Few players are able to immediately dominate once promoted to the majors. Last season, Carlos Santana was the exception. In 192 plate appearances, Santana terrorized opposing pitchers, posting a .401 OBP with a 19.3% walk rate. He was one of the biggest breakout candidates entering 2011. Though Santana isn’t playing poorly, his current season might be seen as somewhat of a disappointment. That, however, would be a foolish assumption. Despite some struggles on the surface, Carlos Santana is still well on his way to becoming the future star that everyone expected. Read the rest of this entry »
The end of August is supposed to signal the start of the pennant chase in baseball. It is the stretch drive toward division championships and Wild Card berths to accord entry into the playoffs where then a pathetically small number of games will determine for most people what team was the best for that season. If this year’s crop of contending races seems a bit lacking in drama that is not entirely the product of your imagination.
Desmond Jennings just keeps doing this kind of thing.
It’s probably about time, reader, that we had a conversation about Desmond Jennings — on account of, as you’ll notice below, Jennings has claimed the top spot on the Player NERD leaderboard. That is, in the words of someone who unnecessarily repeats adjectives, a “big, big deal.”
Let’s use this edition of Leaderboards of Pleasure to further our understanding of Jennings, hm?
• First of all, here are some numbers that will interest the baseballing nerd. On the season so far, through 153 plate appearances, Jennings has made these stats a thing: .354/.440/.646, .470 wOBA, 205 wRC+, 8 HR, 14-for-19 SB, 2.3 WAR.
• It’s important to note that Jennings UZR is actually -1.8 — which is to say that Jennings’ WAR isn’t inflated artificially by that.
• One thing that is inflating Jennings’ impressive line is his BABIP. It’s currently at .413. ZiPS suggests that something like .333 is more reflective of his his true talent. Slash12’s xBABIP calculator suggests .323.
• Question: What would Jennings’ line look like if normalized for BABIP? Answer: Still quite good. Using the FIB calculator Bradley Woodrum’s introduced last week, we find that (figuring a .330 BABIP) Jennings should hit like this:
I was Hurricane Irene’d yesterday, which killed any chance I had to write up the cool intro I had planned. On the plus side, it gives me another week to test my theory. What is it? Well, you’ll just have to check back next week to find out.
Justin Verlander won his 20th game Saturday against the Minnesota Twins. Eric Seidman already covered his MVP candidacy this morning, and I have to agree that we should probably cool down on it a little bit. I’m sure my opinion surprises absolutely nobody — we here at FanGraphs can’t stand pitcher wins, and I’m no different.
However, as Eric mentioned, Verlander might have a shot at 25 victories this season. And as heartless and cold and robotic as I may seem on the outside, even I can recognize the weight of that accomplishment. It hasn’t been done since Bob Welch was led by the Oakland Athletics to a 27-win season in 1990 — and I choose these words for a reason. Welch wasn’t actually that great that year, posting a sub-2.0 K/BB ratio, a FIP above 4.00, and a 2.95 ERA which was only five points lower than the ERA which brought him a 17-win season the year before. But with a little help from his friends, Welch put together the winningest season we’ve seen in two decades. Verlander has 20 wins and only six starts (maybe only five) left, so he won’t catch Welch this year. But can he, realistically, get to 25 and put a name to the accomplishment that actually deserves it?
I can’t decide whether the Dodger’s situation this season is depressing, funny, or so depressing that it is funny. James Loney’s continued presence and playing time is sad/ridiculous in itself — maybe manager Don Mattingly thinks his own 1995 season with the Yankees wasn’t so bad (he was Donnie Freaking Baseball, after all!), and Loney has been almost that “good.” But today’s Donnie Baseball-related news (and we know that’s what brings you here to FanGraphs) isn’t about Loney, but about right fielder Andre Ethier.
Ethier has been playing on a bad knee that will require surgery in the off-season, and reportedly feels like the Dodgers don’t care. Unsurprisingly, neither Mattingly nor Ned ‘Snakeskin Boots‘ Colletti weren’t all that pleased about Ethier’s public comments. You can follow the links for the he said-he said. It does seem, given the situation between Ethier and management, the organization’s financial and (non-)competitive situation, and Ethier’s coming jump in salary, that he is probably on his way out as a Dodger. Unfortunately, assuming they plan on trading Ethier in the off-season, he doesn’t have all that much value.
This is something Aaron Hill can still do, apparently.
Featured Game Colorado (5) at Arizona (8) | 21:40 ET
• Despite their probably more compelling playoff implications, neither the Angels’ nor Giants’ games are particularly watchable tonight.
• On account of it would necessitate watching the Mariners and Cubs, is one reason.
• Another is how the author, personally, is Angels-ed and Giants-ed out at the moment.
• What’s that, my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Terry? I can’t make a verb out of Angels and Giants?
• Sorry, lady. Appears as though I just did.
Also Playing
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.5.
What’s there to say about A.J. Burnett? He’s having an incredibly tough time right now, and this after looking like he’d made improvements from his career-worst 2010 campaign. These days, his ERA and FIP are both within a tenth of a run of his 2010 totals. The Yankees’ “too many starters” dilemma has been a theme for a month now — since Phil Hughes returned from the DL and Ivan Nova came up from the minor leagues. On top of that, the Yankees get starts from ace CC Sabathia, Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. So while some untimely weather and a finger injury to Garcia has put off Joe Girardi’s decision about whom to bump from the rotation, it looks like Burnett is still lined up to pitch against the Red Sox on Thursday. After his next start, it might not be a bad idea to try him out as a short reliever.
It feels like we’ve been saying it for a while, but one can’t help but wonder if Girardi has to pull the plug on Burnett if he has another clunker. After his disastrous nine-run outing against the Orioles on Friday, his August ERA is now at a tick under 12 and his FIP has been at 5.50 for the month. His normalized 4.16 xFIP is more reasonable, telling us that opponents have been smacking homers off of him at (probably) an unsustainable rate. So yes, he’s probably seeing some bad luck, but he’s still been pitching quite poorly.
After announcing on Friday that we’re hiring, you guys responded with some significant enthusiasm. We received hundreds of applications over the weekend, and they continue to come in at a pretty steady rate. Applications will continue to be accepted this week, though we may reach a point in the not too distant future where we’ll have to cut it off just to keep the workload of going through them all somewhat manageable. We want to give each application a legitimate review, and given how many we’ve received, that’s going to take some time.
We’ll attempt to make the process as efficient as possible, but it will likely take us a week or two to get through all of the applications. You almost certainly won’t hear anything in the next few days, but don’t take that as bad news – we’ll be getting in touch with those we’re interested in following up with once we’ve gone through the whole stack.
If you haven’t applied yet (and are planning to), I’d encourage you to do so sooner than later.
