Great News

David Eckstein has re-upped with the Padres for 2010, meaning the Twins will be unable to pursue him in the offseason. Given Ron Gardenhire's inexplicable (but also unsurprising) love for the diminuitive, light-hitting middle infielder and Orlando Cabrera's impending free agency, that allows me to breath a sigh of relief.

Taking One For the Team

In 1887, baseball began officially recording the hit by pitch as a statistic. The all time leader in hit by pitches, Hughie Jennings, started his career 4 years later and compiled 287 over his career of 5639 plate appearances (Jennings also leads the all time list of HBP/PA, minimum 1000 PAs, by a very wide margin). Over 100 years later, Braves and Red Sox second baseman Mark Lemke put together a solid 11 year career with 3664 trips to the plate without ever once being a hit by pitch. At the same time, Craig Biggio was in the midst of a 20 year career in which he fell just 2 hit by pitches short of Jennings's record, but in over twice as many plate appearances. How can players vary so much in this category, when there is seemingly no skill involved in being hit? This question seems especially important considering that hit by pitches positively impact a player's on base percentages, one of the most important statistics that we look at today. Consider that if Mark Lemke had been hit as often as Craig Biggio, his career OBP would have been around 23 points higher (.340 instead of .317). Or if he had been hit as often as Jennings, his career OBP would have been all the way up around .368! Why should Jennings and Biggio get so much credit for something that they don't control, while Lemke is stuck with a below average .317 career OBP? The answer is that maybe there is some link between a player and his HBP rate.

In order to test this, I split up all active players' careers into odd and even seasons, odd seasons being the player's 1st seasons, 3rd season, and so on and even seasons being the opposite. I used only players with at least 2000 plate appearances in both odd and even seasons and compared their hit by pitch percentage (HBP/PA*100) in odd and even seasons. If hit by pitch is just a random occurence regardless of batter, there should be no correlation between a player's odd and even HBP percentage. The results of the 71 players in the data set paint a clearly different picture:

There is an obvious relationship here between the odd and even HBP percentage. Garret Anderson has the lowest HBP rate of all players with at least 8000 career plate appearances, having been hit just 6 times in his 16 year career, including only twice over the past 11 seasons. He has been hit 3 times in 4328 odd PAs (0.069%) and 3 times in 4441 even PAs (0.068%). On the other side of the coin, David Eckstein has the highest HBP percentage (2.66) in this group, and both his odd and even HBP % are higher than any other player's odd or even HBP %. There are no players in the data set with half of an Eckstein career and half of a Garret Anderson career, and the points form a linear pattern. The slope estimate for the regression line is near 1, as it should be if getting hit by a pitch is some sort of repeatable skill; a 1 percentage point in even HBP % should correspond with approximately a 1 percentage point increase in odd HBP %.

The next question to consider is whether this correlation is due to actual skill by the player, or some other factor outside the player's control. Note that skill in this case does not mean ability to move into the way of the pitch. More accurately, it means having certain abilities or traits that increase the likelihood of getting hit by a pitch. Maybe Garret Anderson can't handle the outside pitch, for instance, so pitchers usually try to hit the outside corner, thus decreasing the chance that he gets hit. David Eckstein might have an unusual willingness to let a pitch hit him and Jose Guillen (2nd of the 71 players in HBP rate) might just be such a nasty guy that pitchers like to throw at him. Or, in what I thought was the most likely case before I started this research, good hitters are more likely to get hit simply because they are more likely to get on base, so the pitcher is not worried as much about hitting them. That would not explain why Eckstein, career .658 OPS, tops the list, but I checked for relationships between HBP percentage and batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, and weighted on base average.

As you can see, there is no relationship between HBP percentage and batting average. There are slight positive relationships between SLG, OBP, wOBA and HBP percentage, with R-squareds ranging from 0.6 to 1.7, but they are not statistically significant. Therefore, though on some level batters may tend to be hit more if they hit more home runs or walk more, that only explains a very small amount of the variation in HBP %. Another thought that occurred to me was that, with the hit by pitch being a relatively rare occurrence, perhaps all the variation in HBP % was due to the fact that the sample size for individual players was not large enough. This would be shown by the convergence of HBP % as plate appearances increased.

I'll spare you the statistical details, but a convergence like the one we were looking for would show up as a negative association here between the residuals and total plate appearances. That is, the graph above would show a decreasing pattern, but instead there is no statistically significant relationship between the residuals and plate appearances. Thus, the variation in HBP % is not the result of a sample size that is too small.

