Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Down on the Farm: #44 Edward Concepcion

#44 Edward Concepcion, RHP. 6'3", 190 lbs. BD: 10/3/1988.

Low A: 1-1, 3.61, 52.1 IP, 36 BB, 62 K's, GO/AO= 1.50.

Concepcion has some of the best raw stuff in the system, but he's had a terrible time controlling it. He seemed to find a bit of a comfort zone in the bullpen for Augusta last year. He still walked a lot of batters, but the K's and a moderate GB tendency made compensated for the walks and he was a solid contributor. He throws 96 MPH heat and with a sharp breaking ball. He should move up to San Jose. His ceiling is probably a long/setup man out of the bullpen at MLB level. He's not exactly a young prospect anymore, but power bullpen guys often figure it out late.

24 comments:

  1. The fact that Concepcion has a nasty breaking ball tells me he may be able to make it as a set up guy or closer if he can get a little more control. Most hard throwing middle of the bullpen guys have crappy secondary pitches while most closers are able to find success by complimenting their blazing fastballs with a nasty out pitch.

    Russ Springer is a guy who I will always remember simply because on paper he threw mid 90's and supposedly had 3 other pitches but none of them were anywhere near major league quality. Felix Rodriguez was another who lived off his fastball and could never figure out how to throw anything else. Eventually the game catches up to these guys and when it does it isn't pretty.

    Just heard this morning that Matt Cain put his bay area home on the market. This is the kind of news that probably made Shankbone spit milk and cheerios out of his nostrils this morning. I don't particularly like being a drama mama but WTF Cainer!! Hopefully he is upgrading to a nicer neighborhood but if they don't sign him before the season starts I think it will be time to collectively start to panic.

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  2. OT: Justin Christian was DFAed today to free up a spot for Mota. One less competitor for the 25th man spot.

    Did you look at the house that Cain is selling? Not really that good looking and he made $7.3M last season and will make $15.3M in 2012. He can afford to move on up!

    I would not read anything into it, though it would have been nice if this broke out before media day on Friday and someone could have asked Cain about that.

    If I thought that he didn't have a good head on his shoulder, I think that the media's overhyping his potential salary would have swelled his head on what to expect in a contract. Verlander's contract is the right model for what Cain should get, plus a tick up for inflation. I think he knows that, I think the Giants know that, but negotiations is about seeing what each side is willing to give up and that takes time. I will start worrying, like you, if nothing is done by the time the season starts.

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  3. Relax, everybody! Matt Cain's house has been on the market of and on for over a year. It's listed at a loss and the "seller is very motivated." Translation: Cainer bought the house when he first got married and couldn't afford more. Then when he got a little more money he put a lot into spiffing up the interior. Then when he started making an 8 digit salary, he realized he was just throwing good money after bad, he could afford to take a loss on the house, and he and the missus went house hunting in a much nicer neighborhood.

    I am quite confident this has nothing to do with his contract negotiations.

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  4. I'm relaxed. The amount of money the Rainy Day is raking in makes it a no-brainer they want Cain to continue here and will make it happen. I am quite certain the rabid crowds show them the wisdom of keeping home grown insanely popular players.

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    1. I meant to say rabid crowds at fan fest. They are like rock stars. Couple the marketing aims of Baer & RDF with Cain being Sabean's crown jewel along with Timmy, this should just be a polite negotiation back and forth until something is done. I think Baggs is trying to inject some drama in it with his revelation about the extra year being cancelled before and Cain maybe wanting to see what happens with Timmy. If you take a step back and realize just how much money they have to work with coming up, its not going to be a problem to lock Cain up at all.

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  5. I'm sorry but Cain is no Verlander. If he is looking for a contract around what Verlander is making then he needs to find a new team. Jared Weaver is a closer comparison to what Cain's contract should be. I would love for you to try and argue otherwise OCG.

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    1. Pato I am too tired, have too many cheerios to clean up, and already have a bet going with you, or I'd jump in to defend The Tennessee Stud.

