Andrew McCutchen is having a down year

Last year, I wrote about how some Pirate fans felt that 2010 was a down year for Andrew McCutchen. I attempted to refute those claims on the basis that it was his perceived defensive shortcomings that held his season's perception down.

So it is somewhat surprising that I am here to type that 2011 was a down year for Cutch-22. On the surface this seems counterintuitive as McCutchen is in the midst of a 5.3 WAR season after his first two years being 3.5 and 3.7 respectively.

The first half of the year looked like McCutchen was on the verge of becoming a legitimate superstar in the league as he went .291/.390/.505 (894 OPS) with 14 HR and 15 SB's in the 88 games prior to the All-Star break. But McCutchen came out cold from the ASB and has stayed cold in the 2nd half, with a .226/.335/.382 (717 OPS) line and 6 HR and 5 SB's in 52 games.

Contrary to last year, when McCutchen and the rest of the outfielders were subjected to the bizarre defensive alignments, Cutch-22 has a very favorable Ultimate Zone Rating for his fielding (4.8/150 versus his -12.9/150 in 2010). So last year's 3.7 WAR was held down by his poor defensive rating while his 5.3 WAR may be buoyed by his positive defensive rating. I'm becoming evermore skeptical of defensive ratings, so when I see a player greatly augmented by one, it sticks out.

My reasoning is that McCutchen's Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) has held steady from his first two years. His three wOBA's are (in order) .368, .363, and .364. Additionally, his OPS's are steady at 836, 814, and 830. So McCutchen's offensive component of his WAR rating has held steady, but his defensive rating (the part that I'm skeptical of true value) has fluctuated which has caused his high WAR total of 5.3 in 2011.

Something else to be concerned about is that his overall contact percentages have dropped this year too. As per his Fangraphs page, his contact rate within the strike zone has dropped from 90.6% to 87.9% this year. His overall contact rate for all pitches has also dropped from 84.6% to 81.0% and his swinging strike rate has increased from 5.8% to 7.6% this year.

Let me clarify something -- I am still a huge, huge McCutchen fan. I think he has another gear in him and he is capable of having a 25 HR/40 SB season, which would be monsterous. But this season is not his best one. The good news is that Cutch-22 will not turn 25 until October, which means his peak seasons of age 27-29 are still ahead of him and in line for us as Pirates fans.

2011 Pirates and the NL Central by WAR

So last year around this time, I did a series of predictions for the 2010 season as it related to the Pirates. I got some right and some wrong. And then I got 1 really, really wrong. I predicted, using WAR, that the Pirates would win 76 games. I was only off by 19.

But like a true masochist, I'm back for more. Here's my position-by-position estimates for your 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates. Keep in mind that 2 WAR is considered to be a league average player and that these estimates account for both offense and defense for hitters.

C - Snyder/Jaramillo -- 1 WAR
1B - Overbay -- 1 WAR
2B - Walker -- 2 WAR
SS - Cedeno -- 1 WAR
3B - Alvarez -- 2.5 WAR
LF - Tabata -- 2.5 WAR
CF - McCutchen -- 4 WAR
RF - Jones/Diaz -- 1.5 WAR
Bench -- 0 WAR

Hitters total -- 15.5 WAR

SP1 - Maholm -- 2 WAR
SP2 - McDonald -- 1.5 WAR
SP3 - Ohlendorf -- 1.5 WAR
SP4 - Correia -- 1 WAR
SP5 - Morton/Lincoln -- 0.5 WAR
Bullpen -- 3 WAR

Pitchers total -- 9.5 WAR

Grand total -- Baseline (48) + Hitters (15.5) + Pitchers (9.5) = 73 wins
As you can see from all the 1 WAR's, the Pirates still have a lot of room for improvement on this team. Their pitching, especially, is in need of an above-average arm or three. Alvarez and Walker's WARs were held back by their projected sub-par defense. I would love to say that I sold them short at the end of the season.

I won't show the position-by-position for each team, but I did it in an Excel Spreadsheet. Here's how I predict the NL Central to look:
MIL -- 90.5 (91 wins)
CIN -- 89.5 (90 wins)
STL -- 86 wins
CHC -- 83 wins
HOU -- 77 wins
PGH -- 73 wins

This shows how devastating the Wainwright injury was for the Cards. It's probably a net swing of 4 wins from Wainwright to his replacement, which is the difference between challenging for the NL Central title and finishing in 3rd.

