August Team Notes

The Brassball pennant races are heating up and there were lots of great (or at least interesting) performances in August.  Here's one from each team in the league that may have gone unnoticed unless you dug into the numbers a little bit:

Boston -  Brett Wallace is glad he won't face Parkland's Derek Holland again.  Wallace struck out four times in both games Holland tossed against the Tea Party in August.

Brew City - Starter Edison Volquez had a rough August, surrendering a league-leading 13 home runs and 26 walks.

Brooklyn - Ricky Romero and Jon Niese were first and second in complete games, with five and four, respectively.

California - Aramis Ramirez led the league with 11.9 runs created/game.

Cook County -  Jordan Zimmerman pitched 40 2/3 innings and walked just two batters.

Fleetwood - The Walkers were a middling 8-6 on the road, but a sparkling 13-1 at home.

Florence - The River Bats struggled on offense, but young infielder Trevor Plouffe did slug five homers in just 104 at bats.  Some see potential for much more power as he gets more comfortable in the big leagues.
 
Fremont - Trevor Cahill recorded 33 outs against Lancaster on August 3.  Then he did it again on August 31 against Cook County.

Glen Allen - On August 29, the Mets knocked out 29 hits and scored 20 runs against the Boston Tea Party.

Hessville - Jarrod Saltalamacchia did his part to help the Everreadys in August, slugging seven homers in just 64 at bats to go along with his .328 average. 

Lancaster - Daniel Hudson allowed just 15 hits and two walks in his five starts and 30 innings.

Latrobe -  Rick Porcello deserved better than his 0-3 record in August.  He had a solid 3.35 ERA but received just 10 runs of support in his six starts.

Metropolis - New Avenger R.A. Dickey got the red carpet treatment in Metropolis, as his new offense provided him 45 runs of support in his four starts. 

Myrtle Beach - Mike Pelfrey tossed a complete game against Glen Allen on August 5 but gave up 18 hits and ten runs along the way.

North Georgia - First baseman Mark Teixeira led Brassball with 15 homers and his 33 RBIs tied with Avenger Jose Bautista for the lead.

Parkland -  The Green dealt relief ace Kenley Jansen at the deadline, but Brian Wilson has been a letdown with a 5.14 ERA and 10 walks in seven August innings.

Plaza - The Lions split 7-7 on the road, but treated their hometown fans to just one win in August.

Santa Barbara -  The only two pitchers with six wins were both Outlaws - Justin Verlander and Matt Garza.

Schaumburg -  On August 19, both Willie Harris and Mike Aviles swiped four bases against Myrtle Beach.

Simi Valley -  Santa Barbara only lost five games in August, but one was a one-hit masterpiece by Viking ace Clayton Kershaw on August 2.

SoCal -  The Wildfires went 24-4 despite MVP candidate Mike Napoli getting only two at bats and star Mike Stanton hitting just .228.  The team may be in trouble if Napoli can't get healthy for the playoffs and Stanton fails to shake his slump.

Springfield - Not surprisingly, oft-bruised Carlos Quentin led the league with eight hit by pitches.

Superior - Ichiro was a perfect five for five against Brooklyn on August 7.

Tinley - The Redbirds ran out of gas in August and finished the month on 1-13 skid against powerhouses Cook County and California.

2012 Brassball All-Stars - Pitchers

My earlier post discussed the 2012 Brassball All-Star hitters.  Various challenges, including position difficulty, playing time differences and team representation can make the hitters a very difficult All-Star puzzle.  The pitchers shouldn't be as difficult, however.  You don't need to weigh the difference between a slugging first baseman and a defensive star catcher.  Sure, you need to have a bunch of starters and a couple relievers, but that's about it. 


So, let's take a look to see how this year’s All-Star pitching rosters stack up.


Similar to the Weighted OPS (wOPS) I used to rank the hitters, I’m going to use a simple calculation that will give pitchers credit for both the number of innings pitched and the quality of those innings.  Let’s use youngster Jeremy Hellickson and veteran Roy Halladay as examples.


Hellickson has pitched 138 2/3 innings with a sparkling 2.14 ERA.  Halladay, however, has pitched many more innings – 174 1/3, but his ERA is also significantly higher at 2.58.  Are Halladay’s innings more valuable than Hellickson’s superior ERA?  If we divide a pitcher’s innings by his ERA, we’ll get a Weighted ERA (wERA) that gives credit for both innings and ERA.  Doing the calculation for Halladay and Hellickson shows that, by wERA, Halladay’s quantity was more valuable than Hellickson’s quality.

Halladay: 174.33/2.58 = 67.57
Hellickson: 138.66/2.14 = 64.80

Those wERAs rank Halladay #2 and Hellickson #5 in all of Brassball.  Although drawing lines between players at the very top of the game may be difficult, that’s what I’m here to do.
Here are the top 15 starting pitchers, ranked by wERA.  Eight of the 15 will be making the trip to the midsummer classic.

