Back to the Future: Zito's Got a Brand New Old Delivery

As widely reported, Zito has a new delivery motion: Chron, Giants. He says that he is just returning to the style he used when he was in college - he didn't really get into what got him out of that style and no reporter was astute enough to ask such a question. And the reporters and Righetti are a bit leery about changing a motion that has been success for Zito during his career.

Or has it? According to saber-rules, Zito is a bit of an anomaly, because he walks too many and gives up too many homers and don't strike out nearly enough to make up for that. What he does do excellently, which in DIPS theory is the equivalent of the bumblebee, impossible to exist, is keep the hitter from getting good wood on the ball and thus not give up as many hits as regular pitchers do. And if anyone hasn't noticed, he hasn't been exactly Cy Young material after he won the trophy.

Smells Like Fastball Spirit

According to Zito, this motion will generate more power from his lower body and legs, and put less strain on his arm. The fear by Rags is that he will lose his hammer curve by making this change. The change in angle and how he positions his body and release point could make his curve less effective. Plus it is natural to fear leaving what was successful for something new, watching his new delivery make some other injury more likely and push him to the DL.

But to me, this sounds like he is switching his delivery to be more like pitchers who have experienced great longevity in not only their careers, but in performance at their highest levels: Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens. From what I understand about their pitching style, they are all "leg" men, deriving their power from their powerful legs. Both Ryan and Clemens pitched into their late 40's, still top pitchers, using this delivery style. Perhaps Boras, Zito's new agent, did some research and suggested this to Zito after seeing that he used to use that style in college.

The Teacher Learns From the Pupil-to-be

Or perhaps Zito started some research of the Giants wunderkinds, Cain and Lincecum, after he signed on with the Giants, to see where he can help them out, with tips and such. To be the leader, because he feels he should after signing the biggest contract ever given a pitcher. But then he looked at Lincecum's delivery and remembered that this was the type of delivery he used to use in college. Then he read about the benefits that Lincecum got from using such a delivery and how his arm doesn't need to be iced after games while being able to long throw the next day without apparent harm or tiring.

That's the first thought I had when I read about his new delivery, it sounds exactly like Lincecum's "unorthodox" delivery. So maybe he's going back to it, now that he's a better, more mature pitcher, able to utilize his breaking pitches better, but with this new delivery resulting in less wear on his arm while gaining velocity. That would help him fulfill his contract when all are saying that the Giants are crazy for giving him such a long contract and still allow him to pitch effectively.

In Any Case: More Better Gooder

Either way, imagine how much more effectively Zito can be if he can still throw his breaking pitches effectively while adding a few MPH to his fast ball? He used to be a strikeout pitcher when he was younger and, I suppose, his young arm could throw for more velocity to go with his curve ball, allowing him to strike out a lot more batters when he was younger. But as he has aged, he has lost velocity, resulting in less strikeouts. This could help him be that much more effective as a pitcher while gaining more longevity in the process.

At least, this is what I'm hoping. The scared fan in me fears that this will cause him to have some injury and be out. I have to say, though, that I admit the guts of someone who has been pretty successful to switch everything in order to improve himself, particularly after signing such a huge contract. Even if I weren't a Giants fan, I wish him the best in trying something 99.9999% of people would not dare try.

Much Ado About Nothing: Bonds Signs (again) and MLB Approves (and yet probably not so much)

For all you Chicken Littles out there worrying about Barry signing and about his being dropped off the 40 man roster on-line, sfgiants.com just announced that Barry is signed, sealed, delivered with the MLB's blessing (as far as contract language goes).

Of course, the MLB management probably wished that it didn't work out and they wouldn't have to worry about the maelstorm of negative publicity that Barry's chase of Aaron will create, but, heh heh, now they will. Officially, Selig has said that obliquely, that when and if Bonds hits 756, it will be handled like any other record that is broken. But there is no unamity in how broken records are treated, other than it appears to be different each time. I would bet on Selig not being around, but wouldn't totally blame him either.