The Cubs will most likely disappoint and finish under .500 again this year, but they have the makings of a very nice pitching staff this year.

Cincinnati had the best projected group of hitters (28.5 WAR), which was even better than St. Louis's 26 WAR. Milwaukee was the only team projected to get 20+ WAR from both their hitters and pitchers (22.5, 20 respectively). Their front end rotation of Gallardo, Greinke, Marcum could be excellent.

I had hoped that 2010 would be the year that the Pirates would flirt with .500 and 2011 would be the year they break this cursed losing streak. At best, it seems like that prediction is delayed a year. Maybe 2012 will be the year that the streak is broken. Just in time for the end of the world, as per the Mayans. Kind of fitting.

A great draft class (2005) versus a bad one (2004)

Earlier this season, I examined the highly touted 2005 draft class using WAR (Wins Above Replacement) and determined that, yes, the hype was real. This is a very strong class with a combined 134.1 Wins Above Replacement to this point.

The top 5 contributors to this total are Hall of Fame-path-Ryan Zimmerman (26.4), team leader Troy Tulowitzki (17.8), iron gloved Ryan Braun (16.5), Matt Garza (9.9), and Mike Pelfrey (8.0). All of those guys were college players so they had a 2-3 year headstart on the high school outfielders like Jay Bruce (7.8), Justin Upton (7.7), Andrew McCutchen (6.7), and Colby Rasmus (5.8).

Cutch-22, with his 6.7 WAR, currently ranks 10th in this class -- right behind Ricky Romero from the Blue Jays with his 6.8.

By comparison, let's take a look at the draft class one year before this one, the 2004 class. The 2004 class at the time was said to not be deep, plus it was peppered with some high-salary-demand guys like Stephen Drew and Jered Weaver who dropped in the draft.

Nevertheless, the 2004 class has to date only compiled an 85.8 WAR, even with a one year jump on the 2005 class. Furthermore, two players (Justin Verlander with 25.3 and Jered Weaver with 18.8) have compiled nearly 50% of the WAR in this class. To show the weakness of the class, take a look at Neil Walker who had a great season with the stick and a not-so-great one with the glove. His 1.9 WAR this year and his -0.3 WAR in 2009 gives him 1.6 WAR for his career. That puts Walker in 11th place. Keep in mind that Cutch-22 is in 10th with his 6.7 WAR -- in this class he would be 4th!

Something to keep in mind, regarding the relative strengths of a draft class from year to year, as we move into the 2011 draft which is said to have one of the strongest 1st rounds in years.

The 2010 MLB season by WAR

Earlier this year, I looked at how predicitive/descriptive WAR (Wins Above Replacement) did as a metric for an entire team, as it related to their win/loss records. During that post, I found that 14 of the 30 teams were within +/- of 4 wins of their final total. That's a margin of error of around 2.5% over 162 games.

I thought I would do the same exercise for this recently completed season.

On fangraphs.com you can find WAR by a whole team for both batting and pitching. So I went through and added each team's batting WAR to its pitching WAR and then added in the baseline 48 wins to find what WAR predicted each team to finish. Listed below are the results, with each team's actual wins listed first and their WAR win total calculated (baseline + bat + pitch, in that order). The number in parentheses after the WAR total is the difference between the two.

TB 96 (48 + 27.3 bat + 16.3 pitch) = 91.6 (+4.4 wins)
NYY 95 (48 + 35.5 + 12.1) = 95.6 (-0.6 wins)
BOS 89 (48+ 29.2 + 19.3) = 96.5 (-7.5 wins)
TOR 85 (48 + 25.3 + 16.8) = 90.1 (-5.1 wins)
BAL 66 (48 + 10.8 + 8.9) = 67.7 (-1.7 wins)

