Thoughts On Two Months of Nick Castellanos
There is no perfect point in the calendar to take stock of things and pretty much every time period you can think of is technically arbitrary. There isn’t a magic moment at which point stats become meaningful or scouting data becomes meaningful. It’s all meaningful and more of it is always better than less. But after two months of baseball, I’d like to provide some thoughts on the Tigers most interesting 2014 player. I don’t mean interesting as in “he is the most interesting player,” but rather “his 2014 season is the most important for how we think about him as a player.” This is, of course, Nick Castellanos.
I won’t bore you with the granular details, but Castellanos looked good, then he slumped, then he started to look okay again at the plate. He’s had good and bad moments in the field. His baserunning has been an adventure. All told, at this moment, he’s got a 74 wRC+ (which isn’t good), a -1.5 BsR (which is very bad), and a -2 UZR and -7 DRS (which aren’t very good at all). That’s -0.2 fWAR in 181 PA.
If you took his first two months and played them over and over, you wouldn’t want to keep doing that for very long. On balance, he hasn’t been a great player, but we don’t really care about that for Nick because he’s 22 and getting his first taste of big league action. He will not earn ROY honors based on his first two months, but luckily the Tigers played well anyway and we have five and a half more years to actually get some value out of him.
Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. He’s not a good baserunner, or at least, he’s slow and hasn’t shown good enough instincts to compensate. We never expected him to be a good runner, so this is totally cool!
The defensive numbers are interesting and instructive. He graded out well very early but has since slid back to below average almost entirely for what the numbers consider poor range. He’s league average or better as far as making the plays he gets to, and well below average at getting to the ball. But it’s only been 400 innings, so it’s perfectly fine to be skeptical of the precise values a little bit.
I’ve watched or listened to almost every inning he’s played this season and here are my observations. I think he has the skill to be a perfectly competent third baseman. The range isn’t great, but his hands are good, the arm is strong, and he has decent instincts. He’s done a nice job coming in on the ball and I’ve liked what I’ve seen when he throws the ball. I’ve heard from others that they feel good about his change to stay at third. My guess is that he’s going to be a -5 to 0 3B for the next few years, but that’s totally okay. He doesn’t have to be a plus defender to be a good player, he just has to be able to play the position, which I think he can. I suspect his DRS (which is the metric that likes him least) will even out as he gets more chances, and especially once he gets to cheat toward the line when Iglesias gets healthy.
So this brings us to his bat. If you look at the raw numbers, it hasn’t been great. He has a wOBA under .300, he’s not walking, and he’s not hitting for enough power. But again, you shouldn’t expect a guy to hit his projection during the first two months on the job. Growing pains are fine. If he’s this guy forever, that would be bad, but that’s probably not going to happen.
He has a contact problem, with a contact rate of 69.5% when he swings. To give you an idea, league average is 79.4% and Castellanos ranks 12th worst among qualifiers. Unless you hit for tons of power, that contact rate is too low. But we’ve seen signs from Nick that he’s figuring it out. He went an entire month without a walk from late April to late May and then walked a bunch of times in late May. Some of this is learning what you can and can’t hit. My guess is that he’s always been so talented that almost no one could throw a pitch he couldn’t square up. That happens in the bigs and he simply needs to adjust to it.
From what I’ve heard, he’s a very smart hitter who constantly adjusts, so this shouldn’t be a problem long term. When Nick does make contact, I’ve been really impressed with how much barrel he gets on the baseball and how well he sprays line drives around the diamond. There’s a lot to like there, for me. Better pitch recognition and decision making should make a world of difference for a guy with such natural ability to hit.
If he becomes a league average hitter (.320 wOBA/100 wRC+ or so), he’s a perfectly useful player. But if he can, and I think he will, make good use of that hit tool, he could be a .350 wOBA type guy and could be a 3 win player without really stretching it. If he can really figure out the contact, I wouldn’t be shocked if he found his way into the .370 wOBA range, which is something like a 4 win player given the rest of his profile.
He hasn’t been a star on arrival, but I haven’t seen anything that’s worried me. He’s not going to have to move off the position and he’s shown plenty of ability to hit with the need to make important refinements in his approach. I think it’s reasonable to see him as a slightly above average player going forward. 2-3 wins seems safe with 3-4 quite likely.
Personally, I’m actually a little more bullish than that. I still think he’s going to be a star because, in my mind, his problem isn’t making contact, it’s knowing when not to swing. I think that’s more likely to improve with age than an actually difficulty hitting the ball well. He’s sharp and I think he’ll get there. I think good player to borderline all-star is what I’d project, but given what we’ve seen from him, I’m not worried about any sort of flame out. He isn’t drowning now and it’s only going to get better.
