put yet one more way: Danny Espinosa was so bad compared to how I projected him that the shortfall that he created in my projections is greater than the shortfall created by the injuries to Harper and Werth combined.

Espinosa’s offensive failings, we can say, helped put the Nats in a very deep hole–one that they might not manage to climb out of. Every team struggles. Nobody in the NL East seems to be winning as I write this. And yet, the Nats have fallen into third place because of their lousy start.

This wasn’t Rick Eckstein’s fault, or Davey Johnson’s, or, really Danny Espinosa’s fault. This was General Manager Mike Rizzo’s fault. His “scout’s eye” might have told him something was wrong with Espinosa. The power outage was, in hindsight, evident from the beginning and showed no sign of abating. He knew that Espinosa had at least two injuries that were likely causing his offensive struggles. And yet, for months, Rizzo did nothing, despite the fact that Espinosa had a minor-league option left.

Instead, we kept telling ourselves that it was early, that things were going to come around. For some things did come around–notably Jayson Werth and Wilson Ramos (the latter of which, I should add, is 10 wRC better than my model had him at this point of the year, despite having played a fraction of the time due to an extended DL stint). But for Espinosa, it never did.

I wish I could offer some hope. I wish I could tell you that, no, the Nats offense had every chance of breaking out. I can’t. This is what we’ve got to look forward to.

I’m sorry, everybody. I’m really, really sorry.

# What the hell is the matter with Bryce Harper?

Bursitis.

Oh, you wanted more? Fine:

Bryce Harper doesn’t know how to play outfield very well yet. He makes up for this by being unbelievably fast. But where his bad route to a ball intersects with a wall, that same speed results in painful collisions.

That’s heresy, right? How dare I impugn the defensive skills of the National League’s fifth-best outfielder (by UZR) in 2012? Yes, Bryce Harper posted a ridiculous 9.5 UZR in 2012–that is, his outfield defense prevented 9.5 runs from scoring on the 2012 Nats. That’s pretty good, right?

Sure. But let’s remember that UZR is a highly unstable measure of defensive ability–that is, we need a pretty big sample size to be sure of what we’re looking at:

How many UZR opportunities do you need for UZR to be reliable? There isn’t any magic number. If I asked you how many AB you need before a player’s BA becomes reliable, you would likely answer, “I don’t know. The more the merrier I guess.” That is true with UZR and with all metrics. Of course, for some metrics, you need more or less data than for other metrics for an equivalent reliability. It depends on the sampling error and the spread in underlying talent, and other things that are inherent in that metric. Most of you are familiar with OPS, on base percentage plus slugging average. That is a very reliable metric even after one season of performance, or around 600 PA. In fact, the year-to-year correlation of OPS for full-time players, somewhat of a proxy for reliability, is almost .7. UZR, in contrast, depending on the position, has a year-to-year correlation of around .5. So a year of OPS data is roughly equivalent to a year and half to two years of UZR.

This makes intuitive sense, in a way. To gather information about a player’s defense, we have to put a ball in play somewhere near that player and give him a chance to make a defensive play. In some cases, that happens pretty often–think of a second baseman or a shortstop taking ground balls. Other times, it’s less often–think of an outfielder (like, say, Harper!) standing around as his starting pitcher (like, say, Strasburg!) strikes out batter after batter.

All of this is to say that even though UZR says Harper likely saved 9.5 runs for the 2012 Nats, that might not really be the truest measure of Harper’s defensive prowess in the outfield–although, again, it’s the best we can do for now.

But let’s just take the one year of data and look at it  more closely, OK?

Now, UZR is broken up into components, each of which makes sense if you imagine yourself playing baseball. First, as the ball is put in play, you have to react to the ball, get to where it’s going, and put yourself in a position to make the play. The distance you cover to get to that ball is your range. Thus, the runs that you save because you can get to the ball (instead of letting it go by you) are Range runs, denoted RngR. Bigger is better here–this means you’re actually getting to the ball and getting a glove on it. That’s good news for your ball club.

