Archive for ESPN Insider 2010

Cody Ross had a bit of a down year offensively, hitting .276 AVG/.333 OBP/.503 SLG between 2007 and 2009 with the Marlins while hitting .269/.322/.413 this season. His drop in power from 24 home runs in 2009 to 14 in 2010 is notable, leading to a career low in slugging percentage.

Yet it was the power and timely hitting of Ross, the eighth hitter in the lineup, which put the San Francisco Giants on the scoreboard en route to a 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves to advance to the NLCS. Derek Lowe, a pitcher who has always been known to induce easy ground-ball outs with his sinker, had thrown five no-hit innings up to that point. Lowe unleashed a weapon that has mostly been his secondary pitch: the slider.

In his first at-bat against Lowe in the top of the third, Ross sat and waited for a pitch to hit. But after two called strikes, Lowe quickly struck him out swinging on the third, a breaking slider low and way out of the zone. To capture how deceptive Lowe’s slider was Monday night, Lowe had seven strikeouts and 14 swinging strikes, 10 of them on sliders before Ross’ next at-bat.

But in his second at-bat, Ross adjusted and came out swinging on the first pitch. His aggressive approach on his second chance against Lowe proved successful. He was able to capitalize on the only hanging slider that Lowe threw all day, hitting a first-pitch solo home run in the sixth inning. That was Lowe’s only mistake all night up to that point, and without run support from the Braves’ offense, Lowe could not afford such a mistake.

Taking a look at the game-changing plays of the day, Ross drove in the game-tying run in the sixth and what turned out to be the game-winning run in the seventh, an RBI single that came off an outside 96 mph sinker from Jonny Venters. Ross was able to get just enough wood on it to put it through the shortstop hole, driving in Buster Posey.

His ability to put pop on Lowe’s hanging slider gave the Giants a plus-18.2 percent increase in win probability added, while his single off the left-handed Venters gave them a plus-12.6 percent added chance of advancing to the NLCS. Ross led all players in the game, contributing a total of nearly plus-29 percent WPA to the Giants’ win.

Ross may have lost some power this season compared with last, but he apparently learned to hit sliders. According to FanGraphs’ pitch type values, Ross was below average against the slider every year until this season, when he was above average at hitting the slider in terms of runs.

Monday’s game showed just how tough baseball is: You can dominate for several innings just as Lowe did, but sometimes it’s the bottom of the lineup that gets to you. Ross did just that in Game 4, thrusting the Giants into the NLCS against the Phillies.

In what some have termed the Year of the Pitcher, this postseason has provided some singularly impressive pitching performances to continue the trend. Add Jonathan Sanchez to the list after his 7 1/3-inning, 2-hit, 11-strikeout Sunday afternoon that put his Giants in line to win the game and go up 2-1 in their NL Division Series with the Braves.

By keeping baserunners off the basepaths and pitching late into the game, Sanchez was the driving force behind the Giants’ win. He added 46.6 percent to his team’s win probability, and since 50 percent is the maximum, the statistic tells the story as well as any other. He got the Giants almost all the way there on his left arm alone.

Sanchez joined Game 1 starter Tim Lincecum as the only Giants in postseason history to strike out double-figure batters. Sanchez was, as usual, effectively wild (105 pitches, 69 strikes), but his bread and butter was the offspeed stuff away. The lefty got eight swinging strikes on 40 offspeed pitches, good for a 20 percent whiff percentage that blew his 4.69 percent on fastballs out of the water.

Traditionally, this is the case — offspeed stuff garners more whiffs across baseball — but Sanchez used the weapon almost artistically. He began all but three at-bats with fastballs, but he ended most at-bats with offspeed pitches: Ten of his 11 strikeouts were on sliders.

Fortunately for Sanchez, the Giants’ offense did just enough. Though the offense scored the fewest runs of any National League playoff team during the regular season and seemed as if it might continue to be this team’s Achilles’ heel, the Giants pushed across three runs with the help of some shoddy Atlanta defense. Two of Brooks Conrad’s three errors in the game helped contribute to Giants runs.

Coming through in the clutch was the key at the end of the game, which swung wildly in each direction. In the bottom of the eighth inning, pinch hitter Eric Hinske hit what most Atlantans may have considered the game-winning home run off Giants reliever Sergio Romo. Down the right-field line and barely fair, his home run was worth a whopping 57.8 percent in win probability added, as the game swung from 28.8 percent likely for the Braves to 86.6 percent in one big moment.

