Blue Jays 2012 Projected Wins

On the weekend I decided to take my lovely wife out for a special Valentines Day dinner and a movie.  Given that it took us until the last minute to find a sitter for our two children it didn't leave me any time to make dinner reservations...big mistake.  We got to the restaurant strategically located close to the theatre and unfortunately the wait time for a table was much too long if we wanted to make it to the movie in time, so we decided to go elsewhere.  Of course being the Saturday before Valentines Day everywhere we went there were no tables available.  After finally ending up eating at a quicky soup and sandwich place, because there was just no time at left for anything else, we gobbled down our mediocre sandwiches and rushed back to the movie theater.  The movie we settled on, being Valentine's Day weekend and all, was The Vow, which I figured would be pretty much like every other movie of that genre and just entertaining enough that I wouldn't fall asleep.  Sometime though, very rarely of course, these types of movies can be surprisingly outstanding. Of course I never got a chance to find out as the movie was sold out and the entire night was a disaster. 

As I can relate anything back to baseball this night got me thinking that the 2012 Blue Jays are kind of like the movie The Vow, in that I have very little expectations for this team heading into the season.  Most likely this team is going to be middle of the road and just entertaining enough to keep my interest.  However, every once in a while a team comes out of nowhere and surprises you in being much better than anyone ever expected.  So could the 2012 Blue Jays be one of those teams that surprises everyone, and really what should we be expecting for this season?

Going into the 2012 season the general consensus seems to be that the Toronto Blue Jays likeliest outcome is another 4th place finish behind the Yankees, Rays and Red Sox.  In fact, I've been pretty vocal that 2012 should be viewed as a season to figure out what this team really has, and used to determine their biggest needs.  It feels like almost everyone on this team outside of Jose Bautista and Ricky Romero could be great, or horrible, making it really difficult to determine what positions are in the greatest need of an upgrade.  But what do the numbers say, how many wins should we really be expecting from this team?

Last year I sat down and did this very exercise that I'm about to do today and I used projected Wins Above Replacement (WAR) to forecast the number of wins we should expect from the Blue Jays.  I came up with with my own projections bases on my expectations, trending and past results to forecast players WAR values and in the end I came up with the projection that the Blue Jays would win 84 games in 2011.  As it turns out if it weren't for a late season stumble I may have been bang on and as it was I wasn't far off as the Blue Jays won 81 games.  This season, I'm going to do things a little differently which we will get into a little later, but first I want to look back on 2011 and using players WAR values see how many games the Blue Jays should have won this past season. 

Looking Back on 2011
The principle theory behind the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistic is that it assigns a specific number of wins (positive or negative) to a player in relation to replacement level talent.  Replacement level talent is defined as a combined set of players that would make up a team with a .320 winning percentage, which is equivalent to 52 wins over a 162 game schedule.

Below you will find a list of each 2011 Blue Jays players final season WAR values broken out by position player (table 1) and pitcher (table 2).

Table 1 - Total WAR by Batter for the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays

Player	WAR
Jose Bautista	8.5
Yunel Escobar	4.3
Brett Lawrie	2.8
Jose Molina	1
Edwin Encarnacion	1
J.P. Arencibia	0.9
Kelly Johnson*	0.9
Corey Patterson*	0.9
John McDonald	0.9
Eric Thames*	0.8
Adam Lind*	0.7
Mike McCoy	0.5
Mark Teahen*	0.1
David Cooper*	0
Jayson Nix	0
Darin Mastroianni	0
Adam Loewen*	-0.1
Chris Woodward	-0.2
Aaron Hill	-0.4
Dewayne Wise*	-0.4
Travis Snider*	-0.8
Colby Rasmus*	-0.9
Rajai Davis	-0.9
Juan Rivera	-1.2
Total Offense	18.4

Table 2 - Total WAR by Pitcher for the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays

Pitcher	WAR
Ricky Romero*	5.9
Carlos Villanueva	1.9
Casey Janssen	1.7
Brandon Morrow	1.4
Henderson Alvarez	1.3
Brett Cecil*	1.2
Frank Francisco	1.1
Jason Frasor	1
Jesse Litsch	0.7
Marc Rzepczynski*	0.7
Joel Carreno	0.5
Octavio Dotel	0.4
Zach Stewart	0.2
Shawn Camp	0.2
Jon Rauch	0.2
Chad Beck	0.1
Trever Miller*	0
Mike McCoy	0
P.J. Walters	0
Scott Richmond	0
Dustin McGowan	-0.1
Luis Perez*	-0.1
David Purcey*	-0.1
Danny Farquhar	-0.1
Kyle Drabek	-0.3
Rommie Lewis*	-0.3
Wil Ledezma*	-0.4
Jo-Jo Reyes*	-0.6
Brian Tallet*	-0.6
Brad Mills*	-0.7
Total Pitchers	15.2

From the tables above we see that the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays offense (and defense) represented a total of 18.4 wins above replacement level and the pitchers represented 15.2 wins for a combined 33.6 wins above replacement.  Add this to the number of wins a replacement level team should win (52 or 51.84 to be exact), and this would suggest that the Blue Jays should have won approximately 85.44 games in 2011.  Not that far off from the actual 81 games the team won, however from my limited experience doing these types of exercises I have found that when you add up a teams total player WAR value, it often does result in 3 or 4 more wins than the actual amount.

2012 Projection

This year when projecting each Blue Jays player WAR values, rather than make my own, probably biased, educated guess for each player, I decided to turn to the fine folks of Fangraph who polled the general public of their expectations for the majority of players in baseball.  To see the results for the Toronto Blue Jays player projections go to Fangraphs here, or refer to the tables below for the projected WAR values by batter (Table 3) and by pitcher (Table 4). 

Note: for any player who didn't have WAR projections for the 2012 season, I projected a repeat of their 2011 WAR value.

Table 3 - Projected WAR Values for Blue Jays 2012 Batters

Hitters	WAR
Jose Bautista	7.1
Brett Lawrie	6.1
Yunel Escobar	4.8
Kelly Johnson*	3.8
Colby Rasmus*	3.4
J.P. Arencibia	2.8
Travis Snider*	1.9
Adam Lind*	1.6
Edwin Encarnacion	1.6
Eric Thames*	1.5
Jeff Mathis	0.2
Rajai Davis	0.1
Ben Francisco	-0.1
Omar Vizquel	-0.5
Total Offense	34.3

Table 4 - Projected WAR Values for Blue Jays 2012 Pitchers

Hitters	WAR
Brandon Morrow	3.5
Ricky Romero*	3.3
Henderson Alvarez	2.7
Darren Oliver	1.3
Brett Cecil*	1.2
Sergio Santos	1
Carlos Villanueva	1
Dustin McGowan	0.9
Casey Janssen	0.7
Jesse Litsch	0.6
Jason Frasor	0.3
Francisco Cordero	0.2
Total Pitching	16.7

From the tables above we see that the 2012 Toronto Blue Jays projected offense (and defense) represent a total of 34.3 wins above replacement level and the pitchers represent 16.7 wins for a combined 51 wins above replacement.  Add this to the number of wins a replacement level team should win (52), and this would suggest that the Blue Jays will win 103 games in 2012.

WTF??

The Blue Jays will win 103 games in 2012!

Something has got to be wrong here.  Could someone please look over my numbers as I must have made a mistake, my calculations state that the Blue Jays will win 103 games this year.  That this years team is actually the greatest Blue Jays team ever assembled.  Next thing you will tell me is that The Vow will be the surprise Oscar winner for best movie.