Next, once you’ve got the ball, you might need to throw it somewhere in a hurry. Maybe you need to turn a double play, or maybe you need to hit a cutoff man, or maybe you’re trying to gun down a runner at the plate. You need a pretty good and accurate arm to do any of those things. The runs you save because of your good and accurate arm are Arm runs, denoted ARM.

Finally, things don’t always go your way. Maybe you get to the ball, then boot it. Or maybe your arm is strong, but not accurate; or accurate, but nowhere near strong enough. To err is human, of course. Runs you cost your team because of your errors are–shocker–error runs, denoted ErrR.

Now, let’s look at each of those components for 2012 Bryce Harper. Harper has 5.4 RngR, which tells us that he’s got pretty good range for an outfielder. His arm is absurd: 6.2 ARM,  best in the National League in 2012. He does goof every so often, though, giving up -2.1 ErrR. That all adds up to his 9.5 UZR.

Now let’s do the hack thing and compare Harper to Mike Trout, another phenomenal young outfielder.

Trout posts a higher UZR of 13.3, fourth-best in the American League in 2012. What’s interesting is that he does this despite a not-so-great ARM (-3.8). So, if Trout costs his team runs with a weak/inaccurate arm, whence comes this outrageous defensive skill? Well, Trout doesn’t make many mistakes. In fact, he makes fewer mistakes than average, so that’s worth 0.4 ErrR. The real story is that Trout has absurd range, with RngR of 16.7–best in the American League!

Now, think about what that means, for a second. What does it mean when we say that an outfielder has good range? It means he gets to balls that other outfielders might not be able to reach. There are three parts to fielding a ball in play in the outfield: first, you have to know the ball is coming to you. Then, you need to figure out where that ball is going to be, and how best to get there. Finally, you have to run to that spot and make the play.

Mike Trout has been playing the outfield for quite some time. He played the outfield as an amateur. He has, in his short life thus far, seen many more balls hit towards him in the outfield than Bryce Harper has. No wonder, too– Harper was an catcher as an amateur, and was only turned into an outfielder after he turned professional.

Now, Trout and Harper are built similarly. I don’t have the data, but let’s assume that they have similar reaction times. They can see equally well. They run more or less the same speed (fast!), jump more or less the same height (high!). I submit that the vast difference between Harper and Trout’s range has nothing to do with the raw physical part of fielding–the running to where the ball is going to be. It has everything to do with the first and second parts of the process–seeing the ball and picking the best route to the ball.

This is a long way of saying that Harper’s propensity to run into, at, or through outfield walls has nothing at all to do with his willingness to play hard, or play “the right way,” or whatever. Harper runs into walls, or pulls up at warning tracks, or sprints towards fly balls in the gap because he just doesn’t know where he is on the outfield. He makes up for his lack of skill by employing that prodigious physical gift of speed. It is a testament to Harper’s raw speed that his range is as good as it is at all.

The trouble is, of course, when those sub-optimal routes, taken at breath-taking speed, intersect with walls. That’s why he has bursitis now.

The good news here is that there is every indication that Harper will learn to be a better outfielder as he gains more experience. This is exciting, because if he can get better jumps on balls and make fewer mistakes, he can bring his absurdly powerful arm into play even more often.

Bryce Harper is good at baseball. He is not yet good at playing outfield. He is probably going to become very good at that soon, though–and that will be fun to watch.

Again, notice: this isn’t about Harper’s mentality, or whether he’s playing “too hard,” or whether he believes he can blast through walls like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man. This is just about a 20 year old kid learning to play baseball better tomorrow than he did today.

# Bryce Harper, Cricketer

My good friend Stu over at How Do I Baseball called attention to Bryce Harper’s extreme front-foot batting mechanics in this post today. Go over and read it.

The upshot: “orthodox” baseball batting technique will tell you that Harper, by taking his back foot off the ground, is somehow over-committing and giving up power. As Dave Nichols said:

But, as Stu pointed out, the extreme front-foot batting mechanics aren’t unheard of. Frank Thomas did the same thing from the right handed batter’s box–and nobody ever said The Big Hurt wasn’t a good power hitter.

