Archive for August, 2012

I think there is a lot that can be learned from what happens in 3-and-0 counts. There is not everything to be learned — that wouldn’t make any sense. That would be an outlandish claim, had that been the claim that I made! But I think you can learn a lot about pitchers, generally and specifically, and I think the same goes for hitters. You need a good amount of data, but the 3-and-0 situation is unlike any other.

Yesterday, I examined hitters who whiffed on 3-and-0 fastballs more or less right down the pipe. This was the first thing that occurred to me to examine, because in a 3-and-0 count you should be sitting on a fastball right down the pipe and so you shouldn’t miss it if you get it. I was pleased to find that Dexter Fowler, on one occasion, made a fool of himself. But honestly, while I was actually writing that post, I got it in my head that I should be writing a different post. This is that different post. Think of it as a continuation of the series, if you like, where this series has two episodes before getting cancelled.

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Yesterday, we rolled out Fielding Dependent Pitching in an effort to provide a more thorough evaluation of pitching and run prevention. Today, I want to talk about how FDP can be used to examine the Cy Young races, and specifically, why it illustrates that Johnny Cueto should be the frontrunner for the NL Cy Young Award.

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We’re only three days from the expansion of major league rosters. On Sept. 1, all players on a team’s 40-man roster will be eligible to play in the big leagues without an accompanying move. Often times, baseball fans are treated to a sneak preview of teams’ top minor league talent as a result of September call-ups; or they’re surprised by a relatively unknown player who manages to contribute over the season’s final month.

In preparation for this year’s roster expansion, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the greatest-ever September call-ups, defined here as players that made their major league debut during the month of September.

There are, of course, two ways to look at this: The first is to look at players — position players and pitchers — who generated the most value for their clubs during their call-up. The second is to look at players whose careers began as a September call-up and then went on to have great careers.

I’m looking at both. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 18, 2009, Willy Aybar, who had not played in 6 days, who could barely play second base and had hardly proven himself as a hitter, got the start at second against eventual the AL Cy Young winner, Zack Greinke. Aybar went 4 for 4 with a game-deciding double.

Rays manager Joe Maddon told the media the choice to start Aybar had been a deliberate one, a decision based in the front office’s proprietary analysis. I remember the event — reading the post-game interview moreso than seeing the game — because it marked the first time in my baseball-viewing experience where I had seen a lineup decision apparently based according to ground ball and fly ball data.

Entering the 2009 season, Greinke had a 37.9% ground ball rate — making him one of the league’s more extreme fly ball starters (this has since changed). Aybar, meanwhile, finished his short career with a .349 wOBA against fly ball pitchers and a .300 wOBA against ground ball pitchers.

Since that July 18 game, the Rays have continued to be one of the very few teams to game the underappreciated GB-FB splits game. I suspect one of the main reasons for that is that teams — namely managers — cannot easily identify and predict the splits. Today, I would like to put forth a theory that suggests we can identify — with decent success — GB-FB splits after just watching a hitter take batting practice. Here is the theory:

THEORY: Batters with an uppercut swing will succeed more against ground ball pitchers, and hitters with a more level plane will succeed more against fly ball pitchers, and — naturally — hitters who can swing on both planes will have a smaller overall split.

Let’s examine:

NOTE: Many GIFs are under the jump. The page may load slowly.
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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Very Sortable Table: Arizona Fall League Rosters
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Very Sortable Table: Arizona Fall League Rosters
Regarding Yesterday, A Thing That Was Announced During It
A thing that was announced yesterday — via some manner of stone tablet and/or atop some manner of rocky peak, one assumes — was the preliminary rosters for this year’s Arizona Fall League, or AFL.

Regarding the AFL, What It Is, Again
The AFL is a league composed of myriad top prospects that takes place (geographically speaking) in the Greater Phoenix Area and (chronologically speaking) over October and November. This year’s schedule, for example, runs from October 9th until the November 17th championship game.

Regarding What the Author Has Done
What the author has done is to publish a sortable table of all presently known AFL-bound players, including both the AFL and MLB parent club for each one. Also, for the greater convenience of the reader, each player’s name includes a hyperlink to his FanGraphs player page.

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Ben and Sam discuss whether a team should have claimed Joe Mauer, what he’s worth, and what his future will look like, then talk about the end of Erik Bedard’s stay in Pittsburgh and how sad it is when a guy who’s always either good or injured goes bad.

Episode 233
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), makes his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio from his own, real bed.

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 28 min. play time.)

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Whenever a big-time player hits revocable August waivers, it’s customary for some people to initially freak out, and then for other people to calm them down by saying that lots of players are put on revocable waivers and it doesn’t really mean anything. Obviously, as you know, that’s true. Most of your favorite players will have been put on waivers. Hardly anything will happen to any of them beyond that. It’s all just something that happens, something that teams do because there’s not a lot of reason not to do it.

The big-time waiver player of the day right now is one Joe Mauer. Ken Rosenthal initially reported that Mauer had been placed on waivers, and now Rosenthal has reported that Mauer has cleared waivers. In theory, that means that Mauer can be traded, and if he were traded before the end of the month, he’d be eligible for his new team’s playoff roster. Joe Mauer almost certainly isn’t going to be traded within the next few days, if he’s ever traded at all. Guy’s a popular, productive, hometown player. But this is still something we can talk about, because do you have anything better to talk about? Right, so let’s talk about Joe Mauer.

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“It’s his second start and he looks like he’s in midseason form!”

An exasperated Matt Underwood of SportsTime Ohio let out the preceding utterance after Brett Anderson dropped a 78 MPH curveball in for a strike on Cleveland’s Brent Lillibridge with a 1-1 count in the bottom of the third inning Monday. Even by that point it had become a familiar sight for Underwood and the hapless Indians. All told, Anderson used his off-speed trio — curveball, slider, changeup — 42 times, and 27 of them went for strikes.

Lillibridge struck out swinging on a 2-2 curveball biting down and in. He was one of five strikeout victims and one of 13 straight retired by Anderson to open the game. The positively svelte Anderson cruised through seven shutout innings, continuing to look the part of staff anchor just as the club needs him most.

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