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    2. Well, my brain has not been the best sinceI picked up bronchitis. I recall Verlander getting 5 years, $85M. I would be happy if we get Cain for something in that ballpark. Do not recall what Weaver got. He may not be a Verlander, but I would be happy with a contract like that.

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    3. I don't know, Cain has 3.35 career ERA, Verlander 3.54 ERA, given higher offense in AL, that seems pretty much equivalent. More important to me, Cain has steadily improved each year and his last three years are roughly equivalent and Verlander just had his first season like that in 2011, so by that measure, Cain is better than Verlander.

      The only obvious area where Verlander is better than Cain is by wins. Is that really your litmus test today for a better pitcher?

      He's also better at striking out guys, so I'll give him that, but if you look at his BABIP, his 2011 stands out as much different from his other seasons by his very low BABIP that even the best pitchers cannot maintain that low, .237. Otherwise, for his career, he's right at the mean BABIP almost every pitcher regresses to, .298, so he's going to regress back to his very good, mid 3 ERA, most likely, unless he suddenly figured out a pitch that prevents hitters from getting hits in 2011, after 5 full seasons in the majors.

      Cain, on the other hand, has hit a lower plateau in performance the past three seasons, roughly 3 ERA, slightly below. His WAR is less than Verlander over those three years, but that is mostly because ALL saber measures of WAR assumes that Cain is lucky in his BABIP and will regress to .300, whereas in his 6 full seasons, his BABIP has touched .300 ONCE (2008) and mostly has been in the roughly .260's range, a full 40 points below the mean "everyone" regresses to. Based on recent seasons, that is roughly 25 less hits that he gives up than expected. If I could find a formula to use on how to calc pitching WAR, I would adjust, but to show the impact, in 2011 he gave up 177 hits, so the average pitcher would have given up 202 hits, in 816 AB. The batting average was .217 but would have been .248 for the average pitcher. That drops his OPS against a minimum of 62 points, and based on ISO, roughly reduced OPS 76 points, to .597 OPS.

      Now, 2011 was an outlier in that his HR given up was more than halved. That most likely won't repeat, but given his 2009-2010 performance, I don't expect a big regression in 2012, at worse to his great 2010 performance. Which is still better than what Verlander has been doing.

      Are you lovin' it Pato?

      Turns out Verlander got 5 years, $80M, it was Jered who got 5 years, $85M, but that covers his last arb year and 4 free agent years. Cain is in his first FA year in 2012. Verlander's covered two arb years, so neither is really apples to apples with Cain. Verlander is making $20M per year for his free agent years, Weaver climbs from $16M, $16M, $18M to $20M in his last season.

      Given that traditional stats understates Cain's value, yeah, Cain probably does not get Verlander's free agent yearly $20M, which at 5 years would be $100M, so that's his ceiling. Weaver's progression looks good for Cain, who is making $15M in 2012.

      So maybe $16M in 2013, $18M in 2014, $20M in 2015, 16, 17, for a total of $94M over 5 years. Maybe we can get a little home discount, so roughly $90M over 5 years, or roughly $18M average. That sounds fair to me for Cain and roughly the same as either Weaver or Verlander in total amount, given inflation, though really different because his covers only free agent years.

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  6. Good point. I ran my mouth there without checking facts which almost never happens! If that is all verlander signed for then I am fine with a similar contract for cain but talent wise Verlander is better then cain. Timmy might be a better comparison but doubt we can keep him for anywhere near that cheap. Weaver was around 75 over 5 i think but could be way off. This does bring up a good point though, why do we have to pay top dollar to keep our talent around when guys like verlander are signing friendly contracts to play in frickin detroit when we have a pitchers ballpark and the best place in the world to live! I can see having to overpay for hitters to play here but our own homegrown pitchers who are beloved here are basically trying to stick it to ownership if they want them to srick around.