MIN 94 (48+ 31.4 + 18.5) = 97.9 (-3.9 wins)
CHW 88 (48+ 18.8 + 24.5) = 91.3 (-3.3 wins)
DET 81 (48+ 25.5 + 16.4) = 89.9 (-8.9 wins)
CLE 69 (48+ 10.3+ 9.0) = 67.3 (+1.7 wins)
KC 67 (48+ 14.5+ 11.5) = 74.0 (-7 wins)

TEX 90 (48+ 25.1 + 18.0) = 91.1 (-1.1 wins)
OAK 81 (48+ 22.0 + 13.8) = 83.8 (-2.8 wins)
LAA 80 (48+ 13.0+ 16.3) = 77.3 (+2.7 wins)
SEA 61 (48+ 5.3 + 13.9) = 67.2 (-6.2 wins)

PHI 97 (48+ 23.0 + 19.4) = 90.4 (+6.6 wins)
ATL 91 (48+ 22.2 + 20.9) = 91.1 (-0.1 wins)
FLA 80 (48 + 18.2 + 17.1) = 83.3 (-3.3 wins)
NYM 79 (48+ 15.8 + 14.5) = 78.3 (+0.7 wins)
WAS 69 (48+ 17.2 + 13.6) = 78.8 (-9.8 wins)

CIN 91 (48 + 32.9 + 16.4) = 97.3 (-6.3 wins)
STL 86 (48 + 22.2 + 16.3) = 86.5 (-0.5 wins)
MIL 77 (48 + 29.6 + 10.9) = 88.5 (-11.5 wins)
HOU 76 (48 + 8.3 + 16.5) = 72.8 (+3.2 wins)
CHC 75 (48 + 14.8 + 17.4) = 80.2 (-5.2 wins)
PIT 57 (48 + 3.4 + 6.7) = 58.1 (-1.1 wins)

SF 92 (48+ 25.6 + 21.6) = 95.2 (-3.2 wins)
SD 90 (48 + 24.4 + 15.6) = 88.0 (+2.o wins)
COL 83 (48 + 20.0 + 24.1 ) = 92.1 (-9.1 wins)
LAD 80 (48 + 13.3 + 18.0) = 79.3 (+0.7 wins)
ARI 65 (48 + 24.7 + 7.8) = 80.5 (-15.5 wins)

Whew...number crunchy!
This year, WAR got 18 of 30 teams within +/-4 wins of their actual totals, which I consider to be impressive.

The 3 teams that WAR was off by the most (ARI, MIL, WAS) were all slanted more towards the batting in their components. I have always had more faith in WAR from a batting standpoint than a pitching standpoint, so I wonder if there is something lodged inside of these stats to uncover.

WAR is not perfect, by any means, but it is the best available metric that we have at this time.

2010 NL Central - by WAR

By now, after 3 posts that professed my love of the stat WAR (Wins Above Replacement), it's probably evident that I am a supporter of it as a predictive tool.

Check the sidebar labels under "WAR" to see the 3 part series in which I explained WAR, examined how it did as a predictive tool in 2009, and how it may forecast the Pirates in 2010.

I decided to expand on that thought and use WAR to forecast all the teams in the NL Central. Now keep in mind, these are my estimates (not Fangraphs) based on past WAR totals for each individual player projected to start for the teams. After I did a detailed one for the Pirates, with each projected 25 man roster spot, a couple of things were evident:
1. Your bench does not contribute much WAR, due to lack of playing time. For the Pirates, the bench was 0.0. For the rest of the teams, I assumed a WAR of 1 for the bench, except the Astros got a 0.0
2. The bullpen does not contribute much either. Again, due to playing time (and the chaining effect detailed by Dave Cameron at Fangraphs), the bullpens ranged from 3-4 for the NL Central.

I did go player by player in a nerdy Excel spreadsheet for the rest of the starters, both batters and pitchers. Here are the overall results:
1. STL (48 baseline wins + 28.5 bat + 18 pitch) = 94.5
2. CHC (48 + 21.5 bat + 17 pitch) = 86.5
3. CIN (48 + 23 bat + 13.5 pitch) = 84.5
4. MIL (48 + 22.5 bat + 13.5 pitch) = 84
5. PIT (48 + 17.5 bat + 12 pitch) = 77.5
6. HOU (48 + 17 bat + 12 pitch) = 77

Some of the totals seem a little high to me, but remember that a +/- of 4 wins is very acceptable and easy to do over the course of a year. Also, part 2 of the WAR series showed that WAR was a great predictor of the "order" of the standings within a division, even if the totals were a little off.