The Tigers And High Leverage Power
I’ll give you my biases up front. I don’t really believe in “clutch” as a skill. It’s not that I don’t think high pressure situations are more difficult, it’s that 1) the opponent feels pressure in high pressure situations and 2) if you get better in clutch situations, why can’t you perform that well in non-clutch situations? It is possible to get a “clutch hit,” but clutch hits just describe how important the moment is, not anything about the skill of player, in my view.
But let’s take a peak at a table of statistics entering player on June 3. This is the performance of the Tigers in low, medium, and high leverage situations and the league averages in the same. If you don’t know about leverage, it’s based on how much the game currently hangs in the balance with 0 to 0.7 being low, 0.7 to 1.5 being medium, and 1.5+ being high leverage. It’s a pretty useful proxy for clutchness of the situation:
| BB% | K% | wOBA | SLG | |
| Tigers Low | 5.8 | 18.9 | 0.323 | 0.420 |
| Tigers Medium | 8.4 | 16.1 | 0.326 | 0.419 |
| Tigers High | 9.9 | 18.6 | 0.348 | 0.469 |
| MLB Low | 7.8 | 20.7 | 0.313 | 0.391 |
| MLB Medium | 7.9 | 19.9 | 0.314 | 0.394 |
| MLB High | 9.9 | 20.7 | 0.309 | 0.384 |
Well what do we have here? Notice that most teams and players tend to walk a little more in high leverage situations, but perform a little worse overall while also hitting for a touch less power. The Tigers, for some reason, don’t walk in low leverage situations. They make up for it by getting more hits and have pretty equal wOBA in Low and Medium leverage.
But look at the slugging percentage column. The Tigers out slug the league across the board, but their Low/Medium slugging ratio is typical. Their High Leverage slugging is off the charts. What gives?
The Tigers hardly out BABIP the field in High Leverage situations, but the ISO is obviously much larger. If you peak into home runs, the league hits a home run once every 43 PA in high leverage situations. The Tigers hit one in every 29 PA. We’re talking about a very small sample (6 HR in 172 PA) for the Tigers, but that gap soaks up most of the difference. The Tigers and the league hit doubles are roughly the same rate.
So this doesn’t seem like a super sustainable thing. Instead of flying out a couple of times, the Tigers launched a home run in a high leverage spot which did wonders for their splits. It’s a little weird how little they walk in low leverage spots and weird how much power they have in high leverage spots. It probably doesn’t mean much going forward, but it clues you in to what has happened to date. It’s way more important to look at their collective success across the board than in any one type of situation. The Tigers hit pretty well even when the game isn’t on the line.
How Was The Game? (June 1, 2014)
Quiet.
Mariners 4, Tigers 0
After a grueling stretch, the Tigers concluded their seven game trip with lackluster attack behind Max Scherzer (12 GS, 78.2 IP, 3.20 ERA, 3.12 FIP, 1.8 fWAR) who performed ably in 6.2 innings. Max allowed four runs, but didn’t issue any free passes and struck out 7. He looked strong at times but mixed in enough mistake pitches to surrender a collection of runs. It wouldn’t matter much how good or bad Scherzer was as the bats were very quiet against Elias throughout the ballgame. The club registered just three hits and a walk across nine innings and coasted to series defeat. The Tigers will enjoy the day off tomorrow and start back up at home against the Blue Jays with Anibal Sanchez (8 GS, 43.1 IP, 2.49 ERA, 2.21 FIP, 1.5 fWAR) taking the ball Tuesday.
The Moment: Scherzer punishes Saunders with a four pitch strikeout.
How Was The Game? (May 31, 2014)
Safeco’d.
Mariners 3, Tigers 2
It was a short night for Drew Smyly (8 GS, 48.1 IP, 4.10 ERA, 4.52 FIP, 0.3 fWAR), but the bullpen had his back and held the Mariners at bay. Smyly went 4 and allowed three runs, but his command was rough even though he didn’t walk very many. Cabrera hit another big time home run and the Tigers punched another one through on a wild pitch to Castellanos that scored Jackson. They put some good swings on the ball in the 7th and 8th before the ball died on the track, but the real threat came in the 9th. Avila walked and Kelly singled, but Romine failed to get a bunt down and Davis struck out to set up Kinsler. With the game on the line, Kinsler bounced out and set up a rubber match Sunday with Max Scherzer (11 GS, 72 IP, 3.00 ERA, 3.12 FIP, 1.6 fWAR) toeing the rubber.
The Moment: Cabrera hits a huge home run to left.
How Was The Game? (May 30, 2014)
Redeeming.
