On Neil Walker and plate discipline

Posted on July 29, 2010 by naterose

It’s been noted several times by Pirates fans – and most eloquently by Matt Bandi over at Pittsburgh Lumber Co – that Neil Walker’s success thus far has rested on an unsustainably high BABIP, and that if he doesn’t start taking walks he’s not going to stay useful for very long.

I’m not here to argue against that. Walker has had a low walk rate for most of his pro career, and it’s largely what has held him back to this point. Him taking more walks in AAA this year led to him hitting better overall and earning the call to the Majors.

That trend has not continued in the Major Leagues, though, as Walker has drawn only 11 walks since coming up, good for a 5.4% rate. If that rate is maintained, he’s likely to regress just like Matt said.

Something I’m interested in looking at, though, is whether there’s any hope that Walker will start drawing walks again.

Looking at his plate discipline data at FanGraphs, I think there’s reason to believe that the walks will come.

According to FanGraphs, Walker swings at pitches out of the strike zone 29.1% of the time. That sounds like a lot, but the league average is 28.9%, so there’s only a 0.2% difference there. As far as making contact with those outside pitches, he does it 73.5% of the time, presumably fouling off most of those to keep the AB going. The league average is 66.5%. And finally, his swinging strike percentage is 8% as compared to the league average of 8.4%.

So in all discipline categories that involve pitches out of the strike zone (and thus balls, assuming the ump doesn’t blow the call) Walker is around or better than the league average at handling those pitches.

The strikes against him are the following: He swings at pitches in the zone a bit more often than the league average (66.7% to 64.3%). It’s possible that some of those are borderline pitches which would have been called balls had he held off. He also swings in general at more pitches than the average batter (46.7% to 45.5%).

If there’s one thing that stands out with Walker, it’s his percentage of first-pitch strikes. The first pitch against Walker has been a strike 63.4% of the time as compared to a 58.9% league average. I’ve not paid close enough attention to see if that’s because Walker swings through a lot of first pitches or if it’s just a statistical anomaly and Walker has taken more first pitch strikes than average hitters. If it’s the former, we have a problem. If it’s the latter, a regression is due.

Regardless of all this, taking walks is not about taking balls. It’s about taking ball four. Based on this data, I’d say Walker is due to start walking more. However, we’ll have to wait and see.

UPDATE: Matt has since taken this post and played with some more numbers that I wasn’t aware were available, and has come up with a triple-slash line based on what we should expect from Walker going forward. The results confirm my thoughts on Walker: he’s not going to keep hitting like a star, but if he plays good defense at second, he can hit well enough to stick around as an average player.

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Brad Lincoln optioned to AAA, Brendan Donnelly DFAd

Posted on July 26, 2010 by naterose

I won’t spend too much time on Donnelly. He’s been terrible this year and should have been released a long time ago.

Optioning Lincoln, however, is a bit surprising. I argued when he was called up that he wasn’t ready yet (amidst shouts from other Pirates fans that he clearly was), and he’s done nothing impressive so far in the Majors.

However, the Pirates clearly felt he was ready when he got the call. He’s been pretty underwhelming with a 6.29 ERA and a 1.53 WHIP, his stuff is flat, and he’s not striking ANYONE out (only a 3.7 K/9), but I’m not sure that 44 innings is really enough time to declare him not ready.

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Lastings Milledge is a starter

Posted on July 16, 2010 by naterose

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve long been upset with the amount of playing time Ryan Church has been getting. (If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you should. I can be found @stealing1stbase) Not only is Church 30 years old, not only is he hitting badly, not only are his career stats not at all impressive even if he does regress to his mean, but he’s also been blocking Lastings Milledge.

While Milledge has mostly been a disappointment in terms of him being the player scouts thought he would be when he was a top prospect, he’s also 25 years old and had been hitting better than Church.

To boot: Milledge’s line on the season has been .276/.347/.392. While the slugging is underwhelming, he’s finally been hitting for power in limited duty, hitting three homers, seven doubles and a triple over his last 100 plate appearances. His slugging percentage in those plate appearances has been a respectable .470. Combine this with a decreased strikeout rate and an increased walk rate, and two of the biggest knocks on Milledge in his career thus far seem to have righted themselves: he’s hitting for power and showing a disciplined approach at the plate.

Church, meanwhile, has a .186/.240/.321 line on the season and unlike Milledge has yet to put up a solid month, much less a solid month and a half.

It’s quite possible that Milledge could regress when given the starting role and be the same disappointing player he’s been since coming to the Majors. He was only facing left-handed pitchers while Church was stealing his playing time, and while he’s never mashed left handed pitchers like he has since the end of May, he’s always hit better against them.

