Archive for Kerry Wood

When the FanGraphs meet-up took place in San Francisco on Tuesday night and the group was sitting around the TV hanging on each and every pitch thrown by Stephen Strasburg, inspiration hit for today’s Would You Rather column.  Proven talent versus monumental upside.  Seasoned veteran versus young upstart.  Future Hall of Famer versus….future Hall of Famer?  There are a lot of pros on each side and very few cons.  So if it were up to you…

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Any efforts on the part of the Cleveland Indians to trade closer Kerry Wood got a little more difficult on Saturday, as the 33-year-old was placed on the DL with a finger blister. It’s the second time Wood has been sidelined this season, as the erstwhile Cub was shelved until early May with a strained right lat muscle in his back.

Since signing a two-year deal with the Tribe prior to 2009, Wood has earned around 15-$16 million while contributing 0.2 Wins Above Replacement. He was lights-out during his last season in Chicago (11.4 K/9, 2.44 BB/9, 3.07 xFIP, 2.2 WAR), but Wood’s control has been mediocre in Cleveland — he’s got 9.7 K/9, 4.7 BB/9 and a 4.36 xFIP in 75 innings since transitioning to the AL.

There’s still a chance that he gets traded — Wood could be back before the July 31st deadline, and there’s always the possibility of an August waiver deal. If Wood passes through waivers unclaimed in August, the Indians would be free to trade him to any club. If Wood gets claimed, Cleveland could: A.) revoke the waiver request, B.) make a deal within two business days with the club making the claim or they could C.) let the claiming team take Wood and his salary for a twenty grand fee (thanks, Cots Baseball Contracts and MLBTradeRumors).

With Wood out, Chris Perez is expected to take what save chances the Indians get. The former Hurricane, picked up from the St. Louis Cardinals (along with RHP Jess Todd) in the July 2009 Mark DeRosa deal, is available in nearly four-fifths of Yahoo leagues. Perez’s gleaming ERA and past as a top 100 prospect might lead some to think he’s breaking out in a big way, but the 25-year-old righty remains a work in progress.

In the minors, Perez used his mid-90’s fastball and low-to-mid-80’s slider to rack up 12 strikeouts per nine innings. However, he also issued a whopping six walks per nine frames, leaving him with a good-not-great 3.86 FIP in 113.1 IP. The story has been much the same in 133 big league innings over the 2008-2010 seasons — Perez has punched out over a batter per inning (9.41 K/9), but he has handed out a free pass every other frame (4.53 BB/9). He has also been a fly ball-centric pitcher, getting grounders just 35.7% of the time and serving up 1.15 HR/9. Overall, Perez has a 4.44 FIP and a 4.38 xFIP, a performance that has been exactly replacement-level.

That’s not to say that Perez won’t fare better in the future, but his current 2.62 ERA is based mostly on a .236 BABIP, as opposed to some marked improvement on his part. Perez gets ninth inning responsibilities for now, and he could keep them if Wood is swapped before July 31st or in a later August deal. But, without a change in Perez’s peripheral stats, decline is likely — ZiPS projects 9.64 K/9, 4.82 BB/9, 1.29 HR/9 and a 4.44 FIP for the rest of 2010.

It’s summer, it’s the weekend, and you ain’t got stuff to do. Well, maybe you should check that your lineups are set and your bench doesn’t have dead wood on it before you head out into the sun. You owe your fantasy teams that much at least.

Chris Perez, Cleveland (20% owned)
It’s your last chance to speculate on saves in Cleveland. The reasons to think Perez will be the eventual winner of the closer role are legion. He’s younger than Kerry Wood on a bad team looking to the future. He can be a better pitcher than Kerry Wood. He’s cheaper than Kerry Wood. Other teams are interested in trading for Kerry Wood. This is not to say that Perez is perfect. You’d like to see a lot more strikeouts than 7.60 per nine, a lot fewer walks than 4.72 per nine, and more groundballs than 32.6%. HIs 5.18 xFIP is really worrisome, actually, and you can see he’s been lucky (.236 BABIP, 82.1% LOB). On the other hand, his strikeout and walk rates have been much better in the past, and he does own a closer’s arsenal of strikeout stuff normally. He’s one of the better saves-speculation pickups out there, if not the best.

