A Disaster

Here is how I was guessing/projecting right field and the starting pitchers would shape up for 2013 before the Shields/Myers trade:

	PA	wOBA	WAR
Wil Myers	407	0.330	1.2
Jeff Francoeur	192	0.310	0.2
	IP	ERA	WAR
J. Guthrie	180	4.00	1.0
Ervin Santana	180	4.50	-0.1
Luis Mendoza	110	4.30	0.2
Jake Odorizzi	110	4.30	0.2
Bruce Chen	110	4.50	0.0
L. Hochevar	100	5.40	-1.0
Felipe Paulino	70	4.20	0.2
Danny Duffy	70	4.20	0.2
			2.1 total

And here are my guesses after the trade:

	PA	wOBA	WAR
Jeff Francoeur	590	0.310	0.7
x	40	0.315	0.1
	IP	ERA	WAR
James Shields	200	3.60	2.2
J. Guthrie	180	4.00	1.0
Ervin Santana	170	4.50	-0.1
Wade Davis	140	4.45	0.0
Bruce Chen	80	4.50	0.0
Felipe Paulino	60	4.20	0.2
Danny Duffy	60	4.20	0.2
Luis Mendoza	40	4.30	0.1
L. Hochevar	54	5.40	-0.5
			3.9 total

So that's a +1.8 win difference, but the increase in innings pitched by the starters decreases my prediction for bullpen WAR by -.5 for a grand total of +1.3 wins in 2013. My best guess is that the trade improved the Royals from roughly 80 wins to 81. If the Royals somehow figured they were sitting closer to 86-90 wins, a one win improvement would be significant since it could make the difference in winning the division. If my guess is closer to the truth, such a marginal improvement is meaningless. That's saying nothing of the 2015—2018 seasons after Shields's contract is up and Wil Myers is in his prime in Tampa Bay.

My knee jerk reaction to the trade was that it was terrible. After mulling it over for a day and trying to find the positives, I still think it was a disaster. I hope I'm wrong.

The Greatest WAR Seasons and MVPs

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I whipped up the below chart of the 24 seasons in which a position player has put up 10.5+ rWAR since 1900 and how they fared in the MVP voting. Mike Trout is just the third player to put up that much rWAR but lose in an MVP vote. In five of the seasons, there were no MVP awards. And three times Babe Ruth had a 10.5+ rWAR season but was ineligible to win the MVP thanks to a bizarre rule at the time that players could only win one MVP award in their career.

Interesting that Willie Mays's 1964 is valued the same as Trout's 2012 and Mays finished all the way down at sixth in the voting. Obviously WAR wasn't a thing in 1964, but Mays did lead the NL with 47 homers. His 16th place finish in batting average may have done him in. Ken Boyer took the prize with a pedestrian-for-an-MVP 5.8 rWAR.

Rogers Hornsby's 12.0 rWAR in 1924 is the biggest rWAR season to lose an MVP vote. Hornsby hit .424/.507/.696 with a 222 OPS+, but he did lose the MVP to Dazzy Vance's historically great rWAR season of his own. Vance had a 2.16 ERA (174 ERA+) and 262 strikeouts, a total that almost doubled the second place finisher's strikeout tally.

So, if rWAR was the only factor—and I, like everyone else in the world, don't think it should be—Mays not winning the MVP in 1964 may have been the biggest miss among these 24 seasons. Trout losing in 2012 would be the second.

Alex Gordon 2012 Defense Highlights

Alex Gordon's all-around game has been the best part of Royals baseball for the past two seasons. In addition to a great combination of on-base skills and pop with the bat, he has turned himself into the best defensive left fielder in the game. His 2012 glove work has been recognized with a second straight Gold Glove and as the unanimous choice for the Fielding Bible Award. In honor of another stellar year by Our Alex, here are all the defensive highlights MLB.com has for him in 2012:

many more after the jump

2010–2012 fWAR All-Stars

Here's what the ideal 25 man roster might look like going by Fangraphs WAR put up over the last three seasons. I love that Miguel Cabrera has the highest fWAR in the majors over that stretch.

• 2008–2010 fWAR All-Stars

• 2009–2011 fWAR All-Stars

2012 Royals In Review

 It was a bad year. Good night folks!

The starting pitchers seem to get the lion's share of the blame for the Royals poor record, but the offense was equally at fault. Combine the starters and relievers performance as measured by win probability added, and the arms come out looking a whole lot better than the bats:

But, yes, the starters were a problem. Here's how stark the difference was between the starters and relievers by WPA:

Notice that the hitters and starters come out with almost the exact same win probability added.

While that is a huge spread between the starters and relievers, it's not that unusual. Three AL teams had a larger difference in WPA between their relievers and starters (Twins, Orioles, and Indians). (Only the Tigers, Angels, and White Sox starters posted more WPA than their bullpens. Only the Mariners and Angels bullpens had negative WPA.)

