April 27, 2012

The Orioles Traded Josh Bell...For Bill Hall?

Well, not really.  Over the weekend, the Orioles traded Josh Bell to the Arizona Diamondbacks for a player to be named later or cash considerations.  After the trade, AAA Norfolk needed a third baseman so Dan Duquette went out and signed Bill Hall.  The same Bill Hall that hasn't had a WAR over 2 since 2006?  Yup, that one.  Why did the Orioles decide that they had no need for the 25 year old Bell, but could use 32 year old Hall on their AAA team?  Let's find out.

Through 9 games with AAA Norfolk, Bell was off to a pretty dismal start hitting just .094/.256/.250.  However, when the Orioles acquired him from the Dodgers in 2009 along with Steve Johnson in exchange for George Sherrill, Bell was highly thought of as a prospect.  In 2009, Bell had a nice season in AA with an OPS of .933.  And in 2010, he was less good in AAA but still had an OPS of .803.  That got him a call up to the majors in July where he would basically be the Orioles starting third baseman for the rest of the season.  He received 161 plate appearances to prove himself that year.  What did he do with this opportunity?  He just slashed .214/.224/.302 with 53 SO and 2 BB.  Yes, 2 BB in 161 PA's.  His 1.2 BB% is the lowest I can remember seeing from a major league player.

This earned him a return engagement at AAA where he had moderate success, remembered how to walk a little bit and had an OPS of .758.  But when he was called up to the Orioles in 2011, it was more of the same except his K% actually went up to 38.5%.  In total, he received 226 major league plate appearances and had a 2.7 BB% and a 34.5 K%.  It's next to impossible to succeed in the majors with rates like that.  So, the Orioles designated him for assignment to make room on the 40 man roster for Luis Exposito, who was waived himself by the Boston Red Sox.  I suppose the Orioles thought they needed more minor league catching depth.  In a few days, they worked out the deal with the Diamondbacks where they're not guaranteed to get a player back.  They may just get cash.

The interesting part of this is that once Josh Bell was traded to the Diamondbacks, the AAA Norfolk team needed a third baseman.  So what did they do?  The team went out and signed 32 year old utility man Bill Hall.  Hall signed with the Yankees prior to spring training this year and was pretty excited about it; after he signed with the Yankees, he tweeted:

IT’S OFFICIAL IM A YANKEE!!!!!!!!#IwannaRing!!!!

— Bill Hall (@BillHall_III) February 7, 2012
But he didn't make the Yankees major league roster out of spring training so he opted out of his contract and has been a free agent since.  Hall has had some previous success in the major leagues, but he hasn't been an above average major league player since he hit 35 home runs in 2006 with the Brewers.  At this point, it's pretty clear that was a fluke.  Right now, he may be a decent utility player because he can play a few different positions around the infield and maybe even a little outfield.  For the Red Sox in 2010, he played every position on the diamond except for catcher and first base.  So he's got that going for him.

To me, this move signals that the team had given up hope that Josh Bell would be a productive major leaguer and also means that the team is unhappy with the defense they've been getting from the third base position.  They're willing to look under any and all rocks to try to find someone that's capable of playing third base and not be terrible at it.  Betemit and Reynolds have each taken turns looking horrendous at third so far.  There are even rumors that the Orioles are considering Brandon Inge.  I sincerely hope that doesn't come to fruition as Inge hasn't hit major league pitching in years. 

Hall is off to a nice start with Norfolk, going 0 for 4 with 4 strikeouts in his first game. At the end of the day, the team probably won't call up Hall unless they suffer a rash of injuries.  So he's really just roster depth for the infield, primarily at third base.   These days, that seems to be the primary focus of the Orioles front office.

April 17, 2012

What's Behind Jake Arrieta's Fast Start?

Third year Orioles starting pitcher Jake Arrieta is off to a very nice start to the season through three starts with a 2.66 ERA and 0.89 WHIP.  Buck gave him the nod on opening day and so far has been rewarded for showing faith in the young right hander.  The ERA estimators agree that his good start is legitimate rather than just a result of good luck.  Currently, Arrieta has a 3.33 FIP, a 3.55 xFIP, and a 3.55 SIERA.  All of these are much improved marks from anything that he's put up in his previous two seasons.  Has Arrieta changed at all as a pitcher?  What's behind this good start?

Since three starts is still only about 10% of his work for the season, we have to be careful to not read too much into certain numbers.  Most of his statistics are not reliable at this point.  I'll just get it out of the way now...small sample size.  I know, I know.  But if we didn't analyze baseball in small sample sizes at this point in the season, what would we talk about?  With that out of the way, I'll do my best to only look at the stats that become at least semi-reliable in the small sample sizes.

The first stat that becomes reliable at this point in the year is velocity.  And that just so happens to be much improved for Jake so far this year.  Check out this velocity graph from fangraphs.  Click on it to embiggen.


