Archive for Tim Hudson

It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Giants may have won the World Series last year, but before they got to the postseason, their rotation was not the strength of the team. In the regular season they ranked mid-pack at 16th in ERA and near the bottom in WAR at 28th. And it was primarily just Madison Bumgarner that was the strength of the team in the postseason as he threw almost a third of all innings for the Giants in the playoffs. Aside from mid-season acquisition Jake Peavy, the Giants have not added anyone to the staff. That should probably concern fans of the defending champs. Of course, three titles in five years helps ease some concerns. But for fantasy owners under-performance the year prior sometimes leads to value on draft day. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Barry Zito, you would think that Brian Sabean and anyone one else within the San Francisco Giants’ upper management inner-circle would be scarred for life from fishing in the pond that houses the beloved Oakland Big Three from the early 2000’s. But lo and behold, they go back to the well and this time come away with right-hander Tim Hudson on a two-year deal worth $23M. While I would love to sit here and debate the merits of the deal with both the lovers and the haters of this signing, that ship has sailed already when Dave Cameron reported on the move back in mid-November. Feel free to skim through the comments section as there are certainly a few doozies in there. But since this is RotoGraphs, we’re going to talk about the fantasy aspect. You know, things like where Hudson will go in drafts and what kind of  return value should you expect. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote about hitters who might be undervalued because of poor recent performance that was being caused by something other than a decrease in skill. Today I’d like to take a quick look at the pitchers whose xFIPs were the farthest below their ERAs over the last thirty days. The idea again is that recent performance seems to be weighted too heavily in pricing, and these guys might have a little extra value in the immediate future. Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Saude has been looking at match up data to forecast strikeout rate. His posts are very advanced, somewhat confusing, and have lots of pretty graphs. You can read them here and here, and I suggest that you do. The main thing I took away was that batters and pitchers contribute equally to the outcome of his expected K% formula. Strikeouts are a big deal when picking daily pitchers, so we should be looking at how much the opposing team strikes out against pitchers of the same handedness to try and pick pitchers’ with high strikeout totals. We all look at a pitcher’s match up, but we should be looking at the K% of the opposing team in addition to their overall offensive performance. Below are each teams K% versus both left and right handed pitching along with their wRC+. Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into 2012 the Atlanta Braves were considered by many to have some of the best depth in their rotation. Tim Hudson and Tommy Hanson were the veterans atop the staff, Mike Minor and Brandon Beachy were the young guns ready for the rotation, and Julio Teheran and Randall Delgado were highly thought of prospects. But the rotation looks quite a bit different heading into 2013. Hanson and Delgado are gone. Beachy is out until the summer with an injury. Minor had an up and down year, and Teheran had an ERA over 5.00 in 26 starts at AAA.

But things are not as bad as that last paragraph would make them seem. Read the rest of this entry »

With the 2012 season just a few short weeks away, it’s time for the return of the Roto Riteup to the RotoGraphs lineup. If you were not reading the site late last season, this will be new to you. And you will enjoy it.

Now, onto the notes for the day:

–  Yesterday I mentioned that Salvador Perez had injured his knee but the severity was still unknown. The severity of the injury is now fully known, and the Royals catcher is going to miss about two months after tearing his right meniscus. Perez wasn’t being drafted highly, but he was well owned in AL-only and keeper leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing this series of comparing FanGraphs Points league scoring to traditional scoring, we’ll begin looking today at pitching.  To start, I decided to look at a traditional points scoring system compared to the ottoneu points scoring system.  There is no apparent “standard” fantasy points system, but I chose the points scoring used at CBSSportsline as my comparison, as it seems fairly typical of systems you see out “in the wild.”  Let’s start with a list of the top-10 pitchers by their system in the 2010 season:

For reference, I also included their rank according to total FanGraphs Points.  Overall, it doesn’t look that different, right?  The top three are identical, and most of the top-10 are ranked similarly in both systems.  There are two pitchers who had a ranking disparty of at least 10 spots, however: David Price and Tim Hudson.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since he broke into the big leagues back in 1999, Tim Hudson has quietly ranked among the better starting pitchers in the majors. According to Sean Smith’s historical Wins Above Replacement numbers, Hudson racked up nearly 41 WAR from ’99 to 2009. With a couple more solid seasons, the former two-way Auburn star will rank among the top 100 pitchers in career WAR.

Hudson’s combination of quality (career 3.81 FIP) and quantity (he has topped the 200-inning mark six times during his career) was interrupted in 2008, as the undersized righty had Tommy John surgery in August of that year. Hudson returned to a major league mound in September of 2009, and the 34-year-old looked none the worse for wear.

