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THE ROUNDTRIPPER
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  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Team Blogs We Like
  • Best Resources
  • About The Roundtripper
  • Contact Chris and Tom

Roundtripper Podcast #21 - Trade Deadline Mania!

7/28/2017

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On Show #21 of The Roundtripper, the MLB Non-Waiver Trade Deadline is just around the corner, and Chris and Tom have all the analysis you could possible shake a stick at! They talk about the big names that may be on the move (Yu Darvish, Sonny Gray, Brad Hand, Zach Britton, etc.), take a look at the needs of the top deadline Buyers and Sellers, and try to determine who is going where and at what cost. It's deadline mania in all it's glory! 

CLICK HEAR TO LISTEN/DOWNLOAD, OR FIND IT BY SEARCHING THE ROUNDTRIPPER ON ITUNES PODCAST SEARCH

Be sure to like us on Facebook (search for Roundtripper Podcast) and give us a follow on Twitter (@RoundtripperMLB). Also, if you like the show be sure to rate us 5-stars on iTunes! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please send us an email at Roundtripperpodcast@gmail

 
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MLB Player Value SNAP SHOT: Don Mattingly and John Olerud

7/27/2017

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​John Olerud:

WAR: 58.0
BA: .295
HR: 255
RBI: 1230
OBP: .398
SLG: .465
OPS: .863
OPS+: 129

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Don Mattingly:
WAR: 42.0
BA: .307 
HR: 222 
RBI: 1099  
OBP: .358 
SLG: .471 
OPS: .830 
OPS+: 127
 

  • Don Mattingly was a Yankee. Olerud was a Blue Jay (and a Mariner, a Met, and briefly with the Red Sox).
  • Olerud wore a weird thing on his head. So did Mattingly. 
  • Mattingly had four top 7 finishes in MVP voting, including one MVP award
  • Olerud had an absurd 15% walk rate during his prime years, while only striking out 11% of the time
  • Mattingly led the league in total bases over two consecutive seasons, from 1985 to 1986
  • Olerud produced a beautiful .398 on base percentage to go along with his respectable power and stellar defense
  • Mattingly established a strong reputation with six solid seasons for a popular team, before essentially becoming a 2 WAR/year player for his final five seasons.
  • Olerud finished in the top five in MVP voting once, but also produced five seasons of 5 WAR or more, and nine seasons of 3 WAR or more.
  • Despite Mattingly's superior reputation among writers and fans, he simply does not measure up to Olerud. Olerud knew how to take a base and field his position better than most first basemen of his era, while also hitting loads of extra base hits.
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Why did People Collect Baseball Cards in the 1990's?

7/20/2017

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Carlos Baerga's mustache. That was why anybody did anything in the 1990's. It was our reason for living.
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Bring back great baseball cards. Bring them back now.
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MLB Player Value: Jay Bruce and Jarrod Dyson

7/18/2017

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by Tom Baird

This is the first of many posts on player value and the fun surprises that fans may find when they pay attention to advanced stats. It's easy to get one's mind blown. For example, in 2009, Nyjer Morgan was likely more valuable than Ryan Howard and Hunter Pence, or at least similar in value, since defensive stats are difficult to quantify. This was a year in which those two other players were very good. Howard hit 45 homers while batting .279. As you remember, Nyjer Morgan was not often considered their equal. However, he was at times a fine defensive outfielder and made better contact with the bat in 2009. Howard struck out 657 times and Pence wore his socks too high, so their value suffered. Pence might also have had underwhelming defense and walk rate.

I know what you are thinking. This is mind blowing stuff. Your life just changed. And now, we are going to bring you this kind of exciting information ALL THE TIME??!

Yes.

Probably. This will PROBABLY be the first of many posts on the subject. If you have spent any time at all following this blog, you know that I have promised several times that I will continue to post on a certain subject, but then have proceeded to fail miserably. Because life moves fast and I'm unorganized, plus my toddler breaks things, I have not always lived up to my promises. But this time... this time, I promise to deliver.

In this series of posts, I plan on expounding on player value, focusing on surprising similarities in value among position players that may be significant. This, after all, was the entire premise of that book about Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill changing baseball. They sought to find market deficiencies that would allow teams with less money to find value in unorthodox ways. At the time, on-base percentage was undervalued. That is no longer the case. The so-called sabermetrics movement was never about OBP or defense or exit velocity. It was always about having all the information available in order to find value where other teams do not. We have seen teams value defense, prospects, controllable youth, older players with a history of success (we call these Sabean's Sweethearts), or even former top prospects, among many many others.

This series will focus on players with similar WAR, using both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference metrics. We will discuss the ways in which the players differ, and the perceived value of such players (to fans and possibly GMs alike, although it's pretty difficult to gauge how teams value players until they acquire them through trade or signing).

What's the point? Well, if your team cannot sign or trade for a bat like Jay Bruce during the offseason, why not trade much less for, say, Jarrod Dyson. The answer to this question likely depends on team need (platoons, defense), personnel (does your outfield defense already suck super bad?), or park factors (are you in Seattle where homers don't exist?). With that said, a team that wants Bruce might not want Dyson, because they might be looking for that power bat. Value is not close to simple. Wrapping up value in a number like WAR does not mean that Dyson is better than Bruce. It means that Dyson holds great value for his defense, and it would be worthwhile for a GM and fans to consider that. Players like Kevin Kiermaier have derived a surprising amount of their value from their defense, and some teams (Rays, Cubs, Athletics, Dodgers) are more willing to pay for that value.

