[外電] Prospectus Today: So Wang He's Right, and Mr. Roberts

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原文
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6438

July 10, 2007
Prospectus Today
So Wang He's Right, and Mr. Roberts


by Joe Sheehan

Given that it’s Free Week, I guess I can put my intended catch-up Unfiltered
posts into this space. For the next four days, we’ll be running everything
here at Baseball Prospectus free, giving non-subscribers a taste of what they
can get for about a dime a day. Tell a friend, and help us grow!

I spent Sunday afternoon in Box C342 in the left-field grandstand at Yankee
Stadium, thanks to some friends’ inability to use their tickets. This doesn’
t sound that significant, but it is; it was just the second Yankee game I’d
attended since 1995. After enduring the 1980s while growing up in a Mets
town, suffering through the managerial turnstile and perennial August
collapses and the 1986 World Series, I moved away to Los Angeles and watched
the team that was a joke during my youth become a dynasty again. I
experienced the four World Championships in five years and the 12 consecutive
postseason appearances from a distance.

So walking back into the ballpark was exciting and strange all at once. First
of all, the sheer size of the crowd was a new thing. After all, when I was
coming to the Stadium regularly, you could decide to go to a game at 6 p.m.,
show up at 6:30, and be in a Main Reserve seat along the baselines for $15.
Now, you can’t get into the lower bowl for less than $50, and you can’t get
between the bases without a credit check and a double-digit Q rating.

The entire feel of the place was different as well. When I was getting to
15-20 games a summer as a teenager, the team was competitive, but not
necessarily successful. Now, there’s definitely an arrogance about the
place, a sense that this is where championships happen; there’s almost a
sense of entitlement. I’ve often argued that people who say Yankee fans are
arrogant and spoiled have no frame of reference, that they forget the
1982-1993 period that shaped half a generation, myself included. After one
day at the ballpark, I have a better understanding of the perception. It’s
not something I can necessarily quantify, just a sense, from the copy on
T-shirts to the stadium signage to the way the crowd reacts to events.

The game itself was great for Yankee fans, but didn’t lend itself to much
analysis. The Yankees got three-run homers from Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano,
and Alex Rodriguez en route to waltzing to a 12-0 win. Chien-Ming Wang was
effective, scattering five singles in 6 1/3 innings, striking out three and
walking two. My seats weren’t the best ones for breaking him down, but from
where I sat, he appeared to throw two fastballs, one straight and one with
sink, almost exclusively. He got 14 groundball outs, and I’m hard-pressed to
remember any balls that the Angels drove off of him.

Wang is a fascinating topic, as he’s now up to 65 career starts and 438 2/3
innings with a career strikeout rate that’s actually slightly below his
career ERA, 3.51 to 3.67. He’s striking out more batters in 2007 than he has
before, but his 4.14 K/9 is still well below par for a pitcher in 2007, the
kind of rate that would normally have us clucking over his imminent demise.
Wang, however, is not a soft tosser, a pitcher who works at max effort just
to survive--his fastball is generally clocked in the low 90s, and he touches
94 with it. He works in the strike zone almost the way Greg Maddux did in his
prime, getting early-count outs on contact. Wang’s career mark of 3.39 P/PA
is very low because of this.

I’ve started to think of Wang, to an extent, as the pitching version of
hitters such as Ichiro Suzuki, Don Mattingly, or Kirby Puckett. These hitters
never drew a lot of walks in their primes, because when they swung the bat—
which they did with some frequency—they would make solid contact and put the
ball in play. They didn’t work a lot of deep counts in part because of their
contact rates. Wang is the same way; his strikeout and walk rates reflect his
presence in the strike zone. It works for Wang because the action on his
pitches prevents solid contact, and in particular, power. Wang has allowed
just 27 home runs in his career, and just six this season. His career ISO
allowed of .104 is low for a pitcher in the modern game.

So while Wang is not striking out many hitters, he’s also not allowing walks
or power, which means to beat him, you have to string hits together. His high
groundball rate (2.92 career G/F) also leads to a number of double plays
turned, wiping out the singles he inevitably gives up. He controls the
running game--basestealers are 24-for-43 against him in three years. His
batting average on balls in play has been lower than the league average, and
lower than the Yankee average, but not by a lot (.270, .293, and .280 in his
three seasons). Wang may be one of the pitchers who exerts influence over his
own BABIP, although it still may be too early to make that determination.

If Wang were left-handed and missing ten MPH on his fastball, we’d lump him
in with the Tommy John class of pitchers. Instead, as he is, we’re not sure
what to do with him. It’s fair to say that merely looking at his strikeout
rate and making a clucking sound isn’t going to suffice. It appears Wang is
the exception, a right-handed pitcher who isn’t going to strike out many
hitters, but who does everything so well that he’ll be successful in spite
of that.

---

A week ago, I wrote this:

If the players and the fans alight on the same starter, the players’ second
choice goes, even if he’s a marginal All-Star. Shea Hillenbrand made a team
this way once, and this year, Brian Roberts owes his spot to this process.
Sensible roster construction would allow Orlando Cabrera, clearly more
deserving than Roberts, to make the team, even if it would mean someone plays
a few innings out of position.

This was, as it turns out, a really stupid thing to write. Many, many, many
people e-mailed me to note that Brian Roberts was eighth in the AL in VORP
(at the time; he’s 10th this morning), and that he was by far the best
second baseman in the league. They also pointed out that he was,
statistically, having a better year than Cabrera, outpointing him on a rate
basis and in overall value.

The readers, as usual, were completely correct. I simply whiffed on Roberts,
missing just how great a season he was having. I can chalk it up to my
current displacement, the fact that I haven’t been watching as much baseball
as usual and have been distracted by a move and a housing search, but really,
those are weak excuses. If a guy is the tenth-best player in the league, I
need to know that, and if I don’t, I deserve to be slammed.

What’s amusing is that when I wrote about my All-Star ballot, I mentioned
that I wished I’d voted for Roberts. I know how good he’s been the last few
seasons, the class of a fairly weak crop. I voted for Ian Kinsler, which was
a mistake, one I acknowledged when I wrote the column. So I screwed up on
both ends of this discussion.

Now, it is worth pointing out that at the time I filled out my ballot, Brian
Roberts wasn’t having nearly as great a year as he is now. He had a poor
April, and that month was dragging down his overall numbers well into May.
Just to pick a date, I filled out my All-Star ballot on May 9 at that night’
s Angels/Indians game. This is what Roberts has hit since then (thanks,
Baseball-Reference.com): .348/.429/.457 in 53 games, and going 15-for-17 on
the bases.

So, yes, Brian Roberts is an All-Star, and he’s an All-Star ahead of any
other second baseman in the league, as well as over almost every other middle
infielder. I was wrong to dismiss him, and as always, I thank the readers for
keeping me honest.


Joe Sheehan is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact Joe by
clicking here or click here to see Joe's other articles.

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