Shhh… Johan Santana Needs His Rest

So, despite not working in the All-Star Game, Johan Santana is pitching Game #3 of the Mets’ second half today, working on 6 days of rest.  Overall, Santana has had some concerning problems this year, including registering the highest walk rate (2.9/9inn), hit rate (8/9inn), and slowest average fastball (90.8MPH) of his career 88as a starting pitcher.

Here are some of Johan Santana’s numbers based on how many days rest he has:

Days Rest	Starts	W-L	ERA	IP	K	BB
4	8	3-4	4.74	49.33	44	21
5+	10	7-3	1.88	67	68	16

Also of note, Santana’s 5 best starts this season (Game Scores 64 or higher) all have taken place with 5 or 6 days of rest.

Also, here is Santana’s average fastball velocity, changeup velocity, and the difference in his individual starts broken up by how much rest he had:

4 Days Rest	FB MPH	CH MPH	FB-CH Difference
4/29/09	91.59	81.26	10.33
5/11/09	90.02	80.20	9.82
5/16/09	90.89	80.82	10.07
5/27/09	90.33	80.09	10.24
6/14/09	89.89	81.38	8.51
6/25/09	91.00	81.65	9.35
6/30/09	89.37	81.61	7.76
7/5/09	90.83	81.68	9.15
Average	90.57	81.12	9.40

 

5+ Days Rest	FB MPH	CH MPH	FB-CH Difference
4/12/09*	91.13	79.74	11.39
4/18/09*	90.9	79.62	11.28
4/24/09	91.55	81.76	9.79
5/6/09*	91.73	82.04	9.69
5/22/09	91.40	81.81	9.59
6/2/09	89.89	80.31	9.58
6/9/09	90.13	81.26	8.87
6/20/09	91.17	81.79	9.38
7/11/09	90.39	80.70	9.69
Averages	90.99	81.0	9.92

(Note that Pitch F/X was not active for Santana’s opening day start in Cincinnati.)  But from the data available, there is a small, but appreciable difference in his fastball velocity depending on how much rest he has and therefore a difference in the differential between his fastball and changeup. 

This differential does appear to relate to the outcome of his performance – Santana’s Fastball-Changeup differential was best in April when he was dominant and was quite a bit lower in June when he was struggling.  To add to this point, I put an asterisk next to the three starts where Santana’s game score was 70 or higher – these three include his two best games in terms of FB-CH differential. 

So, in summary, like the rest of these Mets, Johan Santana has problems.  He doesn’t appear to the pitcher that he once was and he seems to be struggling a bit this season when asked to pitch on 4 days rest.  This doesn’t portend well for how he might perform in 2 or 3 years when the Mets may have rebuilt their mess of a team into a contender and he’s still under contract.  Will he or can he be their ace at that time?

(Pitch F/X Data from BrooksBaseball’s Pitch F/X Tool)

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Worst of The Worst

Since today is the worst sports day of the year (best thing on TV is a replay of the 2009 Home Run Derby, which t ook place TWO DAYS ago) and since I have little interest in all things All-Star related, I spent a few minutes studying up on the worst Major League Baseball players in 2009.

This is an interesting topic because these are not the worst baseball players in the world (I am far worse for example) but these are the worst players at the top level of professional baseball.  Essentially, these guys are fine baseball players, just inadequate to perform at the Major League level, yet they are on teams that are stupid enough to keep playing them, despite them likely being worse than many available minor leaguers.

So what follows are some interesting facts that I learned.

Here are the bottom 9 performers in OPS+ in MLB in 2009 (among players who qualify for the batting title):

• Jeff Francoeur 71
• Edgar Renteria 70
• Chris Young 69
• Emilio Bonifacio 68
• Jimmy Rollins 68
• Garrett Adkins 66
• Jason Kendall 61
• Willy Taveras 53
• Dioner Navarro 51

Interestingly, this is a list where you can understand why many of these guys are in the minor leagues.  There are 4 former All Stars (Renteria, Rollins, Kendall, Navarro), one former 120 RBI man (Adkins), and 3 young players with tremendous speed (Young, Bonifacio, Taveras). And then there’s Jeff Francoeur.

