The St. Louis Cardinals and Jake Westbrook have agreed to an extension. The new contract is reportedly a one-year, $8.75 million contract for 2013 with a superfluous mutual option worth $9.5 million for 2014 with a $1 million buyout. While the mutual option seems increasingly prevalent, given that it is usually irrelevant in practice, it might be more straightforward to think of this deal as a guaranteed deal for one year and just under $10 million dollars.
Well, Melky Cabrera might now have some company. Jon Heyman is reporting that Bartolo Colon has failed a drug test and is subject to a 50 game suspension by MLB, which would end his season and make him ineligible for most of the playoffs.
Colon has been fantastic for the A’s this season at age 39, but his career revival was subject to some skepticism surrounding the injections of platelet rich plasma that he received in 2011, which raised questions about what kinds of treatments are performance enhancing in a viable way and which ones should be illegal. Colon was the poster child for the positive effects of PRP, and it seems unlikely that promoters of the treatment will continue to lean on him as evidence of its success.
For the A’s, this is certainly a blow, but the arrival of Brett Anderson from the disabled list now looks like incredibly valuable. Anderson might not be able to pitch at the same level that Colon did, but he should be able to replace most of that production, and help keep Oakland in the pennant race.
For Colon, my guess is that this will be the end of the line. He had trouble finding work last winter, and now heading into his age 40 season and coming off a PED suspension, I don’t imagine too many teams will be lining up to give him another shot.
There exists the idea of a kind of proof-of-concept game, that I’m rather fond of. In any individual baseball game, a player’s performance is essentially unpredictable. The range of possible outcomes spans every possible outcome, as looking at one game is no way to evaluate a player’s true talent. But it stands to reason that a guy can fluctuate around his true talent by a magnitude of only so much. Kerry Wood established in one game that he was capable of 20 strikeouts, and, say, Kirk Rueter could never have done that. Juan Pierre has had games where he’s finished with zero hits and five hits, but he’s never had a game where he finished with multiple homers or four or five strikeouts. Extreme performances are notable, because they demonstrate that a given player is capable of such an extreme performance. It’s within the error bars around his true talent.
Tuesday night, against the Tigers, Ricky Romero put together such a proof-of-concept game. Those who followed along know I don’t mean that in a good way. Tuesday night, against the Tigers, Ricky Romero faced 29 batters, and he walked eight of them while striking out zero of them. Romero and the Blue Jays, unsurprisingly, lost.
Updated: Thanks to the commentors, especially Evan, for double checking my work. I had an issue in Excel that messed up the results for May and June. Charts have been updated.
For most of 2012, the Baltimore Orioles have been playing over their heads. Well, at least when it comes to their expected win-loss record.
Based on the run differential the team has generated, the O’s have amassed 10 more wins than we would expect based on their Pythagorean winning percentage. The team has outplayed its cumulative expected winning percentage throughout the year and — since April — picked up two additional wins at the end of each month. If they sustain this performance and finish August with at least 10 more wins then their Pythagorean winning percentage would predict, they would be just the third team to do so since 2001 (the 2004 Yankees and the 2007 Diamondbacks are the other two).
Some might point to this glaring discrepancy between Baltimore’s actual winning percentage and Pythagorean winning percentage as evidence that the Orioles cannot sustain their winning ways. Of course, this raises the question of whether we really gain anything from a predictive standpoint heading into September if we focus on a team’s expected winning percentage rather than their actual performance.
The answer based on a review of the past decade seems to be no.
There’s a sense that the knuckleball is more prone to the home run. The guys on the MLB Network, while watching R.A. Dickey give up three home runs to the Reds, thought out loud that the lack of spin meant that it would go further upon contact and lead to more bombs. The home run seems to be the source of some of the ‘risky’ label attached to pitchers that use the knuckler. Even physics professor Porter Johnson said in a recent interview that if a knuckleball “doesn’t move, it’s basically a home run.”
As with all conventional wisdom, this link is worth unpacking.
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Featured Game: Miami at Arizona, 15:40 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
Featured Game: Miami at Arizona, 15:40 ET
Regarding This Game, Why It’s Notable
This game between Miami and Arizona is notable mostly on account of it represents the major-league debut of top prospect Tyler Skaggs.
Regarding Tyler Skaggs, Who That Is
Tyler Skaggs is a 21-year-old left-hander (although, because of his July birthday, one currently in just his age-20 season) originally taken 40th overall by the Angels in 2009 from a California high school. He came to the Diamondbacks as part of the trade that sent Dan Haren to Anaheim in 2010.
Regarding Tyler Skaggs, His Place in Various Rankings
Our Marc Hulet ranked Skaggs 11th overall among all prospects in March and 11th overall among all prospects on his midseason top-50 list. Baseball America ranked Skaggs 13th overall on their preseason list and seventh on their midseason list. John Sickels of Minor League Ball ranked Skaggs 23rd overall in February and then 20th overall on his midseason review.
I rarely mention my fantasy team, but I’ll make an exception here because it says a lot about today‘s interview subject. I play in a Scoresheet league with a bunch of baseball-media types — many of us stat nerds — and we’re allowed to protect up to 10 players. I didn’t keep Matt Harrison.
I offered Harrison in a trade before formally cutting him, but no one was interested. Like myself, the other 23 so-called experts were guilty of greatly underestimating the Texas Rangers left-hander.
Harrison is making us — everyone but MLB Network Radio’s Casey Stern, who smartly grabbed him at the tail end of the 12th round — pay for our disrespect. In 24 real-life starts, the 26-year-old has gone 14-7 and his 3.19 ERA and 3.2 WAR rank in the top 10 among American League pitchers. His strikeout rate is predictably sub par, at 5.37 per nine innings, but given his other numbers, does that really matter? Last season, with a lackluster 6.11 K-rate, he went 14-9 with a 3.39 ERA and a 4.2 WAR.
Harrison discussed his repertoire and approach — including the lack of strikeouts — on a recent visit to Fenway Park. Mike Maddux, the Rangers pitching coach, also offered his thoughts on the underrated lefty in a separate interview.
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Harrison on his most-important pitch: “I’m a big sinkerball pitcher. I like to keep the ball down in the zone and make them put it on the ground most of the time. I started throwing my sinker more and more a couple of years ago, and it’s gotten better and more consistent in the strike zone. That’s allowed me to be more aggressive with it. I try to get strike one with it and try to move it in and off the plate.
“I think the [improvement] came mostly from just using it more. I knew what the break was, it was just a matter of where I wanted to start the pitch. Now I know where to start it for a strike, and where to start it for it a swing-and-miss, off-the-plate type of pitch.
“The break is more down than side-to-side, but there is some arm-side break. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben and Sam talk about Brett Anderson’s Tuesday return from Tommy John surgery and its impact on Oakland’s potential playoff rotation, then discuss whether Stephen Drew would be wise to test the free-agent market this winter in light of the other shortstops available.
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