NL Central FIP and Pitching xWARs by Slot

There is a series of articles by Jack Sackman that you can find here.  It is an idea I found interesting an often use when I describe pitchers as a certain type of slot pitcher.  I think in common use a person referring to a guy as a one slot pitcher is more or less actually saying that the guy is a one slot pitcher on a first division team.  In other words, an ace on one of the ten best teams in baseball.  In this series of posts, I am going through each division and describing what each slot means and how that relates to teams.

AL East | Central | West
NL East | Central | West

Methodology
For each team, slots were broken down in 32 starts per slot (for a total of 160 games).  Pitchers were ordered by FIP, lowest to highest.  They were then broken up into slots.  Their FIPs were weighted by inning allotment and a weighted average was calculated for each slot.

An example:

Chris Tillman had an FIP of 3.99 over 11 starts, Zach Britton had an FIP of 4.00 over 28 starts, and Jeremy Guthrie had an FIP of 4.51 over 32 starts.  For the purpose of this study, Tillman's 11 starts all counted for the Orioles slot 1 along with 21 of Britton's 28 starts.  The remaining 7 starts were put into the slot 2 position with 25 of Jeremy Guthrie's starts.  When a pitcher's starts are split between multiple slots, it is assumed that their FIP is equal for every inning thrown and that their IP are equal for every start.

NL Central

FIP

The two things that strike me here is that (1) there are basically three very good pitchers in this division and there are on three separate teams: Matt Garza, Zack Greinke, and Chris Carpenter; and (2) that the Astros front end is as underwhelming as the Orioles and that the Reds backend is as catastrophic as the Orioles.  The backend of the Reds' rotation certainly did not help matters, but it alone was not responsible for them missing out of the playoffs.

Below is the NL Central FIP by Slot Table.

	1	2	3	4	5
Brewers	3.06	3.60	3.74	4.05	4.28
Cards	3.06	3.22	3.64	4.14	4.41
Cubs	2.97	3.89	4.23	4.77	5.44
Astros	3.99	4.15	4.24	4.55	4.79
Pirates	3.77	3.81	4.36	4.72	5.38
Reds	3.58	4.09	4.18	4.95	5.82

xWAR

The following graph is simply a predicted fWAR value using only FIP and IP as described in this post.  It serves as an approximation of fWAR worth.

The NL Central five slot pitchers have as much trouble as the AL East pitchers.  However, it differs from the AL East in that there is not much talent here.

Below is the NL Central xWAR by Slot Table.

	1	2	3	4	5
Brewers	4.39	3.18	2.72	1.71	1.68
Cards	5.01	4.00	3.09	1.60	0.97
Cubs	4.75	2.05	1.05	0.24	-1.76
Astros	1.99	1.96	1.84	0.50	-0.28
Pirates	2.55	2.45	1.09	0.03	-1.81
Reds	3.22	1.74	1.66	-0.50	-2.11

How Much Have the Orioles Spent on International Talent in 2010 and 2011?

The following graph was made from data supplied from Baseball America.

Perhaps with Dan Duquette, the Orioles will see themselves climb up the chart as much as the IFA signing cap permits.

NL East FIP and Pitching xWARs by Slot

There is a series of articles by Jack Sackman that you can find here.  It is an idea I found interesting an often use when I describe pitchers as a certain type of slot pitcher.  I think in common use a person referring to a guy as a one slot pitcher is more or less actually saying that the guy is a one slot pitcher on a first division team.  In other words, an ace on one of the ten best teams in baseball.  In this series of posts, I am going through each division and describing what each slot means and how that relates to teams.

AL East | Central | West
NL East | Central | West

AL Slot Summary

Methodology
For each team, slots were broken down in 32 starts per slot (for a total of 160 games).  Pitchers were ordered by FIP, lowest to highest.  They were then broken up into slots.  Their FIPs were weighted by inning allotment and a weighted average was calculated for each slot.

