Conor Jackson and His Spring Training Dominance

Spring Roster Invite Conor Jackson has been making a name for himself in March.  He is hitting a home run every eight at bats, just a shade behind Jake Fox's amazing 2011 run.  His slash line has been 333/385/792, which gives some bittersweet hope.  Sweet because he is crushing the ball.  Bitter because it is quite contact oriented.  That said, it is difficult to assess how meaningful spring statistics are due to player motivation and the wide range of pitching talent one faces (particularly with Jackson playing some of the 'B' games).  However, a few years back John Dewan found that players who had over 40 plate appearances and produced a slugging percentage over 200 points better than their career mark stood a 60% chance of having a break out season that year.  Jackson has another 15 plate appearances to go and is currently 385 points over his career slugging mark.

Beyond the numbers, much of the hope in Jackson lies in his past as a well respected prospect.  He was a notable 3B talent coming out of California in 2003.  He was one of the top power bats and showed incredible plate discipline.  However, his senior year was interrupted by injuries and there was some concern how well his line drive power would translate with a wood bat.  The Diamondbacks were able to pick him up with the 19th pick and immediately removed him from the infield to see how his arm would play in right field.

In the minors, Jackson's power did decrease, but only slightly.  Buoying that knock in value was that his plate discipline remained.  It no longer was outlandish as his 3:1 BB:K split in college, but a 1:1 in rookie ball to AA and 2:1 in AAA.  His AAA slash line was 354/457/553 and gave hope that his line drive swing would work in the Majors.  The Diamondbacks decided that with Shawn Green entrenched in Right Field and Chad Tracy capable of playing third base that the best move was to deal Troy Glaus to shore up the pitching rotation (Miguel Batista) and the middle infield (Orlando Hudson) while handing 1B to Jackson.

In his first three full seasons in the Majors, Jackson continued to show a high contact rate (batting average ranged between .284 and .300), plate discipline (~10% BB rate and ~10% K rate), and acceptable power (ISO ranged between .146 to .183).  That is not an exceptional first baseman, but one that is a quite serviceable role player on a first division team (though not a true first division first baseman).  The problem with him though was that his defense at first was quite poor and made him essentially a replacement level player during two of those three seasons.

In 2009, something happened to Jackson that happens to 3% of the population around their Spring Training facilities.  He contracted coccidioidomycosis (valley fever).  It is a mold that produces spores, lying dormant attached to particles like fine sand or dirt.  Once inhaled, the mold starts to grow and induces an adverse effect on roughly half of those who contract it.  For most, the illness feels like the flu with sore muscles, joint pain, fever, head aches, and fatigue.  Due to the similarities to the flu, it can often be misdiagnosed.  Some, like Jackson or Ike Davis, develop a more chronic pulmonary infection that can take months, sometimes years, to fully recover from.  Valley Fever can be a particularly devastating illness.  So much so, that it was once considered for weaponization by the U.S. military.  Although I am completely unfamiliar with either Jackson or Davis' cases, I assume their issues were months long infections that resulted in general whole body weakness. 

From 2009-2011, Jackson's numbers (when he was well enough to try playing on the field) were similar to his first three seasons except that his power evaporated.  He was still able to make contact and look for his pitch, but he simply could not do much with those pitches.  His groundball rates increased about ten percent and his infield fly rate increased about 50%.  For a player with less than marginal defensive worth, a power outage simply could not be shouldered by the rest of his game and teams found fewer reasons to hope that he could reclaim the promise he showed before the illness.

Last year, Jackson spent the entire season in the minors at the Chicago White Sox' AAA affiliate, Charlotte.  Again, misfortune struck him as he missed a few dozen games due to injury, but he put up a respectable 277/363/434 line.  Those are not amazing numbers.  A player of his age and caliber should be expected to perform that well (24% better than league average).  However, it was a level of performance that was not seen in years past.

The hope is that Jackson will be able to find himself as the 25th man on this team and provide a useful bat off the bench.  As long as he can hit with infrequent opportunity and perform well enough in the field, he could be a quite useful addition to the team.  However, Spring Training heroics have not been a great indicator of success for the Orioles in the past.  The following is a list of the best hitters over the past four Spring Trainings. 