As an aside, a bit of gamesmanship from the retiring Bobby Cox may have led to Bruce Bochy taking Sanchez out of the game. After the Giants lefty gave up a single, Cox showed righty Troy Glaus as the pinch hitter. Bochy went with the right-handed Sergio Romo in relief in order to exploit the platoon advantage. Cox pulled Glaus and went with lefty Hinske. The rest is, as they say, history.

But the Giants were not done. Freddy Sanchez, 0-for-3 with a walk before coming to the plate in the ninth inning, faced fireballer Craig Kimbrel, closing for the Braves with Billy Wagner hurt. Sanchez was down to his final strike before lacing a single up the middle. Then Aubrey Huff, in the single most tense and important at-bat of the game, drove in the tying run and swung the pendulum back close to 50 percent by adding 34.9 percent of win probability with his bat. One batter later, Conrad’s error on Buster Posey’s grounder sent the Giants to within one win of taking the series.

Jonathan Sanchez got the team most of the way there, but without Mike Fontenot, Freddy Sanchez, Aubrey Huff, and — yes — Brooks Conrad, the Giants would have been a tough-luck losers.

The final score might not reflect it, but the Rays’ Game 3 win didn’t come easily. In four of the first five innings the Rays put six runners on base, but could not bring around any of them to score. Then, once they did start showing life in the later innings, they had to overcome a baserunning mistake and then an extra-wide strike zone before they could mount their comebacks. Twice in this game the Rays came from behind to force a Game 4.

John Jaso’s go-ahead RBI single might have rated the most significant play of the game, but the most important series of events came in the sixth. While the Rays had those six baserunners in the first five innings, they failed to get a hit after a man reached. In the sixth they got off to a good start with an Evan Longoria walk. Matt Joyce hit a soft grounder and avoided getting doubled up, but he still created an out with a runner on base.

Dan Johnson, the second lefty to face relief pitcher Derek Holland, took the first five pitches of his at-bat and worked the count full. Holland went with a fastball away on the sixth pitch, but Johnson reached out and pulled it into right field. The situation for the Rays appeared favorable. They had runners on first and second with one out, which would have given them a win expectancy of 40.1 percent, an increase of 5.9 percent on the play. But the play wasn’t over yet.

Joyce overran second and lost his balance trying to return. Nelson Cruz alertly fired back in, and Ian Kinsler applied the tag in time. That caused the Rays’ win expectancy to tumble all the way to 29.4 percent. The loss in win expectancy from having runners at first and second with one out to a runner on first with two outs is 10.5 percent. That was the single costliest WPA swing of the game, and it nearly cost the Rays another opportunity. Thankfully for them, Carlos Pena and B.J. Upton came through.

Pena had a poor year by his standards, but he was particularly poor against lefties. He struck out in 38.5 percent of his at-bats and hit for far less power than he did against righties. Again, the lefty Holland didn’t have to worry much. Holland delivered four straight pitches well out of the zone, which gave the Rays another chance with a runner in scoring position. Upton took advantage, lining an inside fastball down the left-field line for a double that tied the game. The walk and the double were worth plus-20.7 percent win probability added.

The Rays then threatened to take the lead in the seventh inning. Ben Zobrist hit a one-out double, raising the Rays’ chances of winning by 7.2 percent. The win probability stat is context-neutral, meaning it doesn’t take into consideration the hitters coming to bat. It might have been worth a bit more if it knew that Carl Crawford and Longoria each had a shot to bring home the go-ahead run. Unfortunately, a poor strike zone doomed Crawford. He fouled off the first pitch, but then saw two fastballs that appeared to be way outside. But the home plate ump called both a strike, costing the Rays 6.1 percent in win probability added.

A half inning later, Kinsler gave the Rangers the lead, but the Rays fought back with their big eighth inning. Unlike their previous scoring situations, this one went relatively smoothly. The Rays had to overcome some adversity — some of their own doing, some out of their control — to get there, but they forced a Game 4 on Sunday.

Chants of “Replay!” rained down on Tropicana Field in the fifth inning of the second American League Division Series game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers on Thursday afternoon.

Although we all know that home crowds can exaggerate at times, the controversy here was real. Michael Young was seemingly out on a half swing with runners on first and second and one out in the fifth. Instead, the umpires ruled that Young checked his swing, and on the next pitch, Young took Chad Qualls deep to center field to increase the Rangers’ lead from 2-0 to 5-0.

