Getting to know Felix Doubront

It looks like Felix Doubront will be called up for one or two startsto fill in for Daisuke Matsuzaka, so I thought folks might be interesting in learning a little more about him. Doubront is a tall and skinny 22 year old right hander, and was signed as an international free agent at age 16 out of Venezuela, and has spent six years in the Sox system. He throws a fastball in the low 90s , a plus changeup, and an inconsistent curveball. The changeup is his probably his best pitch, and as such he’s had a reverse platoon split in the minors. Baseball America rated him as the 18th prospect in the system. Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus didn’t rank him in the top 15, and described him as “just kind of a generic solid lefty for me. [He’s] not a bad prospect, but not special.”

That said, this season Doubront has succeeded at both AA and AAA, and seems to have taken a step forward, cutting down on his walks and improving his strikeout to walk ratio. His overall numbers are solid- 6-1 with an ERA of 2.11 while striking out nearly a batter an inning and walking 3.3/9. Doubront is a groundball pitcher, and has yet to give up a homerun this season. Normal caveats about small sample sizes apply, since it has only been 60 innings in the minors, but if this improvement in limiting homeruns and keeping the ball on the ground is for real, the Sox could have a solid, inexpensive backend starter or swingman. Even if he’s not ready for the majors now, Doubront could still develop into a major league starter, given his young age.

Andrew’s wild ass guess stat line for Doubront’s start against the Dodgers:
5 1/3 IP, 3 Ks, 2 BBs, 6 hits, 3 runs

For further reading about Felix Doubront, or for his minor league stats, check out these links.

Red Sox 2010 Draft Signings

So far the only major picks to sign are Kolbrin Vitek (20th overall), who signed at the "slot" suggested bonus by MLB of $1.4 million and Bryce Brentz, who also signed at slot ($877,000). Workman, who was Baseball America's 16th overall player in the draft, and Anthony Ranaudo may be very difficult to sign. Ranaudo is represented by Scott Boras and is reportedly looking for top 10 bonus money, due to Ranaudo's status as the consensus #1 college pitcher and #2 prospect overall coming into this season. If either player signs over slot, then the Red Sox cannot officially sign them until the August 14th deadline. The rule is Bud Selig's clumsy attempt to rein in bonuses, despite the clear benefit for teams to go over slot; essentially, the thinking is that players cannot use deals signed by other prospects as leverage.

A closer look at a late round pick

Alex McCree, a senior from Georgia, was just drafted by the Dodgers in the 17th round. He is a former student of mine, so I took a closer look at his numbers and potential, and found some interesting things. To start, McCree is a very tall (6'6") left hander, with a plus fastball. Working as a short reliever this season, McCree struck out an incredible 38 batters in 22 1/3 innings while only 18 hits. Unfortunately, he also walked 32 and hit 6. Thanks to those numbers, an incredible 64% of the batters faced didn't put the ball in play.

Given how long a left handed reliever can have, plus how project-able McCree is, it seems like a good use of a 17th round pick by the Dodgers. The Dodgers clearly like his potential, as he was also a late round pick last year, as well, but instead he opted to return for his senior season. The key from here on out is going to be control; hopefully McCree will be able to return to his sophomore year form, when he posted a much more manageable 2.94/9 innings.

An interesting intersection of ecology and baseball

So just what exactly do the lake sturgeon, chironomid larvae, and the 2007 Red Sox world championship have to do with one another? More than you probably realize. The lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens, center) was once one of the most abundant fish species in the Great Lakes. However, thanks to demand for its meat and eggs and human development, the lake sturgeon is now uncommon. Despite their massive size (the largest individuals can be >6' and 200+lbs), sturgeon eat lots and lots of small organisms, like midge fly larvae in the upper left. Most of the large fish (salmon and lake trout mostly) that were introduced in the Great Lakes are piscivorous, meaning they eat other fish. If you're still here, stick with me. We'll get to baseball eventually, I swear.