When you do an exercise like this and expand your scope, you come to realize just how much more talent the Pirates need. That's no surprise in and of itself, but once you see in black and white how they compare, it's startling. Here is a position by position ranking of where the Pirates stand within the division.
C - 3rd of 6 (Doumit with 2, leader Molina STL 3.5)
1B - 6th of 6 (Clement with 0.5, leader Pujols STL 8)
2B - 2nd(t) of 6 (Iwamura with 2, leader Phillips CIN 3.5)
SS - 5th of 6 (Cedeno with 1, leader Ryan STL/Theriot CHC 3)
3B - 1st(t) of 6 (Laroche/Alvarez with 3.5, tied with Rolen CIN 3.5)
LF - 4th(t) of 6 (Milledge with 2, leader Holliday STL 5.5, but 4th/5th/6th all 2.0)
CF - 1st of 6 (McCutchen with 4, next closest Bourn HOU/Rasmus STL/Byrd CHC 3.0)
RF - 2nd(t) of 6 (Jones with 2.5, leader Pence HOU 3.5)

Without going into each SP, let me just put this into context a little bit. The Pirates top pitcher, Maholm with 3 WAR, would be tied for 8th. Carpenter and Wainwright for STL are both 5 WAR pitchers.

Although it doesn't seem like much, 1 and 2 WAR here and there add up over the course of a roster. As you can see above, the Pirates are woefully behind at 1B. The next closest to them is Berkman HOU and Lee CHC at 4 WAR. The Pirates need to inject talent wherever they can get it, but right now 1B, SS, and SP are the obvious areas.

That's why if Laroche improves his hitting and maintains his good fielding, he can be a 3-4 WAR player at 3B, allowing us to move Alvarez and his 4-5 WAR potential to 1B. If you add a competent SS at 2-3 WAR and a SP at 4-5 WAR, you have just added 7 wins to the roster. That's how the Pirates will break this losing skien that they have been on the past eternity.

If you have any questions about WAR's for specific players, let me know in the comments.

WAR - it is good for something after all (Part 3)

Part 1 of this mini-series explained the concept of WAR and part 2 showed the level of accuracy of WAR in forecasting the final records of all 30 teams in 2009.

This final part will use WAR to preview the potential win total of the Pirates in 2010, by breaking down each person on the presumed 25 man roster.

I did not run simulations on how many AB's, home runs, doubles, an estimated range and arm strength, etc. Nor did I attempt to calculate the FIP for each pitcher and how many innings they would pitch.

Using Fangraphs' player profiles (and clicking on the "Value" tab), I simply looked at their previous WAR history and adjusted accordingly. I did use some judgment calls, which I will explain when they come up. Also, for those new to WAR, a WAR of 2 to 2.5 is considered to be an average/slightly above average player at his position.

C Doumit -- 2 WAR (he's ranged from 1.8 to the mid 3's, so this seemed safe)
1B Clement -- 0.5 WAR
2B Iwamura -- 2 WAR
SS Cedeno -- 1 WAR
3B Laroche (1/3 of season)/Alvarez (2/3 season) -- 3.5 WAR (every other position in this exercise has just one player, but we all now Pedro Is Coming. I gave 1 WAR to Laroche and 2.5 WAR to Alvarez)
LF Milledge -- 2 WAR (I actually am buying into the hype about him, but held back)
CF McCutchen -- 4 WAR (it's been a long time since the Pirates had a consistent 4 WAR player)
RF Jones -- 2.5 WAR (welcome back to Earth, but he'll still be good)

Bench Church -- 0.5 WAR
Bench Pearce -- -0.5 WAR
Bench Crosby -- -0.5 WAR
Bench Vasquez -- 0 WAR
Bench Jaramillo -- 0.5 WAR

SP1 Maholm -- 3 WAR (he's pretty consistent at this point)
SP2 Ohlendorf -- 2 WAR (WAR is not kind to non K pitchers, I would love to say he's a 3 WAR)
SP3 Duke -- 2 WAR
SP4 Morton -- 1.5 WAR
SP5 McCutchen -- 0.5 WAR

About the bullpen...WAR devalues relief pitchers (as they should be), so if these all seem low that's why. Recently, Dave Cameron had an article of Fangraphs explaining the "chaining effect" of a bullpen, meaning that if Dotel is hurt, Hanrahan will move in and not a call-up from AAA to close the games.