However, a team in the Pirates’ position owes it to themselves to find out if Milledge is just a platoon player or not. And, if it turns out Milledge is a platoon player after all, the Pirates need to find a better hitter against righties to take over the majority of the platoon than Ryan Church.

Now, if I could just get one more wish regarding Milledge, I’d want him to hit at the top of the order so the team can move Jose Tabata to the bottom of the order and take some pressure of the 21 year old.

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Well, this is just a big bag of suck.

Posted on July 13, 2010 by naterose

So much for the All-Star Break being a break for the Pirates.

Today, the team told Tony Sanchez – last year’s first round pick who is out with a broken jaw – that he’s done for the season. That’s a real bummer, both because Sanchez looked poised to go to AA before the injury and because the Pirates’ catcher at the Major League level is Ryan Doumit.

Not content to just leave it at that, some good news was mixed with some bad news. The good news is that Jeff Locke – a part of the Nate McLouth trade – has been moved up to AA Altoona after pitching very well in Bradenton. The bad news is that he’s taking the spot of Tim Alderson – the sole return of the Freddy Sanchez trade.

Finally, the team has re-acquired former farmhand Brian Bixler from Cleveland in exchange for a player to be named later. While a player to be named later is rarely anything to get excited about, neither is Brian Bixler, who is 27 years old and still can’t hit AAA pitching despite it being his fourth year at the level.

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Pirates acquire Sean Gallagher for cash

Posted on July 8, 2010 by naterose

The Pirates today acquired the recently DFA’d Sean Gallagher from the San Diego Padres in exchange for cash, reports Dejan Kovacevic.

Gallagher fits the mold of a low-cost Neal Huntington acquisition very well, as a former highly-regarded pitching prospect that never quite panned out due to control issues. He had a good minor league career in the Cubs system and was ranked the 82nd best prospect in baseball entering 2008.

The Cubs did what they do with highly regarded prospects, calling him up before he was ready for the Majors and giving up on him when he didn’t immediately dominate Major League hitters.

Gallagher shows all the signs of being a guy who was exposed to the Majors too soon and never recovered. However, he’s still a young guy at only 24 years old, he only has 173 innings under his belt, and he has a good four pitch mix. The odds that he’ll live up to his expectations from his prospect days are pretty bad at this point, but there’s enough of a shot that he could be a solid Major Leaguer that he’s worth taking a flier on when the team doesn’t have to give anyone up to acquire him.

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The most infuriating thing about this team

Posted on June 30, 2010 by naterose

As we take a look at all the fundamental mistakes this team has been making as of late – from the baserunning gaffes to the fielding errors to all kinds of other mental mistakes, I think the most infuriating thing about the 2010 Pirates is that it’s coming from players that should know better.

The Pirates have four players in their everyday lineup – Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker, Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata – who are either rookies or in their second year of Major League baseball. All of them are young players, Walker being the oldest at 24. It would be easy to point to this fact and say “that’s why we have so many fundamental mistakes. There are so many young players.”

This all came to a head for me today when I was listening to Rocco DeMaro’s post-game show Extra Innings, and Greg Brown said he thought the team should get a veteran like Cincinnati did with Scott Rolen, and talking about how in Texas they have a lot of young players and he had heard a story about how they all listen to Michael Young because of his experience. He then dismissed the previous signings of guys like Doug Mientkiewicz and Eric Hinske (and presumably Ryan Church this year) because none of them were starters.

There’s probably some truth to the fact that young players tend to listen to what veterans have to say when it comes to playing the game. Speaking personally, if I were a rookie I would soak up every bit of information I could from veterans.

The problem is, it’s not the young players that keep making the mistakes, it’s the team’s veterans! While guys like Pedro Alvarez have made a few physical mistakes such as striking out way too often, I can’t recall seeing any of the four players I named above make a mental mistake this season. That’s come from the team’s vets.

Ryan Doumit has made mistake after mistake this season, both physical and mental. He’s been a big leaguer since 2005, yet he almost cost the Pirates a game because he tried to tag up from second with one out as the go-ahead run, and then he didn’t even slide when he ran home.

Lastings Milledge may only be 25 years old, but remember that he was once considered to be the next big thing in baseball and came up at a young age. He’s been in the Majors since 2006, only a year less than Doumit. His baserunning errors and misjudgement in the outfield both when running routes and when deciding whether or not to dive have reached nearly legendary status in Pittsburgh.