Top five plays (all percentages from Rangers’ standpoint):

Top 5th, 1 out, 2 on: Michael Young HR, +15.3 percent win probability (77.2 percent to 92.5 percent)
Top 4th, 2 out, 0 on: Ian Kinsler HR, +11.2 percent win probability (57.7 percent to 68.9 percent )
Top 3rd, 1 out, 1 on: Elvis Andrus single, Matt Treanor to third, +5.2 percent win probability (51.9 percent to 57.1 percent)
Top 2nd, 1 out, 0 on: Nelson Cruz double, +4.2 percent win probability (47.6% to 51.8%)
Top 3rd, 0 out, 0 on: Matt Treanor hit by pitch, +3.9 percent win probability (50% to 53.9%)

(No play in the Rays’ favor had a WPA > 0.038)

It’s hard to call this a turning point in the game, as the Rangers already held the lead and were threatening. Instead, this was more of the breaking point for the Rays. The Rays’ win expectancy entering the play was already low at 22.8 percent. The home run lowered the Rays’ win probability to 7.5 percent, putting the Rangers in cruise control both in the game and in the series, with two of the three remaining games coming at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

The play comes out to a total WPA of +15.7 percent. However, part of what makes this play so big and so important in the scope of this game is that, by some accounts, Young should have been out before it even happened. According to the WPA inquirer at The Hardball Times, the situation if Young is called out — two outs, runners on first and second, and a two-run Rangers lead in the top of the fifth — comes out to a 26.6 percent win expectancy for the Rays. That still wouldn’t put optimism into many Tampa denizens, but at least it gives the Rays a fighting shot with players such as Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford yet to receive two or three at-bats. This adds about 4 percent to the win probability difference of the play, as the combination of the check swing called for a ball followed by the home run cost the Rays about a fifth of a win.

It’s easy to say that the call and the play don’t matter at all, as the Rays didn’t even manage to muster a run against C.J. Wilson and then the Rangers’ bullpen. However, that’s a basic case of the fallacy of the predetermined outcome. C.J. Wilson may have been forced to pitch more carefully or under more pressure in the later innings, and perhaps the Rays could have pushed a couple of runs home. By that same token, it’s possible that Josh Hamilton, hitting after Michael Young, would’ve hit a three-run home run instead. We simply don’t know what would have happened, and the home run certainly changed the landscape of the game.

Young’s home run gave the Rangers an insurmountable lead and has pushed the Rays to the brink of elimination. That play certainly wasn’t the only reason the Rays lost — an anemic offense and constant pressure from Rangers hitters deserve blame and credit respectively. When it comes down to one moment in Game 2, though, the Young home run was the biggest moment of the game and of the season to date for these two teams.

Lost in the incredible drama of Roy Halladay pitching a no-hitter in his first postseason start is the fact that Halladay recorded a hit in his first playoff at-bat. In fact, his second-inning RBI single changed the win expectancy of the game more than any of the 104 pitches he threw. Halladay entered Wednesday’s game with 136 career plate appearances. He has never had an extra-base hit; he has drawn just one walk. And just eight times in his career, Halladay has hit a line drive. Before 2010, Halladay hadn’t hit regularly since he was an amateur in 1995. A game-changing hit was almost as unlikely for Halladay as a no-hitter. Almost.

Like a poker player with a tell, Halladay has one distinct approach at the plate: He goes up looking to swing. Five of his 13 hits this season, including four of his past six, have occurred on the first pitch. If he sees a fastball in the zone on the first pitch, there is a good chance he’s going to offer at it. So, if there was anything that Edinson Volquez should not have done with the first pitch he ever threw Halladay, it was throwing a 93 mph fastball on the inner half of the plate. By doing so, he allowed the ninth line drive of Halladay’s offensive career.

That should have been it for Volquez, though, because the ball hung up toward left field. It was a hit that left fielders should catch, that the vast majority of left fielders do catch. Playing left field on Wednesday for the Reds was Jonny Gomes, one of the worst defensive left fielders in baseball. In fact, using ultimate zone rating, the preferred fielding metric at FanGraphs, Gomes ranked as the fourth-worst defender at any position.

Matt Kemp: -24.3 runs.
Carlos Quentin: -22.9 runs.
Carlos Lee: -17.4 runs.
Jonny Gomes: -16.1 runs.
Trevor Crowe: -15.7 runs.

Gomes got a late jump on the Halladay line drive, and by the time he recovered, it was too late. He attempted a feet-first dive to catch the ball, but he couldn’t glove it, and had no chance to make a throw to home plate. The slow-footed Carlos Ruiz was running from second base, but with two outs, had a good jump toward scoring the game’s second run. When Halladay’s 17th career hit plated Ruiz, the Phillies’ win expectancy odds went from 64.7 percent to 74.3 percent. Before the inning ended, a two-run single by Shane Victorino pushed them to 85.2 percent.