CL Dotel -- 1 WAR
SET Hanrahan -- 0.5 WAR
SET Meek -- 0.5 WAR
BUL Donnelly -- 0.5 WAR
BUL Carrasco -- 0.5 WAR
BUL Lopez -- 0 WAR
BUL Hart -- 0 WAR

Let's total it up:
48 baseline wins
17.5 starting batters
0 bench bats
9 starting pitchers
3 bullpen

77.5 wins
So WAR says a 78 win season...hmmm...using the +/- 4 win threshold, I'll feel more comfortable predicting a 76 win season in 2010 for the Pirates.

There you have it. Numbers don't lie. If the Pirates don't win 76, it's not math's fault...it's the players. All of this keeps the Pirates on track to break .500 in 2011 as I've predicted for a couple of years now.

WAR - it is good for something after all (Part 2)

OK, in the last post I gave a quick primer on the concept of WAR so let's dive into this topic....
How did WAR do as a model, based on the final win totals for 2009?

The concept of WAR gauges how each player can do against his potential replacement by a AAAA-level player...a player that is too good for AAA, but never good enough to play in the majors.

It is assumed that an entire 25 man roster of these replacement level players would win 48 games over the course of the major league season. So the 2003 Tigers (43-119) actually would have been better just playing their whole AAA team!

On fangraphs.com you can find WAR by a whole team for both batting and pitching. So I went through a added each team's batting WAR to its pitching WAR and then added in the baseline 48 wins to find what WAR predicted each team to finish. Listed below are the results, with each team's actual wins listed first and their WAR win total calculated (baseline + bat + pitch, in that order). The number in parentheses after the WAR total is the difference between the two.

NYY 103 (48 baseline + 38.2 bat + 18.7) = 104.9 (-1.9 wins)
BOS 95 (48 + 27.4 + 23.6) = 99 (-4 wins)
TB 84 (48 + 34.1 + 16.9) = 99 (-15 wins)
TOR 75 (48 + 21 + 18.1) = 87.1 (-12.1 wins)
BAL 64 (48 + 15.5 + 7.4) = 70.9 (-6.9 wins)

MIN 87 (48 + 21.7 + 16.4) = 86.1 (+0.9 wins)
DET 86 (48 + 21.3 + 16.5) = 85.8 (+0.2 wins)
CHW 79 (48 + 10.8 + 22.6) = 81.4 (-2.4 wins)
CLE 65 (48 + 19.6 + 10.5) = 78.1 (-13.1 wins)
KC 65 (48 + 6.8 + 19.9) = 74.7 (-9.7 wins)

LAA 97 (48 + 29.5 + 16.6) = 94.1 (+2.9 wins)
TEX 87 (48 + 22 + 18.5) = 88.5 (-1.5 wins)
SEA 85 (48 + 20.6 + 16.4) = 85 (0 wins)
OAK 75 (48 + 16.9 + 19.3) = 84.2 (-9.2 wins)

PHI 93 (48 + 27.5 + 13.3) = 88.8 (+4.2 wins)
FLA 87 (48 + 19.6 + 14.1) = 81.7 (+5.3 wins)
ATL 86 (48 + 17.9 + 23.4) = 89.3 (-3.3 wins)
NYM 70 (48 + 12.1 + 7.3 ) = 67.4 (+2.6 wins)
WAS 59 (48 + 16 + 3.7) = 67.7 (-8.7 wins)

STL 91 (48 + 18.8 + 19.3) = 86.1 (+4.9 wins)
CHC 83 (48 + 12.6 + 18) = 78.6 (+4.4 wins)
MIL 80 (48 + 25.8 + 3) = 76.8 (+3.2 wins)
CIN 78 (48 + 14.4 + 10.4) = 72.8 (+5.2 wins)
HOU 74 (48 + 12.1 + 10) = 70.1 (+3.9 wins)
PGH 62 (48 + 14.2 + 8.1) = 70.3 (-8.3 wins)

