Archive for August, 2012

I’ve seen him pitch a few times in spring training, and a couple of years ago I saw him pitch a little bit. I think for the most part the comparisons are pretty well-founded. We both throw four pitches — curveball, slider, changeup, fastball. He’s got a little more of a sinker than I do. I probably have a little bit more of a curveball than he does. Otherwise, it’s pretty similar.

Actually, he’s got a much better changeup than I do, too.

— Collin McHugh on Dillon Gee, from a piece by Adam Rubin

Collin McHugh made his major-league debut on Thursday, and said debut was rather excellent, turns out. The 25-year-old right-hander struck out nine while walking just one in seven shutout innings of a Rockies offense that, while not among the league’s elite, is still full of men compensated pretty handsomely to play baseball (box).

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Pretty much all people are creatures of habit, meaning pretty much all baseball players are creatures of habit, meaning pretty much all pitchers are creatures of habit. There’s a reason why pitchers don’t like getting unusual rest between starts. There’s a reason why pitchers don’t like having uncertain roles in the bullpen. Pitchers are all about routines, all about doing the same things over and over and over. They know of a process, and they want to stick to that process.

If you want to take this to the extreme, there have been those pitchers who’ve said they don’t pay attention to who’s at the plate. Of course, that can’t be true, or at least that shouldn’t be true — the identity of the hitter is very important. Thankfully catchers are usually paying attention. Pitchers are mindful of who’s hitting, because different players should be pitched differently.

Thinking about this got me thinking about how pitchers pitch differently in different situations. Then eventually that got me thinking about how pitchers pitch against other pitchers, because I just wrote a post about Tommy Hanson’s offense, and pitchers hitting just fascinates me. We know that pitchers like to have a certain general routine, a certain general approach. To what degree do they deviate from this approach when the guy hitting just isn’t much of a threat?

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Source: FanGraphs

Baseball statistics can be very quirky, especially the ones we carry here at FanGraphs. Players can be worth half-a-win, a hit can produce fractions of the run, stuff like that can be difficult to accept at first. Things happen in wholes in the real world — a team gets credited either with one full win or no win in any single game, that hit either drives in a run or it doesn’t — and understanding that these bits and pieces contribute to the whole isn’t exactly something that gets explains clearly or often enough.

Last night, Red Sox closer Alfredo Aceves lost more than one game. The Sox and Angels played a wild back-and-forth affair with seven total lead changes, including five after the seventh inning. The 29-year-old Aceves was on the mound for three of those lead changes despite only being credited with one full inning of work. He allowed three runs in the top of the ninth to blow a two-run lead, was let off the hook when Cody Ross hit a solo homer to knot things up in the bottom half, then went back out to the mound in a tie game in the tenth only to surrender two more runs.

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Through the whole course of baseball history, several thousand players have managed to bat at least 200 times. An enterprising position player might reach that mark in less than two months. Given that minimum, nobody’s been a better hitter, relative to the rest of the league, than Babe Ruth, who had a career wRC+ of 197. All right, not learning a whole lot so far. Given that minimum, nobody’s been a worse hitter than one Don Carman. The long-time Phillie batted 239 times and recorded a dozen hits, racking up a wRC+ of -79. After Carman, there’s Ron Herbel, at -73. And after Herbel, there’s Tommy Hanson, at -70. Keep in mind that these are large negative numbers and wRC+ has a plus sign built right into the name. By this measure, current Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Tommy Hanson has been the third-worst hitter in baseball history.

Thursday night, facing Barry Zito in San Francisco, was another normal game at the plate for Hanson. He batted twice. The first time, he grounded back to the mound with two runners in scoring position. The second time, he struck out swinging at a curveball. There wasn’t a third time, because Hanson also pitched poorly, and while the Braves surely would’ve preferred that Hanson pitch better, at least he spared them a third time watching him hit.

Hanson has now batted 47 times this season. That’s roughly a quarter of his career total. There are no signs that his offense is getting better. To his name this season, Hanson has a -78 wRC+ and one hit. What follows is the story of that one hit.

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My first trip to the Appalachian League brought me to two parks in Elizabethton and Greeneville which could not have been more different. Elizabethton, a small town outside of Johnson City, Tennessee housed the Twins at an older parks & recreation facility. Considering the high school football opener happening a couple of miles away, about a thousand people showing up for the ballgame was a solid crowd.

Two things about the Elizabethton Twins struck me as interesting. At a time when minor league baseball is big business, the franchise was still run by the city. The General Manager of the club was also the city Parks and Recreation Manager. Ron Swanson most certainly would have been proud!