Because Jim Edmonds‘ Achilles injury rendered him unavailable for the first round of the playoffs, the Reds decided Laynce Nix was healthy enough to earn a spot on their playoff roster. Nix returned from an ankle injury on Sept. 22, and made just one start between then and the playoffs, collecting two hits against the Astros on Sept. 29. The left-handed-hitting outfielder made only 31 starts this season, but in a predominantly reserve role, he had the best offensive season of his eight-year career. Generally, when Nix has been able to catch on to a major league roster, it’s because of the qualities he offers as a defender. In nearly 3,000 defensive innings in the outfield, Nix has a positive ultimate zone rating at each outfield position: +0.3 runs in right field, +11.8 runs in center, +8.1 runs in left. This season, in limited time, he was worth 7 runs above average, and 23.1 runs more than Jonny Gomes.

We don’t know if Nix playing left field instead of Gomes would have changed the outcome of Game 1. We don’t know if Nix, traditionally a worse hitter than Gomes (though left-handed), would have done anything to spoil Halladay’s no-hitter. But, given their histories and drastically different defensive abilities, it’s pretty likely that Nix would have caught Halladay’s line drive, and ended the second inning with the score still 1-0.

Umpires have been in the spotlight all season, from Joe West’s comments about the pace and style of games between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees to Jim Joyce’s blown call costing Detroit’s Armando Galarraga a perfect game. But on the 25th anniversary of Dom Denkinger’s controversial call in the 1985 World Series, the scrutiny of assignments and performance of umpires goes to another level in the postseason.

Perhaps the most interesting assignment for the League Division Series will see Jerry Crawford serving as crew chief for the Yankees’ series against the Minnesota Twins.

Crawford is considered to have the smallest strike zone in the major leagues; this season, among all umpires, he has the lowest strikeout to walk ratio at 1.55, well below the league average is 2.17 strikeouts per walk. Conversely, Brian O’Nora, who is on Crawford’s crew for the series, has an average of 2.50 strikeouts per walk.

While the stats tell one story, the graphic of an umpire’s strike zone can offer an enhanced look at exactly how umps see the strike zone and what that means for the two teams when specific men in blue are behind the plate.

The following images are the called strike zones of Crawford and O’Nora for right-handed hitters in 2010. The graphs were created from MLB Pitchf/x data using 255 separate buckets to represent his strike zone. The dark red area is where 100 percent of the pitches in that zone are called strikes, the green area is where 50 percent of the pitches are called strikes and the purple area is where none of the pitches are called strikes.

This is Crawford:

This is O’Nora:

O’Nora has a significantly bigger strike zone than Crawford, especially in the vertical direction.

The Yankees led the league with a strikeout/walk ratio of 1.81 and the Twins were second with a ratio of 1.88. Both of these teams know how to work a count in order to get players on base.

When Crawford is behind the plate, then, it’s going to be a marathon, and the season mostly bore that out: the Twins had Crawford behind the plate four times; their normal nine-inning game lasted 2 hours, 46 minutes, and with Crawford it lasted 2 hours, 49 minutes (not a huge gap). The Yankees played 3 hours, 5 minutes on average; in the two games they had Crawford calling balls and strikes, they averaged 3 hours, 31 minutes.

The main impact point for CC Sabathia, Francisco Liriano, Phil Hughes, Carl Pavano and others in this series is this: You don’t want to throw around the middle, obviously, especially with Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Jason Kubel and Joe Mauer in this series — but with Crawford, you either pound the zone or you walk a ton of guys.

Keep an eye on which game Crawford is behind the plate for; it could be the turning point of this series.

In the American League playoffs, all four teams have a lefty as their ace — CC Sabathia, Francisco Liriano, Cliff Lee and David Price — and using Pitch f/x, we can isolate data on one pitch that makes these southpaws so successful. Let’s start with Sabathia, who is relying on a new weapon this year.

Sabathia’s sinker

This year, Sabathia posted his lowest strikeout rate (7.46) and highest walk rate (2.80) since 2005. Those are still good numbers, but not the great levels he posted from 2006 to 2009. Sabathia has made up for it, though, by posting a 50.7 percent ground ball rate, the best of his career.

