Our review of Baseball Prospectus’ 2011 PECOTA projections continues with the hits and misses of the American League West, a division that has produced just a single World Series champion since the inception of the 3-division format. That run may come to an end soon, as the Angels now appear to be an elite AL team with the additions of Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson, and the Rangers remain strong coming off back-to-back World Series appearances.

Angels

Although Mark Trumbo had tallied just 16 big league plate appearances prior to 2011, PECOTA nailed his full-season projection on the head. Trumbo had a breakthrough 2010 at AAA Salt Lake, posting a .301/.368/.577 triple-slash line at age 24, prompting PECOTA to name Joey Votto as Trumbo’s closest career comparable. However, even PECOTA knew that Trumbo lacked Votto’s elite on-base skills, and the beefy Angel showed why, falling about 30 points short of even PECOTA’s lackluster OBP projection. This can mostly be attributed to a batting average shortcoming that may or may not correct itself; Trumbo hit just .275 in the his minor league career, and posted a line drive rate of 15.9% in 2011 that was well below the league average. In any event, the ROY runner-up’s first season was a rousing success, and PECOTA deserves kudos for calling it.

PECOTA projected a fall back to Earth for Jered Weaver after he established full-season career bests in nearly every major category in 2010, including winning the ML strikeout crown. Much of the foretold regression was based on a correction in BABIP, since Weaver’s 2010 mark of .276 was well below the league average. Instead, Weaver’s ERA and WHIP dropped into Halladay territory when his BABIP pulled a Robbie Alomar and spat in the face of PECOTA’s projection, checking in at a microscopic .250. Although it’s often lazy to simply attribute an anomaly to simple luck (hyperlink to Burn’s True Value II acticle), it seems to be the culprit in this case, as Weaver’s line drive percentage rose from 15.8% in 2010 to 18.9% in 2011, and his LOB% was very high at 82.6% (his previous full-season career high was 76.2%). In all likelihood, PECOTA will again predict regression for Weaver and although it will probably be correct to a degree, it would be unsurprising to see Weaver – a master of changing effective velocity – continue to post BABIPs below the league average.

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Athletics

PECOTA and fans alike expected a strong season from Daric Barton after his breakout in 2010 that saw him lead the AL in walks and finish fifth in OBP. PECOTA in particular foresaw a slight regression in OBP that was made up for with an improvement in the power department as Barton entered his age-26 season. Barton started 2011 off slow, but by June it was apparent that this was no normal slump; nearly three months into the season, Barton still hadn’t hit a single home run, and his slugging percentage hadn’t seen the right side of .300 since May 2nd. Barton was mercifully sent to the minors in late June, where he slugged just .230 in 17 games before the mystery of the kidnapped clout was solved: Barton had a torn labrum in his shoulder that had poached his power, and the subsequent surgery put an end to his disappointing season. It’s hard to envision PECOTA being nearly so sanguine about Barton in 2012, as it’s difficult to be optimistic about the prospects of a 27-year old first baseman with career .378 slugging percentage coming off major shoulder surgery.

It’s not so much that PECOTA missed on Gio Gonzalez, but it’s fair to say that it underestimated him. Although Gonzalez didn’t blow his projection out of the water, he bested it soundly across the board, and it wasn’t due to luck – he did it by improving himself across the board. Gonzalez’s velocity on every pitch type increased from the year before: Both his four-seam and two-seam fastballs gained more than .5 mph of juice, his changeup increased almost a full mph, and his curveball hopped up a full 1.5 mph. Not only did he improve physically, but also stylistically: In 2010, 42.3% of his fastballs were two-seamers; in 2011, 52.4% of his fastballs were of the two-seam variety. PECOTA foresaw Gonzalez being the same pitcher he’d always been, with some BABIP correction mixed in. In reality, Gonzalez was a better version of the pitcher he’d always been, and has now moved on to Washington to team up with Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmerman in hopes of forming the best young rotation in the game.