In 42.1 innings, Hudson had 6.38 K/9, 2.76 BB/9 and a 3.47 expected FIP (xFIP), getting ground balls at the highest rate of his career to that point (62.2 percent). Again showcasing one of the deepest arsenals among starters, Hudson posted a 9.5 percent swinging strike rate (9.3 percent career average, 8-9% MLB average) and he didn’t dawdle, either: he placed 52.7 percent of his pitches in the strike zone (52.5% career average, 48-51% MLB average) and got first pitch strikes two-thirds of the time (57.8% career average, 58-59% MLB average). In other words, it was vintage Hudson.

Encouraged by Hudson’s work, the Braves signed him to a three-year, $28 million contract extension, with a $9 million club option for 2013. So far in 2010, Hudson has thrown 44.1 frames and has a spiffy 2.64 ERA. Despite that ERA, his season has been a mixed bag.

The difference between Hudson’s ERA and xFIP (4.57) is nearly two runs. He has benefitted from a .234 batting average on balls in play, and his 85.6 percent rate of stranding base runners is way above the 70-72% big league average and Hudson’s career 73.8% strand rate.

He’s doing a tremendous job of keeping the ball on the ground, with a new career-high 66.2 GB% that tops all starters. However, Hudson isn’t missing bats or painting the corners like he usually does. His swinging strike rate is down to 5.7 percent, and his percentage of pitches within the zone is 44.9. Hudson is inducing first pitch contact or getting ahead in the count 0-1 just 50.6 percent of the time. Given those figures, it’s no surprise that he’s striking out just 3.45 batters per nine innings and walking 3.65 per nine.

The sample sizes aren’t huge, but Hudson’s main offerings aren’t hitting their spots or fooling batters as much in 2010 as they did last September and early October:

I made bold the most marked changes between ’09 and ’10 Hudson. His four-seam fastball, changeup/splitter and slider are all getting fewer strikes and whiffs this season.

Hudson owners should watch his control and whiff rates. He’s not pitching poorly, but that 2.64 ERA is misleading. If he continues to garner so few swings and misses and has a merely average walk rate, Hudson loses his fantasy appeal.

Here are seven players for your consideration to either acquire or send packing.

BUY

Shin-Soo Choo – The current owner may look at Choo’s .392 BABIP and figure this is as good as it’s going to get, especially since Updated ZiPS projects him to finish with 17 HR and 16 SB. But Choo has always posted ultra-high BABIPs so he may not drop off as far as some might predict. The current ZiPS forecast seems especially pessimistic, considering that he went 20-20 last year and is on a current pace for 22-32.

Chipper Jones – He is very brittle and currently carries an uninspiring .230-2-7-13-2 fantasy line. But Jones is not one to look at things through rose-colored glasses and he considers himself to be seeing the ball good and just experiencing bad luck. “When I’m drawing walks you know I’m seeing the ball good,” Jones told David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Everybody points to the RBI, but when there’s not a lot of opportunities you can’t help that.” Jones is 6-for-19 with two doubles, seven walks and one strikeout in his past six games. Health is always a factor but Jones feels good about himself and he has been on a mini hot streak. It could all add up to a nice pickup for a low price, especially if his current owner is concerned about Jones’ current groin injury.

Johan Santana – This marks the sixth straight season that Santana has seen a rise in his xFIP and his K/9 continues to fall, down to 7.56, his worst mark since he was a reliever in 2001. Santana’s average fastball velocity has dipped below 90 for the first time in his career. But so much of Santana’s poor overall numbers this year (velocity excepted) is the result of the horrific outing against the Phillies in which he allowed 4 HR and gave up 10 ER in 3.2 IP. In his other six games, Santana has a 2.61 ERA with 9 BB and 34 Ks in 38 IP. Now, you cannot just throw out starts that you do not like, but you should not panic about one bad outing, either. Check to see if his current owner is doing the latter.

SELL

Tim Hudson – While never a big strikeout pitcher, Hudson generally gave fantasy owners good numbers in the other three categories for SP. But this year his K/9 is down to a dismal 3.45 or nearly half of his lifetime mark. His ERA sits at a nifty 2.64 but both his FIP and xFIP are around two runs per game worse than that. Right now it seems on the surface to be a typical Hudson year where he is good in three categories. But it is unlikely that either his ERA or WHIP will remain this low going forward.