2012
Endy Chavez
40 PA, 444/500/556
Endy Chavez was brought in as a fourth outfielder who could provide some power to go along with an excellent glove.  However, his bat completely disappeared when the season began and his defense left much to be desired.

2011
Jake Fox
76 PA, 297/325/797 10 HR
Fox gave many a fan and writer much to be happy about.  Including us.  Based on historical data, it appeared that his rate of 7.2 AB per home run in Spring Training would decrease to 16.4.  It decreased to 30.5 in only 61 AB.  He lack of a defensive home sent him packing.  Last year, he flourished in independent ball and struggled in the minors for Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  He has resigned with Somerset in the Atlantic League.

2010
Felix Pie
42 PA, 342/419/658
Felix Pie was once a top prospect.  He also was once a promising left fielder for the Orioles.  A promising 2009 campaign saw him hit 266/326/437 with a few flashes of a promising defensive glove.  In Spring Training in 2010, his bat jumped and led many to believe that Pie was about to break out as a first division left fielder.  However, he put up a similar performance as the year before and was put down with injuries at several points during the season.  In 2011, Pie was horrible in the field.  He spent last year in independent ball as well as with the Braves AAA affiliate, Gwinnett.  This year he is in camp with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

2009
Jolbert Cabrera SS
48 PA, 457/469/609
At 36 years old, some thought Jolbert Cabrera was in for a renaissance as he pounded Spring Training pitching.  The Orioles quite rightly decided to go with defensive wizard Cesar Izturis instead, which proved to be the best move as Cabrera proceeded to struggle against AAA pitching in Norfolk, going 262/298/401.  In 2010 and 2011, he tore up the Mexican Leagues as a super utility player.  In 2012 (at the age of 39), he played in only 10 games.  For 2013, he will be a manager for the Nogales Desert Ghosts in the independent American West Baseball League.

L.J. Hoes Vs. Xavier Avery

Two of Baseball America's Orioles top ten prospects spent most of 2012 at Norfolk. L.J. Hoes (#6) and Xavier Avery (#7) are outfielders who made their AAA debuts in 2012, are two months apart in age, and whose prospect status is driven by projection rather than performance. During a rain delay in a Tides game, the discussion in the press box turned to the question of which one you'd rather have, Hoes or Avery. At the time, my answer was Avery; but now I think my answer would be Hoes.

I first chose Avery because I believed Avery had both the higher ceiling and the higher floor. Avery is the superior athlete with more speed and defensive value than Hoes. So far, Avery has also shown improving strike-zone judgement, and more power potential than Hoes. If Avery develops to his full potential — admittedly a longshot — his ceiling is minor star. On the other hand, even if Avery doesn't develop any further at all, his floor is still pinch-runner/ defensive replacement/ September callup. While I thought L.J. Hoes would probably turn out to be a better player than Avery, I also thought Hoes' ceiling would be lower than Avery's and that Hoes lacked Avery's specialist floor.

Hoes is limited to left field. When I made my first decision, I believed that, although Hoes had a chance to be a consistent .300 hitter, Hoes wouldn't have the power to be a major-league left fielder. And because Hoes was defensively limited to left field, it was hard to see Hoes as a bench player. I believed that Hoes would be nothing more than a 4-A player, a Triple-A star not quite good enough for the majors. So, even though I believed that Hoes would ultimately turn out to be better than Avery overall, I would rather have Avery.

But after watching Hoes for three months, I've changed my mind. I started by thinking about players who were comparable to Avery and Hoes. An obvious comp to Avery is Felix Pie. Both are athletic, left-handed hitting center fielders with unrefined skills. Although Pie has been a major-league bench player for a few seasons, he also was a consistent .300 hitter in the minor leagues, which Avery has not been. It was harder to come up with a comp for Hoes, a consistent .300 hitter with doubles power and limited defensive skills. The best I could come up with Martin Prado, a second baseman in the minors but has moved positions in the majors, first to left field and now likely to third base. Prado has had three strong seasons, with one top-10 and one top-20 MVP finish. If Prado can be a major-league regular for a contending team, so too can Hoes.

But there's more. There's always been a hope that Hoes will develop more power as he matures. And there's a positive example for that — Ryne Sandberg. Here's a crude comparison of Sandberg and Hoes:

Sandberg
Age	Level	Triple Crown	OBP	SP
18	Rookie	.311-1-23	.390	.421
19	Low A	.247-4-47	.328	.334
20	AA	.310-11-79	.403	.469
21	AAA	.293-9-62	.352	.397
22	Majors	.271-7-54	.312	.372
Hoes
Age	Level	Triple Crown	OBP	SP
18	Cmplx	.308-1-18	.416	.390
19	Low A	.260-2-47	.299	.318
20	SS/High A/AA	.290-4-50	.383	.397
21	High A/AA	.285-9-71	.354	.390
22	AA/AAA	.287-5-54	.372	.388

Hoes and Sandberg were similar types of offensive players, granting that Sandberg was generally one level ahead of Hoes at the same age and had an extremely good age-20 season. At age 24 Sandberg exploded with an MVP 1984, marked by an increase in power. His slugging percentage jumped from .351 to .520, and from 1984-1992 Sandberg had six seasons with slugging percentages of .480 or greater. This gives me reason to believe that Hoes, too, may develop enough power to be a viable regular in left field.

Sandberg is in the Hall of Fame, in large part because his offense was supported by Gold-Glove caliber defense at second base. I'm not claiming that Hoes will be a Hall of Famer or a consistent MVP candidate; he doesn't have Sandberg's glove. But Ryne Sandberg's bat was good enough to be an all-star left fielder. Hoes' bat doesn't have to develop as much as Sandberg's for Hoes to be a viable left-field regular. I now think there's reason to believe that Hoes might develop enough to be a solid left fielder.

And that's why I now would rather have L.J. Hoes than Xavier Avery.

Bad Outfield Defense or a Bad Fielding Metric?

When I decided to write that title I did not mean that fielding is unfair between teams.  Rather, I wonder whether the way fielding is measured is fair.  I was wondering this because there has been discussion about Carl Crawford's defense not translating well to Fenway Park.  It made me wonder whether there was anything peculiar about Camden Yards.  My only resource (FanGraphs) informs me about career UZR home and away, so I decided to use Oriole outfielders who have been nearly exclusively part of the Baltimore Orioles:

• Nick Markakis has played 7874 innings for the Orioles in RF.
• Adam Jones has played 3405 innings for the Orioles in CF and 227 for the Mariners.
• Felix Pie has 852 inning for the Orioles in LF and 13 for the Cubs.

Now from this we can basically declare that all three of these Orioles have overwhelmingly played at these positions for the Orioles.  With these players, we can attempt to measure if there are any unaccounted park factors.

Here is a short description of UZR if you need to be refreshed on how it is calculated.

How to calculate UZR: The baseball field is divided into 78 zones, 64 of which are used in UZR calculation. (As Lichtman explains, infield line drives, infield pop flies, and outfield foul balls are ignored. Pitchers and catchers are not included.)

Here's what is calculated for each zone: the out rate and the percentage of balls in that zone that turn into outs. The league average out rate is then subtracted from the player's out rate — if this number is negative, it means the player is worse than league average. If it's positive, it means he's better than league average.

That rate is then multiplied by the number of balls that hit in that player's zone. This yields a Zone Rating. To obtain the run value, it's multiplied by the Zone Ratings that are calculated for each zone the fielder covers, and then summed. This sum is a simple, unadjusted UZR. It is then further adjusted for park factors, batted ball speed, which side of the plate the batter was hitting from, the pitcher's groundball/flyball ratio and the number of baserunners and outs at the time. The adjustments are made because each of these variables can significantly affect the average out rate in a particular zone. Using run expectancy charts, these rates can be converted to runs.

UZR / 150

Click to Enlarge

Each player does remarkably worse at home than on the road.  It is actually a pretty remarkable finding.  Pie has only about 135 games worth of innings in left field, which is not nearly enough to get a good idea of how dependable a fielder he is.  UZR typically requires 2-3 years of data to get a good read on a player.  Adam Jones has about 546 games worth of innings.  With that amount split between assumed home and road games, it is arguably just enough to be usable.  Markakis has about 875 games worth of innings and is perfectly fine as a data source.  It seems clear enough that this is a real effect.  Playing in Camden Yards in any position in the outfield decreases your defensive metrics.  This means that as useful as UZR might be, it appears to do a poor job characterizing what normal means for Camden Yards.  The alternative explanation is that the Orioles outfielders are actually rather poor defensive players at home.