Aaron vs. Da Commish

I read in the Merc (also discussed how other records were treated by the then current commissioner) about how Aaron was bummed that Bowie Kuhn dissed him by not showing up for his 715 HR feat, but my take is that he at least tried to be there but it was taking too long. He started attending every game starting at 710, though that perhaps was the problem, starting that soon, plus also he personally stopped that game for a ceremony for tying Ruth with 714 (which the Reds protested but then Kuhn threatened to suspend the Reds official on the spot, they relented; really, how could they protest, it was history!).

But the problem is that it is not like a hitting streak or a consecutive game streak, where you know where it may or may not happen. Aaron could have went on a horrible slump and not hit another homer for a month or something, what did he want Bowie to do, follow him religiously all around, like a lap dog, until he finally hits the history breaker? I don't know exactly what a baseball commissioner does, but I assume he must have some duties he has to attend to at some point, he just can't drop everything and follow one player across the country until he hits a homer.

I think Aaron was mainly mad because Kuhn didn't congratulate him for hitting 700 the season before, with a note or a call or anything, and that just fed the bad blood over 715. Again, it was history, so Kuhn had no excuse on that one, but for 715, he was there for a long while, from 710 to 714, but then he felt he had to attend another event.

Now, it was just a booster event, so that was a questionable decision to not attend the game that Aaron hit 715 (again history), when he was that close to the record, but at some point he should be allowed to do Commissioner type of duties, like meeting boosters, if it was planned ahead of time (which I don't know if it was or not, just saying).

Mainly, I see I'm sort of arguing against myself here, but I don't see why Aaron should be that put out. Kuhn was there from 710 to 714, he threatened suspension to the Reds for protesting against a ceremony commemorating the achievement, and finally decided to stop following Aaron because he thought he should start doing some Commissioner type of duties. I personally would not have blown off a chance to see 715 just to see some boosters (I would have blown off the boosters and rescheduled), but maybe the Indians needed all the help they could get to get paying fans, I don't know, so I am willing to give Kuhn a pass on this because he was there for a number of the homers (in case Aaron happened to achieve a multi-HR game) and finally decided he was playing groupie long enough and decided to skip a game (but it was at home in the Launching Pad, what was he thinking?!?). So I question the decision to skip, but respect that he had that right also. If Aaron didn't hit 715 in that game but did the next and Kuhn made the next game, we wouldn't even be having this discussion after 33 years, it would have been a non-issue.

Interesting Question: Ishikawa - Failed Prospect or Dodd Sucks?

What prompted me to write this post, besides the fact that Travis Ishikawa (and other Giants power hitters going to Connecticut) are, in my opinion, unfairly getting their potential downgraded due to poor performance there, is that I was recently looking at who was recently visiting my old blog, and every other search that brought the visitor to that blog was a search on "Travis Ishikawa". Not that there were that many, maybe 10 out of 20 over the weekend, and not all of them were from the State of Washington, Travis' home state, but it seemed like there is a great interest in him. It is not like there were many visitors looking for Matt Cain, EME, Valdez, Schierholtz, etc. info on that old site.

Ishikawa is not the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread or Will Clark

First off, some people seem to think that I think that Ishikawa is the best prospect around and that I really believe in him to be the second coming or something. This is an incorrect impression, to say the least. What it is, is that I believe he can be a good player for the Giants but people mistake my insistence that he is still a valid prospect for belief that he is a great prospect. But I do think that he is a good position prospect.

And in this era of Giants baseball, that is nothing to sneeze about, we probably haven't had a good one (that we drafted, so no Aurilia) since the days of Will the Thrill and Matty Williams. Not to say that I think Travis is in their company, not at all. He is more like Pedro Feliz except that he can take a walk, from what I can see thus far. And that has value, if Feliz could walk at Ishikawa's walk rate, he would be considered a good 3B, with OBP in the mid-300 to go with his high SLG and HR hitting, and OPS in the 800's.

