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Like Chuck Norris, Jason Heyward is an unstoppable force of nature and after reading a few one-liners about him, I got the idea of making this post. So, I want everyone to come up with some sayings and facts about Jason Heyward. Here are the two that first sparked my imagination.

"Like the grim reaper, you don't know when or how, but he's going to get you."

- Brad Hainje

"Morton hit Heyward with an offspeed pitch. Early indication is that the baseball survived the impact."

- Mark Bowman

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His strikeout rate is WAY up and he is hitting .033 2 weeks before the season starts. He definitely doesn't look like the guy he was in Pittsburgh. I was expecting a rebound from the dip in his numbers last year (especially after he got his vision straightened out), but I am already fearing the worst. I want to tell myself this is just a slump but the increase in strikeout rate seems to indicate that something just isn't right. I haven't combed over the fanposts enough to see if anyone had any ideas about what it is but my first thought would obviously be something mechanical (although I haven't had the privilege of watching him but a couple of at bats this spring so this is entirely speculation). Will Nate get things straight? Or are we going to be seeing a lot more of Melky in CF than we expected? I could see Bobby "giving Nate days off against tough lefties (i.e. all lefties)" if this continues. I pray that we will just be able to laugh about his spring training when he is hitting .270ish with ~25 homers this season, but right now I'm afraid.

Now that John Smoltz’s pitching career may be over, the hot dog eaters of the punditry world will start debating something that doesn’t have to be debated, whether Shmok’em Shmoltz is a Hall of Famer.  That’s easy; of course he is, because Smoltz was a much, much better pitcher than another Hall of Famer to whom he is too often compared, Dennis Eckersley.

Sure, it’s easy to make the comparison.  Both Smoltz and Eck began their careers as starters and, later, became two of the best closers in the game.  But if you make just a cursory examination of the careers of both men, unlike so many of the "analysts" who get paid to bloviate simply because they have stats listed on Baseball Reference, the differences between Eckersley and Smoltz are obvious.  No, this will not be a lecture involving Bill James’ marvelous tool, the Similarity Score.  I should use Similarity Scores, but many folks would stop reading right there, drop a couple of curse words on me, and tell me to go back to watching the evil Leprechaun movie marathon on the Sy-Fy Channel.  Instead, let’s see how Smoltz and Eck were not similar without the Similarity Score, and let me say up front that I am not arguing that Eckersley wasn’t a good pitcher.

The Cleveland Indians of the mid-70’s were a lot like the Indians of the first half of "Major League" when Dennis Eckersley joined them in 1975.  He was only 20 and almost immediately was a key member of the Indians pitching staff.  As a rookie, Eck made 34 appearances and 24 starts and was very good, going 13-7 with a 2.60 ERA (adjusted ERA+ of 144).  Eckersley was also good the next two years, but not quite as good as his rookie season and was traded to the Red Sox, where he proceeded to have his two best years as a starter.

Eck had the only 20-win season of his career in 1978, going 20-8 with a 2.99 ERA (139 ERA+) and finished fourth in Cy Young voting.  In ‘79, he was even better with a 150 ERA+ (2.99 ERA again), though he finished seventh in Cy Young voting because his record was "only" 17-10 (more on wins versus pitching stats that actually matter later).  1979, however, would be Dennis Eckersley’s high-water mark as a starting pitcher.  He would never again have an ERA lower than 3.73 as an American League starter, and during the 1984 season, Eckersley and Mike Brumley were traded to the Chicago Cubs for (hold your nose, Red Sox fans) Bill Buckner.

That trade, along with another in-season trade that brought Rick Sutcliffe to the Cubbies, would help Chicago capture the nation’s hearts and the National League East.   Eck was an effective starter again after the trade, going 10-8, 3.03 (128 ERA+) in 24 starts with the Cubs.  After a decent ‘85, during which he missed some time with injury, Eckersley fell off the wagon in ‘86, going 6-11, 4.57 and was traded to his hometown Oakland A’s before the ‘87 season.   Cubs fans might want to stop reading right there, as Chicago received the legendary Brian Guinn, Dave Wilder, and Mark Leonette from the A’s, and within two years, Dennis Eckersley would be, arguably, the best closer in baseball.

After spending part of 1987 in the bullpen, Eck became the full-time closer in ‘88, the year the re-Christened Athletics, AKA the Bash Brothers, would win the first of three straight pennants.  Over the next five years, Eckersley was about as dominant as a closer could be.   His save numbers for those seasons: 45, 33, 48, 43, 51.  His ERA’s: 2.35, 1.56, 0.61, 2.96, 1.91.  In 1993, Eck turned 38, and though he continued to rack up saves he was, at best, only an average pitcher, his ERAs well into the fours during his last three years in Oakland.  After two years in St. Louis and one more season with the Red Sox, Eckersley retired with 197 wins, 390 saves, a 3.50 ERA (116 ERA+), and 2,401 career strikeouts.  In his first year of eligibility, Eck was easily elected to the Hall of Fame in 2004, named on 83.2 percent of the ballots.

The year Eckersley became the best closer in the American League, John Smoltz made his major league debut with the Braves, and a hell of a debut it was.  On July 23, 1988, Smoltz went eight innings, giving up only four hits and one run, with one walk and (surprise!) only two strikeouts in a 6-1 win over the New York Mets.   Smoltz, however, wouldn’t even come close to pitching that well the rest of his rookie season, finishing 2-7 in 12 starts with a 5.48 ERA.  He wouldn’t have an ERA remotely close to that level until his (presumably) final season.

Smoltz was good, but not exactly great, for the next six seasons.  His ERA+ from ‘89 to ‘94 were 124, 104, 103, 129, 112, and 102.   That 129 year was 1992, and Smoltz was very good that season, going 15-12, 2.85 with a league-leading 215 strikeouts.  Some folks were worried Smoltz was about to hit the skids after he went 6-10, 4.14 during the work stoppage year of 1994.   But that is exactly when John caught fire, or whatever metaphor you feel like using there.

Smoltz’s ERA+ from ‘95 until ‘99 were 134, 149, 138, 143, and 140.  He won the Cy Young in 1996, going 24-8 (like Eck, Smoltz had  just one 20-win season), 2.94 and he led the league with 276 strikeouts.  By 1998, though, Smoltz began to miss time with a sore pitching elbow.  He made only 26 starts in ‘98, though he did go 17-3, 2.90 and was fourth in Cy Young balloting.  After being limited to 29 starts in ‘99, Smoltz had Tommy John surgery, which cost him all of 2000 and the first month-and-a-half of 2001.

His first five starts of ‘01, for the most part, stunk, and when he was shut down again after a start on June 9, Smoltz was 2-2, 5.76.  After the All-Star break, the Braves decided to experiment with Smoltz as a closer, leaving (horror of horrors!) John Rocker without a job.  Smoltz was, to be sarcastic, pretty good as a fireman, allowing earned runs in only five of his 31 appearances, and saving ten games with a 1.59 ERA during the second half.

The next year, Smoltz would finish third in Cy Young balloting after setting a National League record with 55 saves, but he actually pitched better in 2003 and 2004, especially ‘03 (45 saves and a 1.12 ERA).  After a 44 save, 2.76 year in ‘04, Smoltz wanted out of the bullpen.  The Braves obliged, and Smoltz was a very good starter for the next three years, with ERA+ of 138, 127, and 140.  But in 2008, at age 41, the arm trouble returned.  Smoltz made five starts in April, and even though four of them were excellent, including a pair of ten strikeout games, the pain was too much and he was shut down.  Just over a month later, Smoltz tried to come back as a closer for one game, but after blowing a save against the Florida Marlins on June 2, he decided to shut down for the season and again have surgery.

The Braves decided not to take a chance on Smoltz in 2009.  He subsequently made eight mostly horrific starts for the Red Sox and was decent in seven starts with the Cardinals last year.  If Smoltz is indeed retired, he leaves the game with 213 wins, 154 saves, a 3.33 ERA (125 ERA+) and 3,084 career strikeouts.

So how is Smoltz that much better than Eck, especially when Eck has so many more saves and Smoltz only has a few more wins?  The answer is that numbers, especially career win and save numbers with pitchers, are very deceptive when showing whether or not someone was one of the best players of their era, which unless I am mistaken, are the players the Hall is supposed to be enshrining.  Dennis Eckersley was, probably, the best closer in the American League…for five seasons.  For another six-and-a-half years, Eck was a closer or a reliever, but was nowhere near being the best in his league.  Yet during those six-and-a-half years, Eck racked up 167 of his career saves.   Eckersley was a good or very good starting pitcher for six seasons.  But he was only among the best starters in his league twice, in 1978 and ‘79 when he finished fourth and seventh respectively in Cy Young voting.  In Eck’s five-and-a-half other seasons as a starter, he was average or, more often, below average, which is why he was moved to the bullpen.

You could make the argument that Smoltz was also moved to the pen after he failed as a starter upon returning from injury in 2001.   However, beginning in 1992, with the exception of his poor ‘94, Smoltz was considered to be among the best starters in the National League, notwithstanding that he had to compete with teammates Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine.  In fact, after 1994 and save for those five starts in ‘01, he was not even close to being an average or below average pitcher until last year.  He won the Cy Young in ‘96 and finished in the top ten in voting four other times, three as a starter, the other as a closer.  No, he didn’t have as many wins as Maddux or Glavine, but (a) he would have had more wins had he not spent three-and-a-half years as a closer, and (b) pitchers aren’t always in control of wins, and as we have demonstrated, Smoltz was well above league-average in ERA adjusted for ballpark and era, usually more so than even Glavine.

Smoltz doesn’t have as many saves as Eckersley simply because Eck was a closer for ten-and-a-half seasons compared to only three-and-a-half for Smoltz.  But Smoltz’s time as Atlanta’s fireman was at least as dominant, or close to it, as Eckersley’s marvelous five-year run in Oakland.   Also, I haven’t even mentioned Smoltz’s postseason numbers, which are among the best in baseball history (41 games, 27 starts, 15-4, 2.67, four saves, 199 K’s in 209 innings).  Eck’s postseason numbers are okay, but not that close to Smoltzie's.

Dennis Eckersley was an excellent pitcher, and I have no problem with him being in the Hall of Fame.  But if John Smoltz doesn’t pitch again, come 2015, the baseball writers will have absolutely no excuse to not enshrine number 29 next to him.

Introduction

Hi again, everybody.  Welcome to Part 5 of my series on the 2010 Fan Projections from FanGraphs.  Here are the links to the first 4 parts:

• Part 1 (Starting Pitchers)
• Part 2 (Infielders)
• Part 3 (Catchers)
• Part 4 (Outfielders)

In this part, I'll be looking at the fan projections for NL East relievers.  While there does not seem to be a dominant bullpen in the division, there are a few that definitely seem thin.  Of course, how many dominant bullpens are there? I'm starting to think that the "shut-down" bullpen is just a myth along the lines of Bigfoot or Jason Heyward's weakness.  Probably half the bullpens in the majors are sketchy at best, and even the ones that seem relatively solid could go downhill fast.

Which brings me to my mega-disclaimer.  Bullpens are practically impossible to project, outside of a few stalwarts. Most teams use between 15 and 20 relievers in a normal season, and many of those players are marginal big leaguers at best.  Plus, the sample sizes are small, which means that luck has a larger effect than normal.  For most everyday player and starting pitcher projections, I'd say that the fans stand a pretty decent chance of at least being in the ballpark.  But for many relievers, I think the chances of getting an accurate projection are no better than 50/50. So just don't be surprised if these projections go horribly awry.  This is for entertainment purposes only.

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It cut out after ten minutes and now someone is interviewing David Wright.

Mods: delete this if you want, I've just been waiting for this show all week and it pisses me off.

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After watching Jason Heyward's spring, many (including myself) have been thinking it would be a good idea to have him start on opening day.  This of course starts the debate about how the financial implications compare vs. how the team will perform with / without Heyward on it.  I've put some numbers down to help myself decide what I think about the situation and I thought I'd share.

For those who don't know, baseball salary rules for young players work as follows.  Players with less than 3 years of service time basically make the league minimum, which for my calculations I will assume is $400k.  Players with more than 3 years of service time but less than 6 years of service time are "arbitration eligible".  The arbitration process allows a player to earn a salary that is a fraction of his "market value".  Players with more than 6 years of service can become free agents, and agree to any contract.  In the three years of arbitration, the process is supposed to produce salaries that are 40%, 60%, and 80% of the "market value" in arb years 1, 2, and 3.

A wrinkle in the arbitration rules is that a "year" is defined as a certain number of days (172 to be exact), and a player must have at least that many days to get credit for 1 year.  Thus, if a player accrues 171 days of service time in a season that does not count as "1 year".  A typical baseball season has ~180 days, so getting to 1 year of service is possible without starting opening day.  To prevent abuse of this system, MLB rules allow the top 17% of players with at least 2 but less than 3 years of service time to become arbitration eligible.  These players are called "Super 2's", and go through arbitration 4 times instead of 3.  In the past, the cutoff for super 2 status is typically in the range of 128 - 140 days of service time.  Counting forward from the start of the season, this means that players called up after June 1 are typically "safe" from Super 2 status.

That's a lot of words, so lets use a specific example; Jason Heyward.  In the example that follows, I've made some assumptions in the calculations: 

First, I've assumed that Jason Heyward will go to salary arbitration every year he can, and receive exactly the "proper" amount - i.e. 40% / 60% / 80% of his "market value" in the arbitration process.  The splits for super 2's are harder to find, so I've used 30% / 50% / 70% / 90% as a basis.  It is straightforward to redo the calcs with any basis you like, so feel free to change it and comment below.

Second, I need to establish what Jason's "market value" is to project his salary for each of the possibilities.  The actual process does not use WAR, but that's what I use here.  I have assumed that Jason Heyward will play at a 5 WAR pace every single year.  Now, all we need is $ / WAR, which was about $4.5M / WAR last year.  You are free to use whatever WAR projection / cost you like, as you'll see I don't think it changes the conclusions at all.

Here's the year by year breakdown for three cases, with service time and salary listed:  starting Opening Day, calling Jason up June 1, or calling Jason up ~April 20, so he just becomes a Super 2.

            League Min     0.4                                          

            WAR               5                                             

            $ / WAR          4.5M                           

Year    Opening Day               Non-Super 2                Super 2           

2010    1yr       $0.4                 < 1yr    $0.4                 < 1yr    $0.4

2011    2yr       $0.4                 1+ yr    $0.4                 1+ yr    $0.4

2012    3yr       $0.4                 2+ yr    $0.4                 2+ yr    $0.4

2013    Arb 1   $9.0                 3+ yr    $0.4                 Arb 1   $6.8

2014    Arb 2   $13.5               Arb 1   $9.0                 Arb 2   $11.3

2015    Arb 3   $18.0               Arb 2   $13.5               Arb 3   $15.8

2016    FA       $22.5               Arb 3   $18.0               Arb 4   $20.3

2017    FA                               FA                               FA      

TOTAL           $64.2                           $42.1                           $55.2

Looking at the table above, one thing is clear:  having Jason accrue a full year of service time in 2010 is a bad financial decision.  The penalty for this is the difference in cost between his market value salary and the league minimum (or Arb 1 year salary for Super 2).  For a player of Jason's potential, this is a lot of money.

Secondly, the "penalty" for letting a player hit Super 2 splits the difference between the opening day and June 1 time frames in this example.  I'd say the "minimum penalty" would be a scenario where the arbitration targets are 20/40/60/80%, in which case the total difference is about $4M.  Again, I'd love to see some "real" numbers here rather than the 4 fractions I've arbitrarily chosen.

So, now that we understand the financial impact, what about the impact to the team that Jason brings when he's playing?  In my opinion, there is a trap that many people fall into here, and it starts along the lines of "If the Braves finish X games out of first / wild card at the end of the year, then you'll regret not having Heyward up the entire time".  People then assume that the difference in games is certainly made up by having Heyward in the lineup.  The fact of the matter is that there is no way to evaluate game-by-game how a player will contribute - i.e whether Heyward could make up those 2 games that the Braves lost in April - May when someone else was playing RF.  The best method that I'm aware of is to calculate the player WAR, and pro-rate that contribution over the time period of interest.  Then, take the difference in what Heyward would contribute and what his replacement (Cabrera / Hinske / Diaz / other) would contribute and see how many "wins" are at stake.

For example, lets now assume Heyward will produce 6 WAR if he plays every single game this year.  If we assume the season is 6 months long, then that is 1 WAR / month.  Let's now assume that whoever plays RF if not Heyward will produce 1.5 WAR (0.25 WAR / month) if they played every single game this year.  Again, pick whatever numbers you like.  Thus:

Heyward plays every day:  6 WAR from RF for the year

Heyward plays starting June 1:  4.5 WAR total from RF for the year

Heyward plays starting mid-April:  5.6 WAR from RF for the year

If we take the differences in each scenario, we find that Heyward as a Super 2 only costs the Braves 0.5 game.  Heyward called up June 1 costs the Braves 1.5 games.  Thus, if the Braves finish 2 or more games out of a playoff spot, having Heyward around vs. not does not swing the stakes in the Braves favor in this example.  If Heyward plays at less than 6 WAR and / or if the replacement RF plays at better than 1.5 WAR, then Heyward's presence / absence makes even less of an impact on the Braves postseason chances.

Obviously, players don't contribute in a linear fashion as indicated in the argument above - a really bad April / May for the replacement vs. an unbelievably hot Heyward in the same time frame, for example, might make the total win difference higher. 

As a Braves fan, I simply cannot justify letting Heyward start opening day.  To me, the decision is Super 2 vs. non-Super 2, and based on Jason's spring, I think the Super 2 route is probably the right way to go.  You give up some $ later on, but not nearly as much as opening day, and you minimize your chance that not having Heyward all year long costs you a playoff spot. 

If you've made it this far, I'll end with this:  another possibility that I haven't included is that Jason can be signed to a long term contract sometime just before arbitration eligibility (think Brian McCann, Ryan Braun, Evan Longoria).  Players usually give up money by doing this, but they gain the security of having a guaranteed contract.  The team also gains cost certainty.  In some cases, the total figure could be less than the middle column listed above!  This possibility is the best case scenario in my opinion, as the team retains control of Heyward for as long as possible, gets the most playing time from him, and gets him at the minimum amount.

Hello again, everybody. Two weeks ago, we looked at who should be our leadoff hitter for the upcoming season. Despite having the lowest OBP of any of the candidates, Nate McLouth was voted leadoff hitter by gathering 63% of the vote. A lot has changed since then, but hopefully Nasty Nate will break out of his slump before the season starts.

Today, lets look at who should hit 2nd in the order for us. 

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Everyone needs to pray that the weather gets better in Jupiter today as I took off work and have great seats for the Braves/Marlins game this afternoon. Anyone know who is scheduled to pitch? I know Gondee usually posts it in the game thread but I'm way to excited to wait. Anyone else going to the game today? All I want to do is drink a few beers in the sun while watching the 2010 NL East Champs stomp the fish.

Spring Training is almost to the halfway point, so I decided to take a look at our two newest offensive impact players, Troy Glaus and Jason Heyward, and see how they are doing.

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