Once the lake sturgeon population declined, the chironomid worm population exploded, thanks to the lack of predators. Not only were there no longer lake sturgeon to eat them, but the salmon introduced into the lake ate many of the smaller fish that normally would have eaten the chironomids too. The ecological term for this kind of interaction is a trophic cascade - basically, the change at the top of a food web can work its way down the food web. So what do lots and lots of chironomid larvae have to do with baseball? Perhaps you remember the common name for one species of chironomid - Canadian soldiers.

After the Indians dispatched the Yankees, the Sox were able to overcome a 3-1 deficit to advance to the World Series. And that, of course, led to the above right photo.

Red Sox 2010 Draft, Day 1

The first round as well as the sandwich round of the MLB draft finished was yesterday. The Sox selected at 20, 36, and 39. Picks 20 and 39 are from the Atlanta Braves signing Billy Wagner, while pick 39 is for the Mets signing Jason Bay. Because the Mets finished in the bottom half of the league, their first round pick was protected. Instead, the Red Sox will receive the Mets 2nd round pick, which is 57th overall. The Red Sox also lost their first round pick to the Blue Jays to compensate the Jays for the signing of Marco Scutaro.

Unlike last year, when the Red Sox selected Puerto Rican high schooler Reymond Fuentes with their only first or sandwich round selection, the Red Sox went with three college players this year: 3B Kolbrin Vitek at 20, OF Bryce Bretz at 36, and SP Anthony Ranaudo at 39.

Vitek was originally a second baseman in college, however very few teams believed he could stay there in the big leagues. Because of his excellent speed, many teams thought he would end up as a center fielder, although according to Pete Abraham at the Globe, the Red Sox seem to have him pegged as a third baseman.

Both Bryce Brentz and Anthony Ranaudo are juniors who had disappointing seasons after strong sophomore years. The Red Sox have tried to use this strategy in the past, drafting current Indians prospect Matt Laporta in the 14th round in 2005. It is a much bigger commitment to use a sandwich round pick, however, so the Red Sox must be hopeful they can sign both players. Ranaudo is a huge (6'7") right hander who can hit 95 MPH at times, but typically in the low to mid 90's. According to the scouting report from ESPN, he also has a deceptive delivery. Ranaudo missed some time early this season with a minor elbow injury, and ended up posting some fairly ugly numbers in 11 starts and 4 relief appearances - a 7.32 ERA and a 1.68 WHIP. However, the Red Sox are banking on his upside here, as he was exceptional in 2009, with a 3.04 ERA and 159 strike outs in 124 innings.

As an aside, the list of players the Red Sox have drafted, but failed to sign is pretty amazing. They include this year's 12th pick, catcher Yasmani Grandal, who dropped because of signability concerns, current Pirates top prospect Pedro Alvarez, the aforementioned Matt Laporta, and finally, Mark Teixeira. For those who enjoy learning missed opportunities like these, Fangraphs has been running a series on "The Ones that Got Away", the best players who were drafted, but not signed.

Bryce Brentz was hobbled by a stress fracture in his ankle during most of the season. He only missed a handful of games, but his junior season was considered a disappointment. While a .348/.444/.636 with 18 home runs is nothing to sneeze at, it is a let down following a .465/.541/.930 sophomore year. Another thing to keep in mind is that the level of competition is highly variable in college baseball, so numbers from the Sun Belt conference aren't equivalent to numbers from the SEC. Despite the weaker competition, ESPN's Scouts Inc wrote that he could end up second best college hitter in the draft, behind uber-prospect Bryce Harper.

Overall, the Sox seem to have done pretty well with the draft. Of course, it is impossible to really determine how good a draft is until you get four or five years down the line, but they scooped up some players who were viewed as potential top ten guys coming into this season. Keith Law listed the Red Sox among his "winners" of day 1 of the draft, and Epstein seems pretty pleased with it too, saying "We felt the draft broke our way."

Update: As I was writing this, the Red Sox picked another college pitcher, Texas SP Brandon Workman. Jason Churchill, of ProspectInsider.com writes that the Sox have received "absurd value" so far. Also, he noted that because all four draftees have been college players, they could make an impact soon.