Ronny Cedeno and Bobby Crosby are both experienced shortstops, with Cedeno having been in the Majors since 2005 and Crosby since 2003. Despite a strong defensive showing, Cedeno made so many gaffes at the plate and on the bases that he’s effectively been benched in favor of Crosby, and Crosby has responded by playing even worse, collecting seven errors in his fifteen games at short.

This team doesn’t need any veteran leadership, it needs to play like its rookies have.

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Lies! Pierogis! Smizik! Live, in Pittsburgh!

Posted on June 23, 2010 by naterose

I realize I’m late on this, but that’s because I feel like neither of these things are real stories. However, they’re what everyone is talking about right now, so I’ll add my two cents.

The Pierogi story:

If you haven’t heard it by now, a part-time employee who donned one of the racing pierogi suits was fired for disparaging comments he made about Pirates management on Facebook. Specifically, for saying:

Coonelly extended the contracts of Russell and Huntington through the 2011 season. That means a 19-straight losing streak. Way to go Pirates.

Predictably, the team’s management wasn’t a fan of this, and the employee was fired.

Frequently lost in this discussion is the fact that the employee was also serving suspension for a previous violation of policy.

I understand that many people see Facebook as something that’s “theirs,” but it’s a public forum. By posting his concerns about his employer in a public forum, the decision this guy made was really no different than if he had gone straight to the news media with his comments (aside from the fact that, had he not been fired, nobody in the news would have printed what he had to say.)

This is also an incident that isn’t isolated to just the Pirates. There are plenty of stories like this in all types of fields, to the extent that many companies hold seminars on what is and is not acceptable to put on social networking sites as an employee. Not only that, but just last year an Eagles employee was in the news after being fired for similar reasons.

Add in the fact that Facebook has plenty of privacy settings that would have prevented the employer from seeing the comment had they been implemented by the employee, as well as the fact that the employee cited the first amendment – a law which extends only to the government and not to the private sector – as a reason he shouldn’t be fired, and it’s clear he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Lies! Damned lies!:

As you know by my previous post, Neal Huntington and John Russell were both extended by the Pirates. In fact, they were both extended in the offseason.

What you may not have heard by now is that some people apparently feel that not telling the public about this constitutes a lie. Specifically, Bob Smizik, who is so interested in this story that he dug this up from an April 7th fan chat with Frank Coonelly:

`piratefan62: Any talk of contract extension for Neal Huntington and John Russell?”

“Coonelly: No, there has not been any talk of contract extensions, because we have a policy of not discussing such matters publicly. Both Neal and J.R. are keenly focused on turning around the Pittsburgh Pirates and not concerned with their contract status.”

Smizik then does his thing (read: makes a mountain out of a molehill) and calls the statement “a bold-face lie,” asks how we can trust management, dubs the incident “Liargate,” writes about how he’s the only one who’s still talking about it (which is not because it’s a brave frontier, it’s because nobody cares except him), and generally keeps being terrible at writing about baseball.

As I read that statement, it’s not a lie. Is it weird that the team didn’t tell the public that their GM and their manager had been extended? Yes. Is it kinda shady? Yes. Did Coonelly use questionable wording? Yes. But overall, the fan was met with Coonelly telling him that the team doesn’t discuss contractual matters publicly. That’s not a lie, it’s just not the type of answer that the fan wanted to hear.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to get back to covering things about the Pirates that are actually relevant to anything.

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Tony Sanchez has a broken jaw, Brock Holt out for 2010 season

Posted on June 23, 2010 by naterose

Well, this sucks.

2010 has certainly not been kind to Pirates prospects. First Starling Marte had a hamate bone injury which required surgery, setting back a year that would probably have seen him promoted to AA at some point.

This was added to the fact that 2009 draftee Colton Cain had an injury before the season started that has had him on the shelf for all of 2010 so far. Also MIA are pitchers Quinton Miller, Victor Black and Brett Lorin.

Then middle infield prospect Brock Holt tore his MCL, and word has recently come in that he will be shelved for the rest of 2010.

Now 2009′s first-round pick Tony Sanchez has been hit in the face with a pitch, giving him a broken jaw in two places that will require surgery.

If there’s any good news to be had here, it’s this: few of these injuries will be significant.

Marte had been playing very well in Bradenton, but he’s also only 21 years old. As well, hamate injuries typically only sap power in the short-term. This may delay his arrival in the Major Leagues, but ultimately he’s still a very good prospect. Cain and Miller both have youth working in their favor as well.

Lorin is older, but he’s already started to come back to action in Bradenton this year. He’s not a top prospect by any means, so if he doesn’t pan out, it’ll be hard to say it was because of the injury.

