May 26
Grant Balfour On Coming To The States And Why He Thrives In Tampa Bay (Video)
Grant Balfour 2 Comments »Here is a neat little video from ESPN on Grant Balfour…
Archive for May, 2010
May 26
[THE HANGOVER] The One Where We Discuss Upton’s Shoulder, Shoppach’s Return And Bob Davidson Channeling His Inner-Billy Crystal
BJ Upton, Bob Davidson, Carl Crawford, Eddie Morlan, Joe Maddon, Kelly Shoppach, Wade Davis 36 Comments »
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: James Shields. James the Greater continues to be one of the most dominant pitchers in the AL with another solid 8 inning performance. And he got stronger as the game went along, retiring the final 16 batters he faced.
THE BAD: Bob Davidson. That pitch above was the one that set Carl Crawford off and eventually led to his ejection. You could have made the strikezone twice as wide and it still wouldn’t have been a strike. But that was just the latest of many pitches last night that helped Jon Lester look like 1991 Tom Glavine who was the master of expanding the zone. If you want a light-side to the story, it is that this is the closest we have ever seen to a real-life reenactment of Billy Crystal flipping out as an NBA ref in “Forget Paris.” Crawford says he was ejected because Davidson told him he was “invading [his] space.” We still have no idea why Joe Maddon was ejected since he was ejected before he even had a chance to say anything…BJ Upton. Once one of the fastest bats and owner of the quickest wrists in baseball, Bossman is a shell of his former self. He has injured his shoulder at least 6 times and we have to wonder if it will ever be the same or if he is just afraid to injure it again. In May, Upton is 12-74 (.162) with 29 strikeouts and 6 walks…Dioner Navarro. Navi has the slowest bat ever. He should name it “Casey Fossum.”
THE TELLING: Joe Maddon will continue to use Willy Aybar and John Jaso in the 5th spot for the time being…Kelly Shoppach could begin a rehab assignment as soon as Monday.
WHERE THEY STAND: The Rays still have an MLB-best record of 32-14, 5 games ahead of the Yankees in the East and 6 games ahead of the Blue Jays in the Wild Card. After 46 games in 2008 the Rays were 27-19.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- Carl Crawford speaks after the game about the ejection (video). [The Heater]
- Marc Topkin has quotes from the crew chief of last night’s game on the ejections. [The Heater]
- Wade Davis tells Marc Topkin that he was “probably a little upset” at how long it took David Ortiz to get around the bases after his Monday night home run. [St. Pete Times]
- Sean Rodriguez and Jason Bartlett had to call 911 after Rodriguez was stung by a stingray. [St. Pete Times]
- Eddie Morlan, the third player the Rays received in the Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett trade with the Twins, has been released. [Biscuit Crumbs]
- Sure it is early, but in ESPN.com’s Cy Young predictor, David Price is first, followed by Rafael Soriano (2nd), Matt Garza (3rd) and James Shields (5th). That’s crazy. [ESPN]
- “If you only go six innings, you’re going to get made fun of,” said Price, who reveals that he got “crushed” by his teammates after a recent six-inning, 97-pitch appearance against Cleveland…And if you go five?…”Don’t come to the field the next day,” Price said. [ESPN]
- Evan Longoria makes WhatIfSports “All-Budget Lineup.” [WhatIfSports]
- Brian Joura of Fangraphs predicts Jeremy Hellickson will be promoted soon (Ed. note: he won’t be). [Fangraphs]
DOWN ON THE FARM…
- Check out “The Rundown” from Rays Prospects for boxscores and more detailed recaps. [Rays Prospects]
- DURHAM: Heath Phillips gave up 2 runs in 5 innings…Dan Johnson hit his 14th home run and added a double…Desmond Jennings was 1-5 with an RBI.
- MONTGOMERY: (no game scheduled)
- CHARLOTTE: (postponed)
- BOWLING GREEN: Jason McEachern pitched 5 shutout innings with 7 strikeouts and 3 walks.
May 25
It is time to update the Tampa Bay Rays Trade Value Index in which we rank the top 45 players in the Rays organization based on their overall value to the team.
The TVI ranks every player on the 40-man roster and the top prospects. The rankings consider a number factors in addition to talent and good looks, such as potential, age, contract and depth of position in the organization.
Notes on how the rankings are compiled and a few specific players can be found after the table. Full calculations can be found at the end of this post…
Notes on the TVI top 45…
- The TVI is calculated using four variables: 1) talent (based on a reasonable projection of abilities); 2) age-value (based on age and years remaining until free agency); 3) position (based loosely on Bill James’ defensive spectrum) and 4) current level (i.e. MLB, triple-A, etc.). These values are all scaled 1-10 and given a weight of 2.0, 1.5, 1.0 and 0.5 respectively.