	NAME	ERA	IP	wERA
1	C.Kershaw	2.52	175.33	69.58
2	R.Halladay	2.58	174.33	67.57	All-Star
3	T.Lincecum	2.37	159.67	67.37	All-Star
4	J. Verlander	2.73	181.00	66.40	All-Star
5	J.Hellickson	2.14	138.67	64.80	All-Star
6	J.Weaver	2.64	170.67	64.65
7	J.Shields	2.73	174.67	63.98	All-Star
8	Y.Gallardo	2.61	158.67	60.79	All-Star
9	M.Cain	2.64	160.33	60.73	All-Star
10	C.Sabathia	2.73	164.67	60.32
11	C.Carpenter	2.93	168.67	57.57	All-Star
12	M.Bumgarner	2.76	156.67	56.76
13	C.Hamels	3.18	169.67	53.35
14	M.Garza	2.57	136.33	53.05
15	J.Vazquez	2.80	141.67	50.60

Amazingly, wERA leader Clayton Kershaw won’t be at the All-Star game.  Springfield’s Tim Lincecum ranks third overall, but first in the NL and will be that league’s starter.  Santa Barbara’s Hellickson is the fourth best starter in the AL but got the starting nod, likely because of his 14-1 record, as much as his great ERA. 


Looking at the chart above makes it easy to identify Kershaw and Outlaw Jered Weaver as the two starters who most deserved a nod but were left home.  What about the starters making the trip that were further down the list?  Parkland’s Jon Lester ranked just 33 with a 41.59 wERA.  Cook County’s Anibal Sanchez also made the team with a 42.98 wERA, good for #28 in Brassball.  Sanchez made the team despite throwing just 104 innings, but he was a nearly perfect 12-1 in his 15 starts.


Now, let’s turn to the relievers.  Here it can be a little trickier, as many voters like to reward big save totals as opposed to the best pitching.  Every year, it seems that some of the most effective relief pitchers are somewhat hidden in the seventh and eighth innings, as opposed to the more glamorous role in the ninth.  I re-ran the wERA leader board limiting it to pitchers that made 10 or more relief appearances this season.  Here are the top 15, including saves for good measure:

	NAME	ERA	IP	SV	wERA
1	M.Belisle	1.02	44.00	1	43.14
2	J.Lopez	0.79	34.00	1	43.04
3	J.Venters	1.30	55.33	17	42.56	All-Star
4	S.Marshall	1.24	51.00	2	41.13
5	D.Oliver	0.95	38.00	6	40.00
6	K.Farnsworth	1.14	39.33	1	34.50
7	C.Martinez	1.74	57.00	5	32.76
8	F.Salas	1.55	46.33	28	29.89
9	P.Humber	3.18	93.33	2	29.35
10	S.Cishek	1.66	48.67	1	29.32
11	A.Alburquerque	1.24	36.33	2	29.30
12	S.Romo	1.13	32.00	2	28.32
13	J.Peralta	1.70	47.67	6	28.04
14	S.Casilla	1.52	41.33	3	27.19
15	T.Clippard	2.61	69.00	3	26.44

Amazingly, just one of the top 15 relievers, ranked by wERA is in the All-Star game.  Even more amazingly, it’s not the guy with 28 saves – Superior’s Fernando Salas.  A couple of names jump out from this list.  Obviously Lancaster’s Matt Belisle and Santa Barbara’s Javy Lopez have had standout seasons., even if they don’t get the chance to close for their teams.  Phil Humber, however, has been an absolute workhorse for the Maulers, throwing 93 innings in 41 games.  Given how hard he's been worked so far, Humber may actually prefer a three day vacation to a trip to the All-Star game. 

So, where did the All-Star relievers come from?  Here’s where they rank on the wERA list of pitchers with 10 or more relief appearances.  

Rank	NAME	ERA	IP	SV	wERA
3	J.Venters	1.30	55.33	17	42.56	All-Star
42	J.Smith	2.23	36.33	12	16.29	All-Star
50	B.Sanches	2.91	43.33	3	14.89	All-Star
57	S.Elbert	1.59	22.67	0	14.26	All-Star

Not surprisingly, Hessville, Brew City and Boston did not have many candidates for the All-Star team.  As such, their best choices (Smith, Sanchez and Elbert, respectively) were middle relievers.  Although he has been effective for the Tea Party, Elbert is likely the single least deserving All-Star this year.  He has by far the fewest innings of any All-Star and has only appeared in ten games.  All that said, I’d put my money on Elbert to win the game’s MVP, because that’s just the sort of thing baseball would do to surprise everyone.

2012 Brassball All-Stars

Baseball fans love to debate.  It doesn’t really matter what it is – we can debate, or even flat-out argue, about it.  We’ll debate who should be in the Hall of Fame, who should be the MVP and, of course, who should be on the All-Star team.  This year is no different. 