After comparing Harper to Frank Thomas, Stu went on to wonder:

It will be interesting to see how far Harper can take his unorthodox hitting mechanics, and how much success can be obtained with them. While many would believe that this front foot approach would make a hitter susceptible to offspeed pitches, if Harper’s two HR’s off of Marlins starter Ricky Nolasco are any indication- both were hit off of offspeed offerings – he has made the proper adjustments to make him fall victim to offspeed and breaking pitches less frequently in 2013 than he did in 2012, using these hitting mechanics.

What struck me, when looking at Harper’s home runs on Monday, was how familiar they seemed–not to baseball players and fans, but to devotees of the other great ball-and-bat sport on this planet: Cricket. To answer Stu’s question directly, the body of cricket scholarship suggests that Harper can be very successful indeed with his “unorthodox” mechanics–because, at least as they presented themselves on Monday, they were perfectly orthodox cricket batting mechanics.

Such extreme front-foot batting technique isn’t unusual in cricket–in fact, it’s extremely orthodox. Have a look at the BBC’s cricket skills pages, and you’ll see this batting technique:

The straight drive in cricket, as played by a right-handed batsman. Notice: the right (rear) foot is practically off the ground, just like Harper batting

This shot is the straight drive. Now let’s look at Harper’s home run swing [UPDATE: I erroneously ID’d the following photo as having been from Monday. Analysis still holds, but if anyone has a photo of Harper’s HR swings from Monday, post it in the comments]:

Harper’s home run stroke, shamelessly ganked from Stu’s post at HDIB. Notice the similarity to the cricket shot?

Harper’s head is over the front knee–aided by the extreme unweighting of his back foot. As England Test Captain Michael Vaughn explains here:

The most important thing for me is to get your head over [your] front leg…now if your head stays mid-centre, the ball has to go square of the wicket.

[In baseball terms: if you’re trying to hit off the front foot, but try to keep your head back, the ball will be pulled foul on your pull side]. Vaughn goes on to explain the role of the back foot in maintaining proper head/body alignment: unweighting the back leg forces the head to go forward naturally, putting the head over the front leg and enabling the player to hit, as we would say in baseball, a line drive only moderately to his pull side.

Notice also that Harper’s bat is surprisingly vertical when he makes contact with the ball–which recalls the orthodox cricketing advice to “show the [bat] maker’s name” as one drives through the ball.

Now, not every shot in cricket is played this way. One of the basic skills of a cricket batsman is selecting which shot to play depending on the delivery of the ball. Again, the BBC’s cricket skill pages demonstrate:

How to pick which shot to play in cricket. We are interested in the drive shots: the “off drive,” “straight drive,” and “on drive.” These are played off the front foot.

Now let’s reverse-engineer Harper’s home run swings in a cricket context. Here’s Harper’s Opening Day spray chart, from TexasLeaguers:

Both home runs land in right-center field. In cricketing terms, they would be “on drives”–driven on the batters’ side. Now, orthodox cricket shot selection doctrine says:

If you get a half volley on leg stump, you hit it back towards mid on with the full face of the bat.

Translated to baseball terms: if you get a ball on the inner third of home plate [and low: cricket balls are bouncing up from the ground], drive it to right-center field [if you, like Harper, are left-handed].

So, where were those pitches that Harper hit to right center for home runs?

Here’s the first one, a home run in the first inning: it’s number 2, obviously:

Hey, would you look at that. It’s low and on the inside third of the plate. A cricketer sees a half-volley on leg stump! How about the second one?

It’s the one marked “in play (runs),” obviously. And again, it’s on the inner third, and low. Yup, another half-volley on leg stump.

Bryce Harper’s front foot hitting mechanics may look strange to baseball fans, but he is behaving exactly like a well-taught cricket batsman would behave when confronted with balls located in that location. He judged the position of the delivery of the ball well. He selected the shot he wanted to play (the drive off the front foot). He executed his plan, and did it powerfully, scoring runs for his team in the process.