An example:

Chris Tillman had an FIP of 3.99 over 11 starts, Zach Britton had an FIP of 4.00 over 28 starts, and Jeremy Guthrie had an FIP of 4.51 over 32 starts.  For the purpose of this study, Tillman's 11 starts all counted for the Orioles slot 1 along with 21 of Britton's 28 starts.  The remaining 7 starts were put into the slot 2 position with 25 of Jeremy Guthrie's starts.  When a pitcher's starts are split between multiple slots, it is assumed that their FIP is equal for every inning thrown and that their IP are equal for every start.

NL East

FIP

The Phillies pitching staff was quite amazing.

Below is the NL East FIP by Slot Table.

	1	2	3	4	5
Braves	3.23	3.39	3.60	3.70	4.26
Marlins	3.14	3.49	3.56	4.08	5.26
Mets	3.35	3.78	4.01	4.44	4.57
Nationals	2.93	3.78	4.05	4.32	4.61
Phillies	2.20	2.60	3.01	3.32	4.00

xWAR

The following graph is simply a predicted fWAR value using only FIP and IP as described in this post.  It serves as an approximation of fWAR worth.

This graph shows even more clearly how remarkable the Phillies rotation was last season.  Keep in mind here that Roy Oswalt's numbers are split evenly between the 4 and 5 slots.

Below is the NL East xWAR by Slot Table.

	1	2	3	4	5
Braves	3.58	3.69	3.03	2.38	1.52
Marlins	4.30	3.42	3.15	1.72	-1.82
Mets	3.56	2.94	2.01	0.92	0.55
Nationals	4.53	2.47	1.87	0.99	0.23
Phillies	7.29	6.32	5.03	3.65	1.69

Eyes on Spring Training: Can Mark Reynolds Find His Inner Toby Harrah?

A couple months back, I wrote a piece on the history of bad defensive third basemen.  Reynolds had a defensive value of -18 expected runs over the 114 games he played at third base.  I made an educated guess that Reynolds would likely not be as bad in 2012 at third with -15 expected runs over 150 games. 

The list I used in that column were third basemen who recorded at least -18 runs expected defensively.  Below the list is paired to how many games on average it took to have one negative run.  For instance, the worst number we see on the list is Ryan Braun who on average gave up a run for the Brewers every 3.2 games he played at third.  Amazingly, Mark Reynolds was twice as good as Braun.  Think about that for a second.

	Games Per Run Given
Greg Norton	6.32
Jim Presley	6.65
Joel Youngblood	5.57
Toby Harrah	6.05
Fernando Tatis	6.68
Edwin Encarnacion	6.23
Mark Teahan	5.33
Joe Torre	6.44
Ty Wigginton	5.54
Gary Sheffield	4.29
Ryan Braun	3.2
Mark Reynolds	6.33
Bob Aspromonte	8
Todd Zeile	8.5
David Wright	7.89

Not including Reynolds, this is a list of 14 players.  Five of them (Greg Norton, Jim Presley, Joel Youngblood, Gary Sheffield, and Ryan Braun) were effectively moved off third base to less demanding positions.  The remaining nine all improved.  That list is presented below:

	Year 1	Year 2
Toby Harrah	6.05	156
Fernando Tatis	6.68	11.38
Edwin Encarnacion	6.23	10.2
Mark Teahan	5.33	7.27
Joe Torre	6.44	19.5
Ty Wigginton	5.54	15.25
Bob Aspromonte	8	75
Todd Zeile	8.5	37.3
David Wright	7.89	22.14

The Toby Harrah number is actually fudged a little bit.  He played 156 games and had a 0 expected runs value, meaning that he was measured as perfectly average in that second year.  Mark Teahan improved the least with a 7.27 games per lost run value.

If you use this group as a range of possible improvement for Mark Reynolds' defensive metric, you have the following:

Mean value: -4 runs over 150 games at third

Median value: -8 runs over 150 games at third

If history is any indication of Reynolds' future performance, the outcomes range from below average to poor.  Couple that with the same offensive performance as last year's and you get someone who is a little above average.  I think we all can live with that.