Breaking Down Adam Lind

Courtesy of Keith Allison licensed under Creative Commons

If you have been on the site in the past couple of weeks you may have noticed the poll in the sidebar asking you fans which player you think will most likely have a bounce back season in 2012 with the options being Travis Snider, Adam Lind, Colby Rasmus, and Kyle Drabek. As well you also may know a couple of weeks ago I mused about Travis Snider and what the future may hold for such a peculiar player. To continue on in the list this week the post will go over Adam Lind and what the future may hold for him.

Before last year Adam Lind was the exact type of player both Blue Jays fans and fantasy baseball gurus alike expected to make a comeback performance. From a fantasy perspective that comeback performance was definitely prevalent with Lind having been among the leagues elite in terms of RBIs before his back injury that occurred in May, but on a hitting level did Lind really start the year strong?

His RBI total may make you think otherwise, but according to wRC+ Lind wasn't even an above average hitter in April. Instead he hit to a 99 wRC+ (average is 100) and was even below the likes of Corey Patterson (Ugh). The RBI total was instead a result of the fact that the hitter in front of Lind at that point, Jose Bautista, was the best hitter in the league and was getting on base more than 50% of the time. If I was in Lind's position, I bet even I could have gotten a few RBIs.

Once you look at the season as whole it really doesn't become any more impressive. Yes, Lind did up his home run total to 26, but he also he also produced a sub .300 OBP and an fWAR that ranked 4th last among qualified first basemen. As you can plainly see those are not good numbers and they probably don't warrant any praise. Instead all the 2011 season has done is make the 2009 season seem more of an outlier and the 2012 season that much more difficult to project.

For starters where does one lay the blame for the lack of production. Obviously Lind hasn't gotten back to the 35 home runs he hit in 2009, nor has he reached his .305 batting average, but most importantly Lind hasn't reached the .370 OBP and 8.9 BB% that he had in 2009. Since that wondrous year Lind hasn't mustered enough to get within 75 points of that OBP and his best walk rate is just a little more than half of his 2009 numbers.

What is the reason for this? A change in approach? Maybe. Poor hitting skills? Another possibility, but most interestingly though is that when looking at some of the Pitch F/X plate discipline stats on Lind's FanGraphs page one thing that stood out was Lind's O-Swing%. Last year his O-Swing% had a small uptick to 35.9%, which is roughly a couple percent above his 2010 stats and quite a bit above his 2009 ones and that is precisely where the concern lies.

In comparison, in 2009 Lind's O-Swing% was the lowest of his career and by a pretty wide margin. That year Lind managed to resist many outside pitches  and put up a 27.9 O-Swing%, a number that is more than 5% off his career average. For the pitches Lind did swing at outside the strike zone, he made contact with over 3/4 of them and put up a percentage that is again much better than his career average. Additionally in 2011 Lind posted the lowest Zone% of his career at 46.9%, essentially meaning pitchers are giving Lind more pitches outside the zone, but as shown with his O-Swing% he is still swinging at the pitches, that is never a good thing. The graphics below give you a better representation.

Pitches Lind swung at in 2009

Pitches Lind swung at in 201

The difference does not seem to be too large at first glance, but if you really look at the two graphics you can see the change between 2009 and 2011. In the 2009 graphic the pitches are more concentrated on the middle with fewer swings outside the zone, while on the other hand in the 2011 graphic the pitches swing at are less concentrated in the middle and more are outside the zone. More than anything you can see how Lind's batting eye has changed be it a result of approach or regression, they both end the same.

Specifically one thing though that is noticeable in the statistics is Lind's consistent decrease in pitches per plate appearance. In 2009 Lind saw an average of 4.03 pitches per plate appearance or P/PA. In 2010 that same number dropped to 3.81 and in 2011 it was a lowly 3.54, not a good trend. What I believe to be the reasoning behind the drop is a clear change in first pitch approach. Through some Pitch F/X calculations it was found that in 2009 Lind swung at 15.2% of first pitches, in 2010 that number almost doubled to 29.2% and in 2011 it remained for the most part unchanged at 28.2%.

In 2009 when Lind got more pitches thrown to him he was able to have more success because he could wait for the pitch he wanted, but in 2011 seeing less pitches did not afford him that luxury. More than anything what all of this alludes to is most likely one of two things, either Lind has been told to swing more at pitches he likes or he simply lacks the batting eye that he had in 2009. I'm willing to bet the its a combination of the two based on some of his contact rates and swing percentages, but whatever the case it will effect Lind going forward.