His average fastball velocity so far this season has been 93.8 mph.  In 2010 and 2011, it was around 92.5 mph.  So through his first three starts, he's gained about 1.5 mph on his fastball.  There is no question that is a positive development.  I don't recall the exact number, but someone did a study on the effect of an increase in velocity for a starting pitcher.  There was something like a .50 ERA improvement for every mph increase.

It's more informative to look at his K% and BB% rather than K/9 and BB/9 at this point in the season, since it makes the sample size bigger.  Usually, I don't mind using K/9 and BB/9 but this early in the season, the percentages are better.  Through 79 batters faced, Arrieta has a 20.3 K% which is up from 17.8% last year.  So he's made a small improvement in his K%. 

Drilling down even farther, Jake has a swinging strike % of 7.5% so far in 2012.  In 2011, it was just about the same at 7.4%.  It's been shown that swinging strike % has a high correlation with K%.  League average has been about 8.5% for the last few years, so he's actually below average there.  He's accumulated 16 strikeouts in his 79 batters faced and 20.1 innings thrown.

It's in his walk rate where he's made a big improvement.  He's only walked 4 of the 79 batters he's faced this year, which is a rate of only 5.1%.  If he could somehow keep this BB%, we will see a big step forward out of Arrieta this year.  There's no way to really know if he can keep this up.  Throughout his minor league and major league career so far, his walk rate has been around 11%.  Hopefully, this is real improvement but his BB% just hasn't stabilized yet so it's hard to say.

The last thing I'll look at are his luck stats.  His BABIP is an extremely low .214.  Obviously, this won't last and some of those line drives he's been giving up will start falling for hits.  Jake is stranding 67.9% of runners that reach base, which is slightly below the league average of 72.5%.  We can expect this number to improve slightly.  Lastly, his HR/FB rate is fairly normal at 9.1%.

What I'd take away from Arrieta's performance so far is the fact that his velocity is up 1.5 mph, he's getting a little lucky on his balls in play, and he has greatly improved his walk rate.  If he can maintain the velocity and keep some or most of the gain to his walk rate, I think we're going to see the best year of Jake Arrieta's career this season.  Maybe the Orioles did have a real opening day starter after all.

I'll leave you with this look at the pitch f/x graph of his pitches so far in 2012. Enjoy.

April 4, 2012

When Will Dylan Bundy Arrive?

Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam
Now that we know Orioles 2011 1st round draft pick Dylan Bundy will start the year with the Low A Delmarva Shorebirds, I started to wonder when we'll see Bundy in the major leagues.  There is talk about him being the most polished high school pitcher to be drafted in years so maybe he'll move faster than most.  I've also heard a lot of fans that want him to be up next year in 2013.  For a 19 year old kid that hasn't yet thrown a pitch in minor league ball, that seems awfully fast.  One of the best ways to gauge his development is to looks at other similarly talented high 1st round draft picks to come out of high school and see how they progressed through the minor leagues.

We can't compare Bundy to the last Orioles high first round pitcher out of high school, Matt Hobgood.  He was overdrafted in the first place to save bonus money.  Hobgood never should have been drafted 5th overall in 2009.  Having struggled since he was drafted, now he's out for the 2012 season because of surgery to his rotator cuff.  He's supposed to be out 12-18 months.

Homer Bailey was drafted 7th overall in the 2004 draft out a Texas High School.  Signed quickly, he was able to pitch in 6 games for the Gulf Coast League Reds that summer.  In 2005, Bailey was sent to Dayton in the Low A Midwest League where he spent the whole season.  The following year, Bailey was moved up to High A Sarasota where he started 13 games.  Midway through the 2006 season, he was promoted to AA Chattanooga in the Southern League.  In Chattanooga, Bailey really excelled posting a 1.59 ERA and a 2.45 FIP.  In 2007, the Reds deemed Bailey ready for AAA Louisville after failing to make the major league team out of spring training.  He was called up to the Reds on June 8, 2007 for a month before he was sent down to AAA again.  This would become a theme for Bailey as he has been sent back and forth between the major and minor leagues every year of his career.  Last year, in 2011 Bailey had his best season so far throwing 132 major league innings with a 4.06 FIP.  He is supposed to remain in the Reds rotation in 2012.

Clayton Kershaw was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers 7th overall in the 2006 MLB draft out of Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas.  Drafted on June 6th, Kershaw signed with the Dodgers quickly on June 20th.  Because he signed so soon, he was able to get in 37 innings with the Gulf Coast League Dodgers at the end of 2006.  For his second year in pro ball in 2007, he was moved to Low A Great Lakes and started 20 games.  He did so well there, including 12.4 SO/9 that he was bumped up to AA Jacksonville on August 6 for 5 starts at the end of the year.  At this point, he was one of the top prospects in all of baseball.  The Dodgers sent him back to AA Jacksonville to begin 2008, but recalled him to the major league squad on July 22, 2008 just over 2 years after he was drafted.  Kershaw has turned into one of the best pitchers in the league and made it to the majors at 20 years old in 2008.