We have no evidence that Harper ever played any cricket at all. But, at least when confronted with the ball on the inside third of the plate and low, Harper seems to have solved that particular batting problem in exactly the same way that generations of cricket batsmen before him have solved it. How classic is Harper’s approach? Here’s the great Australian cricketer Don Bradman [the Ted Williams of Cricket, who actually met Babe Ruth oncedemonstrating the “orthodox” shots for British newsreels in 1930. Look at how powerfully he is able to drive the ball off his front foot at 2:36 or so. Look again as Bradman demonstrates the drive shots off the front foot, starting at 3:36. See how little weight he puts on his back foot?

And, if you don’t think this shot can be played for any power at all, here’s a supercut of the great West Indian batsman Sir Viv Richards absolutely killing a lot of cricket balls--many of the driven off the front foot in exactly the same way that Harper hits baseballs.

This, to me, is a fascinating case of the convergent evolution of two closely-related bat-and-ball games, baseball and cricket.

This has implications for the way baseball players look at batting mechanics and batting technique. There has been a huge body of scholarship built up around cricket batting over the years, and nobody has yet seen fit to study it and see what insights might be useful to baseball players. Most interestingly, there seems to be at least some movement to use quantitative optimization models to teach batsmen to get the bat to the ball as quickly as possible. I am not aware of any similar work being done in baseball–and it might not be a bad idea for a progressive baseball organization to start investigating this sort of thing.

# Projecting the 2013 Nationals: Extra Innings

When I projected that the 2013 Nats were going to win 94 games, I did so with a bit of trepidation. Not only did this mean that I was projecting a performance so good that it would have been literally unbelievable only a few years before, but because I have certain doubts about the construction of my model.

As you might have gathered from the title of this post, I think my model has been systematically under-counting playing time for pitchers and hitters. In the spirit of Top of the Inning/Bottom of the Inning nature of the Natstradamus projections, I’ll deal with the pitching issues first, and then the batting problems in the bottom of the inning.

EDIT: Astute readers noted that I should have reduced relief pitcher innings by as much as I increased starting pitching innings. I have amended the relevant analysis. This results in a 98-win total.

Executive Summary for the TL;DR Crowd: Our earlier projection wasn’t as accurate as it should have been in counting playing time: A slight adjustment in innings pitched for starters–with a corresponding reduction in relief pitching innings– yielded a decrease in runs scored by 2—but a better/more nuanced look at plate appearances by the starting line-up yielded an astonishing increase in runs scored, from 692 to 725. This revises our win projection for the 2013 Nats to 98 wins.

Innings, Limits, and Other Stuff to Tear Your Hair Out With

First, pitching. If you look back at the projected innings pitched column in my pitching runs allowed projections, you will notice that I assume that pitchers in the starting rotation will pitch about 190 innings each, with Strasburg pitching only 180. How does that stack up with reality?

• Gio Gonzalez (199.1 IP);
• Jordan Zimmermann (195.2 IP)
• Edwin Jackson (189.2 IP).

Looking at things like this, it’s starting to look like our 180-inning starting rotation baseline is off by a little bit. Is it really, though? None of the top three for the Braves (Minor, Hudson, Hanson) pitched over 180 innings last year. The Phillies had Hamels (215.1) and Lee (211.0), then a sharp drop-off (injuries). The Mets had Dickey (232.2) and Niese (190.1), and then a precipitous dropoff to Santana (117.0).

Things get a bit better when we look at the Reds, whose top five were remarkably consistent as far as innings, with Cueto (217), Latos (209.1), Bailey (208), Arroyo (202) , and Leake (179).  Likewise, the Giants got a lot of innings out of their starters, with Cain (219.1), Bumgarner (208.1), Vogelsong (189.2), Lincecum (186), and Zito (184.1).

In fact, it’s the rare National League team that gets more than 180 innings from all of its top five starters–only the Giants managed this in 2012, and we all know how that worked out for them, right?

Anyway, returning to our projections: is there a better way we can match the innings expectations for Nationals starting pitchers? Maybe we can. During the height of the Strasburg Shutdown hysteria last year, I wrote that the organization has a general innings-limiting principle:

The Nats have a policy–and a remarkably enlightened one, at that–of limiting starting-pitcher workloads to 120% of the innings a pitcher had pitched the previous year, wherever those innings happened (whether as an amateur, the minor leagues, or the majors). For pitchers returning from major injuries, the innings limit seems to be about 120% of the pitcher’s previous single-season career high total innings pitched.