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If you go to the leaderboards for 2012, you’ll see all the familiar names – Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, David Wright, etc… However, something kinda fun happens if you then reset the minimum plate appearances filter down to, say, 50 plate appearances, so you capture some performances from guys who aren’t exactly everyday players. Then, sandwiched in between Trout and Joey Votto, you find one player who you might not expect to be on a list of the league’s top hitters.

Yes, that’s Erik Kratz, currently tied with Joey Votto for the best wRC+ of any hitter in the National League. The 32-year-old journeyman backup catcher who began the year in the minors and came into the 2012 season with one career extra base hit in the big leagues. He’s basically Crash Davis, as he has nearly 3,000 minor league plate appearances, including over 1,500 in Triple-A. And now, finally given a chance to play every once in a while due to Carlos Ruiz’s injury, Kratz is killing the baseball.

14 of his 22 hits have gone for extra bases. His .406 ISO is nearly 100 points better than the next highest batter with 50+ plate appearances. Among catcher seasons with that same 50 PA minimum, Kratz’s 181 wRC+ ranks seventh all time, one spot below Mike Piazza’s career year of 1997.

Yes, we could also see that it ranks six spots below Taylor Teagarden, whose 2008 season ranks as the best wRC+ from any catcher in a season with 50+ PA, but what fun would that be? It’s far more enjoyable to link Kratz to Mike Piazza.

In a season where nearly everything has gone wrong, the Phillies have a 32-year-old rookie catcher who has been as productive at the plate as Joey Votto. Okay, fine, small sample size, unsustainable performance, blah blah blah. Instead of raining on his parade, I’m just going to celebrate with Erik Kratz, the new king of National League hitting. Congratulations on what has to be one very fulfilling ride.

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

1. Sexy Regressed August Leaderboards
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Sexy Regressed August Leaderboards
Regarding a “Sexy Regressed Leaderboard,” What That Is
In the not very distant past, the author submitted — as a prelude to a series of posts on college summer leagues — he submitted an entirely infallible and also sexy method by which to present responsibly both batting and pitching production regardless of sample size.

Regarding the Method in Question, A Short Description of It
Essentially, what the author did was to (a) take the strikeout, walk, and (for hitters) home-run rates of every player in the relevant sample, (b) regress them accordingly, and (c) produce a number that looks either like wRC+ (for hitters) or ERA- (for pitchers).

Regarding That Method, A Slightly More Thorough Description of It
For the purposes of these sexy leaderboards, 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.

Regarding That Method, The Most Thorough Description of It
Click this hyperlinked text to read the most thorough description of the method discussed here.

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Ben and Sam discuss Austin Jackson’s excellent catch, whether he’s the best defensive center fielder in baseball, and whether it’s even possible to decide one way or another, then dissect Seattle’s eight-game winning streak to see if it’s the start of something good or a fluke that will soon be forgotten.

Episode 231
David Laurila, curator of FanGraphs’ Q&A Series, discusses all manner of advanced baseball analysis with Angels left-hander C.J. Wilson.

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 12 min. play time.)

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In a start earlier Thursday, Justin Verlander just abused the Blue Jays for nine innings. In fairness to the Blue Jays, theirs was a lineup missing Jose Bautista, J.P. Arencibia, and Brett Lawrie, and it was a lineup with Omar Vizquel batting sixth and Jeff Mathis batting seventh, but outside of one pitch Verlander cruised, as he’s so often cruised. He threw another nine frames, with another dozen strikeouts and another paltry two runs allowed. Verlander is a leading Cy Young candidate, and every time he takes the mound, you expect him to do something not unlike this.

What Verlander has done is build a reputation of being perhaps the most consistent starter in baseball. He’s not just excellent; he’s routinely excellent, and a Google search for “Justin Verlander” + “consistent” yields nearly a million results. Of course, a Google search for “A.J. Burnett” + “consistent” yields more than 700,000 results so maybe this isn’t good science. Look at the performance record. I can’t pinpoint the precise moment that Justin Verlander became Justin Verlander, but it’s easy to put it somewhere between 2008 and 2009. Since 2009, Verlander hasn’t posted a FIP below 2.80 or above 2.99. He hasn’t posted an xFIP below 3.12 or above 3.52. He keeps starting and he keeps thriving. He keeps on being Justin Verlander.

Statistically, one can’t deny that Verlander has been consistent, nor should one want to. Perhaps consistency isn’t predictive, but we can identify it in retrospect. On the surface, Justin Verlander has hardly changed at all. Yet it’s interesting to see what turns up when you dig.

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