- Evan Longoria is the clear #1. The next 4 players (Jeremy Hellickson, David Price, Wade Davis, Matt Garza) all fall in a narrow range. But 6 years of Hellickson gives him just a tad more value than 4 more years of Price or 3 more years of Garza.
- At the other end of the spectrum we have mostly players that will be free agents at the end of the year. These players usually won’t command much in a trade.
- Players were given a “bonus” based on their free agent status (Type A or Type B). Even though these players will likely be gone next year, they will command one or two draft picks in compensation. The bonus was loosely based on the values of draft picks in the second-half of the first-round and the supplemental round. Players that will be free agents following the 2011 season were given half the free agency bonus.
- The one player that probably doesn’t fit this model is Carl Crawford. He has a low TVI value due to his pending free agency and he plays a non-premium position. But if the Rays were to try and trade him, he would probably command a steep price because he is considered a “difference maker.”
- Feel free to let us know in the comments if you feel their is variable that should be included in the TVI calculations and if you think the relative weights should be different. This is evolving process. And while we try to remove as much subjectivity as possible, the nature of the beast will always require at least a little bit.
FULL CALCULATIONS AFTER THE JUMP
May 25
Matt Garza On Why The Rosin Bag Gives Him Heartburn And The Reason Behind His Super Goatee
Matt Garza 5 Comments »
A while back we told you about an opportunity to ask Matt Garza a question for Sporting News Magazine. Well we just received our copy of the issue and it looks like two or three of the questions came from Rays Index readers. You guys make us proud.
A few of the highlights…
On spitting less this season: …I’m not using the rosin bag as much as I used to. The reason I had been spitting so much is a lot of the rosin was getting on my tongue. I’d lick my fingers., then go back to the rosin bag and then lick them again. You want your hand not to be slick. You try to keep your hand dry so your able to control the baseball. But that’s dry tree sap, you know? You try to lick tree sap and tell me if you like it or not. I couldn’t swallow it, and the only way to get rid of that taste was to spit. The last couple of seasons it had been giving me real bad heartburn, so I’m not using it as much.
On whether anything is living in his goatee: Not yet, not yet. But I’m hoping to get it long enough to maybe try one day. It started with just messing around, seeing what could happen and how it would look. Then I made a couple bets with a couple guys in the clubhouse and wanted to see how long I could let it grow before I’d get annoyed by it. I’m already annoyed by it, but I’m not going to lose the bet…
So congratulations to Jay Fakterowitz, Drew Sullivan, John Ford, April Timmons and Paul Boyd.
May 25
We are big fans of Dave Cameron and Fangraphs, but his latest piece for ESPN.com is a bit puzzling (thanks Thad).
First is the prediction that the Rays won’t win 70% of their games…
So, while the Rays’ record is sparkly, and even their Pythagorean Expected Record is impressive, there are chinks in the armor. With Carlos Pena struggling, Ben Zobrist hitting like it’s 2006 again and the team struggling to find a productive designated hitter, this isn’t the offense of a team that will win 70 percent of its games.
Winning 70% of a team’s games would mean a final record of 113-49. So Cameron’s big point is that the Rays won’t win 113 games? We are not sure who Cameron is arguing against. On the scale of bold predictions, this one falls just in front of predicting Albert Pujols to get a hit this year.
But what really gets us in that previous statement, is the assertion that Ben Zobrist is “hitting like it’s 2006 again.”
Sure the home runs haven’t been there, but that doesn’t mean Zorilla hasn’t been productive. Let’s compare Zobrist’s 2010 numbers to those from 2006 and 2009, when Zobrist finished 8th in the AL MVP voting. And in doing so, we will use numbers found on Cameron’s own site, Fangraphs.
If Cameron thinks Zobrist is back to his 2006 ways, Cameron just isn’t paying attention.
Yes, the Rays numbers with runners on base are high (.294 AVG) and likely to regress a little bit. At the same, their overall hitting numbers are still a little low (.261 AVG) and likely to rise. And in the end, the Rays will still score a lot of runs. Will they win 115 games? No. But last time we checked, you don’t need 115 wins to make the playoffs. About 94 will do.
May 25
Earlier we talked about Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford and their standings in the early All-Star game voting. But there is a third Tampa Bay Ray with an outside shot at being elected a starter…Pat Burrell.
Burrell is currently 4th, ahead of David Ortiz and trailing Vladimir Guerrero by about 240,000 votes.
And now The Fightins think it would be a good idea to support Burrell’s campaign.