The Advantages of Being Unique

Tim Wakefield is just about as unique as you can get in terms of a career path. He's been waived by the Pirates in his 20's, posted solid seasons starting and in the bullpen for the Sox, including one extraordinarily nerve wracking stretch as closer, and made his first All Star Game in his 40's. Throughout most of his career, Wakefield has been one of the only knuckleballers in the league. In the first half, you did have Steve Sparks in Detroit, and in the 2000's you had the occasional R.A. Dickey sighting, but hasn't been another established knuckleballer, particularly in the National League. At this point, Wakefield has been in the league long enough that most players in the AL have faced him a few times and at least have an idea of what they're getting into. However, because Wakefield was the only knuckleballer National Leaguers were facing, before this year with Dickey's resurgence and the rough start that Charlie Haeger has had in LA, I wondered - did National Leaguers fare worse against Wakefield because of the rarity of his pitch selection?

To start out, I limited the search to 2005 to 2009. I didn't include this year because I wanted to avoid confirmation bias by including Wakefield's marvelous start against the Phillies. Over that stretch, Wakefield made 138 starts - 119 against the AL and 19 against the NL. Against AL opponents, Wakefield was slightly worse than the average AL starter in every single category.

	Wakefield	Avg AL Starter
K/9	5.62	6.16
BB/9	3.13	3.00
K:BB	1.80	2.05
HR/9	1.23	1.12

Except, of course, in ERA and WHIP. Wakefield's ERA for 2005 to 2009 was slightly better than the AL average starter (4.61), as was his WHIP. The reason for Wakefield's success is quite simple, while most pitchers give up a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of about .300 and have very little control over that number, knuckleballers give up a lower BABIP, presumably due to weaker contact. Unsurprisingly, Wakefield's BABIP for this five year stretch was .258, compared to .307 in the AL for the same time frame. Those extra few outs make a difference, allowing Wake to succeed despite unimpressive underlying numbers. Now that we understand how Wakefield succeeds, how does he do against the NL? The answer? He does awfully well. For comparison's sake, I've left Wakefield's AL numbers in the table.

	Wakefield vs AL	Wakefield vs NL	Avg NL Starter
ERA	4.54	3.66	4.46
WHIP	1.31	1.17	1.39

In 19 starts against the NL, Wakefield was transformed from a league average pitcher to a great #2. It is always nice to see your observations borne out by the data, but why did Wakefield do so much better against NL opponents? Were they just making weaker contact, resulting in an even lower BABIP? Striking out more often?

	Wakefield vs AL	Wakefield vs NL	Avg NL Starter
K/9	5.62	5.61	6.47
BB/9	3.13	2.54	3.19
K:BB	1.80	2.21	2.03
HR/9	1.23	0.82	1.09
BABIP	0.259	0.251	0.303

As you can see from above, the answer is neither. Both his K rate and BABIP are essentially the same, instead, National League batters are walking less often against Wakefield and hitting fewer homeruns. Some of this might be attributable to facing the pitcher or small sample sizes (a pitcher can definitely get lucky home run wise in half a season's worth of starts), but I would guess it is a change in approach. NL players who are unfamiliar with the knuckleball may be more aggressive, causing a decrease in walk rates. Looking at pitch per plate appearance data would be one way to nail this down, but unfortunately that isn't readily available to me.

Others have done some really cool work on the knuckleball using PitchFX data, such as this article by John Walsh at Hardball Times from a few years ago.

And the Jays do it again!

Less than a week after scoring six runs on six solo home runs against Dan Haren and the Diamondbacks' bullpen, the Blue Jays scored three runs off of four hits against Ervin Santana. Three of these hits were, you guessed it, solo home runs. To go with their nine home runs in those two games, the Blue Jays also struck out nineteen times, while walking once. To reverse an old baseball saying, you can't hit a solo home run if someone is clogging up the bases!