New York

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If Dr. D reads 20 USSM articles, 19 of them remind him of the Jim Bowden - Gary Huckabay interview on Baseball Prospectus a few years back.  Saber consultants, Bowden sez, are useless because "there isn't a dime's worth of difference between you guys.  You like pitchers who strike out a lot of guys, who walk few, and who keep the ball on the ground.  Well, no kidding.  Us dumb-nuts scouts woulda never thought of that."

And 19 times in 20, reading Cameron's stuff, I smile at Bowden's self-aggrandizing complaint that sabermigos naturally agree on everything :- )

That's 19 times, though ... the 20th time was today's USSM article on Josh Hamilton.   The article is based on the idea of calmly buying out a player's missed time and risk, and it even comes to exactly the figure that Dr. D guesstimated:  6/130 for Hamilton.

Here is our Sept. 14th shtick on Hamilton.  To me the Mariners' roster is a sensationally precise fit for Hamilton:  when he misses 40 games in a year, well, those are 40 games per year that you wanted to give to other outfielders anyway.  The Mariners no longer have Ichiro, so they put Hamilton in CF and rotate 3-4 young outfielders around the corners.  

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Q.  What if I want to argue that 220 plate appearances in NYY is a small sample size?

A.  Then Dr. D would recommend that you take a stats class and learn what a sample is.

;- ) and then he would have a question for you:  "Suppose that Ichiro had flopped in NYY, batting .199.  Would you have called that a small sample, or would you say yeah, that's what I thought?"

Can't have it both ways.  He left town.  If he could have failed, he could have succeeded.  Man up.  His performance in New York matches the best ones of his career.

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Q.  Okay, I would have declared victory if he had hit .242 as a Yankee.  So I'll man up.  Suppose we do take his NYY numbers as indicative.  How good is he still?

A.  He was batting .324 / .346 / .466 before Saturday's game (two hits from the #2 slot, a single and double and SB, thanks for asking).  His BABIP as a Yankee is .343, which is below his career average of .347.

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Q.  Is Ichiro still hitting in New York?

A.  The last two weeks have slowed down quite a bit for him; he's hitting around .200 with only one extra-base hit.

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Q.  Is he playing with more energy?

A.  He is, yes.  His swings at pitches outside the zone are way down in New York.  His contact on pitches outside the zone (OOZ) are also down, leading to less cheap contact.  His SLG is way up.  His batting EYE is way down.

In other words, it's a demonstrable fact that he is being more selective since he left the Mariners, and is letting the bat fly when he gets his pitch.  He hit a couple of early homers and he is giving it all he's got, trying to get his pitch and do something with it.

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Q.  How confident would you be that Gonzalez' first half was a hiccup?

A.  Not all that confident.  

Among his first ten b-ref.com comps are Kent Hrbek, Mo Vaughn, Will Clark, and Justin Morneau.   Clark and Morneau were accused of being the best players in baseball, pretty much, during their (very short) peaks.

Also, his HR's are real short this year, as are his fly balls + home runs.  

Also, he's never had a real quick bat launch; he's a pitch-recognition guy with a smooth, Olerud-style swing.  He's an old-player skill guy.

Also, his BB rate is trending down over the last four years; it's not just down this year.  It's gone from 17% to 13% to 10% to 6%.

Also, his numbers aren't down - not at all - because of luck stats (BABIP, HR/F etc) to any degree whatsoever.

Also, looking at his 120-130 hitting indexes from ages 24-26, his 150's from ages 27-29, and his 130 again now, it's all too easy to imagine the 150's as a three-year prime.

Also, he doesn't look like he's mailing it in, to me.  He looks like he's doing his best.

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Q.  Ouch.  So what's the best reason to think that he's still great?

A.  Every single one* of his component skills is consistent with the idea that he's mailing it in.  For instance, look at his swings on balls outside the zone:

On sucker pitches, he's gone from swinging 25% less often than average, to swinging 25% more often than average.  Also, he's making huge and life-sucking contact on those sucker pitches; his contact rate is 77% this year, compared to 66% league average.  You remember Ichiro whaling away at everything, and topping bad pitches weakly.  You have noticed Ichiro, now that he's into the ballgames, ripping away at a full-blown .302/.323/.469 in New York.  And AGone isn't 38 years old; he's 30.

=== Velocity ===

A thought was floated, advertising that Felix' velocity is back.  Nay verily.  You can't interpret this chart that way.  If you want to understand Felix' summer rocket ride at red line, look not to the radar gun.  Felix' effectiveness, we've beheld, has little fellowship with his speed.

In 2010, and every year prior, Felix' fastball averaged - averaged! - 94.0 MPH or better.  Take a second and review the (MPH) figures on this chart.  Then last year, in 2011, he faded to 93.3 MPH average, which was still smokin' hot - he ranked 13th in all the majors for average fastball velo.  By the way, did you notice that the top 8 were all in the American League?  You went through Ogando, Verlander, Price, Morrow, Sabathia, etc etc until you finally got down to Clayton Kershaw and Matt Garza.  Slap me silly.

So Felix was at 93.3 and trending down in 2011.  He reported to camp skinny, and by his 4th start of 2012 he could barely hit 91-92 on the gun.  Dr. Grumpy gingerly proposed that maybe the lean body mass, or the stamina, had been sapped by the weight loss, and if so, the velo would gradually rebound some.

That's exactly what happened.  The green dots on this chart show an upward angle of close to 10 degrees.  Last night, he was back up to 92.5 MPH on his fastball.  The story isn't that Felix hits 93-96 like he used to; the story is that there is nothing Pineda-like going on in his shoulder.  Rejoice before the high-def TV, ye faithful.

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=== Movement ===

On June 12th, the Padres roughed up Felix for five runs, and this capped an ugly little stretch in which Felix got K.O.'ed three times in four starts - unprecedented for him going back many years.  What was goin' on?