Pat Burrell is currently FOURTH in the All-Star game voting for American League DH. He is only 244,068 votes behind Vladimir Guerrero, the leader in that particular category. PLEASE VOTE PAT BURRELL [VPB2010]
Surprisingly, we love this idea. Would Burrell be able to go? Would he be forced to wear a generic AL jersey? Would Burrell have to spend two days answering questions about how much he sucks and whether he should even be there? Would he answer questions from the St. Pete Times? The possibilities are endless. And all of them make us giddy as a schoolgirl.
May 25
Are Yankees Fans Unwittingly Raising Crawford’s Price Tag?
Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria 8 Comments »
MLB released the first update on All-Star game voting. It is no surprise that Evan Longoria is tops among AL third baseman. After all, he easily outpaced the competition a year ago and was a close third in the overall voting (behind Derek Jeter and Joe Mauer).
What is a little surprising is that Carl Crawford is second among AL outfielders, trailing only Ichiro Suzuki. Crawford is no stranger to the All-Star game. He has been named to the team three times and even won an All-Star game MVP. But he has never been voted into the starting lineup.
So are baseball fans finally starting to recognize CC’s greatness? Possibly. Or maybe Yankees fans, absent any deserving candidates of their own, are voting for Crawford due to what is perceived as an inevitable move to The Bronx next year.
If that is the case, there is an interesting side effect to the voting. Being named an All-Star starter will only help to increase Crawford’s contract demands when he hits the free agent market this winter. Even beyond the stats, an All-Star start would stamp Crawford as one of the more popular players in baseball which opens up marketing possibilities for any team that were to sign him. A popular player is always more valuable to a franchise.
If Crawford is named an All-Star starter and if that does indeed increase his value as a free agent, is that necessarily a bad thing for the Yankees? Maybe not. Sure it will cost them more money in the long run. But the more Crawford commands as a free agent, the fewer the number of teams that will be competing with the Yankees for his services.
So inevitably and unwittingly, Yankees fans may be increasing their team’s chances of signing Crawford this winter.
May 25
[THE HANGOVER] The One Where We Discuss Jaso’s New Spot, Big Dub’s Rough Start And No Trade For Crawford
BJ Upton, Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, Jeremy Hellickson, John Jaso 21 Comments »
The GBT – The Good, The Bad and The Telling sandwich, where The Bad is nice and lean and the The Telling is ripe.
click above image for boxscore
THE GOOD: Carlos Pena. In an otherwise anemic night offensively, Pena continues to show he is on the upswing hitting his 8th home run and 3rd in 5 games.
THE BAD: Wade Davis. For the second consecutive game, a Rays starter allowed the opposition to bat around in an inning as the Red Sox scored 3 in the third. Big Dub needed 40 pitches to get through the third and he was out of the game after 3.2 innings. Outside of Jeff Niemann’s injury-shortened start, this was the first time a Rays starter did not work at least 5 innings…David Ortiz. We really wish Big Papi would have listened to Red Sox fans and retired in April.
THE TELLING: Of the 7 starts in which a Rays starter failed to work into the 6th inning, 4 have been by Wade Davis…John Jaso moved to the 5th spot in the lineup with Carlos Pena and BJ Upton dropped to 7th and 8th…Matt Joyce made his first start with a glove during his rehab assignment. He started in right field last night and it sounds like the Rays want to accelerate his rehab. But where will Joyce go once his rehab assignment ends? We have to think he will be assigned to Durham at least for the foreseeable future.
WHERE THEY STAND: The Rays are 32-13 and lead the Yankees by 5.5 games in the East and lead the Blue Jays and Tigers by 6.5 games in the Wild Card. After 45 games in 2008, the Rays were 26-19.
THE JUNKYARD DOGS WEBTOPIA…
- We have a bunch of stuff in the queue, so be sure to check back early and often today.
- Andrew Friedman told ESPN that Carl Crawford will not be traded this season. [Sporting News]
- BJ Upton filmed a commercial yesterday for Adidas and the upcoming World Cup. Upton provided us with some pictures. [Twitter]
- One writer calls Carl Crawford the most overrated hitter in baseball. [Chicago Tribune]
- Remember that myth about how the Rays are only good because of all the high draft picks? The one we have debunked more than once? Well he is more proof that the myth holds no water. [MLB]
- Baseball Daily Digest argues that the Rays pitchers have been lucky so far…You are going to see a lot of stories like this in the near-future. To predict that a team on pace to win 115 games is going to slow down is an easy prediction to make (thanks Thad). [Baseball Daily Digest]
- The Hardball Times revisits the trade that brought Scott Kazmir to the Rays. [The Hardball Times]
- Here is your chance to jump on the MFIKY bandwagon. [RaysRev.com]
DOWN ON THE FARM…
- Check out “The Rundown” from Rays Prospects for boxscores and more detailed recaps. [Rays Prospects]
- DURHAM: Jeremy Hellickson was perfect for 6 innings and carried a no-hitter into the 8th. He finished with 1 hit allowed and 1 walk in 8 innings with 5 Ks. He is 7-2 with a 2.79 ERA…Winston Abreu struck out all 3 batters in the 9th for his 3rd save…Ryan Shealy had 1 of the Bulls’ 3 hits, his 8th home run.
