Loose End and the Big Finish

We've addressed the players from whom I think we can reasonably expect "significant" (that is, double-digit VORP, or a whole win or more) improvement, and in the introduction, I touched on the fact that I didn't see a single player still on the roster whom I think will decrease by a significant amount. You can argue for Shin-Soo Choo or maybe a pitcher falling off a cliff, but generally speaking, I think:

a) Choo is a good bet to stay very valuable
b) Everyone else is "noise"

But let's address a few things explicitly:

Room for Improvement: Not Eric Wedge

First things first: let us not make global attributions about Eric Wedge the person. He is not an idiot. He is not a schmoe. I did not agree with every move Eric Wedge made, which puts him squarely in the 100% of other managers I have not agreed with at one point or another. He did some things well, and other things less well, and he has been both (IMO) undersold by passionate fans and oversold by front office types. Ultimately, a majority of what it means to be a good baseball manager is inaccessible to the public at large (managing personalities, talking behind closed doors, recognizing physical and mental state, etc.), and by most accounts Eric Wedge was pretty good at these hidden things.

This having been said, I did not spend most of 2007 concocting Completely False Statements for the Google Search Engine in order to get him fired as a frivolous exercise. (Go to www.TheClevelandFan.com and search for "Completely False Statement") There are many things that drove me crazy about Eric Wedge, including bullpen management, veteran playing time, and too much damn bunting. But there are two elements of Wedge-managed teams that are simply unavoidable:

1. Slow starts, especially falling behind in April
2. Underperforming the team's "Pythagorean Projection" consistently

Room for Improvement: David Huff

As I prepare this piece, David Huff finds himself in a battle for the #5 slot in the rotation with, of all people, Carlos Carrasco. This is surprising for three reasons:

1. Huff was arguably our number ONE starter last season, certainly no worse than #3, and led the team with 11 wins
2. This means Huff has been passed up by both Justin Masterson, who seems miscast as a starter, and Mitch Talbot, a guy widely considered by lay Tribe fans as a "settle-for" player in dealing Kelly Shoppach's Salary to Tampa Bay
3. It's CARLOS CARRASCO!

Room for Improvement: Andy Marte

This choice looked a lot more inspired in November when I was planning the series, but ... heck, I'll stick with it. We're coming down the home stretch of players I can legitimately claim have reasonable shots at double-digit VORP improvement, so we're talking about the tail of the curve anyway.

The other wrinkle here, of course, is that Andy Marte would get nearly 4 points of VORP improvement by moving to Australia or playing in Columbus. Andy Marte was really not very good last season, posting a sub-.300 OBP and generating a discouraging -3.9 VORP as a corner utility guy. Andy Marte may not have as much upside as he was once perceived to have, but conversely, Andy Marte is now ALL upside because it is hard to generate less value and still get 130+ PA unless you are Chris Gimenez, which, thankfully, he is not.

Now, the Indians brought in a number of futility infielders to Spring Training, including Mark Grudzielanek, Brian Bixler, and Anderson Hernandez, so it may be that Marte won't even break camp with the big leaguers. On the other hand, none of these men is particularly good at playing third base (Marte's natural position), and playing any of them at first base would be flat-out unfortunate. Marte's chances improve with Russ Windmill on the DL, because Marte would be the primary backup at first.

For now, let's say Marte gets a few shots here and there: he takes some reps at third, he gives Russ a day off against a lefty while LaPorta rests or plays left, he gets a couple shots at DH when Travis is tired, he gets some PAs when someone tweaks a hammy. Baseball Prospectus is projecting him for some 174 PAs, which sounds about right to me: either he'll be hot and get a few more or he'll be lousy and get a lot fewer, but unless LaPorta AND Peralta AND Branyan AND Hafner all have serious problems, there's kind of a hard ceiling on Marte's chances at 250 PA.

Room for Improvement: Justin Masterson

Here's a weird one: in looking to see if I was being too homerrific and overly optimistic about Justin Masterson, a huge young pitcher being converted back from the bullpen to the rotation, I found that Baseball Prospectus thinks I'm selling him short by a significant amount. Frankly, I'm going to stick to my guns here and go with the lower projection, because I have a point at the end of the series, and if there's some slack in it, perhaps Masterson can pick it up for me. You may want to go ahead and use BP's projection: they're more experienced and professional than I am. If I'm going to be wrong, I'd rather be pleasantly surprised.

One of the things lots of analysts will tell you is that teams often undervalue players who could help them more because they focus on what the player can't do instead of trying to leverage what they do well. Adam Dunn is an offensive force, but because he strikes out a lot, some teams would not touch him. You can be slow and be valuable. You can have a subpar fastball and be valuable. I have swallowed the mantra hook, line, and sinker, and believe that there is value in looking past a weakness to get to a strength.

