Dear Gary Sanchez,

I’ve made the two-and-a-half hour round trip to Rome, Georgia to watch you play baseball twice. On both occasions, you have had the game off leaving me with no choice but to dream of scouting your plus power potential without seeing it in person. Mr. Sanchez, the dugout is no place for a young man of your talents. On Saturday, I’ll be back at State Mutual Stadium and hope to see you in game action then. I enjoyed watching a number of your teammates perform well on Thursday, but their potent bats and steady glove work robbed me of seeing you make a token pinch-hitting appearance. Here’s to hoping you have a rightful place in the starting lineup this weekend so I may remove you from the list of “one’s who got away.”

Sincerely,
Mike Newman

Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, my Twitter timeline was filled with about thirty people linking to the same article – a garage sale success story from Erik Malinowski. Malinowski found an issue of Baseball Digest from 1986 that contained baseball’s 30 “unwritten rules”, and so, I thought it might be fun to break each of them down and see whether they still hold true 26 years later.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Garza has always had the stuff to be an elite top tier starter, but never quite put it all together until last year. As Dave Allen and Josh Weinstock explained during this past season, a heavier reliance on his secondary pitches was instrumental in his turn around from three consecutive seasons with an FIP between 4.14 and 4.42 to a breakout 2.95 mark last season. I also looked at how his increase in secondary offerings led to a 4.25 K/BB rate against left-handed hitters specifically for RotoGraphs, a heavy improvement over his past marks against opposite handed batters.

Read the rest of this entry »

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for this weekend edition of Daily Notes.

1. A Quick Word
2. Friday, April 13th
3. Saturday, April 14th
4. Sunday, April 15th

A Quick Word
Below are brief previews for select weekend games — each including the preferred television feed of FanGraphs readers, per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project.

Furthermore, for the benefit of those whose viewing options are limited, each day contains a preview for that day’s featured MLB.TV Free Game.

Information on probable pitchers from MLB.com.

Friday, April 13th
Chicago NL at St. Louis | 15:15 ET
Cubs right-hander Jeff Samardzija, owner of a 3.9 BB/9 rate in 485.1 minor-league innings and 5.3 BB/9 in 169.2 major-league innings (prior to last week), was excellent in his season debut, posting this line in 8.2 innings (box): 31 TBF, 8 K, 0 BB, 10 GB on 22 batted-balls (45.5% GB) — for a single-game 2.54 xFIP (70 xFIP-). Our Bradley Woodrum is optimistic about Samardzija for 2012, especially if he (i.e. Samardzija) continues to emphasize his mid-90s two-seamer and slider… Samardzija faces Adam Wainwright, who, despite allowing three runs, was excellent in his return from Tommy John surgery. Line (box): 5.2 IP, 6 K, 1 BB, 9 GB on 14 batted-balls (64.3% GB), 1.94 xFIP (53 xFIP-)… The Cardinals’ center-field camera angle — among the top five in the majors — provides an opportunity to see the repertoires of each pitcher… Through seven games — and as of Thursday afternoon — the Cardinals hitters lead the league with a 3.2 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago NL.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitching is quite often ahead of hitting early on in the season but as you’ll see below there are still quite a few position prospects who are off to strong starts to the year.

C.J. Cron, 1B, Los Angeles Angels
Current Level: A+
2012 Top 15 Prospect Ranking: 3rd
Current Value: Holding Steady

Despite having his pro debut in 2011 cut short due to injury, Cron has come out swinging in 2012, taking full advantage of the friendly confines of the California League. The right-handed hitter currently has a 1.022 OPS in seven games, including a .556 batting average against left-handed pitchers. Perhaps because he’s seeing the ball so well he has yet to take a walk. Although his stats will no doubt be inflated by the league, Cron could very well hit his way to double-A by mid-year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Schwimer wasn’t happy with his performance last Friday. The 26-year-old right-hander threw a scoreless ninth inning when Triple-A Lehigh Valley beat Scranton Wilkes-Barre. He also earned a save. But the Phillies’ stat-geek pitching prospect looks beyond the numbers that can be found in a box score. After each game, Schwimer charts his pitches and grades them with a plus-minus system.

Schwimer broke down his April 5 outing, pitch-by-pitch, when Philadelphia’s Triple-A club visited Pawtucket a few days later.

——

Schwimer, on charting his outings: “After the game, I look at the film and chart every pitch that I threw. The first thing I chart is my intent. For instance, the intent could be a fastball away. I give it either a plus or a minus depending on whether I was able to physically do what my mind intended it to. That’s a piece of data that FanGraphs or Pitch-FX can’t be helpful with, because they don’t know my intent on the pitch.

“I also read the hitter’s movements and reactions. I chart every pitch and every reaction I get on that pitch. From that information, I formulate a game plan as to how to approach that same hitter in the future.

“When I do the charting, I try to take out baseball’s traditional-result goals. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve heard a lot about Valley Fever this year. Last week, Bob Uecker’s son passed away due to complications associated with the disease. And back in March, when doctors suspected that Ike Davis was suffering from symptoms of Valley Fever and some worried that Mike Trout might have fallen ill as well, Wendy Thurm asked a timely question: “Should MLB Be Worried About Valley Fever?” She concluded that the answer was, basically, no:

Although Valley Fever doesn’t appear to present a significant health risk to players who live or play in Arizona, with two reported cases among major leaguers in the last three years, MLB should take steps to educate teams and players about the disease and how to lower the risk of infection.

Of course, the number of reported cases of a disease is generally lower than the number of actual cases, particularly in the case of a disease like Valley Fever, whose symptoms often resemble those of the flu. Valley Fever is caused by a fungus called coccidioidomycosis, or cocci for short. Cocci grows in the soil, and so its endemic region is almost entirely confined to a very specific, arid area: the San Joaquin Valley of California that gave it its name, and the desert region of southern Arizona. (Most of the state’s population lies within the endemic area, though much of the state is cocci-free, including the Grand Canyon.) The Phoenix-Tucson corridor of Arizona contains the majority of the population exposed to Valley Fever, so much so that local public health advocates have started to refer to it as “Arizona’s Disease.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 164
This edition of Fantasy Friday features Fan- and RotoGraphs contributor Chris Cwik and is being published — for reasons unknown and unknowable — on a Thursday. Among the topics discussed: the answer to the question, “Who or what is Hector Santiago?”; three notable Padres pitchers of note; and the contract extensions of Ian Kinsler, Brandon Phillips, and Carlos Santana — what, if anything, they mean to fantasy owners.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 34 min. play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The Twins announced Wednesday that their top starter, Scott Baker, would miss the rest of the season after upcoming surgery to clear scar tissue from his right flexor pronator tendon. While this procedure has a shorter rehab time than Tommy John surgery, the rehab process is expected to take around six months, leaving Baker unavailable until late October at the earliest. The good news for Baker is that his ulnar collateral ligament was not damaged, so he will be able to go through a normal offseason work program and should be ready for spring training. The bad news for the Twins is that their already thin rotation just lost their captain. Read the rest of this entry »

A few hours before first pitch in the San Francisco Giants game against the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday evening, news broke that Giants catcher Buster Posey was pulled from the lineup. The problem? Posey’s come down with shingles.

Shingles is caused by the same virus (varicella-roster) that causes chicken pox in children. The virus remains in the body’s nerves in a dormant state until activated years later. According to the National Institutes of Health, those adults most likely to develop shingles are over the age of 60, had chicken pox before the age of one, or have an immune system weakened by medication or disease. Stress, and stress-related fatigue, can also trigger a shingles outbreak.

Read the rest of this entry »