Sabathia’s Pitch f/x numbers can actually give us some insight into this change. Between 2007 and 2009 (the years covered by the Pitch f/x data), he threw his sinker just 9 percent of the time, but in 2010 he threw it more than 17 percent of the time. This came mostly at the expense of his four-seam fastball, which gets more strikeouts but fewer ground balls than the two-seam variety.

Here are the locations of all of Sabathia’s sinkers put in play coded for either grounder or non-grounder.

Against right-handed hitters, when the pitch is either low or away, it gets a high number of grounders. When he leaves it up and in or in the heart of the plate, righties can get the pitch in the air. Against lefties it is much tougher, and almost all balls in play off the sinker were grounders.

Liriano’s slider

Liriano has recaptured his pre-Tommy John magic and is pitching like it’s 2006 again. His 3.07 xFIP is the best in the American League, and nearly equal to Roy Halladay’s MLB-best 2.99 mark. Along with Jon Lester, he is the only starting pitcher to strike out more than a batter per inning while also getting more than 50 percent of their balls in play on the ground — the holy grail of strikeouts and grounders.

A huge key has been his amazing slider, which he is throwing more this year (34 percent of the time). Correspondingly, his fastball percentage has dropped; it is now below 50 percent, putting him in the bottom 10 among starting pitchers in fastball frequency. Sliders are typically thrown more often to same-handed batters, but Liriano’s is so good he can still throw it against right-handed hitters 30 percent of the time. When he does throw it, he gets an extraordinary 22 percent swinging strike rate, compared to just 11 percent for the average lefty’s slider to a righty. Here is how Liriano’s slider’s swinging strike rate varies by the pitch’s horizontal location compared to the average; shaded regions are standard errors of the estimate.

He can really handcuff righties with inside sliders. The amazing thing is that Liriano throws the pitch 65 percent of the time with two strikes, so even though it’s a predictable pitch in certain situations, hitters still can’t touch it.

Price’s fastball

Price throws a ton of fastballs. His reliance on the pitch — throwing it 74 percent of the time — is second only to Justin Masterson’s 78 percent among qualified starters. How can Price get away with throwing his fastball so often? Because it averages 94.5 mph; only Ubaldo Jimenez, Justin Verlander and Josh Johnson throw harder fastballs. As we all know, there is typically a positive relationship between fastball velocity and fastball success.

Below is a two-paneled graph that shows a comparison of the velocity of Price’s fastballs to league average, and second, the average number of swinging strikes per pitch on fastballs based on their speed for Price and for all fastballs.

Price throws his fastball nearly 5 mph faster than average — and he rarely throws a fastball slower than about 90 mph, roughly the league-average fastball speed. Looking below this, you can see that Price’s success is above and beyond the speed on his fastball. Even though he throws his fastball very often, batters have a hard time making contact with it, even compared with fastballs of the same speed. There may be something deceptive about his delivery or life on the pitch that makes it harder to pick up coming out of his hand.

Lee’s command

Lee has been throwing his fastball less often in recent years — as he throws his cutter more often — but it is still his best pitch. By FanGraphs’ pitch valuation system, it was the second-best fastball in the game, and over the past three years has been far and away the best.

This value comes from Lee’s amazing ability to command his fastball. His pitches are in the zone more often than anyone else’s, and he starts at-bats with a strike 70 percent of the time, again tops in the league. Here is a plot that shows the density of his fastballs in two inch by two inch squares, with darker color indicating more pitches in that area.

Lee is able to get his fastball in the strike zone frequently. There is remarkably little spillover out of the zone. Beyond that, he also does a good job keeping his pitches on the outer half of the plate. The result of that per-pitch command is Lee’s 0.79 walk rate. The last starter to post a BB/9 below one over a whole year was Carlos Silva in 2005; that year Silva had a 3.39 K/9, this year Lee has a 7.76. Lee combines his historically low walk rate with a respectable strikeout rate, and the result is dominance.

Billy Beane once said that “his stuff” — a reference to the Moneyball philosophy — doesn’t work in the playoffs. He was making an important point: The best team isn’t always left holding up the championship trophy. Other factors are in play come October, notably the draw each team is dealt.

We looked at every team with at least a 10 percent chance of making the playoffs, and then determined their most favorable and least favorable playoff matchups.

The teams we studied were: Tampa Bay Rays, New York Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds, Atlanta Braves, Texas Rangers, San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies; no offense to teams on the fringe of that group.