That is, except when it comes to Justin Masterson.

Room for Improvement: Jhonny Peralta

Okay, this is it.

There are few players who have represented more points along the Fan Emotion Continuum than Jhonny Peralta. In his Age 23 season, Jhonny Peralta posted one of the best seasons EVER for a shortstop aged 24 or under, hitting .292/.366/.520 with 24 homers and playing adequate defense as a young shortstop. The next season, he collapsed to a .257/.323/.385 line with 13 homers and looked a lot less like a cornerstone player. Over the next two seasons, his SLG went back up in significant chunks ("He's getting better!"), but last season, collapsed ("He's turned into a newt!") to a career-low (discounting his Age 21 and 22 seasons, as they had fewer than 300 PA each) .375; his AVG of .254 and OBP of .316 were also the worst in his five years as a regular.

Put this all together, and Peralta's VORP of 3.7 last season was, by definition, barely above Replacement Level. That's awful. Now, I don't know if the Replacement Level is calibrated properly, because I have seen some godawful middle infielders come in as "replacements:" Mike Rouse, Tony Graffanino, Jorge Velandia, Josh Barfield ... Great Scott, there have been some batless wonders come through Cleveland in the past five years. I shudder to think what this team would do with a regular shortstop who hit the astounding .119/.200/.134 Rouse put up, only over 600 plate appearances.

It is one thing to give a 24-year-old a chance to prove a bad season was a temporary dip, a fluke, a gork whose importance can be minimized as part of the development process.

For Jhonny Peralta, this is it.

The Elephant in the Room: Offsetting the Losses

You may have noticed at this point that the Room for Improvement series has, to this point, been exclusively about how Indians players may reasonably be projected to provide MORE performance (as measured by VORP). This is hardly earth-shattering, given the title of the series, but you might get the impression that this is solely about the Indians having a better record in 2010 than they had in 2009. Of course, that's exactly what the series is about, so you should be congratulated for your keen impressionistic sense.

In case you're wondering, the series is only eight players long: I'm not going to try and chart players for whom I have no real confidence, may not play at all, or who can only be projected to make a marginal (if any) improvement. To this end, it's nice, in a sense, that I couldn't really identify an Indians player whom I thought clearly played "over his head" last season: the closest would be the top two offensive performers, Shin-Soo Shoo (53.5 VORP) and Asdrubal Cabrera (38.7 VORP). I don't expect either player to really launch himself into the Pujols-Mauer class of extraordinary player, but Choo's numbers are consistent with his minor-league track record plus three years of major-league development: a .300/.394/.489 is simultaneously quite good but also reasonably sustainable. He's always had good plate discipline, and even if he hits .280 instead of .300, he'll still likely post an OBP near .400, and his power has developed nicely. He hits lefties better than he did, and now that he has more PAs against southpaws, I expect that to at least be stable, if not improve. If anything, it may be that his 21:2 SB:CS is unsustainable, but even that speaks to a baserunning savvy that will serve Choo well in other aspects of the offense as well. (Man's got wheels.) Cabrera, on the other hand, is still only 24 years old, and back at his natural position of shortstop from Day One this season, should be able to post a similar season, which may have had a bit of elevation from the AVG but at leadoff will get more raw bases and should keep his VORP in range.

Room for Improvement: Matt LaPorta

Of course, this whole series was prepared before the Indians signed Russ Branyan and his Three True Outcome Machine to ostensibly play first base. See, the idea from my perspective is that LaPorta would play first, and Mike Brantley would play left, and then the only question would become when we could replace Brantley in left because, look, Mike Brantley can't actually hit. But hey. He can play D and got on base some and he's not entirely Trevor Crowe.

I think LaPorta fits in better at first base because that way, he isn't in left field. Okay, that's not entirely fair: LaPorta is not exactly Pete Incaviglia or Skates Smith out there, but ... look, he's a first baseman.

And so is Russ Branyan.

Now, once upon a time, Branyan was a THIRD baseman. Sure, he anodized his frying pan back in the day, then handed it down to Corey Smiff for safekeeping, sort of a lineage thing that lives on today with Wes Hodges' Cast Iron Special 3000, but he was not arrested for fraud while standing near the third base bag in actual professional baseball games. As far as I know. Baseball-reference.com is a bit incomplete on the matter. But the point is, Russ Branyan is a first baseman now. Let's put it this way: Jhonny Peralta is the third baseman, and has nothing to fear from Russ Branyan defensively. Neither does Wes Hodges. Let that sink in.