The thing is, people have been writing him off as a prospect almost since his first season and I don't see any reason to, yet. For example, one so-called expert on the web wanted to release Ishikawa in early 2004, and still thinks he's a waste of time and money on the part of the Giants (ignoring, of course, that the amount of money and time spent on Ishikawa is a pittance compared to the Giants revenue stream and that there are no star 1B prospect being held back by Ishikawa being in our system). And this year Ishikawa's name is not among the Giants Top 10 list on all the lists I have seen, because of his poor 2006 season (or so people think, looking at the surface), though most still have him somewhere in the 11-20 spots. And given the Giants dearth of position prospects, I don't think we should write off someone who still has a lot of potential.

But He Can Still Be Valuable

Let me set the record straight now: I think Ishikawa is, at best, a low BA, high OBP, high HR, high K, type of hitter. He could be similar to another former Giants who made his name elsewhere, Rob Deer, except that he is a very good (maybe great) defensive 1B, whereas Deer was made for the DH era. He is not a sure thing. Ishikawa has severe flaws in his batting approach that causes him to strike out a heck of a lot, though it has also been developed and refined enough to walk a heck of a lot as well.

However, I still think that there is still a lot of value to a 1B who can play good to great defense at 1B and can hit homers and get walks by the bushelful. I said above that he's not like Matt Williams, but looking at Matty's career stat line - .268/.317/.489/.806 with 18.5 AB/HR - I now realize that this is not that far from what Ishikawa can do - career since power kicked in for Ishikawa is .259/.350/.466/.816 with 23.8 AB/HR (Matt Williams hit .282/.336/.513/.849 with 19.8 AB/HR in the minors).

From minors to majors, Matty's BA went down 14 points, OBP down 19 points, ISO down 10 points but HR improved 1.4 points. If Ishikawa performs similarly, .246/.330/.444/.774 with 22.2 AB/HR. Plus, here are their minors stats up to age 22:

Ishikawa: .255/.357/.430/.787 with 31.1 AB/HR
Williams: .265/.314/.444/.758 with 30.2 AB/HR

Williams busted out when 23 years old, in the minors, but didn't have a full good year in the majors until he was 24 years old. That would be Ishikawa's 2008 season, if he developed like Williams.

In addition, up to this age, the highest HR rate that Williams registered in a significant time with a minor league team in a season was 25.5 AB/HR, when he was 22 (he did hit well in the majors that season, in terms of AB/HR, in a short season but still a lot of ABs). Ishikawa already has 2 seasons better than that and, as I will soon show, 2006 should have been the third. Clearly, Ishikawa has better HR power than what Williams showed, up to age 22, plus took walks more as well. His main problem has been that he strikes out way too often, which Williams did not do as badly, his strikeout rate was OK.

Comparisons

I've written a lot on this elsewhere but others have not believed me when I say that Dodd Stadium kills HR hitting, so here are some facts to back me up. Before I used Ishikawa's data first and perhaps that blinded people to the team and league stats I also showed. So this time I'm only showing group, team, and league data to prove my point.

The data is compiled from the great site, minorleaguesplits.com. Unfortunately, the Defenders' team pitching splits was not available (page was missing) so I had to painstakingly copy each Defender pitcher's stats into a spreadsheet and calculate the team's pitching splits. And why not, it is paid subscribers like you all who keep this site going. Also unfortunately, there were a few pitchers whose data was not available, so the team splits are missing the data for: Quincy Foster, Derin McMains, Aaron Sisk, and Randy Walter (they are all position players anyway, so their stats would probably skew the dataset).

Comparison: Top Connecticut HR Hitters

First, the Defenders hitters who had 10 or more HR, had wildly different AB/HR rates, road vs. home. The foursome are Ishikawa, Schierholtz, Sisk, and Von Schell. On the road, the four of them had a great 25.6 AB/HR rate. Over a 500 AB campaign in the minors, that's a 20 HR season, which is pretty good for a prospect. However, put them at home and its a 41.6 AB/HR rate, or 12 HR in a 500 AB season. Quite a difference, nearly double. As we'll soon see, that's the pattern.