Rays

Best opponent: Yankees
Worst opponent: Twins

Tampa has built its team knowing the strength of Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton and Ben Zobrist in the outfield; at last update, the outfield has been worth 29.7 runs above average. The pitching staff has a lot of fly-ball guys taught to lean heavily on that group. However, against the Twins, who hit the fewest fly balls of any AL offense, that strength would be neutralized to a degree. The Rays should be anxious to play the Yankees in the ALCS, specifically to use their strength on the basepaths to wreak havoc on Jorge Posada and Francisco Cervelli behind the plate.

Yankees

Best opponent: Rangers
Worst opponent: Twins

Credit the Twins for being a thorn in the side of the AL East. The New York offense is built around the home run ball, but this season, the Twins’ pitching staff has the second-lowest HR/9 in the American League. On the other hand, the Rays’ fly-ball staff is a little homer-happy, and balls are always going to fly out of the yard in Arlington. Of the two, the Yankees are hoping they draw Texas in the first round of the playoffs. The pitching staff is the third-most wild in the American League, and the Yankees are second in the league at drawing walks.

Twins

Best opponent: Rays
Worst opponent: Rangers

The Twins have long shown a tendency toward pitchers with very good control that don’t beat themselves. With the exception of Francisco Liriano, this often leads to sacrificing strikeouts. That combination meshes really well with a Rays offense that leads the American League in both BB percentage and K percentage, the latter by almost 2 percent. It stands to reason the Twins’ pitchers could limit the walks while striking out more than usual against a team like that. They don’t want to take that starting staff to Texas; the Twins have posted a team 5.96 ERA at the Rangers’ ballpark over the past four seasons.

Phillies

Best opponent: Giants
Worst opponent: Rockies

The Philadelphia pitching staff has allowed a .771 OPS this year to left-handed batters — versus a .693 OPS to right-handed batters. The Rockies can put four lefties in their lineup on a given night. Jason Giambi can also mash Brad Lidge. The team would rather face San Francisco, take their chances with Aubrey Huff and face a pitching staff that allows the most fly balls in the league.

Reds

Best opponent: Padres
Worst opponent: Braves

The Reds have an offense that depends on hitting home runs; they could have up to six people potentially reach 20 home runs, and their hitters were second in the National League in the rate of fly balls getting over the fence. Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe will limit HRs, so that would be a negative matchup for Cincy. Given that the team’s pitching staff has a lot of moving parts and still a bit of uncertainty, you know they’d like to take their chances with the weakest offense possible. That belongs to the sub-.700 OPS San Diego Padres, who, even when ballpark adjustments are taken into account, are pretty bad at the plate.

Braves

Best opponent: Giants
Worst opponent: Phillies

The Braves would enjoy a matchup with the Giants quite a bit. First, Atlanta leads the National League in BB percentage — it’s the only team in the league walking in more than 10 percent of its plate appearances. As a counter, the Giants give up the most walks of any NL-contending pitching staff. Second, the Braves’ grounder-heavy pitching staff could help neutralize a guy like Buster Posey, who actually hits a lot of balls on the ground (47.5 percent). The team is happy they won’t play the Phillies in the first round (divisional squads can’t meet each other), and you can bet they’ll hope they don’t play them at all. Philadelphia’s big left-handed bats, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, just aren’t good matchups for a staff of right-handed pitchers.

Rangers

Best opponent: Twins
Worst opponent: Yankees

The Rangers’ playoff hopes are invariably tied to the pitching performances of Cliff Lee and C.J. Wilson, both of whom should be thrown twice in any series. More than the Rays or Yankees, the Twins in particular have the biggest gap between their performance against left-handed (.747 OPS) and right-handed (.784 OPS) starters. The only AL team worse against southpaws is, in fact, the Rangers (.730 OPS). Therefore, you can bet they wouldn’t look forward to matchups against CC Sabathia or Andy Pettitte, to say nothing of the major leagues’ best offense.

Giants

Best opponent: Rockies
Worst opponent: Phillies

Colorado would be a nice matchup for the Giants, particularly due to an offense that struck out more often than any other NL contender. The Giants will have a playoff rotation of Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Jonathan Sanchez and Barry Zito — so strikeouts are inevitable. That’s a great staff, but ultimately Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt might be better — especially against a generally anemic offense.

Padres

Best opponent: Giants
Worst opponent: Braves

Offensively, the Padres are a team that hits a lot of ground balls (the most of any NL contender), and by the Pitch Value metrics at FanGraphs, they have been the third-worst team in baseball against the fastball. Conversely, Braves pitchers thrive on good sinking fastballs. The Padres would much rather run into the Giants, against whom they are 10-5 this season. The Giants and Padres play similar styles of baseball — winning with pitching and defense — although San Diego does it a little bit better.