Room for Improvement: Raffy Perez

Well, that was a long layoff. This is an Indians blog, so we shan't be talking about the reasons for that, as they had nothing to do with the Cleveland Indians per se.

When I left off, I was looking at the players from whom we could reasonably expect (where "reasonably" is rather nebulously defined, but hey) improvement in 2010. I was surprised to find Grady Sizemore to be the player with the highest potential for raising his VORP, but at least he's an everyday player. The third-greatest potential comes from a guy who only pitched 48 innings in 2009 and probably won't pitch a whole lot more than that in 2010.

Now, you're probably wondering: how bad does a guy have to pitch to be considered a huge performance sink on an entire team in only forty-eight bloody innings? Well, how about this bad:

12.38 H/9
4.69 BB/9
1.90 WHIP
1.28 K/BB
7.31 ERA
-1.247 WXRL
-9.6 VORP

That's how bad. I mean, negative nine point six VORP. Trevor Crowe "hit" .235/.278/.333 for an EqA of .219 in 202 PA ... and "contributed" -4.5 VORP. Raffy Perez was worse than Trevor Crowe and Wyatt Toregas (-4.4 VORP) put together. Raffy Perez was so bad, he offset the positive contributions of Luis Valbuena (3.7 VORP), Jhonny Peralta (3.7 VORP), and Mike Brantley (1.7 VORP) ALL BY HIMSELF. Worse than Zach Jackaon (-4.3), Jess Todd (-3.4), and Scott Lewis (-1.2) put together. That, my friends, is some Serious Bad.

Room For Improvement: Fausto Carmona

Well, yeah. Pitchers, by VORP ascending:

Manny Parra, -23.9
Andy Sonnanstine, -20.1
Chien-Ming Wang, -18.7
Brad Lidge, -15.6
Fausto Carmona, -15.5

Now, Wang was injured and only made 9 starts, but packed a helluva lot of badness into those 9 starts. Brad Lidge you may have heard of. It's a bit amazing that Tampa kept letting Andy Sonnanstine wander out to the mound to post a 6.77 ERA and give up 11.83 H/9, but then, he WAS held to 18 starts.

Fausto got 24. Including right down to the wire, on Sept. 30.

Manny Parra, amazingly, went 11-11 for a bad Brewers club despite managing a 6.36 ERA. But Milwaukee doesn't have the deep well of outstanding young pitching that the Rays do: it makes sense that they'd keep trotting Parra out there. They had Jeff Suppan, Dave Bush, and Braden Looper in the rotation, fer crine out loud. In this sense, they were a lot like the Indians: what Carmona needed as much as anything else was bulk innings against major-league hitters, and once he came back from the Instructional League, the Tribe was clearly out of playoff contention, so what could it hurt? What, he's blocking Matt Ginter?

Room For Improvement: Grady Sizemore

In looking at the players for whom I can reasonably project significant improvement, I was fully expecting to come up with a pitcher in the #1 slot. In the #2 slot, I expected a pitcher. However, in the #3 slot, I figured it would be someone different, like perhaps a pitcher.

Really, it's hard to argue that the Indians should focus any of their attention on anything other than pitching. The pitching was atrocious last season. The starters (non-Cliff Lee Department) may have been awful, but at least they didn't throw enough innings to save the dismal bullpen. Think about this: of all the pitchers on the roster who weren't traded away for a bag of chicken livers, Aaron Laffey's 10.9 VORP was the highest. Really, this isn't bad for Laffey: he's still very young, missed some time with an injury, and posted a solid (if a bit lucky) 4.44 ERA. If you need 5 pitchers in your rotation, Aaron Laffey can absolutely be one of them. This isn't about Laffey: it's about the fact that Laffey is the most valuable pitcher on the team. That simply won't do.

Room for Improvement: Intro

This is my first post in the Brave New World, so bear with me here.

I don't think it's a statement of Great Earth-Shattering Controversy to say that the Cleveland Indians need to do a lot of things better to have a more successful season. The team lost 97 games, fer crine out loud. This was a bad baseball team. To say it needs to improve is kind of like saying, "Oxygen is helpful" or "Teletubbies are creepy." When you lose 97 games, improvement is necessary. No team loses 97 games solely through "bad breaks." They lose 97 games because there is a fair amount of suckage.

In Cleveland in 2009, this suckage took many forms, a majority of which took the guise of men throwing baseballs from the pitcher's mound. In an effort to quantify exactly where we as fans might reasonably expect improvement, though, I went to Baseball Prospectus' Team Audit for the Indians. The idea here is to identify players who can reasonably be expected to improve their VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) in 2010.