Jim Thome, Minnesota (5% owned)
On April 19th, Brian Joura big-upped Thome in his Waiver Wire piece. On May 19th, I reminded y’all. It’s another month later, so it’s time for your monthly Thome update. The most recent news has Justin Morneau hitting the DL with concussion issues and opening up a spot for Thome to play regularly. In OBP leagues, that’s all you had to say, because Thome is still elite in OBP (.372) and power (.287). If your league uses batting average, you’ll have to give him a longer think because he’ll never again post a nice batting average with those strikeout and contact rates.

Lorenzo Cain, Milwaukee (Yet to be added to Yahoo database)
With Doug Davis hitting the DL, the Brew crew decided to call up long-time prospect Cain to help man the outfield. There are bushels of caveats to mention in Cain’s case. First, he’s been around a while, and it took him five years to get through the Brewer’s minor league system, which is not usually a positive. Second, the twenty-four year old was never once dominating, as his .782 career and .846 full-year peak minor league OPSes can attest. He’s also pretty much a speed-only guy, judging from his career minor league .416 SLG and .124 ISO. He’s more of a slight speedster (6’2″ 200 lbs, 123 stolen bases in 572 minor league games at a 78% success rate). He was also rated “The Tumbler” by Marc Hulet because of strikeout issues last year. The last notch against him is that the Milwaukee outfield is still crowded… for now. Corey Hart is rumored to be leaving town soon, and deep league speed-starved managers could do worse for a speculative pickup here. At least Cain is coming off his best year as an amateur, hitting .326/.407/.439 combined so far in 2010. He also cut his strikeouts this year (down to 20.7% from 24.1%), so he’s going well right now.

Today is supposed to be a waiver wire article, but we’ll have plenty of those. For those of you still planning one last draft (and the internal FanGraphs league is one of those), I thought I would present to you my second-ever auction draft. Yes, I’m a noob. But with more mocks and real-life auctions in my review mirror, I’ll be able to step up the auction coverage here at RotoGraphs.

Here are my results, with comments coming after:

Position Player $
C Brian McCann 22
C Jarrod Saltalamacchia 1
1B Adrian Gonzalez 31
2B Brandon Phillips 21
3B Gordon Beckham 17
SS Alcides Escobar 12
CI Paul Konerko 10
MI Chris Getz 1
OF Justin Upton 30
OF Carlos Lee 19
OF Matt LaPorta 4
OF Seth Smith 1
OF Scott Podsednik 1
UT Gaby Sanchez 2
BN Xavier Nady 1
BN Matt Joyce 1
Total Offense: $173

Position Player $
P CC Sabathia 26
P Josh Johnson 22
P Brett Anderson 16
P Roy Oswalt 6
P Ryan Franklin 5
P Ryan Madson 4
P Kerry Wood 3
P Ryan Rowland-Smith 2
P Jonathon Niese 1
BN Ian Kennedy 1

Pitching total: $87

This was a 15-team put on by MDS (MillionDollarSleeper), who I’m sure you’ve seen around the comment boards at this site and others. He brought in an impressive collection of talent including David Goleblahblah, Paul Greco from FantasyPros911, Tim Heany from KFFL, Rudy Gamble and Grey Albright from Razzball, Paul Bourdett from AOL Fantasy Fanhouse, Antonio D’Arcangelis from RotoExperts, Scott Swanay from Fantasy Sherpas, Chris Carbonell from the Starbonell BlogTalkRadio show, Charlie Saponara from FB365, and yours truly.