Rockies

Best opponent: Reds
Worst opponent: Giants

The Rockies have one of the game’s best pitching staffs, and a boom-or-bust offense that strikes out a lot, but can hit the ball hard across the diamond. The Rockies’ staff could help neutralize Cincy’s homer-happy offense. A Rockies-Giants NLCS would not be fun for fans of offense; those are two low-scoring squads. The Rockies’ contact issues would likely be exacerbated by facing San Francisco’s staff.

The MVP has traditionally been awarded almost exclusively to players on winning teams; this methodology has led to some great seasons getting overlooked at times.

Here are five examples of great seasons that took place within the context of absolutely terrible teams, including one 2010 candidate.

Cal Ripken
1991 Baltimore Orioles (67-95)
11.1 WAR
This is arguably the best season by a shortstop ever. Ripken hit .323/.374/.566 while playing some terrific defense at the game’s hardest position. His .407 wOBA was third-best in baseball behind lumbering sluggers Frank Thomas and Danny Tartabull, but Ripken ran circles around those two in defensive value.

Johnson made up an astounding 89 percent of his team’s total WAR. It’s one of the great wasted seasons in the history of the game.
And yet, even with a historical season from their star player, the Orioles were still awful, finishing ahead of only the Cleveland Indians in the American League.

While Ripken had to carry the offense by himself, he couldn’t do anything to help the pitching, which was among the worst in the league. Sam Horn and Randy Milligan were not enough to help Ripken score the runs needed to overcome problems at getting opponents out, and so Baltimore had to endure a miserable season in the year that their franchise icon had the best year of his career.

Randy Johnson
2004 Arizona Diamondbacks (51-111)
9.9 WAR
Part of a legendary run of some of the great pitching seasons ever, Johnson’s 2004 season stands out as an oasis in the driest desert you could imagine. He was a dominant workhorse, throwing 245 innings with a league-best 2.30 FIP. He struck out 290 batters, avoiding giving too much responsibility to one of the league’s worst defensive teams. He pitched deep into games because the bullpen behind him was atrocious. And yet, he “only” won 16 games (against 14 losses) because Arizona had the worst offense in baseball.

How much did Johnson carry that team? Everyone else on the roster combined for a total of 1.2 WAR. Johnson made up an astounding 89 percent of his team’s total WAR. It’s one of the great wasted seasons in the history of the game.

Barry Bonds
1995 San Francisco Giants (67-77)
7.7 WAR
Bonds had some better years when he was older, yes, but in a strike-shortened 144 game season, he hit .294/.431/.577. This was back when he was still a young, spry athlete, so he hit 33 homers, stole 33 bases and played a really good defensive left field.

Even with the game’s best all-around player in the lineup every day, the Giants still managed to finish in last place in the NL West. They just didn’t have enough talent around Bonds, especially on the mound, where the immortal William Van Landingham was the team’s best pitcher.

Ryan Zimmerman
2010 Washington Nationals (61-84)
7.0 WAR
By WAR, Zimmerman has been the best player in the National League this year, combining terrific offensive numbers (.304/.389/.512) with Gold Glove defense (plus-15.9 UZR) at third base. His teammates have not lived up to their end of the bargain, though, and the result is another losing season for the Nationals. Don’t blame Zimmerman, though — he’s accounted for 23 percent of his team’s WAR.

Carlos Pena
2007 Tampa Bay Rays (66-96)
6.2 WAR
The Rays struck gold with Pena in 2007, picking him up for nothing over the winter and then watching him blossom into one of the game’s premier power-hitting first basemen. He hit .282, launched 46 home runs and drew 102 walks. His .430 wOBA was the fifth-best in baseball that year, and he was no slouch at first base either. However, he was surrounded by the remains of the old Devil Rays era and the team was not able to capitalize on his breakout season. Tampa Bay finished with the worst record in baseball, but Pena’s performance helped the Rays avoid the shame of a 100-loss season — and then he helped propel them to the World Series in 2008.

You’ll note that Steve Carlton’s 1972 season is not mentioned, and that’s because we have WAR data for pitchers going only to 1980. However, it’s likely his 27 wins on a 59-win team would have put him on this list.

The Houston Astros have a large problem on their hands — and we don’t even mean their current 66-73 record.

The team did a good job this season of building towards the future; those efforts have been rewarded with a third-place standing in the NL Central that likely could be much worse (they’re playing strong right now, at 7-3 in their last 10).

The long-term future isn’t so rosy, though.

