Tell me Moore, tell me moore

With The Mariners deciding two days ago upon the promotion of Guillermo Quiroz. It settled the tiny debate that was growing that the mariners may want to take a look at Adam Moore. While he has a lot of tools and he is older in age. I posted in the blog on my top 5 on Tuesday that i thought it was a mistake to bring him in to the fold just yet. Let me do a quick explanation on why i believe that and then I'll turn my attention to the real basis for my blog today.


Adam Moore while being 26 and playing collage ball has over 1200 minor league at-bats. It was pointed out in this article by Jerry Crasnick over at ESPN about the importance of a hitter having at minimum 1500 abs to become a successfully major league hitter. Adam Moore will get those final 300 ab this year in AAA Tacoma, and while he isn't hitter bad (.270/.357/.324 AVG OBP SLG) he still has sometime to spend to adapt to the next level of pitching. I fully expect for him to come out next year at spring training and be competitive for the starting catching position. But until then we have time to allow him to learn and refine his skills. We hope to have him on our team for years to come and instead of trying to pull him to the majors like some former prospects we need to make him grab our attention down at AAA.


http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=crasnick_jerry&id=4136793





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Kenji vs. Rob - The Catching Cliche



My dad called me last night and one of the first things he says to me is "So, I guess Johnson's back in there... Good, i think we do better when he's catching"

There has been a lot of people with that feeling. Even I myself have had that feeling from time to time. Rob Johnson is just a very like able guy. He plays and works very hard, he communicates with the pitchers very well, in his interviews he comes across as a down to earth guy.

But beyond all that is he really better than Johjima? This involves more than just fielding percentage, or what they are doing at the plate. This is quantifying a position that beyond any other position (besides the Pitcher) on the baseball field impacts every play.

Of Course i did my research and this is by far not something i did by myself but took many great statisticians and other great authors work to help support my points being made.



--David Gassko Hard ball times on "Quantifying Catcher Defense, and Other Stuff Like That"

--Tom Tango "Evaluating Catchers"


-- Erik from beyond the box score "Catching Prospects: Pop-guns and Bazookas"


definitions for stats used

Innings = Innings the player has played at the position of catcher


ZR = Zone rating
a measure of fielding ability based on the number of outs made in relation to the number of
balls hit into a player's zone, limiting the zone to an area considered playable by the
fielder; calculated as outs/(balls hit into zone).

PB/I% = Passed Balls per inning catching

CS% = Caught Stealing percentage
the percentage of players trying to steal that the catcher throws them out.


CERA = Catchers ERA

This would be the average runs scored on pitcher while the catcher is behind the plate.

HRA = Home runs against

The number of home runs a catcher has given up.


WPA = Win Probability Added

Clutch - How much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.


O-Swing% Percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone

Contact% - Total percentage of contact made when swinging at all pitches

WAR - Wins Above Replacement

(sorry the picture is horrible i'll get a better one up.)

Mariners Record w/ Johnson 11-10

Mariners Record w/ Johjima 9-15

(Jamie burke gets credit for 3 games in which we are 2-1)


The best that we can say is that the Mariners pitching staff and team performs better with Rob Johnson behind the plate, but Kenji appears to be the better player

That said it appears that Johnson has been making a better attempt and seems statistically to be just as good if not better in some small ways. Now, yes the 30% vs. 45% of runners caught stealing is rather large gap. But remember this is Robs first full years in the bigs and he is making a lot of adjustments. Kenji has been playing for 10+ years of professional ball.



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FOR HAYDEN


Tottally stumbled across this article about statistical analysis of Clutch hitting.

Take alook and tell me what you think. It's written by Tom Tango THE LEADING statistical guy
in baseball right now. He works with Bill James and a few other statistical analysis guys.


http://www.tangotiger.net/clutch.html


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