Brad Ausmus just signed a 2 year 7.5 mill contract. Times sure do change – he just came off a 2 year 4 mill contract. Unusual for a guy to get a RAISE from a new contract at age 36, hunh…Guess the market for FA catchers was kinda high. I didn’t expect it would take THAT much money to sign him, especially AFTER San Diego and Arizona had already acquired catchers.
I guess we coulda traded for the Rangers’ Gerald Laird, who Buck Showalter seems to hate for some reason, or signed Ramon Hernandez for 7 mill/ year for 4 years, but at least we didn’t sign Bengie Molina.
He had one of those infamous “contract years last year – was bettern he had been for several years, especially after the ASB.
Let’s take a look at some of his numbers: (data from Lee Sinins’ baseball encyclopedia, hardball times.com, the baseballcube.com, yahoo.com and espn.com)
Or we can look at his last few years RCAA (from Lee Sinins) remembering that most catchers are (-)
03: – 32 RCAA
04: -24 RCAA
05: -14 RCAA
- well, you can see that he was never Mike Piazza with the bat.
Brad’s hitting at the Box was INCREDIBLY better this year than his past averages of .244/ .311/.337/.648. He has always hit lefties a LOT better and has always hit much better after the ASB (so much for catchers gettin all tired out…) I know that both Biggio and Adam Everett have become extreme pull hitters, aiming for those tempting Crawford Boxes, and I don’t have a nice distribution of where Brad’s hits landed, but I seem to remember that in August and September, seems he had a LOT more hits up the middle and to RF than I remember him hitting for years.
Lets look at a few other numbers:
Runs Created/Game: 4.0 (on the low side)
GIDP: 17/451 PA = 3.8%
51 BB: 48 K (now how many ML players have fewer Ks than BB? besides Barry Lamar?????)
Pitches/ PA: 3.7 (second on the team to Lance’s 3.9 – yeah Todd Self was first, with 4.4, but we threw him away…)
BB/PA: .115 (second highest on team next to Lance)
BA/RISP: .255 (second highest on team to Lance’s .260)
Win Shares?
15 total (5th, after Matheny, Barrett, LaRue and Schneider)
10.4 fielding WS (second)
4.5 batting (14th – like I said, he’s not Mike Piazza. Actually, he not even Jason LaRue…)
So what of next year? Is it possible that maybe Brad has learned to be a little better batter at age 36? Hey, old is NOT dead, as my Mama says… And JC Bradbury, who writes for Hardball Times, has a predictor statistic (now I am NOT smart enough to compare it to all the other predictor tools, like PECOTA and ZIPS, etc, so please don’t ask me why I chose this one, other than I happen to like what his numbers show…)
Like PECOTA, it has a bell curve probability shape, with 0.687 OPS at the low 5th %ile end, 0.729 OPS as 50th %ile probability and 0.771 OPS at the predicted 95th %ile upper end. This is super neato cuz Brad hasn’t had an OPS of .729 since 2000.
And one of these days, I am gonna go through Roy-O, Astacio, Wandy and Backe’s starts to show yall that these guys had much better pitching scores with Ausmus catching than Chavez/Quintero.
By the way,
You DO know that Roger said he wouldn’t come back if Brad wasn’t here, right?????
Oh yeah – you wanna know why I called Brad a Clutch Hitter. Well, it’s because he scored the highest of anyone on our team on THT’s “clutch factor” (assuming I am right that the lowest negative number is best) which THT defines as
“Clutch” is the name we’ve given to the portion of Bill James’s Runs Created formula that includes the impact of a batter’s batting average with runners in scoring position and the number of home runs with runners on. The specific formula is Hits with RISP minus overall BA times at bats with RISP, plus HR with runners on minus (all HR/AB) times at bats with runners on. This stat is not a definitive description of “clutch hitting,” just one way of looking at it. “
Brad Ausmus = Mr. Clutch. Whoda thunk it??? (yall DO know that the all-time clutch hitter according to this formula is Garth Iorg, right???)
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB
Good analysis, Lisa. I’ve knocked Brad’s offense from time to time, but the fact is that his offense is average — not great, but not awful. Our problem is that we have the WORST BACKUP CATCHERS IN THE ENTIRE MAJOR LEAGUE. Check out this line:
PA H BB EBH HR AVG OBP SLG OPS
Backups 159 27 5 7 3 .176 .208 .261 .469
That’s not bad — it’s PATHETIC.
Roger Clemens OPS = .523, and he’s a 43-year-old freakin’ PITCHER who didn’t bat for 20 years in the AL.
Backe’s OPS is .626.
Keeping Ausmus is a risk; he’s a catcher, and catchers don’t age well. But he’s very smart, and he is still playing at a major league level offense-wise. And having watched him catch all year, he still has it defensively. His arm and move to second aren’t as good as they once were, but he’s saved many bases blocking balls, and he gives Roger, Lidge, and other pitchers the confidence to bury nasty splitters in the dirt, even with runners on third.
On balance, it’s fine to re-sign him. Expensive, but okay. However, we can’t count on him for as many games as he used to play, and we need a better backup. That had better be a priority. It’s not sexy, but it will make a big difference for us. And we also need it in case Brad goes down.
And while we’re on the topic of missing offense, the latest rumor has the ‘stros picking up Nomar for $6M-$8M to paly left field. I have one question for O Sorcerer Tim: Are you ****ing out of your mind?
Nomar hit for a .772 OPS.
That’s not bad, that’s pathetic.
It’s the fourth consecutive year his OPS has dropped.
Where is .772 among NL left fielders?
eleventh. out of twelve.
Only the hitting-challenged Pedro Feliz is worse, though at least he plays out here in an extreme pitcher’s park (SBC).
And among all qualified outfielders, Nomar is 24th out of 30. The only outfielders worse offensively are Burnitz, Wilkerson, Beltran, Feliz, Pierre, and the worst hitting OF in the entire league (by a long shot), WillyT.
And Nomar wants how much?
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Besides, his wife is way more fun to watch.
Too much money for somebody who can’t hit. I was fine with bringing him back at roughly the same salary, but with all of this team’s holes and needs, 2/$7.5M is too much money.
He can hit, but only in August :0