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Mariners

When I was 22, my father died of a heart attack. It was probably the most devastating thing that’s ever happened to me. I became depressed, and I drank to numb the way I felt. Sometimes, the simple act of breathing felt too tall a task to bear. It took me a long, long time to feel like myself again, and I don’t know that it’s something I’ll ever completely get over. On April 18^th of last season, Justin Smoak’s triple-slash line for the season stood at .291/.403/.491 and he had walked 11 times against 11 strikeouts. On April 19^th, 2011, Justin Smoak’s father died of cancer. Smoak returned to the lineup on the 26^th, but his line for the rest of the season was a dismal .226/.310/.382. I’ve never spoken to Justin Smoak, and I have no idea to what degree his father’s death affected his play last season. Justin Smoak himself probably doesn’t exactly know. Perhaps he was just off to a hot start over a small number of games, and he would have had a poor season regardless. It could be that his development was retarded by his receiving only 636 career minor league at-bats, and he has simply not been ready for the major leagues. But one thing is certain: Athletes are real human beings just like the rest of us, and matters of the heart can’t be explained by numbers.

With the exception of playing time – Ackley wasn’t called up until mid-June – PECOTA had the young slap hitter pegged dead to rights, despite just one professional season of data to go by. The ability to accurately forecast a high-beta player like Dustin Ackley is truly a testament to BP’s projection system, and this was certainly one prediction that the Mariners are thankful came true; a second basemen who can post numbers like this at age 23 in a pitcher’s park figures to be a very valuable player for years to come.

PECOTA correctly predicted that Michael Pineda was ready for the major leagues – it just didn’t know he was this ready. Pineda shocked the baseball world by striking out more than a batter per inning over 28 starts and making the All-Star team in his rookie season. Although it projected an impressive 3.59 ERA for Pineda as a 22 year-old, PECOTA also reasonably assumed that there would be an adjustment period when it came to his mastery of the strike zone. Instead, Pineda carved up the big leaguers just as easily as he had done down on the farm, using an overpowering fastball that averaged 94.2 MPH (5^th-highest among ML starters) and a wipeout slider that he threw on 32% of his deliveries (4^th-highest rate among ML starters). Pineda is still a high-beta player, even more so than most pitchers his age; his second half (1-4, 5.12 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 5.8 IP/start) was significantly worse than his first (8-6, 3.03 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 6.3 IP/start), and he was traded from Seattle (5^th-lowest in 2011 ballpark factor scoring) to New York (6^th-highest) in the offseason. Pineda’s skill set is clearly elite, but a sophomore slump and a top-5 Cy Young finish seem equally likely at this point.

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Rangers

Over the course of his career, Ian Kinsler has shown off a wide range of skills – power, speed, the ability to hit for average, high OBP – but for the most part has failed to exhibit all of them in the same season. The one skill Kinsler has never shown is the ability to stay healthy; prior to 2011, he averaged just 124 games played per season. PECOTA reasonably projected Kinsler for a respectable showing across the board, along with his normal score of missed games. PECOTA couldn’t – and shouldn’t – have figured Kinsler to play a full slate of games, but that’s exactly what he did, appearing in 155 games and avoiding the DL for the first time in his career. With the playing time to let his power play out and without injury to sap his strength, Kinsler popped a career-high 32 home runs and even added a new wrinkle to his game with 89 walks – 27 more than his previous career high. It would be fairly unusual to see Kinsler continue his healthy ways going forward; look for PECOTA to again project Kinsler to miss time in 2012, and this time to be right on the money.

Adrian Beltre has been an unexceptional hitter for the majority of his career, exceeding an .850 OPS just once prior to the age of 30. That’s why, at 31, his 2010 season with Boston (.321/.365/.553, 102 RBI) appeared to be an outlier. PECOTA felt this way as well; even though Beltre was headed to Texas to hit in the most hitter-friendly ballpark in game, he was projected to fall back under the .800 OPS mark. PECOTA severely underestimated how Beltre would fair in Rangers ballpark, as his work there carried his 2011 season: In his friendly confines, Beltre posted 1.078 OPS (including an obscene .706 slugging percentage) that was over 46% better than his .737 OPS on the road. Beltre spent the first 12 years of his career in toiling in noted pitchers’ parks Dodger Stadium and Safeco Field; clearly the move to Boston and now Texas is a major factor in what appears to be a legitimate career resurgence.

