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.

Finding Goose Gossage in Wei-Yin Chen

I was listening to Kevin Goldstein's and Jason Parks' podcast (episode 84: This Show is a Disaster).  They discuss how there was a Major League team that saw Tim Lincecum as a relief ace in the mold of Goose Gossage.  That is, a relief pitcher who could rack up a 150 IP.  It requires a pitcher who is capable of bouncing back rather quickly between outings.  A player with a rubber arm.  There has not truly been a player fitting this mold in 25 years with Toronto's Mark Eichorn.  Eichhorn threw 157 IP, but they were high leverage innings and he managed a 6.4 WAR.  Before him, the seventies and eighties had several relief aces like the aforementioned Goose Gossage, but also Mike Marshall and Bob Stanley.

I think what ended the era of the relief ace was free agency.  Teams used to be more willing to be aggressive with their pitchers.  There were no rigid pitch counts and pitchers would throw several bullpen sessions working on pitches.  Some pitchers were able were able handle this workload.  Others could not.  With the increasing cost of free agent pitchers and pitching prospects, it made financial sense to be more protective of prospects.  However, because the teams could not figure out who had a rubber arm and who did not, approaches were developed to be protective of all pitchers.  The end effect is that the rubber arm pitchers do not have the opportunity to emerge. 

Even more rebellious systems, like the Texas Rangers, do not have a system in place to find this kind of play.  However, there is a system that does: Japanese baseball.  One of the ways in which baseball differs in Japan is the way in which pitchers train.  Daisuke Matsuzaka's training regimen was described in Men's Health.  Between starts, Dice-K would throw three 150 pitch sessions.  He would rarely lift weights, but would do a great deal of cardio and sprints.  Some of Dice-K's more amazing feats include a 249 pitch, 17 inning effort and his four day, 38 IP, and 500 pitch effort in a high school tournament.  Michael Street also wrote a couple of excellent articles on how pitching is regarded in Japan and mentioned how pitchers are often taught to go deep into pitch counts.

The result is that there are starting pitchers that become available as international free agents usually around the ages of 30-35.  Wei-Yin Chen, 26, signed on with the Orioles for roughly 12MM spread over three years.  I am unaware of his throwing regimen, but will assume it is similar to the majority of NPB pitchers.  For a mid or upper tier revenue team, this cost would be fine to try a solid pitcher with a training background similar to many who have gone throw the NPB system.  Chen could be used for high leverage situations every other day and pull in 30-50 pitches in the bullpen and another 30-50 pitches in the game.  The Orioles could target Chen for meaningful innings in close games, maximize his performance by having him throw threw the lineup once, and slide him in where his left-handedness may provide him a better opportunity to be successful.

This will not happen though.  Chen is slated as a starter.  Although I have thought differently, it appears Tsuyoshi Wada does not have a handshake agreement to start.  His 86 mph fastball and his fringe breaking balls and change up may have the opportunity to provide a great deal of innings.  His marginal offerings suggest that he would not fit the mold of relief ace.  Wada could serve as an inning eater in games that have gotten away from the team which would save them from having to use Jim Johnson, Matt Lindstrom, and others in games that are unlikely to matter.

Eyes on Spring Training: Is Chris Davis the Next Eric Karros?

Chris Davis is slotted in to begin the season as the Orioles' starting first baseman.  He is an interesting player.  He has shown massive power in the minors and has flashed skills in the Majors that could lead to him being a good offensive first baseman.  However, he does not have historical precedence in his favor.  If you do a search for first basemen who had over 1000 plate appearances and a rWAR worse than -2, you come up with the following list:

Player	WAR/pos	From	To	Age
Chris Davis	-2.4	2008	2011	22-25
Dan Meyer	-5.6	1974	1978	21-25
Howie Schultz	-2.7	1943	1948	20-25

The is not a list to be excited about.  Dan Meyer showed some promising raw power, but was never quite able to make it play in a game situation.  He bounced around from Detroit to the expansion Mariners and then finally the Oakland A's where he was related to a role player and, eventually, AAA depth.  Howie Schultz' offensive success in the depleted minors during WW2 did not translate to the Majors (At 6'6, he was rejected for military service).  When the soldiers came back, it was apparent that he did not have the ability to play baseball and decided to flip over to the NBA where he won a championship with the Lakers.

This looks bad, but it is difficult to look at these players and see a strong relationship to who Chris Davis is.  When your sample size is three, there may be considerable differences between the players and different reasons for struggling may not mean that those reasons are equally challenging to overcome.  Davis' -2.4 rWAR is composed of a below average offensive component and an atrocious defensive component.  Dan Meyer's defense rates similarly to Davis, but his offense is horrendous.  Schultz' -2.7 is similar to Davis', but all of it is a result of an inability to hit.  I have difficulty with these players informing us about Chris Davis' future.

In light of this, I performed a new search looking for first basemen who have had between 1000 and 1500 plate appearances through their age 25 season and who were below average at hitting and fielding.  This resulted in four players:

Player	WAR/pos	From	To	Age
Ricky Jordan	1.7	1988	1990	23-25
Willie Upshaw	-0.9	1978	1982	21-25
Eric Karros	-1.7	1991	1993	23-25
Chris Davis	-2.4	2008	2011	22-25

This list is actually a bit more promising.  Ricky Jordan was a platoon player on the platoon crazy early 90s Phillies teams.  He was a big guy who was above average against lefties and was eaten up by righties.  Unfortunately, such a player is not of much use these days with the expansion of the bullpen.  It is difficult to keep a strict platoon first baseman on a roster.  Willie Upshaw broke out in his age 26 season with a 4.3 rWAR and maintained starter production for an additional two seasons.  Afterward, he struggled to produced and went over to Japan.  Eric Karros took until his age 27 season to figure out how to up his contact rate high enough to become a good major league starter.  He had the best career of the players in this group.  There are also some similarity between the two in terms of them both being solid contact based minor league power hitters.  If Davis can match a similar career path as Karros, the Orioles should be happy.

Of course, Davis needs to figure out how to hit pitches that are not just down the middle or down the lower middle of the plate.

As you can see on the heat map above, Davis underperforms when he is challenged high, outside, and pretty much inside as well.  This graph is based only on 836 pitches, but it really gives the appearance of an amazing mistake pitch hitter.  It could be a major reason why he dominates AAA because the pitching at that level is filled with guys whose control is not the greatest.