The Myth of the Blue Jays Offense

This off-season whenever the discussion turns to dissecting the Blue Jays greatest needs for improvement, on numerous occasions I've heard comments similar to, 'They don't need to improve their offense as they scored the 6th most runs in baseball', 'Their offense is good enough' or 'Their pitching was horrible and was the biggest reason for their lack of success'.  Whenever I heard comments like this alarm bells went of in my mind as I suspected these assumptions may be based on faulty information.  Therefore today I'd like to delve into the Blue Jays 2011 offensive runs scored and pitching runs allowed, compare them against the rest of the league and see if the common beliefs hold up.


The 2011 Results - Offense

Yes it is absolutely true the Toronto Blue Jays finished finished 6th in baseball in runs scored in 2011, however, with pitchers hitting in the National League you really can't use runs scored as a measure of comparison for teams from the different leagues.  Therefore, to compare apples to apples I will only use American League team totals for the purpose of this article, where the Blue Jays finished 5th out of 14 teams in runs scored.  Refer to Chart 1 for American League runs scored by team.

Chart 1 - American League Runs Scored by Team

Team	Runs Scored
Boston	875
NY Yankees	867
Texas	855
Detroit	787
Toronto	743
Kansas City	730
Baltimore	708
Tampa Bay	707
Cleveland	704
LA Angels	667
Chicago White Sox	654
Oakland	645
Minnesota	619
Seattle	556
Average	723

The first thing that stands out to me is that although the Jays did finish 5th in the league in runs, they scored 132 less runs than the league leading Boston Red Sox.  Additionally, they only scored 20 more runs than the league average.  Thirdly, these totals ignore home park factors and could be misleading.

To combat any park advantage I decided to equalize each teams at home runs scored by taking their 2011 park factors and adjusting each to an equivalent of 1.00.  Therefore, once removing home park advantages, the Toronto Blue Jays adjusted total runs scored was 692, which was 31 runs below the league average.  Additionally, they now finished 10th out of the 14 teams in adjusted total runs scored.

Therefore, despite the common belief, the above analysis suggests the Blue Jays offense was below average for American League teams in 2011.

The 2011 Results - Pitching

The common belief is that the entire rotation outside of Ricky Romero and 10 starts for Henderson Alvarez, the entire Toronto Blue Jays rotation was a disappointment.  Additionally the bullpen couldn't be counted on as they blew a league leading number of saves and Casey Janssen was the only reliable member that had any kind of success. Overall the pitching staff was a disappointment and needs improvement.  On the surface the numbers support this argument as Toronto Blue Jays pitchers allowed 761 runs which was the 4th highest total in the American League.  Refer to Chart 2 for American League runs allowed by team.

Chart 2 - American League Runs Allowed by Team

Team	Runs Allowed
Baltimore	860
Minnesota	804
Kansas City	762
Toronto	761
Cleveland	760
Boston	737
Detroit	711
Chicago White Sox	706
Oakland	679
Texas	677
Seattle	675
NY Yankees	657
LA Angels	633
Tampa Bay	614
Average	717

Again, the above totals ignore home park factors and when the number of runs allowed at home are adjusted to equalize any advantage/disadvantage, the totals look very different.  The 2011 Toronto Blue Jays adjusted total runs allowed is now 706, which is good enough for 8th lowest of the 14 American League teams and 11 fewer runs than the league average number given up.  Therefore, since both numbers are now right in the middle of the pack for the American League, you could say that the Jays pitching was league average in 2011.

Therefore, while I believe that both the offense and pitching needs some improvement before we can truly call the Blue Jays a team ready to compete for a playoff spot, the analysis above suggests that it is actually the Blue Jays offense that needs the greatest amount of improvement.
 

Photo courtesy of SI.com

Why Prince Fielder Will Sign With the Blue Jays



Let me start by saying that I have never thought up until today that there was any real chance that Prince Fielder would sign with the Blue Jays.  The team has never given any indication that they would, and I have been the first to tell others that it's not happening.  Sure I would daydream every now and then what it would be like to have both Fielder and Jose Bautista in the middle of the Blue Jays line-up, however I never though it would happen, in spite of any reports to the contrary.  That is until today, and for no other reason that when I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together in my head I realized that Toronto is really Prince Fielder's only option.