Jarrod Parker was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks 9th overall in the 2007 draft out of Norwell High School in Indiana.  Parker held out to the deadline and didn't sign in time to pitch in 2007.  In 2008, he was assigned to Class A to pitch for South Bend.  He spent the entire season there and had a 3.44 ERA with a 3.12 FIP.  To begin 2009, he was bumped up to High A Visalia.  He dominated in 19  innings there and was quickly moved to AA Mobile.  On July 30 in a start for Mobile, Parker injured his elbow and ended up needing Tommy John surgery.  The surgery severely delayed his arrival in the majors.  He would go on to miss the rest of 2009 and all of 2010.  Parker was sent back to Mobile when he returned in 2011 and spent almost the entire season there.  He was recalled to the Diamondbacks for one start at the end of the season.  This offseason, he was traded to the Oakland A's in a package of prospects for Trevor Cahill.  In the running for the 5th starter role with Oakland, he was recently sent to AAA but still may be up shortly with the A's.  Parker is now 23 and in his 5th pro season.

Madison Bumgarner was drafted 10th overall in 2007 out of South Caldwell High School in North Carolina.  Bumgarner didn't pitch in pro ball in 2007.  In 2008, the Giants sent him to Low A Augusta in the South Atlantic League where he dominated to the tune of a 1.46 ERA backed up by a 1.71 FIP.  It was more of the same dominance in High A ball to begin 2009 so after 5 starts there, he was sent to AA Connecticut in the Eastern League.  He spent the majority of 2009 in AA, and got called up to the Giants for 10 innings in September.  Deemed by the Giants to still not be ready for pro ball to begin 2010 (most likely because of his velocity dip in 2009) he was sent to AAA Fresno for 14 starts.  June 26, 2010 was the day that he was called up to the Giants for good.  He has been excellent since he's been in the big leagues while making it to the majors almost exactly 3 years after he was drafted.

Rick Porcello was drafted 27th overall out of a New Jersey High School in 2007.  He was supposed to be drafted higher but his bonus demands and notoriously demanding agent Scott Boras led to him falling to the Tigers.  The Tigers have traditionally rushed their prospects through the minor leagues, like they're currently doing with Jacob Turner.  Porcello had a reputation for being a strikeout pitcher in high school with a devastating curve ball.  Upon arriving to the minors, he began relying on a sinker and pitching to contact.  Porcello didn't pitch in the minors in 2007 after he was drafted, and in 2008 he was sent to High A Lakeland where he spent the whole season and threw 125 innings.  The next year the Tigers invited him to spring training and surprisingly he made the team's rotation out of spring training.  He made his debut on April 9, 2009.  Having spent only one season in the minors, Porcello currently has a career 4.38 FIP.

So what can we tell about Bundy from all this?  2 of the 5 high school pitchers started their careers in Rookie Ball the season they were drafted.  This didn't seem to speed up their paths to the big leagues as they still took the same general amount of time to pass through the minors.  Bundy didn't sign until the August 15 deadline, so he didn't pitch in rookie ball either.  The fastest to get to the majors of the 5 was Porcello, but that had more to do with the Tigers rushing him than anything he did.  Next was Kershaw; he took right about 2 years to get to the bigs because of his sheer dominance of the minor leagues.  Homer Bailey and Madison Bumgarner both took 3 years to get to their respective big league clubs.  Slowed down by a lost year due to Tommy John surgery, Jarrod Parker didn't get to the majors until 4 1/2 years after he was drafted.  That's assuming that he's called up to the A's soon to continue his big league career.

The average time for these types of high 1st round high school draft picks to make it to the majors is two to three years.  Porcello and Parker look like the exceptions.  If Bundy is dominant in the minors, he'll spend closer to 2 years in the minors.  If he's just decent, he'll probably spend closer to 3 years on the farm.

The other thing to consider when thinking about when he'll come up is service time.  Say Bundy dominates the minor leagues and is called up to the Orioles to start 2014.  The Orioles can delay his service clock starting by holding him in the minors for a few weeks until mid April.  Players need 6 years of service time to become a free agent, with 172 days constituting a full year.  If they hold him down for a few weeks, they can get another year of service from him in his age 27 season.  There is also the super-two arbitration element to consider.  If they hold him down until around June to avoid super-two status, the Orioles can potentially save a considerable amount of money in arbitration by only having him eligible for arbitration 3 times instead of 4.

Considering all of these elements, I think the earliest we see Bundy in an O's uniform is June, 2013 with a more likely call-up date of June, 2014.  I'm certainly looking forward to seeing him in an O's uniform.