Comparison: Connecticut Hitters vs. Eastern League Hitters

Next, lets compare Connecticut hitters vs. the Eastern League in general. On the road, Connecticut hitters hit homers at a 47.5 AB/HR pace, which is right about the Eastern League average of 45.9 AB/HR. Both also were at about the same HR/FB rate: 8.4% for Connecticut, 8.8% for Eastern League hitters. But once you get to home, the Eastern League is still about the same but the Connecticut home hitting suffers greatly for HR: Eastern League averaged 43.6 AB/HR and 9.0% HR/FB (HR per Fly Ball), but Connecticut hitters only averaged 78.2 AB/HR and 5.9% HR/FB! So as you can see, on the road, Connecticut hitters were about the same as the Eastern League in general, but at home, they were horribly worse, at almost double the AB/HR rate and half the HR/FB rate.

Comparison: Connecticut Pitchers vs. Eastern League Pitchers

Looking at the pitching stats shows the same pattern again. On the road, Connecticut pitchers allowed homers at a 59.8 AB/HR pace or 0.6 HR/9, which is better than Eastern League pitchers who allowed homers at a 43.5 AB/HR pace or 0.8 HR/9. The HR/FB rate showed this slightly superior performance: 7.2% for Connecticut, 9.0% for Eastern League. However, at home, the Eastern League shows about the same rates but Connecticut is much better: Eastern League allowed homers at a 45.8 AB/HR pace or 0.7 HR/9 at home (8.8% HR/FB) whereas Connecticut allowed homers at a 83.8 AB/HR pace or 0.4 HR/9 at home (6.4% HR/FB).

Clearly, pitching at Dodd Stadium helps the pitchers greatly in terms of not allowing homers. At a 83.8 AB/HR pace, in 500 AB, a hitter would only get about 6 HR in a full season. At 45.8 AB/HR, that would be 11 HR. That would be almost double the number of homers in a season that would be given up by a pitcher pitching in the average Eastern League park instead of pitching in Dodd Stadium.

And that is the pattern we see with the hitters, the hitters would hit double the homers given the same number of ABs if they hit on the road versus hitting with Dodd as your home. So hopefully you can see why I believe that Dodd Stadium is horribly skewing the stats of most position players playing at Dodd (some actually do better at home, but clearly the vast majority of hitters suffer greatly hitting at Dodd). And hence why I believe that to proper assess the performance of any of our key hitters in Connecticut, you need to look solely at their road stats.

Closer to Travis Ishikawa's True 2006 Performance: Is It Real or Is It Dodd?

Of course, Ishikawa did not play a full season in Norwich either, so that brings into play the possibility that small samples skewed this road stats. But it is the only available performance data we have, so we have to use them. Plus, as you'll see, his road stats look a lot like his past seasons, so that makes it easier for me to accept that his road stats are representative of his skill level.

Here is a table showing his full season results for his career once he started hitting for power (I left out his 2004 brief stint in San Jose):



As one can plainly see, his road stats for 2006 matches quite well with his 2004 and 2005 seasonal stats. And his home stats show a great drop in both homerun frequency and walk frequency, most probably because pitchers were not afraid of him hitting a homer at home, so they grooved in more pitches into the strike zone, which resulted in less walks, more contact (and less strikeouts), but also much less homers.

Examining each metric, his BABIP is clearly very high for his career when he is not striking out(his BABIP was high prior to 2004). His Road BABIP for 2006 is clearly within the range for his career, while his Home BABIP is clearly not within his career stats, which is pretty much set after 3-4 seasons and most players BABIP stays near their career BABIP. At minimum, sabermetric theory says that his Home BABIP should regress higher towards his mean since it was so far off in 2006.