The conventional wisdom is that this limit may not apply to pitchers like Gio Gonzalez (age 27) and Dan Haren (age 32). Jordan Zimmermann (age 26) might have arguably “aged out” of this system, too, since he pitched 195.2 innings last year. Detwiler (age 26) might have aged out, as well, but last year’s 164.1 IP represented his professional maximum, so let’s assume we’re stretching him out more carefully and put him on the limit. Strasburg (age 24), it should go without saying, is probably under this silent limit as well.

Applying those limits, and looking at last year’s performances, we get the following:

• Stephen Strasburg. 120% of last year’s innings for Strasburg works out to 190.2 innings for Strasburg. Plugging that into our model, that works out to 54.23 runs allowed, an increase of 3.03 runs.
• Jordan Zimmermann. JZ pitched 195.2 innings. It would be foolish to assume he would pitch any more. Let’s assume he pitches 195 innings, then. That works out to 80.38 runs allowed, an increase of 2.06 runs.
• Gio Gonzalez. 199 innings is a lot, but he pitched over 200 innings in the two preceding years, so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to give Gio 200 innings in 2013. Ten more innings of Gio than in our initial model yields 84.67 runs, an increase of 4.24 runs.
• Ross Detwiler. Detwiler’s 151 innings in 2012 was a career high for him. Increasing that by 120% yields 181 innings. Fortunately, the old model pegged him at 180 innings to begin with. We’ll leave well enough alone, then.
• Dan Haren. Haren’s a little harder to judge. He only pitched 176.2 innings in 2012, but before his back got balky, he pitched well in excess of 200 innings for seven consecutive seasons. Various projections have him pitching as many as 218 innings and as few as 170. Let’s say he recovers form and pitches 190 innings–which is what we had in the original model. Great.

After adjusting for an increase in innings pitched, we see that the Nats give up a few more runs– 9.33 runs. That’s enough to cost them one full game in the Natstradamus projection–so that leaves them with 93 wins, instead.

Not so fast. You will notice that we’ve increased Gio’s innings by 10, Strasburg’s innings by 10, and Zimmermann’s innings by 5. That means we need to reduce relief pitcher innings accordingly. If we reduce Craig Stammen’s 110 innings to 95 innings (-6.6 runs allowed) and Zach Duke’s innings from 90 to 80 (-4.8 runs allowed), we actually end up saving about 2 runs. That keeps us steady at 94 wins for now. But how about the hitting?

Batters: Up.

The crude assumption built into the model was that every one of the starting position players got 600 plate appearances each. This is, of course, false. The ever-astute David Huzzard reminded me that the number of plate appearances varies with position in the batting order. Fortunately, Baseball Reference lets us look at exactly how many plate appearances, on average, each batting order position got in the National League in 2012. As you can see, the lead-off batter gets, on average 750 plate appearances–125% more than our model assumed! What does it look like?

750
732
716
699
684
666
647
625
606
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 2/18/2013.

In fact, we see that in the NL, the only batting average position that gets even close to 600 plate appearances is the number 9 batter–which is usually the pitcher’s spot! Safe to say, then, that the model is broken as far as runs scored. To fix it, we need to figure out what the batting order is going to be and award plate appearances in proportion to that player’s spot in the batting order. To keep things consistent with our defensive statistics, we’ll assume that each “every day” position player appears in 150 games. With that in mind, let’s assign some plate appearances to a hypothetical order:

695
678
663
647
633
617
599
579
561

That leaves us with some 453 plate appearances to distribute among the other bench players. Let’s assume, crudely, that we distribute them evenly among Tracy, Moore, Lombardozzi, and Bernadina, giving them 113 plate appearances each. Let’s also further assume that the “Pitchers” spots are evenly distributed among all the starting pitchers, giving each of the starting five 112 plate appearances each.