LAD 95 (48 + 23.9 + 19.4) = 91.3 (+3.7 wins)
COL 92 (48 + 18.7 + 23.6) = 90.3 (+1.7 wins)
SFG 88 (48 + 12.3 + 21.7) = 82 (+6 wins)
SD 75 (48 + 15.8 + 5.9) = 69.7 (+5.3 wins)
ARI 70 (48 + 15.6 + 17.9) = 81.5 (-11.5 wins)

A few thoughts...
1. 14 of the 30 teams were plus or minus within 4 wins of their actual totals. 4 wins either way is a 2.5% margin, very reasonable in my opinion. If you expand to +/- 5 wins, over half of the league (17 teams) meets this criteria.

2. WAR really missed on each last place team. It just can't account for the unmeasurable....some teams just can't win some years.

3. Take another look at the WAR win totals by division. Aside from ARI and ATL, WAR predicted the finish of each division. To me, that is the most amazing predictive use for this stat.

4. I wondered if each team's over or underachievement from the +/- 4 wins threshold was due to their defensive prowess (or gaffes). I looked at the Ultimate Zone Rating for each of these 16 teams and did not find a correlation. 8 of the teams that were outside the 4 wins threshold had a correlating good/bad UZR, while the other 8 did not. Meaning if you were the ARI Diamondbacks and underacheived by 11.5 wins, your defensive rating was a +2.5, meaning we can't blame your failures on not playing defense.

The final part of this will break down the 2010 Pirates and see what could be in store for them. Special preview -- it's better than you think.

WAR - it is good for something after all (Part 1)

Settle down, dirty hippies. I'm talking about a baseball stat.

After posting some travel thoughts, food thoughts, and deep thoughts about the state of our cities, it's time for a good old-fashioned nerdy baseball post. WARNING, WARNING!! This post contains numbers and a stat you can't find by reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette!

One of my favorite new-age baseball stats is WAR or Wins Above Replacement. It was developed by Dave Cameron who is the main contributor to his own blog "U.S.S. Mariner" and another great website called "Fangraphs". The main concept of WAR is to determine how many wins a certain player is than if he was replaced by a run-of-the-mill AAA player that never has achieved success at the major league level. This AAAA-type of player is called Replacement Level...a readily available commodity that can be paid the major-league minimum. For instance, Andrew McCutchen last year was a 3.4 WAR player, meaning he was worth an extra 3.4 wins to the Pirates over some typical AAAA-level scrub.

WAR is for both pitchers and batters. For batters, there are 4 main things (with a bunch of little things in each of those four things):
Batting
Fielding
Positional Adjustment
Replacement Adjustment

The detailed description of these items for batters and pitchers can be found here...
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/glossary/#winvalues

...but the thumbnail sketch is this:
Batting - based on stats accrued during the season (BA, OPS, K rate, etc)
Fielding - based on a defensive metric called Ultimate Zone Rating to account for range, arm strength, errors, etc)
Positional Adj - some positions are harder to play than others and if you play one of them, you either get extra credit (SS, CF, C, 2B, 3B) or deducted (1B, DH, LF/RF)
Replacement Adj - this is based on a 600 plate appearance season, so you get a percentage of the points if you are less than 600 PA's

The same concept applies to pitchers, but primarily revolves around a metric called FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching). This metric takes the defense out of the equation and sees what a pitcher's ERA would look like based on his own merit. It gauges a pitcher's strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed...all things that the pitcher is solely responsible for. Just because your SS had a bad night does not factor into FIP.

Again, consult the glossary above for more explanation.
Not only can you determine WAR for each individual player, but then you can aggregate it for the whole team and determine how many total wins that team may or may not achieve. It is a good predictive model for a season.

In my next 2 parts, I'm going to look at how WAR did as a reflection on each MLB's teams win total from 2009 and then I'm going to break down each of the players on the potential 25 man roster for the Pirates to determine the 2010 Pirates' win total.

Number crunching at its finest!