Archive for April, 2012
Baker Undergoes Surprise Tommy John Surgery
Right-hander Scott Baker was set to undergo surgery on his elbow for a cleanup of his flexor pronator tendon earlier this week. Any elbow surgeries can result in complications for a big league pitcher, but considering the alternatives, Baker appeared to be rather lucky in terms of his diagnosis. As he said:
[The team doctor] said this is something that’s not going to repair itself. It’s not going to cure itself. It’s something that needs to be taken care of. Fortunately, he said the (UCL) ligament looked great, so I guess in a way, as bad as this is, the flexor pronator tendon is what needs to be repaired.
However, when the team doctor, Dr. Altchek, opened up the elbow, he determined that the UCL was damaged to the point that it needed repair. The MRI testing done prior to the surgery completely missed the UCL damage. Now, instead of missing only six months of the 2011 season, Scott Baker will not pitch again for approximately 12-18 months.
The good new for Baker is that the success rate for Tommy John surgery is now upward of 85-92 percent. The likelihood of returning to the big leagues in some capacity appears overwhelmingly positive. Most likely, though, his next big league job will not be with the Minnesota Twins. Baker has a $9.25M club option for the 2013 season, but there is almost no conceivable way Terry Ryan and the Twins exercise that option at this point.
Daily Notes: Free Afternoon Baseball
April 18, 2012
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Brief Previews for Select Games
2. Lightly Annotated Video: Matt Garza’s Slider
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Detroit Radio
Brief Previews for Select Games
Here are brief previews for three of today’s games — each including the preferred television feed of FanGraphs readers, per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project. (Information on probable pitchers from MLB.com.)
Justin Verlander’s Ninth Inning Heat
by Bill Petti
April 18, 2012
By now, there is not much that Justin Verlander does that should surprise us. The Tigers ace has thrown not one, but two no-hitters and regularly displays the hardest fastball, in terms of average velocity, in the league. Since 2009, only Ubaldo Jimenez has an average four-seam fastball equal to Verlander’s in terms of velocity (95.4), and given Jimenez’s recently struggles Verlander essentially stands alone.
In his last start against the Kansas City Royals, Verlander entered the ninth inning having thrown 104 pitches. Up to that point, the righthander had not thrown more than 18 pitches in a single inning. He would go on to close the game out by throwing 27 more pitches, bringing his pitch total for the night to 131. What was more impressive than the fact that he threw 131 pitches was the fact that, in the 9th inning, he threw four fastballs that topped 100 mph. (Now, the gun in Kansas City that night may have been a little hot, but we are still talking about 98+ mph fastballs.)
It has been said that Verlander is one of those pitchers who generally gains velocity as the game goes on, and that such a trait is quite stable. I was curious about how Verlander compared to other hard-throwing starters who pitched deep into games. To be clear up front, there are not many pitchers who not only throw extremely hard but also pitch as deep into games as Verlander. I came up with two such pitchers: Felix Hernandez and CC Sabathia. Since 2009, Verlander, Hernandez, and Sabathia all averaged over 107 pitches per game, seven innings per start, and ~94 mph on their four-seam fastballs.
FanGraphs Prospect Stock Market
Tyler Austin, OF, New York Yankees
Current Level: A-
2012 Top 15 Prospects Ranking: 11th
Current Value: Ready to Explode
Already on his third position (3B, 1B, RF) after playing catcher as an amateur, Austin has done nothing but hit despite his uncertain defensive home. He hit more than .350 in 2011 and he’s currently above .400 in low-A ball. He also has 11 extra base hits in nine games. Austin was also successful in all 18 base stealing attempts last year so he’s not a one-trick pony, although he’s a smart base runner as opposed to a fast one. Austin is yet another example of the rich getting richer.
Early Season Trends Worth Monitoring – NL Edition
Last week I set out to examine some early-season trends and what they may mean for the season ahead. Incidentally, the list was entirely comprised of players on the junior circuit, so today, let’s examine a couple trends that are taking place in the NL, and if we feel they’re worth monitoring. As usual, the “blah blah small sample size blah blah” still applies, though feel free to mention it in the comments if it tickles your fancy.
History Suggests Tim Lincecum Might Be Just Fine
After getting drilled for four runs in the first inning by the Phillies last night, the ever-growing worry surrounding Tim Lincecum reached a fever pitch. As Chris Cwik noted last week, his velocity continues to trend downwards in a pretty dramatic fashion, and he’s now getting hit on a regular basis while throwing 90 MPH fastballs. The combination of diminished velocity and poor performance are assumed to be signs of a larger problem. As the theory goes, they might not be conclusive by themselves, but together, they suggest that there’s something seriously wrong.
History, however, suggests that jumping to that kind of conclusion may very well be premature.
Tim Lincecum is not the first pitcher to start the season without his best fastball, and he’s not the first pitcher to get hit hard while showing reduced velocity. To look at how predictive previous situations have turned out to be, I went back to our monthly leaderboards starting in 2008 and looked for situations where a pitcher posted high BABIP and/or HR/FB rates in April while also showing significantly reduced velocity, and yet had posted BB/K/GB numbers that suggested that they were still capable of getting Major League hitters out. In other words, pitchers who were pitching like Lincecum is now. Here’s what I found.
Strasburg’s Human Inning Against Houston
Stephen Strasburg did his job Monday night against the Astros, notching the win and a quality start. He threw six innings and held Houston to two runs on six hits and one walk while striking out five. It was a solid outing and any pitcher across the league would take it, but this was Stephen Strasburg pitching at home against one of the league’s lesser squads. The no-hitter watch was started as soon as Jordan Schafer stepped up to lead it off for the Astros. Given the circumstances, Strasburg’s performance looks surprisingly human.
Roy Halladay, In Relief of Roy Halladay
April 17, 2012
Given his excellence over the last decade, it’s become difficult to discuss Roy Halladay without merely descending into a list of superlative adjectives.
Indeed, Roy Halladay posted the league’s best WAR (8.2) among pitchers last season. By WAR, he’s been the best pitcher over the last two years, as well. And last three years. And four years. And five. And six. And seven. Really, to find a recent analog to Halladay’s achievement as a pitcher, you have to go back to 1998; over the final 12 years and ca. 2,400 innings of his career, Randy Johnson posted a 73.3 WAR. (Halladay debuted in 1998 himself, and has recorded 70.5 wins in 2554.0 innings since then.)
Given Halladay’s dominance, it’s unusual to find him in a jam of any sort while pitching; however, during last night’s contest against the Giants, something like a jam unfolded for the right-hander.
With Philadelphia leading San Francisco by a score of 5-1 heading into the bottom of the fourth, Halladay allowed consecutive hits to Brandon Belt (single) and Brandon Crawford (double) to start the inning (box). That situation (runners on second and third base with no outs) created a generic run expectancy of 1.79 for the Giants. That accounted not only for Halladay’s highest-allowed run expectancy of the young season, but would have actually been his fifth-highest mark during all of 2011. Over the span of two batters, San Francisco’s win expectancy had risen from 8.4% (at the conclusion of Philly’s half of the fourth) to 20.5%. Even two outs, provided they were of the batted variety, could shrink Philly’s lead by two runs.