Will Justin Upton continue his assault on regional purveyors of fast food?
This edition of One Night Only contains:
1. Previews for four games, all featuring Flawless Information™ — that is, sexy, updated Team NERD scores and sexy, updated ZiPS projections.
2. A complete table of those same Team NERD scores, now with totally infallible UZRs.
3. A video you can watch at home or office.
Last year, Charlie Morton had an ERA of 7.57, had a stint on the disabled list, and was bounced from the Pirates rotation and ended up back in Triple-A. This year, he has a 1.64 ERA, is averaging better than seven innings pitched per start, and is one of the main reasons the Pirates are a .500 team, only a game out of first place in the NL Central. He’s an early season success story, and credit is being given to his new Roy Halladay-esque delivery and the decision to lower his arm slot.
But at the risk of being a wet blanket, I’m going to suggest that Morton’s success so far is actually problematic long term, and it might just be in his best interests to get torched by the Marlins tomorrow.
The misplay that cost the Royals the go-ahead run.
Moving the Needle: Shelley Duncan laces a double to bring around the go-ahead run, +.299 WPA. Who would have thought that not only would a Royals-Indians matchup in April be a highly anticipated game, but that it would also end up being the best of the night? (Or at least close, since that’s pretty subjective.) The teams traded barbs for the first seven innings, but found themselves tied at three at the end of nine. The Indians wasted no time in extra innings, though, scoring an early run and then tacking on three more to put the game out of reach. Tim Collins started the inning by walking Carlos Santana, and then gave up the double to Duncan. The assist goes to Alex Gordon, who played the ball in the corner poorly, which gave Santana enough time to round third and score easily.
Notables
Aaron Crow: 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 2 K. He was a bit wild, as is his wont, but he did a great job cleaning up for Jeremy Jeffress.
Grady Sizemore: 3 for 5, 1 2B, 1 BB. From his first two games, you’d think he didn’t miss a beat. I recommend Paul’s article on him.
Also in this issue: Twins 5, Orioles 3 | Cubs 1, Padres 0 | Red Sox 9, Blue Jays 1 | Pirates 9, Reds 3 | Giants 8, Rockies 1 | Tigesr 8, Mariners 3 | Dodgers 4, Braves 2 | Rays 5, White Sox 0 | Brewers 6, Phillies 3 | Rangers 7, Angels 1
If someone told you Justin Upton would finally make the jump to “superstardom” this season, you may have been slightly hesitant to believe them. After all, Upton is coming off a somewhat disappointing season, in which his home runs dropped from 26 to 17 and his strikeout rate rose to an alarming 30.7%. Though his 3.1 WAR was still solid, it’s fair to say his future looked a lot brighter following his 2009 season. Upton has gotten off to a great start this season, and there’s evidence that suggests his strong start is sustainable. Perhaps this could be the year Upton fulfills his lofty expectations and becomes one of the best players in baseball.
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Heading into this past weekend, Indians fans were already abuzz. Then the Tribe went out and swept the Orioles.
As a result, when baseball fans awoke this morning, only three teams were in the top 11 in both offensive and pitching WAR. Two were preseason contenders, the Philadelphia Phillies (11th among position players, first among pitchers) and Colorado Rockies (third and third). The other was the fightin’ Cleveland Indians. And, for good measure, yesterday’s game also featured the triumphant return of Grady Sizemore.
Troy Tulowitzki’s been on a tear this season. But this isn’t some small-sample, month-long streak. He’s been raking since last July, after he returned from a wrist injury that sidelined him for nearly five weeks.
Usually when a hitter returns from these types of injuries it takes awhile to hit at pre-injury levels. It’s pretty obvious to understand why: Batters use their wrists to swing through the ball. In Tulo’s case, though, it’s almost as if he never suffered the injury.
The Angels’ Dan Haren pickup is looking great; early in the 2011 season Haren has been one of the game’s best pitchers. He has been the beneficiary of some BABIP and HR/FB luck. Still, the underlying peripherals are amazing, including a league-leading 13.5 K/BB and 2.80 xFIP.
Through his first four starts, and one appearance out of the pen during an extra-innings game, Haren is throwing his cut fastball much more than he did in the past. By my classification of the PitchFx data he is throwing it just under 40% of the time (the BIS classifications for yesterday’s game have not been updated at this time). Here are the locations of all those cut fastballs so far this year.
One of the more bizarre plays I’ve seen by a pitcher occurred during Saturday’s tilt between the Oakland Athletics and the Detroit Tigers. With Daric Barton on first base and David DeJesus batting, Justin Verlander appeared to hit DeJesus with a pitch. However, a look at Verlander’s footwork revealed something very odd, and confusion ensued. Due to MLBAM’s arcane rules regarding video, I cannot embed the video here, but you can see it at this link. (And now in .gif form from Chad Moriyama of Memories of Kevin Malone!)
Although you can’t tell from the end of the video or the befuddled announcing crew, the result of that play was actually a balk, resulting in Barton moving over to second base and the at-bat resuming with a 2-1 count. Let’s dive into the video and examine just why the balk was called here, with the help of some screenshots.
If you’re any sort of saberist, you should already know that Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) is vastly superior to On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS) at measuring offensive value. While OPS is a mishmash statistic, throwing together OBP and SLG for kicks and giggles, wOBA was created based on research on the historical run values of events. It weighs all the different aspects of hitting in proportion to their actual, real-life value to a team’s offense.
But how exactly do these two statistics differ in assigning value to events? See for yourself:
