New York Nine: The Natural Returns Home

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Natural Returns Home

It's been rumored for weeks and months but it seems as though the man with the sweetest swing on baseball, Ken Griffey Junior is returning to Seattle according to reports by ESPN and I couldn't be happier for the fans of Seattle. Now I've never ventured out there, but you have to feel for Seattle, they lose their basketball team, the Seahawks, the perennial champion of the NFC West goes to shit within weeks this season, and the Mariners become the first team with a 100 million dollar payroll to finish under .500. Damn, that's pretty shitty, I feel kind of bad complaining about my Giants losing in the first round after winning the superbowl last year.

But now the last remant of greatness of those awesome Seattle teams is coming back to town. Yes he's a bit older, the hop in his step is gone and he's not quite the MVP caliber player he once was, but its still Griffey, one of the few great clean stars we have left anymore (at least as far as we know). And in truth his numbers suggest that he's clearly not the same guy he once was, posting a pretty pedestrian .249/.353/.424 line last year while with cincinatti and chicago, but the move is more than just production. Its something for these fans to hold onto, a reason to go to the game and see the legend in action, older and slower for sure, but still capable of showing you a flash of that greatness of his. But this move is not entirely a nostalgia move as I think he still has a little in the tank and can be useful when used properly by seattle, providing some well needed power in an otherwise mostly punchless lineup.

This move hardly makes Seattle contenders and indeed they have a lot of work to do before that happens again, but after all the bad moves they've done, letting griffey and a-rod go, trading randy johnson and pretty much dismantling those great teams of the 90s and doing nothing right since then, its nice to see them throw the fans a bone. they deserve something these days.

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Some Key Terms to Know When Reading

I throw around a lot of numbers and stats so I figured I should probably explain some of them:

wOBA - a new one I'll be using, short for weighted on-base average is essentially an improvement on OPS. Scaled to average OBP (with .330 the league average) wOBA more properly weighs on-base percentage higher than slugging percentage and more accurately weighs extra base hits (a double isn't worth double of that of a single which is what SLG does) to give a better picture of a batter's worth.

.000/.000/.000 is the industry shorthand for the split stats for batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, in that order, these are some of the more commonly used stats to indicate how productive a hitter is.

OPS - shorthand for On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging is becoming more in vogue in the mainstream media to get a better idea of the raw production of a hitter, instead of saying how often they get a hit OPS shows how productive those hits are.

BABIP - Batting Average on Balls in play, its pretty much what it says, how often that a batter puts in ball in play that it becomes a hit, its a stat that shows if a hitter is just having a lot of bad luck or a hot streak is just fluky. For instance a BABIP of .200 is considered unlucky its not that he's not hitting, he just isn't hitting where the fielders are not there.

OPS+ - as the name implies, OPS+ is OPS but with adjustments to park effects and other outliers to normalize the data. Indeed, as most people know some parks are harder to hit at than others, which this stat compensates for, 100 being the baseline of league average

WAR - Wins Above Replacement, as its name suggests, provides an exact number of wins a particular player is worth above what your average AAA player, or replacement player would provide in his absence. Although this is a very difficult stat to explain (I don't totally get it personally) the stat is beautifully simple in that it provides a precise value of either a pitcher or hitter to his particular team, which enables teams to monetize their worth and properly assign a dollar value.

ERA+ - similar to OPS+ its a more highly sophisticated way of evaluating a pitcher's performance adjusted for park effects, this also is on a numerical basis with 100 as league average.

FIP - short for fielding independent pitching, FIP measures the only aspects of the game that a pitcher has total control over, strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Scaled to ERA, FIP gives a truer indication of a pitcher's true talent by removing the luck apparent with balls in play.

WHIP - Walks and Hits per innings pitched, a little more well known stat, but a good indicator of how effective a pitcher is. Chances are if a guy is walking a lot of guys and giving up a hot of hits, he's not pitching all that well.

xFIP- a variation of FIP which normalizes home run rates as a way to discount aberrational home run rates that are either too high or too low to reasonably sustain.

UZR- Short of Ultimate Zone Rating, this is the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined. This is a difficult stat to understand because it's not one of those stats you can figure out at home, because it includes a bevy of factors including park effects and speed. As a consequence, its not a perfect stat, but its the best defensive stat we have. Also seen as UZR/150 is the Ultimate Zone rating per 150 games.

RngR - Range Runs is defined as the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity. Also not a perfect fielding stat, but one of the many fielding stats that help as as fans get a fuller picture of a player's defensive prowess.

New York Nine

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The Natural Returns Home

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