As for Sanchez, this represents missed development time, which sucks for a college draftee. However, unless he does some weird thing I haven’t heard about where he throws out would-be base thieves using only his jaw, it shouldn’t be anything more than that. So while 2010 has been unkind to Pittsburgh prospects, it’s not the end of the world.

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Confirmed: Neal Huntington, John Russell extended into 2011

Posted on June 17, 2010 by naterose

This story by Ken Rosenthal is more to do with the unconfirmed rumors of John Russell’s dismissal, but within the story Rosenthal leaks out some information that hasn’t been leaked anywhere else, stating that both GM Neal Huntington and manager John Russell have been extended through 2011.

According to Rob Biertempfel, the team is set to make an official statement shortly addressing the rumors. Updates and my reaction to the news after that.

UPDATE: Jenifer Langosch tweets that the pair have indeed been extended to 2011, and Dejan Kovacevic goes so far as to say that the deal was already done this past offseason.

I’m happy with the Huntington extension. A reasonable argument could be made either way, as it’s now clear that he pretty much whiffed on the Jason Bay trade, who was arguably the only player the team could have expected to get a real return on. There’s a chance that Bryan Morris could still make the trade look good, but one out of four is generally not a good return. However, it also looks like he hit the Xavier Nady trade out of the park.

As a whole, I feel like Huntington has done yeoman’s work rebuilding this team from the minor leagues up, and honestly I feel like if Bob Nutting gave Dave Littlefield seven years to completely wreck the team, he should give Huntington a fair amount of time to rebuild it as well.

As for Russell, I’m generally indifferent on who manages the team. The players seem like they like Russell. I’m not a fan, as I feel he makes some truly boneheaded decisions, but I also don’t have the fiery hatred for him that a lot of other fans have and I feel like the team’s record is far from being his fault. A magical combination of Joe Torre, Connie Mack, Tony LaRussa, Bobby Cox, Lou Piniella, Joe Maddon and Casey Stengel rolled into one manager couldn’t get a winning record out of this team as it’s currently assembled. At some point I think Russell has to go, but he’s nothing more than a fall guy right now. If the young guys like him, I say let him stick around until the team starts to look good.

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Thoughts on the debut we’ve all been waiting for

Posted on June 17, 2010 by naterose

Although today’s ballgame was a horribly played defensive debacle which saw the Pirates commit six (SIX!) errors, it was still a day of hope for Pirates fans, as the uber-prospect we’ve all been waiting for started at third base and hit sixth in the lineup.

If you don’t know who I’m talking about by now, you’ve been living under a rock. Pedro Alvarez has been the biggest name to come to the Majors since Strasburg, and not just for Pirates fans – the third baseman was ranked the eighth best prospect in the Majors to start the year by Baseball America.

Tonight, Alvarez went 0-for-2 at the plate with a walk and a strikeout. He also committed and error in the field, leaving him a homer shy of what I refer to as the Adam Dunn cycle. (Speaking of which, Alvarez has zero home runs this year! Clearly it’s time to bench him to get Ryan Church into the lineup!)

Not to sound like a wet blanket, but this is the kind of production I expect from him at first. At each level of his pro career this far, Alvarez has started out with about a month’s time of being a player who will either walk, strike out, or hit a home run before adjusting to the level and becoming a more dynamic hitter who will also have a respectable batting average. This is not unusual for players like Alvarez, and even if he struggles out of the gate, by the end of the year everyone should start to realize what a special talent he is.

Overall, Alvarez looked very patient at the plate, working deep into counts in every plate appearance. That type of patience will not only lead to better pitches to hit and more walks, it will also make starting pitchers work harder, which is always a plus.

As for the rest of the game, it was mostly uninspiring. The aforementioned six errors were committed by Bobby Crosby twice, Javier Lopez, Ryan Doumit, Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker. Aside from Walker, nobody expects any of these guys to be good fielders, and Walker can be forgiven since he’s still got barely over a month of experience at second under his belt. Still, six errors is inexcusable even to a person who hates the error statistic.

However, there were also some encouraging things, as Jose Tabata hit his first Major League home run and Lastings Milledge went 2-for-3 with a double, which will hopefully keep him in the lineup instead of Ryan Church and his .179/.220/.308 line.

On another note all together, I realize how late I am on this, but the corresponding move to bring Alvarez up was to designate Aki Iwamura for assignment. The team has said that they hope to work out a trade in the next ten days, but considering how disappointing Iwamura has been all year, I’m not optimistic that anything will get done, or that even if anything does get done that anything even remotely interesting will be coming our way.

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