If Lind has the same batting eye and approach in 2012 that he has had the past two years you likely won't see too much improvement. The batting average will presumably come up a little from where it was in 2011 because his BABIP suggests he was at the least somewhat unlucky, but beyond that I don't know how you can expect more. Some people may tell you that Adam Lind was hindered by his back injury and that he will easily bounce back to form in 2012, but in 2010 Lind had little to no injury problems and still sucked and this year his best hitting month came the month after he got back from his injury.

In order for Lind to truly get back to his peak season he will have to more of what he did in 2009. That would include swinging at less pitches outside the zone, waiting for his pitch, regaining some opposite field power and much more. Those changes would presumably be able to propel Lind to great heights, but with the 2009 season being the only one in which Lind excelled at all three of those areas it isn't looking good for 2012.

Despite the objective evidence I'm sure you will still see some believers, but I'm not one of them. I'm also not one to suggest the Jays should have signed Pujols or Fielder to replace Lind, but when a certain Torontonian *cough* Joey Votto *cough* comes on the trade market or to free agency I'd bet an improving Jays team takes a shot at him. Until then I'm guessing we will have to live with an underachieving bat at a prime offensive position, with our only hope the prospect of obtaining Votto and Farrell's realization that Lind is not a #3 or #4 hitter.

Stat Definitions: FanGraphs Glossary

Sources: Fangraphs, Baseball Reference, Texas Leaguers, ESPN

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An In-Depth Look at Extending Brandon Morrow

Photo Courtesy of Mirosport.net

With the Blue Jays offseason in a bit of a slump and the Darren Oliver signing being the most exciting thing at the moment, I found myself having to write about something different. Rather than speculating on Garza rumours or a possible (I use that term loosely) Prince Fielder signing, I have come to the realization that other than the occasional non-consequential signing the Jays likely won't do much in terms of roster changes this offseason. Instead they will likely stick to their plan of building from within and then keeping the talent in the organization. Up to this point the latter half of the plan has only needed to be addressed to a small extent, but now with young talented players like Brett Lawrie, Colby Rasmus, and the centre of this writing piece Brandon Morrow all possibly needing extensions, Alex Anthopoulos definitely has his work cut out for him.

Morrow as most of you probably know was traded to the Blue Jays from the Mariners in December 2009 for right handed reliever Brandon League. Seattle had drafted Morrow in the 2006 draft with presumably the intention of making him their closer. At the time this seemed fine as Morrow had the velocity and plus pitch that you traditionally look for in a closer, but as time went on the Seattle front office and coaching staff created some kinks in Morrow's development. These kinks being that towards the end of the 2008 season, the Mariners decided that they would begin to move Morrow to the starting rotation and out of a relief role, utilizing the ole Earl Weaver strategy.

Long story short Morrow's stints as a starter didn't turn out as expected and it resulted in the Mariners demotion of him to AAA as well as the multiple changes between roles in the starting rotation and the bullpen. Due to this Morrow began to become a "change of scenary" for Seattle in the sense that he didn't need to be traded, but would likely have trouble succeeding in Seattle organization through the development process they had created. Ultimately all of this hoopla turned out well, for the Jays at least, as it led to the trade that landed them Morrow in 2009. Reports initially coming from the Blue Jays organization subsequent to the trade suggested that they intended on using Morrow exclusively in the starting rotation, giving Morrow a clean slate to work on.

Now what does all this mean and why is it at all important to a possible contract extension. Well if you simply look at Brandon Morrow's service time and age you would see that he is heading in to his second year of arbitration and is eligible for free agency after the 2013 season. But if you take into account the time that Morrow spent with the Mariners and how he was never really used as a full time starter there, then Morrow is in some sense of the word a third year player.

In terms of the actual contract extension this means that rather than the negotiations acting as if Morrow is a guy with 4 years of service time, Anthopoulos could make the argument that Morrow is really just a third year player coming off his sophmore season. I'm sure Morrow's agent would have something to say about that, but it would be a good argument for Anthopoulos to make. If that is the route that Anthopoulos takes I'm sure guys like Jon Lester, Yovani Gallardo, Ricky Romero, and Jaime Garcia would come up in terms of comparable contracts, all of which signed for around 5 years and $30 million.

