Rays Colored Glasses » MLB

Were new Rays reliever Josh Leuke’s struggles in 2011 purely a fluke?

Robbie Knopf — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 04:19:13 +0000

Hi. I’m Robbie Knopf and I’m a new writer here at Rays Colored Glasses. I’m bringing a different dimension to RCG: sabermetrics. My specialty is sabermetrics and Pitch F/X analysis, and I’ll use those as just another avenue to analyze the Rays and attempt to make sense of the complicated game of baseball. I hope you all enjoy my writing, and I’ll attempt to explain all the different stats as we go along.

The other day, the Rays made their first trade of the offseason, trading catcher John Jaso to the Seattle Mariners in exchanged for troubled right-handed reliever Josh Lueke. Both players were downright awful at least at first glance in 2011, with Jaso hitting just .224 with just a .298 OBP, and Leuke posted a 6.06 ERA. But Lueke has a lot more potential to be great than Jaso, and that was evident even from his 2011 stats.

He posted an 8.0 K/9 (strikeouts per 9 innings ratio), a 3.6 BB/9 (walks per 9 innings ratio), and a 0.6 HR/9 (home runs allowed per 9 innings ratio) in 25 major league relief appearances and 32.2 IP (innings pitched), which amounts to a much better 3.24 FIP. (FIP is Fielding Independent Pitching, a formula that uses strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed in order to find a “true ERA”, the ERA that a pitcher would put up with average defense and average luck. The MLB average was 4.03 in 2011, just a bit higher than the league ERA of 3.94.) After being sent back down to the minors at the end of April and returning in late July, his FIP improved to 2.90 in his 17 relief appearances as he posted a 3.43 ERA. And those FIP’s seem to be no fluke. Lueke throws a fastball in the mid-90′s along with a nice splitter and two breaking balls, a curveball and a slider. Lueke, who will be 27 on December 5th, has the potential to be a valuable late-inning reliever for the Rays. But there’s one obvious thing holding him back.

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Awards week recap

Devon Rogers — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 13:00:11 +0000

As I mentioned earlier this week, this is the awards week for the Baseball Writers Association of America. The Rays did pretty well this year, taking away two of the three American League awards and collecting a third place in the third. Now, the MVP has not been announced yet, but no Rays have any chance to place near the top.

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Balanced schedule means less Yankees, Red Sox for Rays

Devon Rogers — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:15 +0000

As I mentioned earlier today, the MLB made some big decisions for the future of the league today, voting on two of the bigger points of the new collective bargaining agreement, expected to be announced in the near future. One of them was the movement of the Astros to the American League West from the National League Central.

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