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  7. Many of my opinion are based on the eye test and verlander is just more dominant then cain. I am a sucker for velocity and I remember when verlander pitched his first no no, his final pitch in the 9th was 98 mph. I also play a lot of fantasy baseball and that tends to influence me as well. That may not be the best way to pass judgement but there is definitely a correlation between the best fantasy players and how they are valued in real life with their salaries. OGC, I should have known better then to challenge you, I wouldnt doubt it if you were able to dig up stats that prove the earth is flat.

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  8. I never bother defending OGC for anything, even on MCC. Exhibit A up above.

    BTW OGC - they are doing the adopt-a-giant draft next week. I think you've posted within the last year on there so Adrianza is safe for you. Fla-Giant had a rules proposal and mentioned luring you back, it made me laugh. Check it out if you want.

    I am going to stop bashing MCC (well, OK maybe I'll get some sly digs in here and there) because I enjoy the prospect discussions an awful lot. I view participating in this adopt-a-giant process as giving up my outsider status a bit. I'm sure I'm viewed as suspect bringing in all that shiny optimism.

    Pato - Fact checks are easy on cots contracts! Weaver is 5/85, through 2016 and he has a full no-trade.
    Verlander is 5/80, through 2014. His was signed to avoid arbitration.

    Cain at 5/95 would be very fair to both sides. I'm crazy, I'd go to 6/120 easily. That's why I'm not a GM. Come on, have some appreciation for how hard this is. You have to negotiate against players you obviously really like and have high hopes for. This is all about talking an agent down from the moon. Bobby Evans, this beer is for you!

    Verlander obviously kills it on the eye test. Lets just remember Cain used to be a fireballer and settled down to PITCH. They use different methods to get similar results. I think I'm actually more confident in a guy who has the potential to push it up when he wants then a guy who is just sitting there the whole time, seems like more of an injury risk, the fireballer. But then again, Nolan Ryan lasted a long long time in the game and got to do advil commercials afterwards.

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    1. Thanks for the heads up. I've somehow, even though I don't go there frequently, end up somehow running across the annual adoption process by accident, and I was thinking that this year I would give up on that and not go looking for it, but the cosmos and kismet has spoken, so I will go looking for the sign up and keep my adoptee.

      Funny you mention Fla-Giants luring me back. I will have to check it out, thanks. I get the ha-ha jokes and stuff, and enjoy that, but sometimes it just gets hard to see 100 pages of jokes to get to the meaty discussion happening in the middle. Plus, I did not feel respected there, I provided a lot of content and research/time and would get bashed for one thing or another, and I know I'm not always right, so I like discussion, but some people go too far, and other times, I'm just dealing with an idiot and nobody would step in to agree with me. It just got tiring.

      It also got worse starting in 2007 when I was relatively positive about the future direction of the Giants, that the light was at the end of the tunnel, and I would just get bashed on for that, plus my support of Sabean's moves. And I admit asking for it sometimes, and I would bait the crowd with my comments, mostly because I was tired of defending myself, by myself.

      Maybe if Grant posted a mea culpa post, he said that I was just lucky in 2010, but I've been right about the Giants direction since 2007, or at least more right than anybody on MCC, I was alone on my island, so this is not a one-time thing. If he did that, I might consider going back, but I know that ain't happening (in his back-handed "apology" to me on my site, where he basically blamed me but he's "sorry", he openly asked for DrB to return, but, significantly, did not repeat the request to me).

      Or Goofus, I was actually more disappointed in him, because he was someone who would actually post somewhere "ogc, give me something positive" and if I could give it to him, I would. I thought maybe he would stand up for me in some of the battles, cause I thought that was why he asked for me, that he believed in what I had to say, but I can see now that he was just down and wanted a pep talk, but he really was of the regular crowd.

      But that's OK, I'm happy hanging out in this part of the ether, where I can have cogent conversations, share info, and not feel like I have two heads, like I'm Don Quixote, like I'm the only guy in the plane to see the thing on the wing. Life is good here.

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    2. Well, I've replied to your post on MCC. I wonder if the people there will realize that I'm joking with you or not, at the beginning.

      I miss the prospects discussions there, FLA-Giants does have a lot of good stuff there, I just forget to check back for his posts. Maybe this season... But DrB noted him before and I just keep on forgetting.

