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At least one of these words applies to the present edition of One Night Only.
This edition of One Night Only is limited in terms of written copy, on account of most of the author’s effort was expended in the pursuit of designing a cleaner, more user-friendly presentation for the daily slate of games — which design one can see by reading furtherly in the present post.
You’ve probably heard by now that, at 80-years-old, Jack McKeon was just named the Marlins manager once again. This makes him the second oldest manager in baseball history behind only the legendary Connie Mack. While I don’t have any pithy SABR-analysis about how McKeon might help turn around the Marlins (seriously, the next person to figure out how to predict a manager’s impact on a team will be the first), McKeon’s return to the game gives me an excuse to look at what Major League Baseball looked like the first time a team hired him to be their skipper.
The year? 1973, when the Kansas City Royals made McKeon a manager for the first time at age 43. There were 12 teams in the American League, the Designated Hitter was being tried out for the first time in history, and he had a 29-year-old left fielder named Lou Piniella. Yeah. (Side note – how weird was Piniella’s prime? wRC+ from 26-31 of 107, 90, 138, 74, 111, and 39. He was Aubrey Huff before Aubrey Huff came along.)
Other fun fact from the 1973 Royals – their best player was John Mayberry, the father of the Phillies outfielder of the same name. But, really, that’s nothing – that team also featured Hal McRae, the father of Brian McRae, who retired from the game twelve years ago.
There are going to be a lot of age-related jokes about McKeon, and a few of them will even be funny. But while I can’t say anything about whether he’s going to help them win more games, McKeon is a character, and having him in the dugout will make Marlins games more interesting. And for that, I say welcome back Trader Jack.
Moving the Needle: Skip Schymaker hits one for Albert, +.426 WPA. The Cardinals entered the ninth with a 4-3 lead, with the 8-pitcher-1 spots coming up. In one of those moments where we remember why we love baseball, Fernando Salas surrendered a homer to Alcides Escobar, who hadn’t hit one since September 4th of last season. It was a no-doubt shot, too, into the left field corner. Salas retired the next three straight, which came in handy the next inning when Schumaker slammed a sweet, delicious cookie over the wall in right-center. It was his first career home run off a left-handed pitcher (390 PA).
Notables
Albert Pujols: 3 for 3, 1 HR. That was his eighth homer in June. Of course, the story was the wrist injury he sustained. That could keep him out for a few weeks, which is just something that the Cardinals, now tied atop the NL Central, simply do not need.
Also in this issue: Red Sox 12, Brewers 3 | White Sox 8, Diamondbacks 2 | Indians 5, Pirates 2 | Braves 4, Rangers 2 | Twins 5, Padres 4 | Yankees 10, Cubs 4 | A’s 2, Giants 1 | Reds 2, Blue Jays 1 | Mariners 2, Phillies 0 | Tigers 9, Rockies 1 | Rays 1, Marlins 1 | Dodgers 1, Astros 0 | Orioles 7, Nationals 4 | Angels 7, Mets 3
Almost three months into the season, more statistics are beginning to stabilize, and certain stars are emerging. It has become clear that some players, whose success was initially thought to be the byproduct of small sample trickery, are legitimately on their way to an All-Star caliber season. Some of these players are in the process of establishing new levels of performance. Some are merely reverting to a previously established high level of productivity that was thought to be long gone. Others are living up to their billings as prospects worth monitoring, perhaps reaching that destination sooner than was originally thought.
And in the cases of the players highlighted in this post, some are unexpectedly leading their teams in wOBA. Here are five players having fantastic seasons, but whose names are surprising to see atop their team wOBA leaderboard.
Last year during our very first FanGraphs Event, we gave out FanGraphs t-shirts to everyone who attended and up until this day, those were the only FanGraphs t-shirts that were let loose into the world! Turns out we had some left over, and now we’re selling them for $19.99 each, which includes shipping and handling.
For you t-shirt aficionados, they are Fruit of the Loom brand, 100% cotton, and actually fit quite nice. They come in navy blue, and white. The supply of these is fairly limited, and some of the white ones are out of stock. If there’s demand, maybe we’ll make another batch.
They’re on sale now!
It was big in New Zealand, at least.
This edition of One Night Only contains:
1. Expanded previews for four games: Saturday’s Baltimore at Washington and Toronto at Cincinnati games, and Sunday’s Texas at Atlanta and Detroit at Colorado games.
2. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of this weekend’s games.
3. Precisely 1,000 apologies for not posting a Friday edition of ONO.
Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.
— Pedro Cerrano in Major League
Every baseball fan is familiar with the Pedro Cerrano archetype: the hard-hitting batter who blasts fastballs into the next county but whose knees turn to jelly when the pitcher snaps off a breaking ball. I caught part of Major League while flipping through the channels the other day and I began to wonder, who in the majors today most resembles the Cleveland Indians’ Jobu-worshipping, cigar-smoking slugger?
If you’ve missed my earlier Saber-Friendly Tips, you can find them here.
As I have alluded to in the not-so-distant past, I feel like sabermetric writing should not be all the same. If you’re writing a piece that’s geared for other saberists — or for a very knowledgeable audience, like this one — then obviously very different rules apply than if you’re trying to cater your analysis to a broader audience. You can toss around multiple acronyms and discuss statistical concepts without much worry, while doing the same thing in other places could have you denigrated by your audience as a know-it-all, pompous jerkface.
We all love to poke fun at television announcers — whether at ESPN, MLBN, or elsewhere during game broadcasts — but they face a very difficult task: how do you give insightful analysis while still appealing to the wide range of different viewers out there? There are plenty of announcers out there that love stats and analysis (hello, David Cone!), and it’s no easy task to try and mesh those numbers into a game broadcast without scaring off all the viewers out there who don’t like math.
These same challenges apply to us saberists. What sort of an audience are we trying to reach, and how can we best do so? Today I want to suggest another way in which people can help make saber-stats easier to digest: rounding your numbers.
The Milwaukee Brewers’ “all in” offseason, during which they traded a good chunk of young talent (including some of their best prospects like Brett Lawrie and Jake Odorizzi) to dramatically improve their pitching staff, seems to be working. New Brewers Shaun Marcum and Zack Greinke are dominating so far (although it hasn’t shown in Greinke’s ERA), and Milwaukee is currently in first place in the National League Central. However, as part of the price for acquiring Greinke from the Royals, the Brewers had to take on shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt. Betancourt has somehow been even worse than the Brewers might have expected (perhaps he’s the victim of a curse), and is at -0.5 WAR so far. Betancourt isn’t hitting, and he has only exacerbated the Brewers problems in the field. The Brewers are in the divisional lead, as mentioned, but some might doubt whether the Brewers can make the playoffs with Betancourt playing like, well, Betancourt. What does history tell us about replacement level players and playoff teams?
