Archive for August, 2012

Felix Hernandez’s perfect game on Wednesday was a testament to both his excellent stuff, but also a well-deserved outcome for an excellent game plan executed by he and catcher John Jaso. A former Ray himself, Jaso appeared to know just how to approach the Rays lineup, getting increasingly good results as the game went along:

That’s 5 swinging strikes through the first 61 pitches, and then 19 through the remaining 53 pitches. How did Felix do this? He and Jaso took advantage of an aggressive Rays plan by placing filthy breaking stuff further and further from the zone.
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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. All the Teams Without Hope
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

All the Teams Without Hope
Woody Allen on Hope
Here’s a brief passage from Woody Allen’s book Without Feathers regarding hope:

How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not “the thing with feathers.” The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.

Norm MacDonald on Hope
Here’s an excerpt from Norm MacDonald’s special Me Doing Standup, in which he discusses hope briefly — like around the 5:40 mark, mostly. (Note: this clip contains English swear words.)

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David Murphy isn’t a star. The former first-round draft pick — 17th overall by the Red Sox in 2003 — has never been able to establish himself as more than a solid player. Coming into the season, his high-water marks included an .806 OPS and 2 WAR. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t getting better.

Murphy now is having a career year in Texas. Entrenched as an everyday cog in a star-studded Rangers lineup, the 30-year-old outfielder is hitting .298/.379/.475, with 10 home runs. Once considered a liability against left-handed pitchers, he’s hitting .372 against them this season.

Murphy, who came to Texas at the 2007 trade deadline, discussed his career and his evolution as a hitter.

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Murphy on getting an opportunity: “I was a high draft pick, but realized pretty early on — a few years into my minor-league career — that it was going to be tough to get to the big leagues with the Red Sox and stay there. Getting traded was the best possible opportunity for me. I had a chance to establish myself as a big-league player the second I got to Texas, and fortunately, I was able to take advantage. Since then, the team has gone nowhere but up. To be able to say that I’ve played in two World Series in my first four full years in the big leagues is something that not many guys can.

“I didn’t really care about it being a big-market environment in Boston, but from my perspective, as an outfielder, I was going to have to put up monster minor-league numbers in order to be looked at as an everyday type of player. That was definitely discouraging at times. I just wanted an opportunity to be up on the big league club and seeing what I could do, and it felt like I wasn’t going to get that chance anytime soon. My best opportunity was going to come with another organization, and I’m happy that it turned out to be the Rangers.”

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Ben and Sam discuss how they came to know that Melky Cabrera was about to be suspended for a positive PED test before the news broke, and how they decided what to do about it.

Episode 226
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), shares his largely impotent thoughts in re news and journalism during his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio.

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 48 min. play time.)

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Source: FanGraphs

27 batters faced, 12 strikeouts, 15 other outs.

In June, I put Matt Cain’s perfect game in historical perspective. This one by Felix Hernandez might not have matched Cain’s strikeout total, but it’s still one of the great single game pitching performances of all time.

Hats off to King Felix, who is more than deserving of the nickname.

A map of the Coastal Plain League.

Other Lists
Cape Cod League
Northwoods League
New England Collegiate League

With August very much here, the nation’s collegiate summer leagues — many of which have probably hosted at least one future major leaguer — are coming to an end.

Below are the players to have performed most ably in this year’s edition of the Coastal Plain League. Offensive production (represented as the totally made-up SCOUT+, where 100 is league average and above 100 is above average) is essentially a version of wRC+, except using the three main defense-independent inputs (home-run, walk, and strikeout rate), all regressed duly*. Pitching performance (represented by the also entirely made-up SCOUT-, where 100 is league average and below 100 represents above-average run prevention) is calculated using a version of kwERA, with regressed strikeout and walk rates as the relevant inputs.

*By the method outlined here.

The idea here is not to suggest that the following players are/were the actual best prospects from the Coastal Plain League this summer. Outlets like Baseball America and Perfect Game will certainly do a much better job of that. Rather, it’s to (a) represent as accurately and responsibly as possible the best performances of the Coastal Plain League season and to (b) acquaint ourselves with those top performers.

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With about a month left in the minor league baseball season, one of 2012’s worst kept secrets has been the prodigious speed of Cincinnati Reds shortstop prospect Billy Hamilton. With 139 stolen bases entering today’s action, Hamilton is six away from the minor league record of 145 set by Vince Coleman in 1983.

Video after the Jump

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MLB’s official account just sent out the following message on Twitter.

BREAKING: Giants OF Melky Cabrera suspended 50 games without pay after testing positive for Testosterone, a performance-enhancing substance.

— MLB (@MLB) August 15, 2012

Melky Cabrera’s suspension begins immediately, and since the Giants only have 45 games remaining in their schedule, this effectively knocks him out for the remainder of the regular season and the NLDS, should the Giants qualify for the playoffs. Losing Cabrera in the midst of their pennant chase will obviously hamper those efforts.

Cabrera was in the midst of the best season of his career, hitting .346/.390/.516, and had accumulated +4.5 WAR in 501 plate appearances. Taking his bat out of the Giants line-up creates a significant offensive hole, and this news probably makes the Dodgers the favorites to win the NL West.

This will also have massive ramifications on Cabrera’s future, in all likelihood. He is eligible for free agency at the end of the season, as a guy heading towards his age 28 season who had put together two straight terrific seasons, he was likely in for a significant payday. This failed test will certainly cast a cloud of suspicion on Cabrera’s breakout performance from last year (which was caused by a significant jump in power), and teams will likely be very wary of giving a significant contract to a player coming off suspension for PEDs.

Rather than pointing to the contracts received by the likes of Torii Hunter and Aaron Rowand, teams will now be equating him to the likes of Jose Guillen and Manny Ramirez. If this list of PED suspensions on Wikipedia is accurate, then as far as I can tell, no player has ever signed a deal for more than two years after previously failing a drug test, and nearly every player on the list had to go year to year for the remainder of their career.

Most other players who have failed drug tests have either been at the end of their careers — and thus easily avoided — or have already been under contract. How Major League teams approach Cabrera’s free agency should be a fascinating story. He’s probably gone from looking at a 5+ year contract to hoping for a one-year “pillow contract” where he can attempt to get through 2013 without any failed drug tests and hope that he can sustain a high quality performance, and the list of teams who are willing to take the PR hit to bring in a guy coming off a failed PED list is probably not that large. Cabrera has instantly gone from being one of the prizes of the winter to being a guy who will probably not have many suitors.

This failed test may end up costing Cabrera in excess of $60 to $70 million this winter. Because of the timing of the suspension, this may be the highest cost any player has ever paid for failing a drug test.

Just to settle my curiosity, I’ve set up a poll (after the jump) to see how this news affects your willingness to employ Melky Cabrera on your own. If you were a Major League GM and Cabrera offered to play for you at whatever number you considered to be a reasonable price — whether that’s the league minimum or $5 million — would you sign him? Or do you simply now see Cabrera as a guy you wouldn’t want on your roster because of the bad PR and the belief that he’s going to take a big step backwards if he stops using testoserone?

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