There were some interesting concepts put forth, though other recommendations proved to be infuriating in their lack of discourse. Perhaps a strict word limit stifled the writers’ ability to elucidate their ideas, else I must assume that a brutal deadline window acted to blunt the authors’ explanations. The following is a rundown of the radical ideas that were offered in part one of the three-part series (in reverse order for dramatic effect):

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Option #5: Reliever minimums and mound-visit limitations

Christina Kahrl’s radical suggestion is to place distinct parameters on the usage of relief pitchers, with the aim of short-circuiting the robot-like nature of some managers to abuse the bullpen in late innings, as they strive to maximize platoon splits. Repeated trips to the mound and frequent calls to the bullpen bring to a crawl the pace of the most crucial innings of close games, and this idea could help to improve the fan experience. However, doubt is cast by the fact that many of the other major sports suffer from the same foot-dragging of end-game drama. The last five minutes of a close game in the NFL or the NBA will move at a snail’s pace, with frequent time outs and clock stoppages, as well as time-slowing strategies like basketball’s frequent-foul ploy and football’s obsession with icing the kicker.

I do like some of the strategic implications of CK’s idea, though I think it would be even more interesting to add a couple of twists to her suggestion. For starters, I believe that it is unjust to penalize only the pitchers for late-game shenanigans, and it makes sense to extend similar restrictions to pinch hitters. In other words, if we are going to require a certain number of plate appearances to pass between calls to the bullpen, then we should would make the same adjustment for relief batsmen, such that a manager could not call upon consecutive pinch hitters. Likewise, I would suggest an amendment to Kahrl’s rule of a 3-batter momentum, instead lobbying for a threshold of two plate appearances. Such an adjustment, when combined with the new restrictions on pinch-hitting, would create a fascinating decision-making paradigm for managers in end-game strategy, while preventing skippers from overplaying the cat-n’-mouse game of platoon.

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Option #4: Keep rosters at 25 players, all season long

Courtesy of Tim Kirkjian, the purpose of this rule would be to kill the 40-player roster expansion of September, which TK argues provides a competitive advantage for wealthier ballclubs, due to the difference in minimum salaries from the minor leagues to the majors. The fault lies in the details of his explanation, as Kirkjian suggests that wealthy clubs can afford to call up five to ten players for a month-long major league salary, while other teams are limited to just a couple of promotions. However, a team that brings up six additional month-long salaries is effectively adding about $400k to the cost side of the balance sheet, which is a meager sum for a big league ballclub, particularly one with aspirations of contention, and such an amount would hardly prevent a cheaper team from making a competitive move.

I do think that Kirkjian is onto something, as the 40-man roster number is probably too high, given the fact that the majority of teams fall short of maximizing the roster-count in September. My suggestion would be to change the cap to about 30 players for the season’s final month, a total that would allow any team to call up the most promising prospects without breaking the bank, yet restrict the fat cats from taking “unfair” advantage of the system. It would also allow those teams that are out of contention to showcase their top young talent, thus giving their fans more reason to attend those final games that mean little in the standings, while reaping some developmental equity with their best young assets. Contending teams could add a couple of arms for the pen or bats off the bench, and do so without running up an exorbitant bill on celebratory champagne.

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Option #3: Soccer-style rules of relegation and promotion

Baseball’s perennial cellar-dwellers are viewed by some as an affront to the sport, and an increasing wariness of infidelity chases those teams who might be more mindful of the bottom line than the win-loss column. Jim Caple has a proposal that is designed to relieve such a problem (if one exists), in the form of soccer-style rules of relegation and promotion. In other words, those teams that finish at the bottom of the standings would run the risk of being demoted to minor leagues, while the best farm clubs could earn the right to play with the big boys on the main stage. Theoretically, the loyal followers of the Pirates or Royals could dream of future International League championships, while fans in Sacramento or Oklahoma City could be treated to the bright lights of the Show.