      But I generally get sucked into a long useless post when I go there, there is just so much wrong thinking there. :^)

      Honestly, I was shooting from the hip myself regarding Verlander vs. Cain. I wasn't thinking of them being equivalent, I just was saying that I wanted Cain to have a similar contract, or what I thought, 5 years, $85M plus inflation.

      But his comment got me thinking, and even if it turned out the other way, I would have still wrote up something, I don't need to be right on everything (even when I didn't think I was making such a statement :^).

      And I think Nolan Ryan is the original Freak, the exception to the rule, most fireballers end up blowing up their arms, only freaks can pitch effectively almost to 50 YO.

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    3. Chasing windmills is an activity that sometimes just has to happen. You're a good egg OGC.

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    4. Thanks Shankbone, I've always been harder on myself than most anyone else (except probably for my father), and because I look at all angles, I question myself all the time, and I do wonder if I'm a good egg or not, sometimes, and wonder if it is just me or what, because I have found myself to be a different thinker (like woman's lib and the environment in the 70's, to me, as I was growing up, there was no question those were the right things, I couldn't believe that it was even up for debate. Talk about a naive person :^).

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  9. Very true, I still take advil to this day because of Nolan. I don't even get headaches, I just take it thinking eventually my 78 mph fastball will turn into 102. The one thing about guys like Verlander is they can take the defense behind them out of the equation with all the K's and potential to dominate batters as opposed to counting on your defense to make all the plays behind you. It just kills me that Timmy and Cain are such shrewd negotiators because they have to know that the more money they get, the less their is to build a team around them. Zito is a couple of lockers away and they can't figure out that sometimes it's better to not be greedy or you might end up being the highest paid irrelevant player in the majors.

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    1. I don't view Cain as greedy. The money we are talking about are reasonable market value for Matt Cain. We can complain about him sticking it to the Giants AFTER such a contract is signed (or he leaves for big money), but unless the player has exhibited such behavior previously, I would not use that to characterize him. He's been very good to the Giants before in his two prior contracts, so I would not fault him for asking for market value now.

      I don't see what your problem is with Lincecum. He has done stuff that has never been done before (not that there weren't pitchers capable of that before the Cy Young award was created) and is still very good. It is his right to ask for market value, and using the rule of thumb on arb, his salaries have almost exactly been right around the $30M market rate, roughly. If he wants CC type money, I don't blame him, but I would cherish him even more if he, as you put it, understand that getting the big money could make the team weaker in the future. Some players get that, others don't, but I won't begrudge them asking for market rate.

      I understand loving the fireballer. My first was John "The Count" Montefusco, so I get that. But there are many different ways to get a hitter out, and while you don't want to rely solely on guile to pitch, I don't think Cain does. By not going all out on every pitch (remember, he had a tender elbow his first season with us), he can save his fastball for when he needs it, as I've read somewhere that he does that. And he does something with his pitches that causes the batters to make weak contact, resulting in a lot of easy popflies, that, while it puts the defense on the spot, is usually a pretty easy out (and sometimes automatically called out by the ump).

      That's why he's able to put up BABIP's significantly below the .300 mean that everyone is suppose to regress too. While it is not as ideal as a strikeout, among outs, the popfly is basically the same as a strikeout, just not as dramatic, but if you can appreciate the pitcher's craft that led to the batter popping out weakly, that can be as beautiful as a strikeout.

      I think that they get the Zito example. It has been brought up in a couple of interviews this off-season that I can recall, I know Krukow said something on that, and maybe also Rags too.

      And yeah, the love of strikeouts I think is intensified by Fantasy Baseball. But if you also look at all the studies on pitching, that is the most researched way to get hitters out consistently without giving up anything on the bases as well. That's also because of DIPS research.

      But as a great follow-up work done to examine DIPS found, while DIPS is an actual phenomenon, there were also pitchers who were able to generate a lot of good pitching without a blazing fastball, and crafty lefties were one category of that.