The results are shocking:

 Player Name 4-year total PA 4-year total wRC 4-yr moving avg wRC/PA Projected PA Projected wRC Team Total wRC Jayson Werth 2803 425 0.151623260792009 678 102.80 Ryan Zimmerman 2844 426 0.149789029535865 633 94.82 Tyler Moore 171 26 0.152046783625731 113 17.18 Bryce Harper 597 86 0.144053601340034 663 95.51 Adam LaRoche 2622 361 0.13768115942029 647 89.08 Denard Span 2671 334 0.125046798951703 695 86.91 Wilson Ramos 613 76 0.123980424143556 290 35.95 Ian Desmond 1849 214 0.115738236884803 617 71.41 Danny Espinosa 1428 164 0.11484593837535 599 68.79 Roger Bernadina 1150 121 0.105217391304348 113 11.89 Chad Tracy 845 85 0.100591715976331 113 11.37 Kurt Suzuki 2703 274 0.101368849426563 290 29.40 Steve Lombardozzi 448 42 0.09375 113 10.59 Stephen Strasburg 83 3 0.036144578313253 112 4.05 Drew Storen 2 0 0 0 0.00 Dan Haren 240 19 0.079166666666667 112 8.87 Craig Stammen 90 3 0.033333333333333 30 1.00 Jordan Zimmermann 166 4 0.024096385542169 112 2.70 Zach Duke 226 1 0.004424778761062 0.00 Tyler Clippard 14 0 0 0 0.00 Gio Gonzalez 84 -5 -0.05952380952381 112 -6.67 Ross Detwiler 97 -9 -0.092783505154639 112 -10.39 Ryan Mattheus 1 0 0 0 0.00 Rafael Soriano 0 0 0 0 0.00 Bill Bray 0 0 0 0 0.00 725.252999244993

That’s a huge jump in runs scored, from 692 up to 725!

Putting it Together

Having adjusted our playing-time expectations somewhat, our revised projection has the 2013 Nats allowing 600 runs, while scoring 725 runs. Running that through the Pythagorean Win Expectation Formula gives us a revised win projection for the 2013 season of 98 wins, or four more than we had initially projected. The vast undercount of offensive plate appearances made a huge difference in terms of runs scored, and added two whole wins. The increase in starting pitching at the expense of middle relief yields two more wins.

There are a few caveats, of course. Naturally, this all assumes that every player involved will stay healthy all year, and that they all perform according to their four-year trailing average performances. A realignment of the batting order will affect runs scored in very real ways: this is particularly true in the case of Bryce Harper. The current line up puts two left-handed power hitters, Harper and LaRoche, back-to-back, which may be suboptimal in matchup situations. But moving Harper down in the order will deprive him of plate appearances and run-creating chances.

# Projecting the 2013 Nationals, Part 3: Offense

Now we come to the fun part of the inning: how many runs does the home team score? The model projects that the 2013 Nationals will score 693 runs.

Assuming that an everyday position player will get about 600 plate appearances, and assuming that the plate appearances of the two catchers, Suzuki and Ramos, are divided evenly, we end up with a table that looks something like this:

 Player Name 4-year total PA 4-year total wRC 4-yr moving avg wRC/PA Projected PA Projected wRC Team Total wRC Jayson Werth 2803 425 0.151623260792009 600 90.97 Ryan Zimmerman 2844 426 0.149789029535865 600 89.87 Tyler Moore 171 26 0.152046783625731 150 22.81 Bryce Harper 597 86 0.144053601340034 600 86.43 Adam LaRoche 2622 361 0.13768115942029 600 82.61 Denard Span 2671 334 0.125046798951703 600 75.03 Wilson Ramos 613 76 0.123980424143556 300 37.19 Ian Desmond 1849 214 0.115738236884803 600 69.44 Danny Espinosa 1428 164 0.11484593837535 600 68.91 Roger Bernadina 1150 121 0.105217391304348 150 15.78 Chad Tracy 845 85 0.100591715976331 100 10.06 Kurt Suzuki 2703 274 0.101368849426563 300 30.41 Steve Lombardozzi 448 42 0.09375 150 14.06 Stephen Strasburg 83 3 0.036144578313253 150 5.42 Drew Storen 2 0 0 0 0.00 Dan Haren 240 19 0.079166666666667 150 11.88 Craig Stammen 90 3 0.033333333333333 30 1.00 Jordan Zimmermann 166 4 0.024096385542169 150 3.61 Zach Duke 226 1 0.004424778761062 30 0.13 Tyler Clippard 14 0 0 0 0.00 Gio Gonzalez 84 -5 -0.05952380952381 150 -8.93 Ross Detwiler 97 -9 -0.092783505154639 150 -13.92 Ryan Mattheus 1 0 0 0 0.00 Rafael Soriano 0 0 0 0 0.00 Bill Bray 0 0 0 0 0.00 692.7806858275