Tigers 6, Mariners 3
Justin Verlander (12 GS, 79 IP, 3.99 ERA, 3.48 FIP, 1.8 fWAR) was the story entering this game and he was able to do enough to calm the crashing waves. Verlander was much more efficient and kept the hard contact to a minimum as he went 7.2 innings, allowed five hits, a walk, three runs, and struck out seven. He had better velocity than he had in recent starts and looked much less lost out there on the mound. We knew he’d get better than he had been for the last couple of weeks and he did so in a hurry. It wasn’t classic Verlander, but it was more than enough. The offense played Tigers baseball on Friday and did the rest. Cabrera hit a majestic home run to left in the 3rd and Davis his one in the 7th, but it was the one in the middle that really counted. With a man on second and two outs in the 5th, the Mariners decided to walk Cabrera to face Martinez, and a ten pitch at bat later, Martinez made them pay with a no doubt blast to right. Walking Cabrera might have seemed reasonable with a base open, but on average, that move will cost the Marines .23 runs, and boy did it ever. They gave away the platoon advantage and a free base for the right to pitch to a great hitter without the possibility of a double play and it bit them. The Tigers would take it, however, and marched on to their 31st win of the season. They will look to take the series with Drew Smyly (7 GS, 44.1 IP, 3.86 ERA, 4.81 FIP, 0.2 fWAR) on the bump Saturday.
The Moment: VMart stays alive by fouling pitches off and goes yard to put the Tigers ahead.
Coming To Terms With Justin Verlander
An optimist and a pessimist walk into a sports bar. Justin Verlander is pitching. The pessimist looks at the radar gun, checks the stat line, and looks at the contact. He says to his friend, “What happened to Verlander? He’s terrible now.” The optimist looks back at him and says, “What do you mean, he’s top 20 in fWAR and has a 3.45 FIP, that’s pretty good!” Both are true, depending on your perspective.
The Verlander we knew from 2009 to 2012 is gone. He doesn’t have 101 in the chamber for the 8th inning strikeout. He doesn’t have all four pitches on most nights. He lives 90-93 and touches 95-96 when he reaches back. The bite on the breaking ball shows up occasionally rather than regularly. He gets tired now, apparently. The strikeouts are down, the walks are up, the hard contact lives. Justin Verlander, best pitcher on the planet, is gone. The pessimist is right.
But so is the optimist. Let me write the last paragraph again in a different way:
Verlander sits 90-93 and reaches back for 95-96 when he needs it. He throws a curveball, slider, and changeup, all of which flash plus plus, but are more typically above average major league pitches. He’s not a huge strikeout guy, but is certainly capable of going on a run. He’s had some trouble stranding runners and is having more issues with lefties, but on balance he’s sporting a league average ERA and slightly better FIP after a couple of rocky starts. The optimist is right.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Justin Verlander in his current form is a still a very good pitcher. He’s had a bad string of three starts, but no one thinks the last two weeks represent Verlander going forward. They aren’t meaningless, but you should never project a player to perform at their best forever or their worst forever. We’re probably going to see a lot more 7 inning, 3 R starts than 7 inning 2 R starts. That’s okay. Verlander is 31. The reign of terror wasn’t going to last. We knew that. We talked ourselves into two extra years, but we knew he’d come back to Earth.
I don’t think we can fix Verlander. He’ll be better going forward than he is right now, but it’s wrong to expect him to be a Cy Young starter anymore. He’ll still have four or five starts in a row that will be excellent like last year’s postseason, but things are catching up with him. He has a little less in the tank than he used to. The stuff isn’t quite as good. He’ll tweak things and get out of the present funk, but there will be more funks in the future because that’s what happen when you age.
We’re done with Justin Verlander the 7-9 win player and now living with Justin Verlander 4-5 win player. That’s still plenty good. Just because he isn’t the Verlander of old doesn’t mean he won’t be good. And he’ll learn to adjust. He still has above average stuff. The problem is that he’s trying to pitch like he still has elite stuff. He need to change his approach. The walks will come down. The strikeouts will come back a bit. It’ll get better as he matures.
Last year, for all our strife, Verlander was a 5.0 WAR starter. This year he’s actually on pace for close to that. ZiPS thinks he’ll do it and Steamer things 3.5 to 4.0 is more realistic. Even if he walks the lower bound, he’s still an above average major league starter. Still plenty good enough to help the team win.
There’s a lot of concern about the size of his contract given his declining skills, but he doesn’t have to be that good for the deal to come out fine. He’s got 6 years and $160 million left if you include this season. On the free agent market, a win will cost you about $6 million (and it’s trending toward $7M). So Verlander needs no more than 27 WAR from now until the end of 2019. That’s a 4.5 WAR pace per season to make the deal a fair value factoring in no inflation. That’s not out of the question. If you call it $7M/WAR, it’s a 3.8 WAR pace. That seems like the right expectation. Verlander can earn the contract, or get somewhere close.
He’s done being the man, but that doesn’t mean he’s worthless. You can’t overreact to three starts, but you also have to accept the overall trend. Maybe he’s still recovering from the injury, but I think these are just normal signs of aging and a pitcher going through a transition from power pitcher to regular human being.