For BB%, he has always been very good at getting walks. His 11.8% Road BB% is right in range of his career stats (he walked a lot prior to 2004 as well). However, again, his Home BB% is outside the range he established thus far in his career.

For Contact%, which is the time when he makes contact and not strikeout, his Home and Road basically is equally on both side of his career norm for this metric. His overall percentage is basically the same as seasons before, so it does not appear that home or road (or at least not clearly appear) affects his strikeout rate, for better or worse.

BB/K is a ratio that some sabers say is a sign of whether a hitter will be good or bad hitter. With great hitters getting a ratio over 100%, and 50% as the minimum threshold, Travis hasn't been able to even meet the minimum, except for one season. He has clearly been bad from this aspect.

Lastly, and most importantly to me, his Road AB/HR is not that far away from his previous two seasons at 23.4 AB/HR. However, if you only saw Travis in Norwich, then yeah, you might not think much of him as a prospect, going from 19.6 AB/HR (about 25 HR in 500 AB) in 2005 all the way down to 45.7 AB/HR (about 11 HR in 500 AB) in 2006.

Giants Thoughts

The Giants should promote Travis to Fresno's AAA team so that he does not have to deal with Dodd anymore, particularly since ESPN screwed the team by filming in Dodd, preventing the team from resodding the field in a smaller configuration, which means that the Giants could not change the field to minimize any negative offensive aspects. Screw that ESPN!!!

It is clear to me that on the road, Ishikawa was still hitting the way he had in previous years and thus considered to have done a good job, whereas his home numbers clearly stunk and would be a flag of caution if this effect did not affect the whole team, both batters and pitchers, and by a very large margin (basically a doubling).

And it is not like he has any age advantage over the hitters or pitchers in AA. The average age there is 24.8 years for hitters with at least 295 AB (Ishikawa had 297 AB). Of these 79 hitters, only 10 of them were 22 years or younger - Ishikawa was one of those ten (FYI: Schierholtz was another of those ten and hit better than Ishikawa). And the average age for a pitcher there is 25.2 years, so he is much younger and less experienced than the pitchers in the Eastern League, as well, by a good three years on average.

Of the 10 young hitters, only one had an OPS over .800 and just barely at .833 - Travis had .801 OPS on the road. Still, overall, he had the 4th best OPS with a .719 OPS. Looking at homers, even with Dodd, Travis had the best AB/HR at 29.8, with the average AB/HR at 44.9 for the group of 22 year olds and younger. Obviously, without his home stats, he would have been head and shoulders above the other hitters in his age group.

In a hitter's league like the PCL, Ishikawa should be able to return to past performance levels relatively easily. However, the leap from minors to majors is usually fraught with failure, even for AAA hitters who hit pretty well, so even if he did well in Fresno, that does not mean that he'll ever become a major league hitter. As it is for most prospects, it is one step at a time.

And while many, if not most, fans and analysts think that Ishikawa took at step backward in his development in 2006, I believe that he continued showing the skills that he had shown before - patience in taking walks, tempered by his very high (and very poor) strikeout rate, but has 25+ HR power and plays great defense at 1B, according to some (sounds like JT Snow) - and should be promoted to AAA and away from Dodd Stadium, before it plays on his mind and on his confidence, and forces him to change his hitting mechanics to try to do better in that lousy stadium.

However, with Chad Santos still around and maybe even Lance Niekro, though I think we are out of options with him, I'm afraid the Giants might make Ishikawa repeat AA again instead of promoting him to AAA, just because we have other 1B in the system. I still like Lance, and he might in fact be a good platoon partner (one expert rates Travis as a platoon 1B) with Travis at 1B from 2008 on, but I would rather see Ishikawa get a chance to play in Fresno and risk losing Niekro than to see Ishikawa get hampered, or worse, get his confidence shakened, by playing in Norwich again. We don't have enough position prospects that we can screw around with even one with some potential and not hurt the farm system.