Given that it was a 15-team league and my second attempt ever, I don’t think I fared so badly. I’d say Adrian Gonzalez for $31 was a little much, but the top-tier first basemen went for closer to $40 and Albert Pujols went for $48, so I think I did okay there. Maybe $10 is too much for Paul Konerko, but Adam LaRoche went minutes later for $15 and I felt (much) better. Things happened a little differently with Alcides Escobar – ten minutes after wondering if I’d spent too much on him, Everth Cabrera went for $4 and I wondered if Escobar’s superior batting average (based on fewer Ks and minor league history) was worth $8. Maybe it will prove to be. Carlos Lee for $19 looks about as bad as he does in a uniform, but the crib sheet I was using from LastPlayerPicked.com had Lee worth $21 next year and I was happy to get the power production with a good batting average for relatively cheap. And as for Scott Podsednik and Gaby Sanchez, who both showed up on my NFBC teams, too: They were cheap. And I think they’ll play almost regularly all year. So that’s something.

On the pitching side, CC Sabathia went for less than Johan Santana ($28), Dan Haren ($31), Felix Hernandez ($33), Zack Greinke ($32) and Tim Lincecum ($41), so I was happy to get my ace for cheaper than most. I also preferred CC, despite his big innings totals, over Ubaldo Jimenez ($26) and Ricky Nolasco ($25) as much as I like the younger pitchers. Lord knows CC has put up big innings totals before.

Once I spent my top-closer money on Brett Anderson, I knew I’d be looking for value in the saves category. Advice from Baseball Prospectus’ Marc Normandin was ringing in my ear (punt saves!), but I decided I’d rather try to field a full team this time. Once he’s healthy, I happen to think that the Indians will want to run Kerry Wood out there at closer to pump up his value for a trade, meaning that between him and Ryan Madson, I think I might have a second closer in there somewhere.

It’s kind of a wonky team and seems devoid of elite, top-shelf talent, but it just might work. What do you guys think?

According to Tom Singer of MLB.com, Cleveland Indians closer Kerry Wood could miss up to two months with a strained latissimus muscle. The 32 year-old Wood, who inked a two-year, $20.5 million deal prior to the 2009 season, posted just 0.4 WAR last year as his walk rate ballooned and batters were reluctant to chase his stuff out of the strike zone. Because of the missed time, Wood has no chance of having his $11 million option for the 2011 season vest (he needs to appear in 55 games for that to happen).

With Wood out, save ops will go to 24 year-old Chris Perez. The former Miami Hurricane came to Cleveland via St. Louis, as part of last June’s Mark DeRosa trade that also netted the Indians Jess Todd.

A 6-4, 230 pound righty, Perez uses a mid-90’s fastball and a hard, mid-80’s slider to wreak havoc out of the ‘pen. He punched out 12 batters per nine innings in the minors, and has 10.03 K/9 in 98.2 career big league frames. Perez’s heater has been worth +0.39 runs per 100 pitches, with the slider checking in at +0.43.

Control, however, has proven elusive. Perez walked six hitters per nine on the farm, and he has issued 4.47 BB/9 in the majors. As you might expect, he doesn’t do a great job of getting ahead in the count (his 57.9 first-pitch strike percentage is about average). Opposing batters haven’t been especially giddy to chase his pitches off the plate, as Perez has a career 21.3 outside-swing percentage (25 percent MLB average).

Homers are another possible problem. Perez has burned worms just 36.8 percent of the time over the 2008 and 2009 seasons, and has surrendered 1.19 dingers per nine innings.

CHONE and ZiPS give similar forecasts for the 2010 season:

CHONE: 9.82 K/9, 4.91 BB/9, 0.98 HR/9, 4.13 FIP
ZiPS: 10.07 K/9, 4.62 BB/9, 1.12 HR/9, 4.12 FIP

If he’s still available, Perez should be picked up in all leagues. He’s going to whiff a ton of batters, though he could occasionally give owners indigestion due to the walks.

The news came down the pipe this morning that Joe Nathan has a torn Ulnar Collateral Ligament and is, in all likelihood, headed for Tommy John surgery. No pitchers in recent memory have rehabbed through a torn UCL. A moment of silence for Nathan’s 2010 season, and for all of the keeper league owners that were happy with their elite closer.