There are several issues that cast this idea into the sea of impracticality, starting with the blatant discrepancies in minor-league market sizes, but the fatal flaw is that it completely ignores the established structure of the minor leagues. The current system is one based on affiliation, with minor league teams that are controlled by parent clubs at the major league level, and any relegation or promotion would create the obvious incentive for collusion on the part of those organizations whose affiliates made the big jump. The Detroit Tigers are not about to let their playoff hopes be dashed by a late-season series with their own Toledo Mud Hens, and the front office would leap at the opportunity to rock some September roster expansion by stealing Toledo’s top players for the stretch drive. Such thoughts bring to mind another question: if a parent club calls up a player from a promoted team, is it then considered a trade?

Set aside the probability that no minor league market could compete financially with established clubs in the bigs, such that any promotion would be temporary at best, and instead consider the magnitude of change that would be necessary to create the opportunity for such a theory to gain traction. The league would have to recruit 150+ new owners to take over the minor league clubs, while overhauling the entire affiliation structure, in a process that could even necessitate that all minor league players become free agents in order to avoid blatant cases of malfeasance. This article was not the first that I had come across to suggest the soccer-relegation idea for baseball, though I was appalled by the lack of mention for any of these enormous barriers to entry. One would expect a radical idea to at least pass the sniff test of reality before earning the digital space for mainstream consumption.

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Option #2: Scheduled Double-headers

I actually like Jayson Stark’s idea on the surface, despite the impossibility of it coming to fruition. It is quite unlikely that MLB will agree to resurrect the ghost of scheduled double-dips, given the potential dollars to be lost and the identities of those who vote on such things, but if they were to ever entertain such an idea, it would likely need to be less aggressive than the plan put forth. Whereas Stark suggests a double-feature for each team every week of the season, I would limit the experiment to those months when kids are out of school, in order to encourage families to spend their summer days at the ballpark. The cost of games has changed the landscape of ballpark culture, with an emphasis on targeting corporate dollars above the family of four; this idea would provide an opportunity for American families to justify the expense, and to rekindle some of the nostalgia that has defined the history of this grand ol’ game.

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Option #1: Death to the 9^th inning

I saved the most egregious proposal for last, despite its position atop the list provided at ESPN. My jaw dropped when I read the header, and I was frozen with the shock that comes when someone you respect makes a statement that defies logical explanation, and then goes on to defend the asinine claim. David Schoenfield is the head of the Sweet Spot, succeeding the great Rob Neyer to represent the sabrmetric side of the game for the mainstream ESPy audience, yet the audacity of his proposal to short-cut the game after eight innings is supported by mortally weak evidence.

Schoenfield used a 3-pronged argument to justify the validity of his assertion, but in doing so he dug an even deeper hole of unexplained consequences. After shaking off the dumbfounding essence of an idea that proposes that we “endure” 10% less of the game that we love most, and shuddering at the thought of changing the fundamental framework of a sport that we have carefully preserved for over 150 years, I considered the loopholes in each of Schoenfield’s three arguments. It was a remarkably easy undertaking.

The essence of his first point was that Major League games are too long, and that it would be a benefit for the casual fan to cut down on game time. This idea reeks of someone who does not enjoy watching the game of baseball, who thinks of the pace of the game as a burden, and who is likely to depart in the 7^th inning in order to “beat the traffic.” It is difficult to accept that Schoenfield falls into this category, given his occupation and the passion with which he writes about baseball, but I am at a loss for why else he might make such a bold declaration. After all, MLB games are shorter in duration than their NFL counterparts, and nobody is complaining about football games that drag on too long.

The most damning aspect was David’s claim that “Die-hard fans are going to watch no matter what; shorten games and maybe you’ll get more casual fans out to the park.” As a Die-hard, I am offended by the implication that the league should downplay my preferences in favor of someone who might show up to watch the dot race on the Jumbotron. As a businessman, I am amazed that David would suggest such a blatant violation of the 80/20 rule, in which 80% of the revenue is driven by 20% of the customers, and to alienate that customer base is the equivalent of company suicide.