As excited as we’ll all be to follow Bryce Harper in his quest to beat Mike Trout’s insane age-20 season, it’s instructive to look at this table. Jayson Werth and Ryan Zimmerman are projected to get 91 and 90 wRC respectively. Harper is expected to do great things–86 wRC–but it’s worth noting just how much a healthy Werth and Zimmerman mean to the Nationals line-up.

Notice also that the line-up is remarkably deep. Let’s look at it from the point of view of a possible batting order:

1. Denard Span, wRC 75.03
2. Jayson Werth, wRC 90.97
3. Bryce Harper, wRC 86.43
4. Adam LaRoche, wRC 82.61
5. Ryan Zimmerman, wRC 89.87
6. Ian Desmond, wRC 69.44
7. Danny Espinosa, wRC 68.91
8. Wilson Ramos, wRC 37.19; plus Kurt Suzuki, wRC 30.41

Those first five batters, however you order them, are pretty impressive. That should make for a much deeper line-up than we’re used to seeing here in DC.

So, what does this all mean? Tune in next time as we discuss how this all fits together in Part 4.

# Offseason Blues (part 1 in a bazillion) UPDATE: NOW WITH MORE DC SPORTS AWESOMENESS

As I went home after Black Friday, I calculated that, without baseball, I suddenly had something like twenty-four hours a week that I didn’t know what to do with–that figure being a conservative estimate of the number of hours I spent watching baseball in person or on television, or the Internet, or listening to Charlie Slowes and Dave Jaegler call a game on the radio, plus the hours spent going to, hanging out at, or coming from the ballpark.

I don’t think I’m all that unusual, and I haven’t really found anything to fill those hours.

So it’s somewhat comforting that former teen phenom (and future perennial superstar) Bryce Harper is also having a hard time figuring out what to do with his time. Harp’s turned his mind to sartorial matters lately, it seems:

(Just to clear up any ambiguity, I think he’s referring to his own personal “swag,” rather than his ever-faithful dog, Swag)

This takes a delightful turn, though, when he asks another youthful DC sporting hero for style help:

Even more delightfully, RGIII seems ready to oblige:

UPDATE: It appears that John Wall wants in on this particular conversation. This is like a perfect storm of youthful, off-the-field DC sporting exuberance. Hat tip and huzzah for Dave Huzzard, who alerted me to this :

(And, yeah, I know this is really more Nats Enquirer’s beat, but what can I say? I’m bored, too. When’s spring training?)

UPDATED UPDATE:The Great Wall is getting socks, too. Somebody needs to take a group picture.

# Hunting the Dreaded Sun Monster

Nats fans are all too well acquainted with the dreaded Sun Monster that ate up both Bryce Harper and Jayson Werth during a Sunday afternoon horror show against the Brewers at Nats park on September 23. (Of course, this creature already has its own twitter account.)

Well, the Nats will travel to Saint Louis to play the Cardinals in the National League Division series. Because television is run by media elites who write idiotic hit pieces about DC, the Nats will play at 3:00 P.M, Eastern time. Thanks to the New York DamnYankees and their stranglehold on prime-time television scheduling, the Nats will have to play an afternoon game for the benefit of the legions of unemployed television-viewing baseball fans everywhere who would otherwise be numbing their pain with vicodin and bourbon cocktails while watching Dr. Phil.

This also means that Harper, Werth, and possibly Morse might have to contend with a Saint Louis Sun Monster. James Wagner of the Post has already written a fairly good piece on the difficulties of the sun in Saint Louis. I commend that piece to you if you want to read about how players felt about the sun.