Now let’s have some fun with rampant closer speculation. The front-runner has to be Jon Rauch because of his mythical ‘experience in the role.’ Yes, because he closed for 40 innings in the National League, he’ll probably be the front runner to assume the mantle in Minnesota. Then again, one has to be concerned with his strikeout rate, which peaked in 2006 (8.47), recovered in 2008 (8.29) and dropped off a table last year in Arizona (6.30 overall). In general, he offers some nice strikeout ability (though not plus for a closer) and an above-average walk rate (2.89 career, 3.46 ’09 ML average).

On the other hand, there’s been some change in his mix as he’s aged, and it doesn’t seem to be good news. He’s using his fastball less every year (down to 52.8% from 67.9% in 2006) and replacing it with his curveball (up from 3.3% to 15.5% last year). The problem? His fastball has been worth 17.1 runs by linear weights over his career, His curveball? -1.3. Yeah, where is that fastball going?

Could the Twins instead turn to a man with a funky delivery that has his own blog and a penchant for juicing? What about Pat Neshek? He owns a sparkling 10.56 K/9 for his career, a decent 2.76 BB/9, and despite slight gopherball problems (1.12 HR/9 career), has a sparkling WHIP (0.96). He’s coming off TJ surgery of his own, but has pitched live ball in Spring Training (2 innings, 2 Ks and 1 hit if you must know). There is a whiff of Brad Ziegler about him, but here are his splits against lefties, from our very own splits pages: 8.59 K/9, 3.68 BB/9, 1.16 WHIP (good), 55.9% FB, 12.1% HR/FB, 1.64 HR/9, 4.70 xFIP (bad). This is all against 185 total lefty batters faced… this sample is not big enough to say definitively that he cannot handle lefties. This book is not closed. And since it is such a fun read, there’s at least one fantasy analyst that is banging the drum for Neshek to take over the closer’s role for the year.

What about Matt Guerrier? What about him? With a below-average 6.01 career K/9, and no corresponding excellent ground ball rate (45.5% career) he’s squarely third on this list. His .222 BABIP last year will surely regress and the Twins will once again have the okay guy they’ve always had. No closer here, despite last year’s seemingly excellent numbers.

One last note – the possibility that the closer comes from outside the organization is reasonably high. The Cubs inquired with the Jays about Jason Frasor, and because that team is rebuilding, it seems that maybe also Scott Downs might be available. Anthony Castrovince, the Cleveland Indians reporter for MLB.com, speculated on Twitter about Kerry Wood being moved to the Twinkies. These options may all be more palatable to a Twins team that wants to compete in their new stadium. Hey, they all have ‘experience in the role.’

The Indians recently signed Kerry Wood to a 2-year deal with a vesting option for a third year. What does this mean for your fantasy team in 2009?

The headline says it all: Wood was excellent last year. He posted a 3.26 ERA, but that came with a 2.32 FIP and a 3.16 tRA* (which translates to a 2.76 ERA). Wood had an excellent 84/18 K/BB ratio in 66 innings, and allowed a .331 BABIP, which is likely to regress. Wood did benefit from a lower-than-normal home run rate, as only 6.2% of his fly balls became homers, a number that will likely be higher in 2009.

Wood’s statistics also may suffer from a switch from the National League over to the American League. However, Wood was so fantastic in 2008 that his ERA should remain low once again in 09, even in the more difficult league. Furthermore, Wood will be locked in to closer duties on what should be a very good Indians team, thus getting him a lot of save opportunities.

The one knock with Wood is his fragility. There’s no denying his injury history, and no one knows how he’ll hold up as a reliever for a second straight year. However, Wood did manage 66 innings in 2008 and escaped the season virtually unscathed. Wood’s injury concerns may be overblown by other people in your league, perhaps driving his value downward.

Wood looks like he’ll be a solid value in fantasy leagues, available after the top tier of closers have been taken. He should rack up saves as well as strikeouts, and should help you in ERA and WHIP as well. You will have to be vigilant about any injury concerns, and you might be well advised to pick up Wood’s likely replacement (probably Jensen Lewis) at the first sign of an injury. If you are able to do that, you minimize the damage that a Wood injury would inflict upon your team, while reaping the benefits that a healthy Kerry Wood will bring.

Kerry Wood is a good bet to provide excellent value for you, and finding closers at a value price is one of the most important skills a fantasy player can have.