      But I think Cain is even rarer, the crafty righty who can both get the strikeout when he can, but otherwise tries to induce weak contact. That I have grown to love following Cain.

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    2. Very well said OGC. I have absolutely grown to love how Cain pitches. If you can induce weak contact you don't have to throw as many pitches and you can save you K's for big moments. Cain is still very much a strikeout pitcher, just not in a follow the numbers way. And the fact he gets all the Sabers in a frenzy is icing on the cake.

      If Krukow is to be believed, Timmy is profoundly effected by Zito's melancholy and is avoiding bigger expectations in part because of Zito's failed contract. Not sure I completely believe it, but I don't disbelieve it either. And I echo OGC's comments about the players - you can't call them greedy before a move, and you can't expect them not to want market rate for their services. This is professional sports. Now a hometown discount would bring down the house, but I don't even think the Giants need that. They can pay these guys, and will try their best to get that done.

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  10. Just to be clear, I said they were shrewd negotiators which they are. Greedy is what they will become if they end up fleecing us. Don't forget that Timmy's camp came back asking for 8 years after Sabes offered 4. Cain is truly an anomaly and I am more confident that he can continue to have success more so then Timmy and that is my big fear. Timmy had a few great seasons and has very gradually declined back down to earth somewhat. If I had to bet on one over the other it would be Cain to have the better long term overall career while Timmy was the brightest flame for his first few years. One more thing, Cain is a "pitcher" but one thing he does lack is a strikeout pitch. Although he may get his fair share of 1 and 2 pitch outs because of his ability to miss the sweet spot on the bat, he does go deep into counts once he has 2 strikes because he can't put guys away like he used to. None of his pitches are "go to" 2 strike pitches. If there was a stat that showed strikeout rates after getting 2 strikes on a batter I would be interested to see where Cain ranks because my guess is that he is in the bottom half of the league in putting batters away once he has gotten them to 2 strikes.

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    1. This is normal negotiations in business. One side asks for the moon, the other claims poverty. Then they hash it out and come to a compromise where both sides are happy but neither side (hopefully) is fleeced.

      I've always liked to cut to the chase and go with the fair offer/bid first, but as I've grown more experienced, I realize that negotiations is partly a game and if I start out near the middle, the other side will expect me to come midway (kind of like how most of the Giants arbitration deals end up at the mid-point between the two submitted numbers, roughly) and I would always end up paying too much and getting too little.

      Also, if Lincecum is as spooked by huge contracts like Zito's, the only reason then to ask for an 8 year contract, which is even more, would be to dissuade discussing a long term deal, just looking at it from a negotiating viewpoint.

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    2. Well, unfortunately, Baseball-Reference does not have a way to find who leads, but I can find the results by team and NL.

      For 0-2, in 2011, Cain was not as good as the league, his strikeout rate (per AB) was lower than the league and best team, and OPS was higher than the league and best team.

      For 1-2, his OPS was worse again than both, but his strikeout rate was better than league but slightly worse than best team.

      For 2-2, his OPS and strikeout rates were worse again.

      For 3-2, his OPS and strikeout rate were much better than league or best team. For the above, his OPS was off the league average but close. Here is the comparison for 3-2:

      NL Avg: .217/.446/.337/.782, 34.3% K/AB
      Best tm: .183/.407/.287/.694, 36.5% K/AB
      Cainer: .117/.370/.182/.552, 39.0% K/AB

      So, he does not appear to have a go-to strikeout pitch looking at his overall stats with 2 strikes, but when he really needed a strikeout, he was much better than league average AND best team in OPS and strikeout rate, which suggests that he does have a strikeout pitch when he needs it.

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  11. Cainer has always had trouble getting that 3'rd strike, but he's not exactly a slouch when it comes to K's. His K/9 has never been < 7. Last year he was at 7.27 which ranked #39 amongst starting pitchers which puts him in about the top 25%.

    I do get a bit frustrated watching him pitch at times because if he had a decent putaway pitch, he could probably put up K/9 in double digits because he gets to 2 strikes on so many batters so quickly.

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