- MONTGOMERY: (postponed)
- CHARLOTTE: Nick Barnese gave up 4 runs (3 earned) in 6 innings, raising his ERA to 4.01. He struck out 6 and walked 1…Tim Beckham had 2 more hits and a walk, raising his average to .217. He has 13 hits in the last 6 games. He did commit his 8th error. Matt Joyce started in right field for the first time on his rehab assignment and walked 3 times.
- BOWLING GREEN: Aaron Dott making just his second start threw 5 shutout innings, striking out 6 and walking none…Christopher Murrill had a pair of doubles and now has 17 hits in the last 10 games. He is hitting .349.
May 24
Tomorrow we will be posting our updated Trade Value Index, in which we rank the top 45 players in the organization based on overall value to the franchise. Two of the most important criteria for determining overall value is a player’s age and the number of years remaining until that player is eligible for free agency.
In this post we are going to show you how we calculate this value. We will also take a look at what the optimum age is for promoting a player to the Major Leagues so that the Rays can maximize a player’s value. And finally we will show you how all the Rays players rank based on age-value (AV).
We know that a player’s peak age is about 27. This is great if you are able to build a team with 25 27-year olds and then get 25 new 27-year olds next year. But players usually stay with a team for more than a single season.
So what is the optimum range of ages to have a player on your team? Let’s say you can have a player for two seasons. On average, is it more valuable to have that player for ages 26-27 or ages 27-28? To know this we need to know how valuable the age-26 and age-28 seasons are compared to each other and relative to the age-27 season.
Luckily, the guys at The Book have already done that part of the work for us. Using several key stats for hitters, they calculated linear weights to each age from 21 through 39. If we graph these values we get an idea of how players age…
As we can see, the curve peaks at age 27 (linear weight=0.999) and a player is a little bit better at age 26 (0.996) than at age 28 (0.978). So in our original hypothetical situation, if a team can only have a player for two seasons, they would usually be better off with the ages 26-27 than the ages 27-28.
Now let’s extrapolate this and determine AVs over all possible combinations of age and number of years a player is with the team…
In the first column we see the original linear weights from The Book. To calculate the AVs for the other columns we simply added the values for each age-season a player would be with the team. For example, if a player debuted at age 21 and is with the team for six seasons, his AV is calculated by adding the values in column 1 for ages 21 through 26.
So at what age should a player make his big league debut if the team is to maximize the player’s AV*? If we assume that the player will be with the team for six seasons and leave once they are eligible for free agency, then a team can maximize a player’s production by having the player debut at age 24. This would cover a player’s ages 24-29 seasons.
Now let’s look at the AVs for Rays on the 40-man roster and a few of the top prospects. Notes on this table can be found below…
Notes on the table…
- The original linear weights were for hitters. It has been argued that the peak season for pitchers is also age 27. However, we do not have linear weights for other ages. So for the sake of this analysis we are assuming that the curve seen above is the same for pitchers.
- We used ages for the 2011 season and control refers to the number of years remaining until free agency starting with 2011. Basically, we are looking at value beyond this season. Therefore, players that will be free agents this winter have AVs of zero.
As we can see, Jeremy Hellickson, Desmond Jennings and Jake McGee will all be in their age-24 season next year. If they make their big league debuts (as expected), the Rays will be maximizing their values. Evan Longoria’s AV falls below these three because his 6 remaining seasons cover ages 25-30, which is slightly less valuable than the ages 24-29 that the three prospects will likely spend with the Rays.
At the other end of the spectrum, several key members of the roster have low AVs. This is because these players are nearing free agency (e.g. Matt Garza, BJ Upton). So while these players will be in or near their peak season (age-27), much of their value has already been used.
Obviously there are a lot of other factors that go into determining a player’s value. But for a team like the Rays, they need to maximize that value at every turn. Most of the Rays talent will come from within the organization, and most of those players will leave by the time they hit free agency. It is the nature of the beast. And if the Rays are going to tame the beast, they need to maximize AVs.
(a special hat tip to Sky Kalkman of Beyond the Boxscore who pointed me to the linear weights data)
*A player is eligible for free agency once they hit 6 years of service time. However, depending on when a player makes his debut, it is possible for a team to get (nearly) 7 seasons from a player before they become eligible.
May 24
When he was 10 years old. This image comes to us from the Astros TV broadcast Friday night.
