1. What is SIERA? Sounds like xFIP to me. Give me one sentence on it.
SIERA is an estimator of what a pitcher’s ERA would be with average luck, defense, and park, by looking at other pitchers with similar strikeouts, walks, and ground ball rates in recent seasons, and goes a step further than similar estimators by accounting for the BABIPs and HR/FBs of similar pitchers.
Just a few hours after Chris opined that the Indians needn’t go all-in this season, the Indians made a fairly conservative move. To help shore up their outfield, which is currently short Grady Sizemore and Shin-Shoo Choo, the Indians acquired Kosuke Fukudome from the Cubs for two prospects. Chicago will pick up some of the $4.7 million remaining on Fukudome’s deal. While the specific prospects aren’t clear at the time of writing, we can still examine how this helps Cleveland’s chances.
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Featured Game
Arizona (9) at San Diego (3) | 15:35
• Carlos Beltran will likely be making his Giant debut tonight (19:05), but watching that game would also entail watching a lot of Kyle Kendrick.
• Meanwhile, here, we have Daniel Hudson (8) and Mat Latos (7) — and a Diamondbacks team that’s very much in the NL West race (3.0 games back at game time).
• One player you might see is Collin Cowgill, who did this at Triple-A Reno: 456 PA, .354/.430/.554 (.397 BABIP), 11.2% BB, 13.8% K, 30-for-33 SB.
• That’s a 115 wOBA+ (i.e. park-adjusted wOBA, relative to league average), per StatCorner.
Watch: MLB.com. (The game appears to be unavailable locally in both markets.)
Ed. Note: Four people were injured in the copyediting of this article.
One word. Change one word of the trade description, and you might see a world in which the Cardinals got fair value for Colby Rasmus in their trade Wednesday night.
The consensus for the most part is that Alex Anthopoulos pulled a coup when he acquired a young left-handed center fielder with power and speed and a decent glove for his collection of spare parts. A rental starter, a rental backup center fielder, a rental righty reliever, and a young lefty reliever is all that it took to get Rasmus. But then there’s that one word — reliever.
Call Marc Rzepczynski a young lefty starter, and suddenly things might seem a little more even.
Moving the Needle: Jose Altuve breaks the tie with a single in the ninth, +.448 WPA. The good news: Jon Jay drove in a run with a double in his first official game as Colby Rasmus’s replacement. The bad news: the Cardinals couldn’t muster more than two runs. That opened an opportunity for the Astros in the ninth. They started with a double, and with two outs they had men on first and second. Altuve grounded one right back up the middle, bringing home the first run easily. The second run came around, too, when Jay’s throw got away from cutoff man Albert Pujols. The Cards threatened in the ninth, but could not strike.
Notables
Bud Norris: 6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 5 K. He hasn’t struck out more than five since the first of July.
Clint Barmes: 2 for 4, 1 2B, 1 HR. He’s the one who started the ninth with the double, making him a pretty big figure in this one (even though he got cut down before he got to third).
Also in this issue: Red Sox 12, Royals 5 | Braves 2, Pirates 1 | White Sox 2, Tigers 1 | Mets 8, Reds 2 | Angels 3, Indians 1 | Rockies 3, Dodgers 1 | Mariners 9, Yankees 2 | Brewers 2, Cubs 0 | A’s 13, Rays 4 | Marlins 7, Nationals 5 | Twins 7, Rangers 2 | Giants 2, Phillies 1 | Blue Jays 3, Orioles 0 | Diamondbacks 4, Padres 3
The Cleveland Indians’ hot start nearly shocked the baseball world earlier this season. After a strong April and May — during which the team was 32-20 — the Indians have fallen back to earth, posting a 20-29 record in June and July. Despite their recent struggles, the Indians remain only two games behind the Detroit Tigers for the American League Central lead. With the post-season still within reach, Indians’ general manager Chris Antonetti announced that the team is going to be active around the trade deadline. While making the post-season would go a long way towards satisfying a long-suffering fan base, the Indians need to make sure they don’t jeopardize their long-term rebuilding effort for short-term success.
Mercifully, the Mariners’ historically bad 17-game losing streak is over. Sure, Seattle didn’t play well for the last three weeks, but it found itself on the wrong side of probability on an incredible level.
If Seattle had a 50/50 chance to win every game, the chances that they would lose 17 games in a row can be calculated by using a probability chain. Taking 50-percent to the 17th power results in 0.0008-percent, or 1-in-131,072 odds.
However, the Mariners are not expected to win 50-percent of their games. Read the rest of this entry »
Ichiro Suzuki is getting old. In life, that’s not a bad thing. In baseball, it is.
He is now in season 11 of the MLB portion of his career and season 20 of his professional career. Despite his age, he has played in 102 of the Seattle Mariners’ 103 games this year (not counting today). Moreover, he has more plate appearances (457) than anyone over age 35 in 2011. The next closest, Paul Konerko, is over 30 PAs behind him.
Ichiro may look as healthy and athletic as ever, but his numbers this year have been very un-Ichiro-like:
wOBA: .285
wRC+: 80
UZR: -8.4
Bsr: 2.3
All, except for the base-running (UBR) numbers, are career lows for Ich-dawg. We have long-anticipated Ichiro would slow down his ageless mastery of baseball at some point, but the depreciation in his 2011 statistics seem rather sudden. Worth noting:
Congratulations to Ervin Santana for completing the 273rd no-hitter in major league history and the third no-hitter of the 2011 season!
While every no hitter is a great accomplishment and a rare feat, not all no-hitters are created equal. Tangotiger recently created four different game scores based on various criteria, for the different ways you might perceive a particular start.