The question now lies as to whether we can discern what part of UZR has the problem and whether it makes any sense.

Arm

 

 No pattern appears with arm values.  This makes sense as throws are contained within the playing field.  It would be unlikely if a stadium could play much havoc with throws outside of wind issues, which apparently is not the case with Camden Yards.

Incidence of Errors

Incidence of errors also does not appear to be greatly affected by Camden Yards.  This is also expected as grounds crews do a fairly good job ensuring that each stadium has an excellent field.

Range

Range is where we see the issue.  I am not entirely sure what the problem is.  Range is basically determined by how plays are in a players' area and how many he winds up catching.  Somehow, Camden Yards is a difficult place to track down baseballs.  I am not sure if there is an issue with see the ball come off the bat, if high flies are greatly affect by wind, or something else.  Unfortunately, I do not have any data for how visiting teams perform here.  UZR does account for park factors and one would think such a shift in fielding would be figured into the final number.

What if the numbers are correct?

It just might be that UZR is actually accurately measuring defensive ability at Camden Yards. The Orioles may be horribly position themselves and/or are inadequately instructed in how to play in their own ball park.  This reminds me of an article from a couple years ago, but I fail to remember who exactly wrote it.  Peter Gammons, I think, mentioned how the Red Sox did not care that Jacoby Ellsbury had a -9.7 UZR after the 2009 season.  They said that their internal metrics measured defense better at Fenway Park better than UZR did.  Ellsbury looks like a good centerfielder, so maybe they were correct.  Likewise, maybe UZR measures defense in Camden Yards as well as it does in Fenway Park.

Conclusion

I do not have a solid conclusion after looking at this data.  If the Orioles are doing this poorly at Camden Yards and UZR adequately adjusts for park factors then it would mean that every other team  on average is playing about 2 WAR better defensively.  While also meaning that when the Orioles are on the road, they outperform various home teams about the same.  I just have a hard time understanding how the numbers can be accurate here.  I inclination is to think there is a significant failing in UZR in the outfield at Camden Yards.

Cup of jO's (August 3, 2011): Britt answers on Pie's antics

Game Summary
Box Score / Play-by-Play / AP Recap

Alfredo Simon shut down the Royals over seven innings, walking just one run on four hits and a walk. Tommy Hunter, acquired in the Koji Uehara deal, made his first appearance with the club, allowing two singles and a run. Chris Davis hit his first homerun as an Oriole, allowing an Everrett Teaford fastball to travel deep on the outer half before muscling it out to the opposite field. It was a good night all around for the Birds, who take a step towards winning their first AL series since the first week of June. Jeremy Guthrie takes the mound tonight opposite former 1st Rounder Luke Hochevar; you can check out the STATS LLC game preview here.

Of interest....
Last week Jon touched on Felix Pie's peculiar habit of chasing down batting helmets tossed during walk off celebrations. Britt Ghiroli of MLB.com asked Felix about this ritual and reported her findings at Britt's Bird Watch:

“It’s a touchdown,” Pie said of grabbing the helmet in celebratory glee. “It’s like we scored a touchdown.”

Makes perfect sense to me. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see a few more touchdown celebrations in 2011. When we do, make sure to keep your eye on #18.

Cup of jO's: Felix Pie's Celebration Technique

We do have some trade deadline perspective to share, but first . . . I noticed from an Orioles' message board that Felix Pie celebrates home runs in a strange way.

Click on the image and watch the helmet.

 My guess is that is Pie lost a bet at some point this season and has to chase down helmets.

Anyone have a better guess?

Felix Pie vs RH Fastballs

Here is a quick post today. I decided to chart out how Felix Pie fared against right handers tossing four seamed cheese. The samples was 431 fastballs with a velocity of 92.1 +/- 2.3 mph. You can tell from the graph that Felix's eyes were wide for high heat from the mid to outside part of the plate. He had strikes called on the interior and low outside as we would expect. Most of his hard hit pitches were in the center slanting outward with his range leaning outside as he steps into the pitch. Looking at the graph, for fastballs I would target Pie high and outside to punch him out. Setting him up with an inside pitch would be a good idea perhaps.

Click on the image to get a larger picture with greater resolution.