The bullpen was only fifth in the AL in WPA, but they led the loop in fWAR. Part of that comes from being used so much thanks to the weak rotation. The bullpen was only fifth in K% and ninth in BB%, but limited homers better than any other AL 'pen. Their 7.3 fWAR was the highest in team history and resulted in the fourth time the Royals bullpen has led the league in fWAR:

As for the rotation, they posted the fourth worst adjusted FIP in team history with an even worse adjusted ERA:

Maybe the less said about the rotation the better.

The offense was fourth in the AL in batting average and stole bases pretty well but struggled to score runs. If this were the 1970s or prior, that might be confusing, but of course the Royals were bad in the areas that actually correlate to scoring runs: Getting on base and hitting for power.

This chart shows the team rank in various offensive categories (I've explained or linked to explanations of some of the stats in the caption):

ISO, wOBA, wRC+, BsR=base-running of the non stealing variety, SBr = (.2 x SB)+(-.4 x CS), WPA

It's kind of amazing they had the lowest homerun, walk, and strikeout rates. They loved to put the ball in play. If it's true that former hitting coach Kevin Seitzer's philosophy focused on hitting for average, I'm glad they let him go. It's ironic considering Seitzer was one of the best on-base guys in team history as a player.

Here's a similar chart for the pitchers:

ERA-, FIP-, xFIP-, OPS=opponents OPS, WPA, QS=percentage of games with a quality start, GmSc=game score average

A not great but not terrible K rate, a terrible walk rate, and a good home runs against rate led to a middle of the pack FIP but only a tenth place finish in runs allowed.

Moving on to the confusing world of defense:

"Eff" is defensive efficiency, which is a simple measure of what percentage of balls in play the defense turned into outs. The Royals were at 68.9%, worst in the AL. The fact that UZR and DRS rate the Royals a little better suggested to me that spacious Kauffman Stadium suppresses defensive efficiency. Except Baseball Prospectus has a park adjusted defensive efficiency...and the Royals are still last. So the Royals were at best mediocre on defense and possibly really terrible. I felt good whenever a ball was hit to the left side of the field and nervous when it was hit to the right side.

The end!

Baseball Bloggers Alliance AL Awards Ballot

Baseball! Bloggers! Awards! This is the first year I am participating in the Baseball Bloggers Alliance awards voting. I've spent way too much time poring over the numbers trying to make my picks. My number ones were not difficult, but the second and third spots drove me crazy for some reason.

Stan Musial Award (MVP)

1. Mike Trout
2. Miguel Cabrera
3. Robinson Cano

For all the controversy over Trout v. Cabrera, this is an easy one for me. Cabrera had a great year...and Trout was significantly better. Cabrera was the better hitter by only the slightest of margins, and Trout ran the bases like Rickey and fielded like Willie.

Walter Johnson Award (Pitcher)

1. Justin Verlander
2. David Price
3. Felix Hernandez

Price had a slight edge in raw ERA to Verlander, but when park adjusted, Verlander comes out ahead. Add to that better fielder-independent numbers for Verlander, plus his league-leading innings pitched, and Verlander is the easy choice. The ordering of Price and Hernandez could go either way, but I liked Price's consistency. He had a quality start a league-leading 81% of the time he took the mound.

Goose Gossage Award (Reliever)

1. Fernando Rodney
2. Jake McGee
3. Jim Johnson

So, I'd never heard of Jake McGee when I started looking at AL relievers. McGee was apparently used as Tampa Bay's "fireman" this year, which I love. The lefty struck out 34% of the batters he faced and only walked 5%. Jim Johnson doesn't have impressive strikeout totals, but he did lead the league in both saves and shutdowns, while only "melting down" three times.

Willie Mays Award (Rookie)

1. Mike Trout
2. Yu Darvish
3. Jarrod Parker

Connie Mack Award (Manager)

1. Buck Showalter
2. Bob Melvin

I really don't know how to go about picking managers other than from teams that outperform their "on-paper" expectations. The O's and A's certainly epitomized that this year.

2012 Royals Pitcher wOBA & WPA Records

wOBA Against

.251 Francisley Bueno

.269 Aaron Crow

.280 Kelvin Herrera

.281 Jeremy Guthrie

.288 Greg Holland

.292 Felipe Paulino

.302 Jose Mijares

.302 Tim Collins

.308 Jonathan Broxton

.326 Louis Coleman

.332 Luis Mendoza

.334 Nate Adcock

.341 Danny Duffy

.347 Bruce Chen

.350 Vin Mazzaro

.351 Luke Hochevar

.352 Everett Teaford

.364 Will Smith

.376 Jeremy Jeffress

.400 Jonathan Sanchez

wOBA = ((.688 x BB) + (.719 x HBP) + (.88 x 1B) + (1.251 x 2B) + (1.585 x 3B) + (2.048 x HR))/PA

minimum 50 batters faced; average wOBA for 2012 was .315

WPA Records

Jeremy Guthrie 9-5

Felipe Paulino 4-3

Vin Mazzaro 3-3

Danny Duffy 3-3

Luis Mendoza 12-13

Bruce Chen 14-20

Everett Teaford 2-3

Luke Hochevar 11-21

Jonathan Sanchez 4-8

Will Smith 5-11

team total: 68-94

a "win" is a start with a positive win probability added