The second piece of evidence in Schoenfield’s case was that cutting off an inning would get rid of the necessity for an extra pitcher, thus allowing teams to carry another bat off the bench, which could open the door for more pinch-hitting opportunities and defensive adjustments late in the game. What he fails to recognize is the realistic probability that managers would fall into even more predictable patterns when faced with just eight innings and 24 outs. Reliever usage might become streamlined, with roles entrenched further given the higher percentage of innings that would be eaten by starters, and the sudden spike in pitchers-to-outs ratio would only encourage further platoon-exploitation.

The most harrowing part of Schoenfield’s defense is the last argument on the board: “It won’t ruin the stats.” David is an established authority on the subject, so I suppose that we are expected to just accept his statement as truth, this despite his one-sentence justification: “An eight-inning complete game in 2012 is just as impressive as a nine-inning complete game in 1973…” While that statement might have merit as it stands alone, it does nothing to justify his premise that stats will not be ruined, as Schoenfield focuses on just the one statistic that will catch up to the expectations created in the 1970’s. He completely avoids the obvious impact on all other counting stats, as there would be a 10% decrease in relative rates of strikeouts, walks, hits, home runs, stolen bases, RBI, Runs, VORP, and WARP, among others.

Eliminating one inning per game would amount to 162 innings per team per season, which is equivalent to 18 games worth of playing time. From a historical standpoint, it would be a statistical nightmare, and we would need to view the stats in the post-8^th inning age within context, with asterisks attached to every no-hitter or perfect game pitched in the eight-inning era. Modern hitters would have to clear the hurdle of 10% less playing time in order to break league records, and the functional impact on counting stats would be twice as severe as reverting back to the old 154-game schedule.

Our review of Baseball Prospectus’ 2011 PECOTA projections continues with the hits and misses of the National League West, a division comprised of top-heavy teams that has seen a different club capture the flag in each of the past three seasons.

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Diamondbacks

In 2011, Upton actually met Doug Thorburn’s expectations, and kicked the crap out of PECOTA’s. As a 21 year-old in 2009, Upton had a 20/20 season and slugged .532 in his first full season. However, 2010 represented a suspension-jarring speed bump as the potential Junior Griffey heir slugged a Senior-esque .442, prompting a lukewarm 2011 projection from PECOTA. Instead, Upton finished 4^th in the NL MVP voting and led his team to a division title. It’s going to be an awesome time watching Upton and Mike Stanton duke it out for the MVP award for the next 15 years.

Most people would be fooled into thinking that a 26 year-old centerfielder coming off an All-star appearance and career-high OPS would be destined for even greater heights in the coming seasons. But PECOTA saw that Young is what he always will be: A nice player with speed and some pop that will always limited by an inability to maintain consistent contact (evidenced by a failing to even sniff PECOTA’s meager .245 batting average projection). Young has improved his game over the past two seasons by upping his walk totals, but aside from that is still the same player he was at 22.

Unless you had Ian Kennedy on your fantasy team last year, you might not realize that he went 21-4. 21-4! It was no dumb luck either, as Kennedy unveiled the pinpoint control upon the NL West that he’d exhibited in his minor league career. He walked just 2.2 men per nine, nearly one and a half less than PECOTA prognosticated. However, the biggest surprise was his ability to keep the ball in the yard, allowing just .77 HR/9 after a 1.2 mark the year before. Look for PECOTA to predict a good amount of regression for 2012, but if Kennedy keeps putting up 3:1+ K/BB ratios, he’ll be a true ace for years to come.

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Dodgers

You can’t blame PECOTA for its projection of Kemp; I defy anyone to accurately predict a man to finish 2^nd in the MVP voting after posting a .760 OPS the season before. Yet that’s exactly what Kemp did, breaking out across the board and falling one homer shy of the 5^th 40/40 season in baseball history. If he can hang onto the ability to walk 70+ times per season, he’ll be a better player than Andre Dawson ever was.