After the 2006 season, when the Astros missed the playoffs by 1 1/2 games, they made a splash by signing Carlos Lee to a six-year, $100 million contract. It seemed like an odd decision at the time. The market for Lee didn’t appear overly competitive. Even if it was, the contract still seemed out of line. Lee produced numbers that would justify that type of contract just once in his career — and that was in his 2004 season with the Chicago White Sox. Since then it had become clear that while he could hit, his fielding was a liability. That can become a problem in the National League.

The first two seasons of the contract looked just fine, as Lee justified his salary with 3.6 and 3.9 Wins Above Replacement, or WAR (explained more here). But in 2009, the situation started to look troublesome, as Lee produced just 2.1 WAR. Converted to dollars, that is $9.3 million — or about half of what the Astros actually paid him. This year Lee has been even worse, producing worse than a replacement player — that is, a theoretical player freely available in a minor league system. Lee has been 0.7 wins worse than a replacement player, costing his team $2.9 million in addition to his $18.5 million salary, or a $21.4 million discrepancy. That’s not something Houston can afford if it wants to contend in the future.

We’ve seen this many times in the past few years. A player might be at the end of a long-term contract, the contract might have been poor from the start, or the player might have unexpectedly declined. There has been no discrepancy worse than Lee’s, which means that he has had the least valuable season in history, based on dollar value. But there have been some particularly poor performances per contract. Let’s take a look at some of the worst.

Jose Guillen, 2009
Guillen is an example of a contract that should never have been signed in the first place. If the Kansas City Royals had designs on contending during Guillen’s tenure with the team — 2008 through 2010 — they didn’t do much else to further that goal. It didn’t help that Guillen performed worse than most could have imagined. In 2008 he produced minus-1.8 WAR, which created a $20.1 million gap between his salary and value. Overall with the Royals he produced minus-1.3 WAR. It was a bad contract from the start, but few envisioned it being that bad.

Bernie Williams, 2005
The New York Yankees certainly signed Williams for at least one year too many, but that’s the price they had to pay for competing with the Boston Red Sox. Their arch rivals came close to signing Williams after the 1998 season, but the Yankees came back at the last minute with a seven-year, $87.5 million contract. Not many players can roam center field briskly at age 36, and Williams was no exception. He produced minus-2.2 WAR in 2005, the contract’s final year, creating a nearly $20 million discrepancy. The Yankees did realize plenty of value earlier in the contract; Williams produced a WAR of 5.0 in each of the contract’s first four years.

Todd Helton, 2010
A nine-year extension for a 27-year-old superstar might not seem like a bad deal, but that wasn’t exactly the case with Todd Helton and the Rockies. The nine-year, $141.5 million contract he signed in 2001 didn’t take effect until 2003. Helton produced heavily in the first two seasons, 6.9 and 7.1 WAR, but after that his production dropped. He has had a few good seasons since, but injuries have sapped his power. The contract would have looked a lot better had it been enacted in 2001, rather than 2003. Helton got a few too many years.

Alfonso Soriano, 2009
Any time a player signs an eight-year deal, the team probably knows that the last year or two will hurt. But the third year? That’s what the Cubs realized with Alfonso Soriano and his $136 million contract. He earned $16 million in 2009, but produced 0.0 WAR. He has recovered a bit in 2010, but he’s still not playing to the level of his contract. The Cubs signing Soriano was not a mistake. Giving him so many years was, though.

Jason Kendall, 2007
It’s tough to fault a team for signing a 28-year-old superstar catcher to a long-term deal, so the Pittsburgh Pirates get a pass for their six-year, $60 million contract to Jason Kendall. He helped justify it by producing 4.7 and 4.6 WAR in years two and three of the deal, but that didn’t bring the Pirates closer to contention. They eventually traded him, leaving Oakland to realize the worst year of the contract, 2007. Decline can be expected from a 34-year-old catcher, but minus-0.7 WAR after a 3.1 WAR season? That seems excessive. Kendall ended up costing the A’s and Cubs $2.7 million, or $15.7 million when factoring in his $13 million salary.

Gary Matthews, 2009
Sometimes one year can make a big difference. Gary Matthews had never established himself as any type of star during his first five years in the league. But then in 2006 he went on an offensive tear and produced 3.9 WAR. This enticed the Angels, who signed him to a five-year, $50 million contract. They set the example for why teams should not sign players based on one good year. It took Matthews just two seasons to produce a negative WAR, and in the third he produced minus-1.1 WAR, costing his team $5 million, or $15 million counting his salary. They ended up eating the remainder of the contract after the season.