Now obviously it is quite unreasonable to expect Morrow to take that type of contract when MLBTR already projects him to make $4.2 million in arbitration this year. Instead I'm sure Morrow's agent will come back comparing Brandon Morrow to the recently extended John Danks and rightfully so. Danks signed an extension for 5 years and $65 million with the Chicago White Sox this offseason. Had he not signed the extension, Danks would have been eligible for free agency after the 2012 season one year before Brandon Morrow.

The Danks comp likely to be brought up would be interesting as Danks and Morrow are very similar but different at the same time. They are similar in the sense that both players are in their fifth year in the MLB and close to free agency, but due to time spent in the minors Morrow has one less year of service time and 3 less years of full time starting experience. Other than that one similarity they are pretty different in their execution, but both have been good starters over the last three years. Danks has the higher fWAR in the last three seasons, due in large part to a higher innings count. He also holds a lead in the traditional stats like ERA and Wins, which often increase arbitration and sometimes free agency earnings. Though on the other side Morrow holds a firm lead in his K% as well as the more sabrmetric and predictive stats such as FIP, xFIP, and SIERA. (Customized FanGraphs stats table here)

What this all boils down to is that in the end Morrow will likely get a lot less guaranteed money than John Danks, but also significantly more than Ricky Romero. Danks' contract is worth about $65 million and Romero's is worth $30.1 million, it seems like such a simple-minded way to do it, but if you take the average of those two contracts it is about $47.5 million over 5 years. If there is to be a $47.5 million dollar extension proposed, I'm thinking it will probably work out something like this...

If you look at the layout of the proposed contract, depending on how good they think Brandon Morrow really is, the contract seems to work out for both sides. Morrow gets some added financial security and the Blue Jays get 3 years of Brandon Morrow's free agency at a reasonable price with a chance at quite a bit of upside. Using the current assumption of approximately $5 million = 1 WAR we can figure that for Morrow to be worth the contract extension he only needs to produce 1.9 WAR per year. If we use FanGraphs version of WAR we see that over his past two years as a starter Brandon Morrow has averaged 3.5 WAR per season, far and above the value he would need to provide in order to fulfill the proposed contract extension.

Even if we use the less optimistic Baseball Reference version of WAR we can see that over the past two years Morrow has averaged 1.5 WAR. Then using Sky Kalkman's WAR Spreadsheet, we can figure out how much Morrow has to improve to fulfill his contract. As expressed in the first table over the course of his contract Morrow has to be worth an average of 1.9 WAR per year. In the past two years Morrow hasn't been at that mark, but if you take his average ERA from the past two years and then assume a steady innings increase you get a total of 11.0 WAR, which is still 1.5 WAR in surplus value. Even if you assume that he misses some time to injury, Morrow would still have to miss roughly 140 innings over the course of the contract, which isn't unprecedented, just to be worth the 0.1 WAR less than the value of the contract.

Finally if you at all believe that Brandon Morrow will reach his "potential" that predictive stats such as his 3.51 xFIP or 3.31 SIERA over the past two years indicate, then that is all just added value. If you believe that over the course of his contract that Morrow will match his xFIP (top half of the table below) with the same innings counts as in the above table then he will be worth approximately 24.8 WAR, which is 15.3 wins of added value. Then if you are a real dreamer and believe that Morrow can match his SIERA (bottom half of the table below) he will be worth about 27.6 WAR, which is 18.1 wins in surplus value.

Of course almost all of this is speculative research and depends quite a bit on Morrow accepting a contract similar to the 5 year $47.5 million dollar contract proposed earlier, but the contract at least in my opinion seems pretty fair and through this has a very good chance of providing surplus value. Though as I stated there is always the chance that Morrow would turn down that contract as he has been known to follow some sabrmetric stats or as he calls them "nerd" stats. He may feel like he has more potential to outperform this contract, but financial security is always nice too, especially for a pitcher. Then there is also the off chance that the Blue Jays organization feels like he isn't even worth the proposed amount. Whatever it is we as fans can only hope that at some point Brandon Morrow reaches his "potential" and doesn't just become one of those players with the great peripheral stats, who never lives up to them.

The Anthopoulos regime has been good with extensions thus far after handing them out to players such as Jose Bautista, Ricky Romero, and Yunel Escobar, we can only hope that the Jays front office continues the trend going forward. With Brandon Morrow and whatever other young cost controllable player the Blue Jays acquire.

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