PLAYERS THAT HAVE SIMILAR VALUE, per fWAR:

Jay Bruce and Jarrod Dyson:
Dyson: .246/.328/.370, 7.8% Walk Rate, 15% Strikeout Rate, above average defense, worth 2.1WAR
Bruce: .267/.333/.534, 9% Walk Rate, 22% Strikeout Rate, below average defense, worth 1.9 WAR

Bruce is obviously deriving his 2017 value from power and an increased BABIP (batting average on balls in play). His walk rate is slightly up from last year, as is his ISO, or Isolated Power metric. He is currently tied for ninth in the league with 24 HRs, along with Bryce Harper, and is 18th in the league with a .267 ISO, just above Paul Goldschmidt. These are very good numbers. He is slugging the ball well. He is getting similar contact to last year in regard to exit velocity, but his average launch angle appears dramatically different. His launch angle has increased from around 14 degrees to 19. He is lofting the ball more. Obviously, this has resulted in more homeruns.

Ever since his third season in the league, Jay Bruce has always graded as a well below average defensive outfielder. In fact, FanGraphs places him 15th worst of the Major League Outfielders over the past four seasons, based on their value metric. When he was young, he had one great defensive season and another good one. And then his glove was thrown into a dumpster and set on fire. I'm guessing. He has struggled immensely with defense over the past few years.

As for Dyson, we are actually seeing more of the same from a player that has made a habit of producing stellar defense, average offense, and stellar base running each year for the past five seasons. He has been a 2.5 to 3.0 WAR player almost every year, since the 2012 season ended. His production actually tops that of Bruce over the five year span, by a lot. His power numbers seemed to have ticked up a notch over the past two years (topping out at FIVE HOMERS so far this year), but he continues to essentially be the same player. Dyson does not walk much, but actually walks more than other players with his speed and lack of power. He is not only a fast player, but a skilled baserunner. His base running scores have been positive each year for the past five years, and he has stolen bases with an 85% success rate. In fact, Dyson has scored positively for defense and base running each of the past five years, and has only once scored negatively offensively (in 2014, when he graded only slightly below average). He has actually been a remarkably consistent all around player, like Angel Pagan or a lesser version of Shane Victorino.
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Quick Hits on Joe DiMaggio and the Streak

7/16/2017

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  • On this date in 1941, Joe DiMaggio hit in his 56th straight game. This would eventually become one of the most well-known, long-standing records in professional sports. He would never get another hit again. Until Friday. He got two on Friday! That's why everyone likes Fridays to this day.
  • Also, people like to say that DiMaggio was denied his proposed incentive of $10,000 from Heinz after failing to set the record at 57. If this were true, it would also mean that Heinz was incentivizing a hitless game on Friday, so that the record could stick at 57. This would ruin Fridays. 
  • So let me get this straight. Ketchup not only wants to ruin hotdogs with its existence (#mustardforever), but now it wants to ruin baseball? And Fridays?
  • Ketchup is awful, and it only seeks to destroy our precious ballgame, and our precious hotdogs, and our precious ballgame hotdogs. 
  • Joe DiMaggio got a walk in Game 57, and eventually extended his on-base streak to 74 games. Nobody noticed, however, because sabermetrics weren't a thing. Brad Pitt had not invented them yet.
  • Along the way to 56, DiMaggio passed up players like Wee Willie Keeler and George Sisler.
  • George Sisler is likely best known by younger generations as the guy whose record was recently broken by Ichiro Suzuki.   
  • Although a Hall of Famer, Sisler is rarely mentioned along with the other hit kings like Cobb, Rose, Williams, DiMaggio, and Suzuki. If one were to look at historical photos of Sisler, they could assume that Sisler knew all of his records would be broken. Maybe he owned a time machine and figured it out. It would explain the face.
He even made the face while hitting. He was so disappointed. 
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Back to DiMaggio...
The streak ended on Thursday. People were sad. The Heinz family wept. Mustard connoisseurs were happy not to see the game tainted by greed, corruption, red stains and gross aftertaste.  The Yankees won the game, and DiMaggio went on to win the MVP award. The Yankees finished the season strong and went on to beat the crosstown rival Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.
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And who knows? Maybe a new Yankee Star is on his way to earning an MVP and World Series berth. Time will tell. In the words of a beautiful elderly red-headed man, let's get back to this one.
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Homerun derby predictions

7/10/2017

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Last year, I watched the home run derby live from the right field bleachers. Unfortunately, no left-handers got out of the first round and I never saw a ball come all that close to me. Fortunately, the derby was amazing, and totally worth the ludicrous amount of money I paid to sit there. This year's derby participants are arguably more exciting than last year's. Here are my predictions:

1. Stanton will repeat. I know we all want to believe that Judge and Bellinger will destroy the world, and I think they will, but this world still belongs to Stanton. Last year, I watched the batting practice before the derby (yes, that exists) and saw Stanton hit about ten balls deep into the stands. That was immediately before the derby. I was immediately betting on Stanton, and I still am.

2. Sano will surprise. The top four will be Giancarlo, Sano, Bellinger and Judge. I think that Sano will shine, but he won't get past the hometown homerun hero.

3. There will be a semifinal between Judge and Bellinger, and Twitter might explode and die.

4. The hometown fans will go insane.

​5. You will all have creepy dreams of that giant outfield monstrosity chasing you after watching the derby.




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    ABout

    Spanning an entire continent, lifelong fans Chris Kubak and Tom Baird take you on a magical, sabermetrically enhanced journey through Major League Baseball. 

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