PECOTA completely missed the dartboard when it came to the Dodgers, whiffing wildly on Kemp, Andre Ethier, Chad Billingsley, Jonathan Broxton, Hong-Chih Kuo, and Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw – basically, every Dodger that matters. PECOTA also missed on some that don’t, like Jerry Sands. Based on the strength of his minor league-leading 35 homers in 2010, PECOTA saw Sands coming up to The Show and slugging nearly .500 at 23 years old. Well, it didn’t quite happen like that. Called up in mid-April, Sands spend the rest of the spring waving at low-and-away breaking balls, slugging just .328 in 41 games before being sent back down to the farm. Sands did offer hope for the future in a September callup, posting a .908 OPS in 83 PA’s; next season will be a truer test for both Sands and PECOTA in terms of his projection.

Lilly is proof that even PECOTA can hit a batting-practice fastball; his level of performance has been remarkably consistent since 2007. PECOTA nailed Lilly’s performance across the board, and it would not be surprising to see the soft-tosser keep it up for several more seasons; his closest comparable, Mike Mussina, pitched effectively until he was 39.

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Giants

Since Sandoval has been a consistent raker since he reached the legal drinking age, it was reasonable to expect a sizeable bounceback after an inexplicable 2010 in which he seemingly forgot everything he ever knew about hitting. The Round Mound of Pound rebounded in a big way in ’11, slugging a robust .552 despite a wrist injury that cost him six weeks of action. That slugging percentage was the one area in which PECOTA shortchanged the otherwise bulbous Panda, and it marks the second time in four ML seasons that Panda has slugged over .550 – big production from a player yet to play in his age-25 season.

Aside from the drop in innings PECOTA seems to project for every starting pitcher, it pegged Timmy pretty well, although his drop in K-rate and rise in walk rate were slightly more dramatic than projected. If you’re wondering if this signals the beginnings of a career swoon for The Freak, note that his closest comparable as of last season was Pedro Martinez, who was excellent until age 34. It’s worth noting that 2011 was Lincecum’s first full Major League season in which he didn’t win either a Cy Young or a World Series ring.

Much like was the case with Jerry Sands, PECOTA erroneously thought Belt was ready to hit in the majors. Belt sure looked ready judging by his minor league stats, but got chewed up and spit out against his first tour of major league pitching. He did hit in the minors (.989 OPS), and he’ll be given every chance to break camp with the team again, this time with tempered expectations from both PECOTA and fans alike. Belt sports a career .343/.457/.596 triple-slash line in the minors, but it must be concerned to Giants fans that Belt’s #2 and #3 comparables are notorious Major League flops Matt Gamel and Jeremy Hermida respectively.

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Padres

2011 could have gone any number of directions for the volatile Latos, but PECOTA pegged the young righty good, sans a 91-inning chasm that’s on par for BP’s projection system. Coming off a pair of impressive major league seasons at age 24, Latos figures to continue to develop into a frontline starter, provided the dreaded injury bug doesn’t bite. His trade to the The Great American Ballpark will make for a bumpier road to stardom than the one winding through Petco Park, but Latos’s career 8.7 K/9 and 3.1 K/BB ratios will play anywhere.
Everyone knew Ludwick was going down a sharp downhill … everyone besides The Padres and PECOTA, neither of whom apparently got the memo. Luckwick’s OPS has dropped every year since age 30, culminating in last year’s pitful .673 effort. Don’t expect PECOTA to misfire on Ludwick again, as history is littered with one-dimensional sluggers who enjoyed one monster season before slowly flailing into obscurity. Richard Hidalgo, anyone?

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Rockies

Despite finishing third in the 2010 Cy Young race, PECOTA expected major regression from Ubaldo in 2011. As it turned out, major regression is what we got. Despite identical marks in walk and strikeout ratios between the two seasons, Ubaldo’s ERA jumped nearly two full runs as his BABIP spiked from .271 to .314 and his home run rate doubled. Expect a correction in the good direction in 2012, but asking for another 2010 is probably a little much.

Tulo posted a .930 OPS at age 24 and a .949 OPS at age 25. Natually, PECOTA projected an .835 OPS at age 26. Of course, he posted a mark nearly 100 points higher and finished in the top 10 for MVP voting for the third year in a row. Tulowitzki is a wonderful player, combining the ability to hit for both average and power with legitimate gold glove defense at shortstop, and often topping the whole thing off with an awesome mullet. What more could you ask for?