Also, if you relax the standard of a player needing to qualify for the batting title, and just look at players with 100 or more appearances, the bottom 8 are:

• Fernando Martinez 37
• Matt Tolbert 37
• Ron Belliard 36
• Carlos Guillen 35
• Conor Jackson 34
• Aaron Miles 30
• Alexi Castilla 28
• Mike Aviles 22

Two observations from this list – first off, I think its VERY impressive that Luis Castillo has avoided the fate that befell Ron Belliard, Carlos Guillen, and Aaron Miles (three other guys who could easily be playing second base for the Mets if Omar Minaya had played his cards a little differently).  For the record, that’s probably the nicest thing I’ll ever say about Luis Castillo. And secondly, Fernando Martinez has a lot of work to do.

Finally, in reference to the above photo, in the 5 full seasons that our friend Rey Ordonez played for the Mets (2 seasons were shortened by injury), here was his order of finish in the OPS+ statistic among all Major League qualifiers:

• 1996 -- OPS+ 60 -– 146th of 147 qualifiers
• 1998 -- OPS+ 53 -– 159th of 159 qualifiers
• 1999 -- OPS+ 64 -– 153rd of 157 qualifiers
• 2001 -- OPS+ 67 -– 155th of 157 qualifiers
• 2002 -- OPS+ 65 -– 150th of 154 qualifiers*

*Ordonez was 3 plate appearances shy of qualifying for the batting title in 2002, but I included him anyway

In retrospect, Rey Ordonez’ career probably peaked when he through out a guy from the outfield on his knees in his very first game on Opening Day in 1996.  From there, it was 6 more years of watching the worst offensive player in baseball.  Definitely a proud era for Mets fans.

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The Aging of the Mets

Among the interesting (and alarming) pieces of news in this must read article from Sunday’s Daily News is this anonymous quote attributed to a National League scout:

"I understand that NY teams play under different rules and FA signings are the M.O., but without the influx of talent from the amateur draft, international scouting and shrewd trades it is difficult to have balance and cohesiveness. More importantly, the vulnerability to injuries is exacerbated by their impotent system. If you evaluate the Minaya regime, it is difficult to identify a plan or philosophy beyond acquiring high priced FA talent."

It does seem to be the case that the current Mets are old without many significant prospects on the horizon.  And the young (and youngish players that they do have (Murphy, Evans, Oliver Perez, Pelfrey, Reyes, and Wright) all seem to have taken a step back this season.

This got me thinking about the relationship between a team’s age and results. And that led me to generate the following graph depicting the Mets winning percentage plotted with the average age of their position players over their 48 season history:

What I find interesting from this graph is the recurring theme of a peak in the age of the Mets lineup often coming a year or two before the Mets’ record bottoms out.  Note how the peaks of the age curve seem to come right before the winning percentage curve starts to fall. Lets take a look starting on the left side of the graph:

If we ignore the Mets first seven seasons (all well below .500) and start tracking the curve after the 1969 championship, we see the team slowly aging in the early 1970s while maintaining a consistent .500 record.  In 1975 and ‘76, the Mets average age reaches a peak of around 28 1/2 years old which presages a 5 year run of awful winning percentages and last place finishes. 

Again, after the 1986 Championship (built on a mix of young stars with a few savvy veterans, with an average age of 28 years-old in ‘86) the Mets began to age and added some free agent veterans in the early 1990s (Murray, Randolph, Viola) with the lineup’s age peaking at 30 years-old in 1992, one year before their winning percentage hit rock bottom (.364, worst in baseball).

Again, in the mid-to-late ‘90s, the Mets lineup got younger, although the 2000 NL Champions were a veteran bunch, with an average age of 30.4 years old.  After the 2000 season, however, the Mets continued to age, peaking at 30.5 years old in 2002, one year before their winning percentage nadir-ed at .410 in 2003.

Again, the Mets age peaked in 2007 at 30.8 years-old and now the Mets winning % curve appears to be trending down.

Given the historical trends and the scary truths about today’s Mets (older team, few prospects, current young players have been disappointing) we may be looking at a team that gets a lot worse before it gets better. 

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