Transaction Analysis B... (10/20)
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October 30, 2009 Transaction Analysis BlogMinor Moves, AL
Outrighted RHPs Jim Miller and Chris Lambert, C-R Guillermo Rodriguez, and OF-L Jeff Fiorentino to Norfolk (Triple-A); noted the loss of LHP Sean Henn on a waiver claim by the Blue Jays. [10/29]
Outrighted RHP Takashi Saito to Pawtucket (Triple-A); he refused the assignment to become a free agent. [10/19]
BP Comment Quick Links BP staff (11) For folks that are curious, after a flurry of comments between us, oira61 and I discussed this privately. While I didn't intend to insult Sean Henn personally, I can certainly see how a question of whether or not you're hurting someone is a lot more important in the grand scheme of things than sticking up for a bad pun. I decided to pull the weak humor, and we agreed together to have our back-and-forth here in the Comments segment pulled. BP doesn't normally do this sort of thing--we leave it to readers to vote things up or down--but oira61 and I agreed to make it so. Oct 30, 2009 15:44 PM
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Fantasy Focus: First Base Rankings Review
Of Adam Moore and Rob Johnson, I think you'll find that Johnson has the bigger problems catching the ball.
Coaches love him and think he's a great receiver, but the rate at which he allowed passed balls is staggering.
Or more importantly, delete the scorer's opinion of the play and look at PB+WP value--see some good stuff here, but I suspect you already have--and Johnson's execrable there as well, while compensating somewhat with his value against the running game.
That said, per that research, everyone the Mariners employed but Johjima winds up with a negative rating, and Johjima's total isn't so hot. That brings me back to one of my more fundamental concerns about WP/PB evaluative tools, which is that it's a play that takes two players to create, and getting the pitcher out of the equation to evaluate the catcher in isolation seems difficult. What these numbers really are is an aggregate of battery performances, and since not every opportunity is distributed evenly, we can suggest that catching Felix Hernandez is harder to do than, say, catching Jamie Moyer, but this is where it seems to me we have to accept that the data tells us something, but not everything, and credit coaches and professional scouts with having something valuable to say on the subject.
In the Diamond Appraised, Wright&House spend a great deal of time discussing a catcher's ability to affect era. Not so much passed balls, wild pitches and controlling the running game but instead the ability to control balls and strikes. If you believe in this, and believe as the book states that it can mean as much as one run per game, then you would always opt for the catcher who has the greatest positive impact on era.
This off course is very difficult to quantify. But the Mariners ERA with Rob Johnson catching was 3.22 vs 5.01 when Johjima was catching. If you really believed that Johnson could deliver a Mariner's team 3.22 era, then you would put him out there no matter how badly he hits or how many passed balls he gives up. Whether the belief is quantifiable or even true is irrelevent, what the Mariners believe will determine who catches.
I'd refer you back to some of the ground-breaking work that Keith Woolner did on the subject of CERA--essentially concluding that if there is a reliable, measurable, repeatable impact, it lies below the level of statistical detectability--starting here, then with his postscript to that essay, and then with this follow-up in 2002.