Some of the All-Star selections seemed like no-brainers.  Of course Mike Stanton and his 32 homers and Brassball leading 98 RBIs will be starting, just like Jacoby Ellbsury and his 27 homers and 51 stolen bases.  But what about Justin Upton?  And how do we have an All-Star game without Albert Pujols?  Let’s take a look at who deserved to make the team and who didn’t.

First, we need to establish some ground rules.  How do you compare a player like Carlos Gonzalez, who has 383 plate appearances, and Matt Kemp, who has 485?  Rather than break out the heavy Sabermetric tools, we’ll settle for something quick and dirty.  Let’s use Gonzalez and Kemp as an example:

Gonzalez has 383 plate appearances and a .992 OPS while Kemp has 485 plate appearances and an .890 OPS.  Multiplying those two numbers will give Kemp credit for all his extra plate appearances and Gonzalez credit for his much higher OPS. 

Gonzalez: 383 x .992 = 387.0

Kemp: 485 x .890 = 435.0

For this article, I’ll call that Weighted OPS (wOPS) and use it as a simple measure to identify those surprising All-Star starters, subs and snubs. 

Miguel Cabrera leads all of Brassball in wOPS and by a wide margin.  He signed a huge contract in the offseason to stay with Fleetwood and has not disappointed.  So far, Cabrera has earned his $7,000,000 his starting spot at 1B for the National League. 

Across baseball, the four highest wOPS hitters are all starting the game:

1.     Miguel Cabrera – 512.6

2.     Jacoby Ellsbury – 464.1

3.     Melky Cabrera – 457.3

4.     Adrian Gonzalez – 449.0

Let’s look at the starters for each league and see how their wOPS ranks in all of Brassball:

National League

C – Miguel Montero – 370.5 wOPS – #34 overall

1B – Miguel Cabrera – 512.6 – 1

2B – Robinson Cano – 382.0 – 26

3B – Pablo Sandoval – 391.2 – 19

SS – Jose Reyes – 373.8 – 32

LF – Alex Gordon – 404.0 – 15

CF – Jacoby Ellsbury – 464.1 – 2

RF – Mike Stanton – 425.9 – 9

DH - Mike Napoli – 405.4 – 14

American League

C – Wilson Ramos – 244.2 – 130

1B – Adrian Gonzalez – 449.0 – 4

2B – Michael Young – 395.9 – 17

3B – Adrian Beltre – 372.2 – 33

SS – Troy Tulowitzki – 379.0 – 28

LF – Carlos Gonzalez – 387.0 – 21

CF – Matt Kemp – 435.0 – 7

RF – Melky Cabrera – 457.3 – 3

DH – Victor Martinez – 365.9 – 37

So, six of the top ten and 11 of the top 25 were voted to start the game.  Not too bad.  Among starters, the one name that sticks out is Cook County’s Wilson Ramos, who is ranked 130 in Brassball.  A big part of his ranking is Ramos’s relatively small number of plate appearances, as his .825 OPS is very strong.  As a catcher on a juggernaut offense, Ramos gets regular days off, which pushes his wOPS down quite a bit.  With that exception, every other All-Star starter is in the top 37 players in the league, based on wOPS.

Who are the big snubs?  The line starts behind Superior’s Justin Upton and Glen Allen’s Albert Pujols.  Those two are ranked #5 and 6 in all of baseball, but will get extra time with their family instead of an all-expense trip to Florence. 

Although Pujols clearly deserved a spot on the team, it would be hard to make him the NL first baseman ahead of Miguel Cabrera.  That’s not true for Justin Upton, who not only deserved to be on the AL’s squad but should also have been a starting outfielder.  Upton has been at least as good as Cook County’s Matt Kemp and much more valuable than Carlos Gonzalez due to CarGo’s missed time.  

Only two other hitters in the top 20 failed to make the game:  North Georgia’s Mark Teixeira (#13), Metropolis’s Andrew McCutchen (#18) and Hessville’s Gaby Sanchez (#20).

Among the All-Star reserves, Springfield’s Hunter Pence and Metropolis’s Jose Bautista have the best argument to be starters and not reserves.  Pence is ranked #8 and likely should have Alex Gordon’s spot in left field. 

Bautista is ranked #11 and comes in ahead of Glen Allen’s Pablo Sandoval.  That might be surprising, as Sandoval has hit a league-leading .358 so far, which is 90 points higher than Bautista.  However, Bautista has a higher on base percentage due to his 63 extra walks.  Bautista also played nearly every day and has nearly 70 more plate appearances. 

In the end, the reality may just be that while Joey Bats is a good nickname, Kung Fu Panda is a great nickname.  It is the All-Star game and sometimes that makes all the difference.