What you say???  What about all the other reports about numerous teams being interested in him.  Well, we need to remember he is being represented by Scott Boras who is the king of spinning false interest in his clients and in early December he had even convinced a reporter to break the story that Fielder had narrowed his list of teams down to three, which also happened to included the Blue Jays.  Additionally, when you start looking at the teams that are reportedly interested, all of them have denied any interest.

Let's go through the list:

1. Washington

According to MLB.com there's a "99 percent" chance that the Nationals will not sign Prince Fielder.  Additional reports suggest that after the Jayson Werth signing last year which is not quite working out the way they expected, they are a bit gun shy to hand out another big contract, and they say the teams situation is settled at first base with Adam LaRoche.

2. Seattle
According to ESPN's Jerry Crasnick Seattle's interest in Fielder is "extremely overblown." and an agent reports are that they only have $3 to $4 million left for this years budget

3. Milwaukee
Prince's former team has moved on and signed Aramis Ramirez instead, and with Francisco Rodriguez accepting arbitration there is little money left to bring back Fielder.

4. Texas
According to Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports, if Texas signs Yu Darvish, there is reportedly no money left for Fielder

5. Miami
According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports a high ranking official in Miami has stated the team "is not and will not" be pursuing Prince Fielder

6. Baltimore
According to Roch Kubatko of MASN that there is "no way" the Orioles will give Fielder the kind of money he wants, and the teams General Manager Dan Duquette says they won't be players for Fielder.

7. Cubs
The Cubs have just acquired their first baseman of the future in Anthony Rizzo.

8. Cardinals
Rather than paying a princely sum, the Cardinals have signed Carlos Beltran instead and Lance Berkman will be the teams 2012 1st baseman

9. Dodgers
The teams general manager Ned Colleti has said the team is likely done spending as "we are at our payroll"

That completes the list of team with reported interest in Prince Fielder, could there be others?  Possibly San Francisco, however they have never been linked to Fielder and John Heyman of CBS sports reports that Fielder does not want to go to the West Coast.  Maybe Arizona, but they've got Paul Goldschmidt at 1st base who is young, inexpensive and controllable for the next 6 years.  I guess you can never count out the Red Sox and Yankees, but their 1st base and DH situations are filled.  This really only leaves one team, the Toronto Blue Jays. 

Also, the Toronto Blue Jays have never denied interest in Prince Fielder, they have just balked at his asking price and contract term demands.  However, if they are the only bidder then Fielder will eventually have to give in to the demands of the Blue Jays and settle for a maximum 5 year deal.  After all, Alex Anthopoulos has a value for all players and if a contact for Fielder meets what they believe is his value, and it makes sense for the team, then he's willing to make such moves.

Update: According to the Washington Post the owners of the Washington Nationals met with agent Scott Boras to discuss Prince Fielder, therefore the "99 per cent" chance that he won't sign with the team comment may have been nothing more than posturing.  Something that a lot of teams may be doing to try to get the price down.

Update 2: According to Jon Paul Morosi the Blue Jays are "not a serious suitor for Prince Fielder" and that "Price/years would need to come way down".  Well the hypothesis of my article is that since apparently no one is interested in Prince Fielder at his current demands, his price/years will have to come way down if he wants to play anywhere next season.

Picture “Photoshopping” courtesy Chris Creamer, baseball card template courtesy Andrew Meyer, via Getting Blanked

How the Best Players in the AL Were Acquired - Part Two

In part one of How the Best Players in the AL Were Acquired it appeared that spending money on free agent players was not the best way to attain valuable players.  However the data collated to determine this conclusion was only taken from the American League 2011 season, and that breaks the cardinal rule that you should never make a judgement based on a small sample size.  Therefore, today I will look at results for all American League player seasons over the past ten years to which will either support or discredit our findings from in Part 1.