But here at Natstradamus, we like verifiable phenomena where we can find them. So the question is: when is the worst sun field time at New Busch Stadium in Saint Louis?

If you don’t want to be blinded with science here’s your short answer: the Sun Monster is going to gobble up whoever is standing in center field at 4:02 P.M. Central Time (5:02 Eastern).

Let’s start with the ballpark orientation. You should all bookmark this diagram by the brilliant FlipFlopFlyBall. That’s a graphical representation of the direction a batter faces in all MLB ballparks, relative to True North.

Let’s assume that a center fielder in straight-away center field lines up so that he could stare at the batter directly in the eyes–that is, they would be on the same line, facing each other. (I know this isn’t how real defensive alignment works, but go with me on this, OK?) That means that the center fielder would have to be facing 180 degrees opposite the batter’s facing.

Refer again to that diagram and look for Busch Stadium. If you plug Busch Stadium into Google Earth and measure the angle from home plate to straight away center field, you will see that the batter faces about 68 degrees from true North. The Center Fielder, then, would have to be facing the other direction (180 degrees opposite!) so the Center Fielder’s facing is about 248 degrees from true North.

Thanks to the hard work of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the general public has access to an excellent Solar position calculator. The value we’re looking for is the Solar Azimuth: the position of the sun in degrees clockwise from north.

At the start of the game (2:00 P.M. Central Time, 3:00 P.M. Eastern), we can already see that the solar azimuth is at 221.94 degrees. Things get progressively worse as the afternoon goes on, however. At about 4:02 local time, things are at their worst: the solar azimuth reaches the dreaded 248.06 degrees: right into the eyes of the center fielder.

Yikes. How about a shadow? That’s going to need a bit of trigonometry.

At the start of the game, the solar elevation (the angle of the sun, measured from the horizon) is 36.06 degrees. I don’t have good measurements of the height of the stands at Busch Stadium, so I’m going to assume the stands are about 100 feet tall at their highest point. We’ll also imagine that the center fielder is playing about medium depth (start of the inning, no basenners, no defensive shifts on) which puts him maybe 375 feet from home plate. I don’t know the measurement of the foul ground between the plate and the backstop. Let’s assume it’s 12 feet.

The length of the shadow at any given time, then, assuming that the sun is shining directly behind home plate, is the long side of a right triangle formed by the base of the backstop (A), the top of the stands (B), and the position of the center fielder (C). If that value is equal to or greater than 387 (375+12), the center fielder is in the shadow; if less, the Sun Monster has him.

So how long will the shadow be at 4:02 PM central time? well, that’ll be

$\tan{\theta} = \frac{\text{height of stands}}{\text{distance from backstop}}$

Which means

$\text{Length of shadow} = \frac{\text{height of stands}}{\tan \theta}$

Where

$\theta = \text{angle of elevation}$

With an angle of elevation of 16.51 degrees at 4:02 PM local time,

$\text{Length of shadow} = \frac{\text{100 feet}}{\tan 16.51^\circ} = 337 \text{feet}$

Our center fielder will get no help from the shadows, then. If he stands 375 feet from the plate, he’s 387 feet from the backstop, and in the full sun. Fifty feet ahead of him (in what would now doubtless be infield-fly territory), the relief of the shadows beckons. But he must live with the full sun.

At the start of the game, by the way, the shadows are much shorter–a mere 137 feet–so even if the sun isn’t directly in the center fielder’s eyes, pretty much the whole outfield is in direct sunlight.

There you have it, Nats fans. We had better hope that there are no fly balls hit to Nats outfielders tomorrow.

# Touched by an Angel

Called strikes: Angel Hernandez on Bryce Harper, Aug. 8, 2012. Note the red dots outside the box.

All of Nats town is about ready to kill umpire Angel Hernandez for his lousy officiating of last night’s Nats v. Astros game.

Thanks to the magic of Pitch/FX and the most excellent Texasleaguers Pitch/FX Database, I present to you, without further comment, a plot of pitches that Angel Hernandez called strikes on Bryce Harper.