That leaves us with seemingly one conclusion: getting hit by a pitch is the result of skill, whether it is the inability to hit the inside pitch, a willingness to take one for the team, or even a personality that rubs the pitcher the wrong way. However, despite the strong evidence in support of this conclusion, there are other factors that have not been controlled for, such as the quality of other hitters on the team or pitchers that are generally faced with the uneven schedule. Nonetheless, all the evidence points to the fact that there is something that a hitter controls about getting plunked, and thus the statistic belongs as a component of on base percentage.


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In need of some relief

Actually, before I take a look at the relief pitchers that are options for the Twins I want to address another person the Twins may be targeting at middle infield: David Eckstein. To be brief, this would be a pointless move that wouldn't improve the team at all. At the plate, he's essentially Nick Punto if he consistently played like his 2008 version (see below), and that's not necessarily a bad thing for a shortstop/second baseman. Unfortunately, Eckstein's defense has eroded to the point where he can no longer play shortstop effectively (and he hasn't played there this year). At 34 years old, that's not surprising. At second base, his defense has been below average, but not horrible, in relatively few innings (~850) the last two years. Punto, meanwhile, has rated above average to good at second over the last two seasons.


That, combined with his weak hitting this year and low upside, makes for an unappealing trade target. He could be a very slight upgrade over Nick Punto if everything works out right, but that's unlikely, especially considering he just came off the disabled list yesterday. I think the last thing the Twins need is another scrappy, light-hitting middle infielder for Gardy to be infatuated with.


On to the real topic now. Yesterday I mentioned a few relief pitchers the Twins have been linked to, and I'd like to run through an expanded list: Sean White (SEA); John Grabow (PIT); Michael Wuertz (OAK); Jason Frasor, Scott Downs, and Brandon League (TOR); and George Sherrill (BAL). It's rumored that the Twins are trying to address both their middle infield and bullpen needs in one trade--Sherrill and White are the two that don't fit that bill. Personally, I don't think they should bother trying to do that if a deal for Sanchez like the one I looked at yesterday is on the table. I'd just take that and worry about a reliever separately.

Sean White is an uninspiring choice, with a nearly even strikeout-to-walk ratio (21:20) and more of the same on his minor league track record (52:43 in 125 AAA innings in 2008). He does induce a lot of ground balls and gives up limited home runs, but he's not the late-inning option the Twins need.

John Grabow is a southpaw who fares only slightly better against fellow lefties than he does against righties. He strikes out more batters than White but also hands out more walks. His WHIP is pretty high (1.57, 1.46 career) and his FIP is 4.47 despite a significantly lower HR/FB% than any other season of his career. So, while I'd like him more than White, he's not that great of an option.

Michael Wuertz has been very good this year, and presents a pretty good option. He's struck out 64 batters in 48.1 innings against just 13 walks. His 3.17 ERA is actually worse than his 2.56 FIP, which he's accumulated with a HR rate right in line with his career average. I believe he still has another year of arbitration, meaning he'd be around in 2010 too. Between all of that, though, the A's may be asking for a lot for Wuertz.

The Blue Jays have a nice trio of relievers in Jason Frasor, Brandon League, and Scott Downs. All 3 would be nice additions, as they all strike out about a batter an inning and have a walk rate around 2.5 per nine innings. Downs is owed the remainder of $3.5 million this year and $4.0 million in 2010, Frasor is in his last year of arbitration and will be a free agent, and League still has another year of arbitration. Downs' contract makes the lefty a little less desirable, but it also means he might come cheaper in a trade.

George Sherrill is another solid option. While I don't like him quite as much as Wuertz and the Toronto relievers, he would be a good addition to the bullpen. His walk and strikeout rates are similar to the Blue Jays corps, but he's an extreme fly ball pitcher (50.6 % fly balls) who gives up very few home runs (0.77/9). Even though he's managed to do this throughout his career, I still don't like counting on those odds.

So, overall, it's hard to determine who's best to trade for when you don't really know what the Twins would have to give up. If you consider recent trades as a baseline, perhaps you can get some idea. The Rockies just traded high-A pitcher Connor Graham to the Indians for reliever Rafael Betancourt. While he's a righty, he's otherwise pretty similar to Scott Downs, since Betancourt has a club option for $5.4 million next year. Graham is a 23-year-old who's pitching pretty well (9.75 K/9, .231 BAA, 2.96 FIP), but walks too many (4.59/9) and perhaps has been aided by a really low HR rate (0.22/9). He did, however, have a rate of 0.18 for 2008, so maybe it's not a fluke.

Perhaps that's someone like David Bromberg? If so, the question becomes are you willing to part with Bromberg for Downs this year and next at the aforementioned price. I'm not sure, and that's why I feel like the trade discussed yesterday is a better bet. But I suppose it's possible the Twins could make two trades--we'll just have to wait and see.