Again, I've determined the criteria for "Best Players" to be any season in which a player has posted a WAR (Wins Above Replacement) of 3.0 or better.  This resulted in a total of 655 player seasons in the American League from 2002 through 2011.  So let's get to the results:

The Hitters....

The list of hitters in the American League that posted a 3.0 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) or better over the past 10 years resulted in total of 391 players, and detailed in the chart below is how teams acquired these players:

Acquired	Total Players	% of Overall Hitters
Trade	116	29.7%
Amateur Draft	140	35.8%
Amateur Free Agent	29	7.4%
Free Agent*	92	23.5%
Via Rule 5 Draft	0	0.0%
Waivers	3	0.8%
Purchased	11	2.8%
Total	391	100.0%

* Players that were re-signed by their existing team as free agents are not included in these totals.

The biggest change we see from Part 1 of How the Best Players in the American League Were Acquired is that the percentage of players that were acquired via free agency jumped from 5.4% up to 23.5%.  However the amateur draft and trade routes were still the best way to acquire a top player.

The Pitchers...

The list of pitchers in the American League that posted a 3.0 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) or better over the past 10 years resulted in total of 264 players, and detailed in the chart below is how teams acquired these players:

Acquired	Total Players	% of Overall Pitchers
Amateur Draft	95	36.0%
Trade	74	28.0%
Amateur Free Agent	27	10.2%
Free Agent*	58	22.0%
Via Rule 5 Draft	3	1.1%
Waivers	4	1.5%
Purchased	3	1.1%
Total	264	100.0%

* Players that were re-signed by their existing team as free agents are not included in these totals.

Again, the biggest change we see from Part 1 of How the Best Players in the American League Were Acquired is that the percentage of players that were acquired via free agency jumped from 10.7% up to 22.0%.

Overall Players...

The list of overall players in the American League that posted a 3.0 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) or better over the past 10 years resulted in total of 655 players, and detailed in the chart below is how teams acquired these players:

Acquired	Total Players	% of Overall Players
Amateur Draft	211	32.2%
Trade	214	32.7%
Amateur Free Agent	56	8.5%
Free Agent	150	22.9%
Via Rule 5 Draft	3	0.5%
Waivers	7	1.1%
Purchased	14	2.1%
Total	655	100.0%

Based on the results from the American League over the past 10 season, the best way to acquire a "Top Player" is through the Amateur Draft or via trade, with the two avenues almost equally viable.  Signing a free agent is also a much more viable option than our initial analysis suggested, as on average 15 "Top Player" seasons a year are a result of players that had signed with their team as a free agent.

What we can also determine is that acquiring players through waivers or the Rule 5 Draft is highly over-rated, as it is very unlikely source of acquiring talent, and while purchasing a player from the Japanese league may seem to have some merit, most of those seasons are a result of two players, Ichiro Susuki and Alfonso Soriano.

Trend...

To get a better understanding if there is a changing trend for how the best players in the AL were acquired I have included a graph below that breaks down the data by season:



What we find above indicates that there is a downward trend of elite players acquired as free agents.  My initial inclination is that teams are now acquiring these players by trade before they have a chance to become free agents, as we saw with the Roy Halladay and Adrian Gonzalez deals, however at the same time we don't see a spike in "Top Players" being acquired through trades which would refute this hypothesis.

Also in the above graph we see a steady upward trend of the "Top Players" acquired through the amateur draft.  This may be a result of more teams locking up their young talent to long term contracts through their productive seasons, such as has been the case with many players on the Tampa Bay Rays.  Another explanation could be more players re-signing with their existing teams rather than leaving to sign with another team as a free agent.  Both of these theories would also provide an explanation as to why there has been a decline in productive seasons coming from free agent signings.

Of course only time will tell if these trends will continue or if they are only a mere result of random market fluctuations.  However if I'm a general manager, I'm first looking to either acquire players through trades or the amateur draft, and additionally I'm looking to identify my young "elite players" and hoping to lock up these players to a contract that takes them through their productive years.