Archive for Scott Baker

It’s time for the inaugural edition of the RotoGraphs Mailbag. Our email address for this feature is rotographs+mailbag@fangraphs.com, so send in your questions! Remember to try to give us all relevant information in the fewest words possible, and you’ll be all set.

In a 10-team mixed league I was offered Lincecum for Bruce, Baker and Joba. I’ve got plenty of depth at SP with Haren, Vazquez, Gallardo, Meche, Slowey and Ubaldo (we start 10 pitchers and have no bench). I’d replace Bruce with Fowler/Morgan. It’s not a keeper league.
Thanks guys, D.S.

While I’m always a proponent of consolidating talent in shallow leagues, this really tests the assumption that you should always take the best player in a trade. Tim Lincecum is by far and away the best player in this trade, that much is for sure. Amazingly, he’s upped his otherworldly strikeout rate and dropped his walk rate this year. In fact, with at .368 BABIP against, he’s been unlucky, if you can believe that. Other than the fact that he led all pitchers under 25 in Baseball Prospectus’ Pitcher Abuse Points last year, there’s little to worry about.

But you don’t have the luxury of moving pitchers in and out. You need to field six or seven good starting pitchers, not just one or two and a bunch of spot starters. Dropping from Joba Chamberlain and Scott Baker to Lincecum alone will hurt your depth and cause you to go to the waiver wire for pitching. And starting pitching on the waiver wire is pretty barren these days. I say you hold on to your buy-low trio and reap the benefits of their return to grace.

As David pointed out, Jay Bruce is only on the way up from here. Chamberlain still has an elite strikeout rate himself (8.83 K/9), despite a step back. It is upsetting that his HR/9 almost doubled and his BB/9 is up a full walk, and also that his fastball is down almost three miles per hour over last year. People are reaching a lot less, too (20.5% this year, 26.3% career). (Wait, why was I recommending you keep him?) Baker, though, should rebound for sure. After giving up 9.5% HR/FB over his career (MLB average hovers around 10%), Baker is serving up home runs on 18.6% of his fly balls. Nothing else is out of order, so he should return to his customary value as that number falls.

Sure, none of these guys are Lincecum. But if you’re already playing Ubaldo Jimenez, it might get ugly quickly if you start looking for another pitcher on the wire. Perhaps more knowledge about the pitching on the wire would shift this trade into the ‘do’ category.

I am in a 12-team mixed head-to-head league and am considering trading Adam Lind for Shin-Soo Choo for a couple reasons: 1) I like the more balanced stats Choo brings to my team (more R and SB), and 2), I think Lind may be overvalued right now considering his hot start (BABIP of .384), and vice-versa for Choo. Based on Choo’s great second half last year, and improving BB% and K% this year, I think he has a decent chance of outperforming Lind even in HR and 2B and RBI. Would you make this trade?
Thanks, M. R.

Wow, you did a lot of the analysis for us here. But the question is still interesting, for another reason. These players are actually very similar: they are high-line drive hitters that should hit for solid averages. They both may have mediocre home run totals by the end of the year, as well.

The under-rated Shin-Soo Choo’s career fly-ball percentage is low for a power hitter, at 32%, but he’s settled in around 36% the last two years. His line drive rate has been nothing short of elite – it’s at 26.4% this year (8th in the majors), and 23.8% for his career. Line drive rate is positively correlated with batting average, and with the improving walk and strike-out rates, Choo is indeed a very safe producer in batting average. A 68% success rate on steals should mean he’ll comfortably continue to pilfer bags, too.

Adam Lind has the same low fly-ball percentage (33.5% career), and also sports a great line drive rate this year (25.4%). However, his career line drive rate is nowhere near Choo’s elite status at 19.8%, a figure that has largely been skewed by this year’s excellence. Because Lind has always sported a double-digit HR/FB rate, while Choo hasn’t, ZiPS likes Lind to hit another 14 homers while it likes Choo to total 14 for the year. However, with Lind’s low fly ball percentage this year (29.5%), he’ll have to start getting those infield flies (25.8%) out of the park for the power projections to be correct. He certainly is busting out, as Dave Cameron outlined here.

I think you’re right in taking the safer choice of the two. Choo’s added steals should make up for the five or six home runs he may lack compared to Lind. But I can’t help wondering: Can you upgrade somewhere else since Lind’s name is so hot right now? Add a second pair of players into the deal in order to cash in on Lind’s rising star and better current numbers.

Scott Baker is a slightly better version of Kevin Slowey. And, as you know, Slowey is pretty good.

The similarities between these two Twins righties are striking. Take a look:

If you recall from my article about Slowey, I think that his overall numbers may underrate his actual abilities, as he appeared to show substantial improvement during the season. Still, Baker appears to be a bit better than Slowey: a few more strikeouts (although, again, I think that Slowey’s strikeout rate could rise next year), and fewer balls, even though he walked more batters.

The fact that Baker induced swinging strikes in over 10% of his pitches is an excellent sign – league average for starters is around 7.5%. Baker, like Slowey, is a fly ball pitcher, and therefore will be prone to homers. However, Baker should strike out enough batters to reduce the overall number of fly balls he allows, and he walks few enough so that he minimizes the damage when the he allows a homer.

In 2008, Baker posted a 3.45 ERA and a 3.79 FIP. His BABIP was completely normal (.290), although considering that the Twins were well-below-average defensively (they ranked 27th in Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency), perhaps Baker was a little lucky on balls in play. Baker posted a rather high LOB% of 78.7% – this should regress in the future, but it probably won’t fall more than a few percentage points. His homer rate could rise a few percentage points as well (8.5% of his fly balls left the park), but it shouldn’t rise too much.

Overall, the Scott Baker from 2008 is a very reasonable facsimile of what we should expect in the future. He should post an ERA under 4, a WHIP under 1.20, and strike out around 7 or 7.5 batters per nine innings (over 200 innings, that’s 140-150 strikeouts). Furthermore, Baker is pretty low-risk, as far as pitchers go. The injury he sustained in 2008 had nothing to do with his arm/elbow/shoulder (he strained a groin), and is unlikely to recur.

Scott Baker is the exact type of pitcher that can he had in the middle of most drafts, and is probably better than many other pitchers taken around the same time. Like Slowey, Baker is very low-risk, and the reward is fairly high.