He’s going to be good, he’s just not going to be the guy you lined up to see. He’ll have those nights. He might even have a lot of them. But the guy who owned the league is gone. The guy who’s pretty good and will occasionally make you remember those summer nights chasing no-hitters is still here.
There’s a lot left in Verlander, but our expectations need to adjust. The fact that he’s been this good and this durable for this long is some sort of medical miracle. Just look around at all of the promising young starters losing UCLs. We made it through Verlander’s peak without losing him for a single start. Imagine that. He hasn’t missed a start in nine major league seasons. He’ll finish this year somewhere near 49-50 career fWAR. He’s probably going to the Hall of Fame. We were treated to the greatest show in sports. There will be a lot of great nights, but they won’t all be great anymore.
The pessimist and the optimist are both right. Verlander’s done and Verlander’s fine. There’s no magic fix this time, but there doesn’t need to be. Nothing that good lasts forever.
How Was The Game? (May 29, 2014)
An escape.
Tigers 5, A’s 4
Rick Porcello (10 GS, 63 ⅔ IP, 3.82 ERA, 3.91 FIP, 1.0 fWAR) didn’t have a typical Porcello day. Sure he only allowed 2 runs in 5.2 innings, which fits the mold, but he walked six and hit one, which is very much not his style. The stuff was pretty good, but seemingly every pitch that needed to be a strike end up out of the zone. Luckily, some good fortune kept the runs at bay and the bays delivered. They scored one in the first, two in the fifth, and two in the seventh to support the effort from a variety of sources and they needed each, as Nathan allowed a pair in the 9th to make it too interesting. The win, when you think about it, actually earned them a split, even if it felt like they lose twelve times on Wednesday. They’ll take a clean slate to Seattle behind Justin Verlander (11 GS. 71 ⅓ IP, 4.04 ERA, 3.45 FIP, 1.6 fWAR) on Friday.
The Moment: Martinez adds some insurance with a two run double.
How Was The Game? (May 28, 2014)
Maybe the year’s best.
A’s 3, Tigers 1
Anibal Sanchez (8 GS, 43.1 IP, 2.49 ERA, 2.20 FIP, 1.5 fWAR) didn’t officially do it all on his own, but he needed very little help. A Torii Hunter blast and some defense from Rajai Davis was pretty much all he required to slay the A’s on Wednesday night, but the last two outs changed everything. Sanchez was classic Sanchez working all four pitches and dialing up above 95 mph more than a dozen times in 8.1 innings. He allowed three hits and a walk while striking out 9 en route to what was almost a beautifully played 1-0 win in Oakland. If you missed this one, it is definitely one to go back and take in as it was one of the best games of the year thanks to Sanchez and his counterpart, Scott Kazmir who was also very strong. Great pitching, solid defense, and a snappy pace. Then of course, the only reliever came in and ruined everything. After a misplay from Castellanos put runners on the corners, Nathan allowed a no doubt blast to Donaldson to turn this from a 1-0 win to a 3-1 lost. It’ll be Rick Porcello (9 GS, 58 IP, 3.88 ERA, 3.55 FIP, 1.1 fWAR) on Thursday going for the split.
The Moment: Sanchez carves them up all night and nearly goes the distance.
New English D Stat Calculators!
If you’re new to New English D this year, you might not be aware of this feature, so I thought I’d put out a quick reminder. If you haven’t been to our stat primer page, it offers tons of background on the advanced stats we use here and why they are better than the more traditional numbers. But built into four of those pages are calculators that you can play around with on your own. Fill out the boxes and you can get values for FIP, xFIP, wOBA, and WAR. I can build others if you’d like as well.
Enjoy and please report any problems. Be aware that they can take a few seconds to respond if many people are using them.
How Was The Game? (May 27, 2014)
Late, but great.
Tigers 6, A’s 5
Max Scherzer (11 GS, 72 IP, 3.00 ERA, 3.12 FIP, 1.7 fWAR) did that thing where he started poorly and then locked in. He allowed five runs, but got much better in the later innings and kept the team in the game long enough to register the tying run. The Tigers got going early in this one with Hunter, Cabrera, and both Martinezes combining for two in the first with Cabrera adding a homer, Avila knocking one in on a double, and Hunter tying it with a blast in the 7th. The tie game would not last as Davis pinch ran for Martinez who walked and advanced on a passed ball and steal before scoring on a fielder’s choice from Jackson. Joba did his job and Nathan did his with an assist from a tumbling Kinsler, sending the Tigers to a win, which was more than a sight for sore eyes. All of a sudden, the Tigers can secure a series split with Anibal Sanchez (7 GS, 35 IP, 2.83 ERA, 2.42 FIP, 1.1 fWAR) going Wednesday.
The Moment: Davis swipes third on a throw back to the pitcher.
New English D 