Jeff Niemann – Like Hudson, xFIP paints a much bleaker picture of Niemann’s early-season results than his ERA. Both his FIP and xFIP are nearly identical to 2009, when his ERA was 1.67 higher than his current 2.27 mark. Niemann is throwing his splitter twice as often as last year, and with good results, too. But it seems unlikely that his fine pitching early in 2010 has more to do with the change in his repertoire than Niemann simply being the recipient of good fortune.

Justin Upton – One of the first outfielders off the board in fantasy and likely gone by the second round in most leagues, Upton is off to a poor start. Whenever I recommend to sell a high draft pick not performing well, people comment that now is the worst time to trade him. Obviously, Upton will not be this bad the rest of the season. The key is to get more in return than he will produce the rest of the way. It seems to me his trade value is greater than the .274-20-70 that RoS ZiPS projects for him. In one recent CBS Sports league, he was dealt straight up for Matt Holliday, who seems likely to outperform Upton in AVG, R and RBIs going forward while it should be relatively close in the other two categories.

HUNCH

Nick Swisher – His BABIP is 56 points higher than his career average and his 17.5 HR/FB rate is 0.4 away from his career-best mark. But I predict that Swisher will keep up his strong performance throughout the season and exceed the Updated ZiPS marks of .264-28-94-92-1 at the end of the year.

Which of these two pitchers is going to go for more in your auction this year? Here are their 2009 stats and their 2010 ages:

Player A: 15 W, 2.87 ERA, 238 Ks, 1.026 WHIP, RHP, age 33
Player B: 2 W, 3.61 ERA, 30 Ks, 1.465 ERA, RHP, age 34

Now, that comparison is not really fair, as Player B was obviously hurt at some point while Player A had arguably the best season of his career last year. So, let’s use some career numbers instead.

Player A: 4.19 ERA, 8.14 K/9, 1.24 WHIP
Player B: 3.64 ERA, 6.13 K/9, 1.26 WHIP

That closes the gap considerably and you could reasonably opt for Player B, preferring his likely ERA to Player B’s definite K advantage. A lot would depend on the health of Player B and the respective teams of the two pitchers. Let’s throw another piece of information into the mix, the Bill James 2010 projections for both players.

Player A: 15 W, 3.60 ERA, 204 Ks, 1.20 WHIP
Player B: 10 W, 3.64 ERA, 89 Ks, 1.29 WHIP

That projection sees the ERA and WHIP as tossups, but a huge advantage in W and Ks for Player A, in part due to a 68-IP advantage for Player A. The Mock Draft crowd has already spoken, giving an ADP of 57 to Player A , with a high draft position of 41 and a low draft position of 71 in the last 199 drafts. Meanwhile, Player B had an ADP of 192, with a high draft position of 144 and a low draft position of 230.

As you might have guessed, Player A is Javier Vazquez while Player B is Tim Hudson. The Braves essentially had this choice and opted to go with Hudson. They have the best information on his health and they determined he was worth a 3 Year/$28 million contract, which includes a $1 million buyout of a fourth year, also at $9 million. Meanwhile, Vazquez at $11.5 million on the final year of his contract was dealt away in what was at least partially a salary dump.

The Braves would have preferred to have traded Derek Lowe, who is older, less effective and costs more money than Vazquez. But no one was willing to step up and take Lowe off their hands, at least they did not offer a haul greater than that offered for Vazquez, a haul criticized on most Atlanta message boards.

The Braves are generally regarded as a well-run team. They knew that signing Hudson gave them six SP and that they would have to shed the salary of one of them prior to the season. They decided that three/four years of Hudson at $9 million per year was better than one year of Vazquez at $11.5 million plus additional salary the following two seasons or two compensation picks. And they did this knowing that this is the final year for manager Bobby Cox and knowing that the window for another championship for Chipper Jones is closing, too.

From the Braves position, we cannot evaluate this trade until we see what they do with the money freed up in the differences between the salaries of Vazquez and Melky Cabrera, roughly $9 million. Do they trade for Dan Uggla and make him their first baseman? Do they sign Mark DeRosa and make him a starting outfielder? Those are just two of countless options now available.

But what we do know is that we need to reevaluate the 2010 rankings of both Hudson and Vazquez. If the Braves think Hudson is healthy enough to lock up for three or four years, than he is a decent bet to provide better results than his ADP as the 49th SP off the board would indicate. And with Vazquez in the AL, pitching half his games in 2009’s best HR park in baseball, we probably need to adjust him downward from being the 10th SP selected, his current ADP.