Archive for September, 2012

Effectively Wild Episode 41: The Brewers Are Back in Contention, Technically/Max Scherzer and the Tigers’ 2009 Trade Revisited

Ben and Sam discuss the state of the Brewers, which is a lot like the state of the Phillies, then talk about Max Scherzer’s long-awaited improvement and which team won the 2009 trade that brought him to Detroit.


FanGraphs Audio: Dayn Perry, In Medias Res

Episode 240
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), begins his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio in the middle of things.

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 40 min. play time.)

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The Potentially Tragic Late Life of the Brewers

You’re going into the bottom of the ninth inning, and your favorite baseball team is trailing 7-0. The game’s being played in a roughly neutral run environment, and so your team’s odds of winning are about 0.2 percent. That’s one-fifth of one percent. Maybe you’ve stopped paying close attention, and maybe you’ve stopped watching entirely, because the game is basically hopeless. It’s clearly not impossible to score at least seven runs in one inning, but it is exceedingly rare.

The first batter draws a walk. The next batter draws another walk. Now maybe the guy after that strikes out, but then a single loads the bases, and another single scores two. A walk loads the bases once more. You’re paying close attention again, if you didn’t turn the game off, because suddenly things are interesting, and your team has tons of momentum. Your team’s odds of winning with one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth of a 7-2 game are about four percent.

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Madison Bumgarner’s Slider is Awfully Impressive

Through just two and half seasons, Madison Bumgarner has already accumulated 11.0 WAR, which is an even more impressive number when you consider that this is just his age-22 season. Bumgarner has followed a breakout 2011 campaign with a season of similar quality, with an increased strikeout rate and decreased walk rate despite a rather large uptick in home runs allowed. Even with the increased home run total – 20 allowed this season compared to 25 in his previous 325.2 innings pitched – he has gotten away from the “hittable” label and has seen his BABIP drop to .265, putting his career mark at a standard .299 mark compared to the rather high .317 prior to this season.

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2012 Free Agent Custom Leaderboard

With the regular season just a few weeks away, we know many of you have turned your attention towards the off-season, and are coming up with potential scenarios you’d like to see your favorite team pursue this winter. So, to assist with comparisons and plans, we’ve created a custom leaderboard with all of the free agents expected to hit the market this winter.

There is some guessing required here, as there are team and player options that haven’t been officially decided upon, so we made the best guesses we could based on the information available at the moment. This means that we’ve included Jake Peavy and Dan Haren as free agents while not including Tim Hudson or Paul Maholm, though each is in a position to potentially have their option picked up for 2013, depending on what decisions are made by their current organizations. The nice thing about custom leaderboards is that if you don’t like some of the guesses we made, you can simply remove or add players and save your own version of the list with your own assumptions, so you’re not tied to the ones we’ve made. We’ve done most of the work for you, and you can tweak as necessary.

And, because it’s built on our leaderboards, you’re not limited to just the default display. If you want to limit it to players under the age of 30, you can use the age filters to just show the younger free agents. If you want to view performance over the last three years for more context than just 2012 performance, you can use the multi-year selectors to show data from 2010 on. And, you can play around with the data filters, so if you only want to see hitters with an ISO over .200 or a wRC+ of 130, you can do that. You can also save each report individually, creating a host of different FA leaderboards to peruse based on the filters you want to look at repeatedly.

We hope you find this tool useful. If you want to thank someone for the hard work putting it together, throw your kudos at Brandon Warne, and to David Appelman for coming up with the Custom Leaderboards to begin with.


Tigers Jump Ahead, Sink Peavy In Fifth

Jake Peavy put together a good start Tuesday for the White Sox in the middle of a massively important series with Detroit on Tuesday. The veteran righty went just 5.2 innings but struck out nine, allowing three runs on six hits and two walks. Although not a “Quality Start” by the typical measure, it was according to his 52 Game Score. Such denotations as “quality,” though, will always be subjective and open to debate.

If it weren’t for Peavy’s struggles in the fifth inning, any discussions surrounding Tuesday’s start would be unnecessary. Peavy cruised into the frame, allowing just three singles and a walk while striking out five throughout the first four innings. Of 59 pitches, Peavy faced just 14 counts with more balls than strikes; half came on full counts and five came in two at-bats (both resulting in outs).

But then came the fifth, and Peavy stopped getting ahead.

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First Inning Chess Match in Minnesota: Ironic?

Of all the big Tuesday night games, perhaps none was bigger than the barn burner in Minnesota between the Twins and the Royals. The Twins failed in their quest for that elusive 60th win, and the Royals solidified their grip on third place in this 9-1 thriller. Some might say the game was not compelling, but I found at least two things that drew my attention in the first inning alone: a failed bunt and a failed steal. When these plays first happened, I found each a source of irritation and I planned on writing that up. However, after looking a bit more closely, things were not so clear cut, and I thought it would be even more interesting (to me, at least) to write that up.

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The Time Jerry Blevins Had the Greatest Something

Odds are, as FanGraphs readers, you aren’t Oakland A’s fans, but you are at least somewhat familiar with Jerry Blevins. You know something about who he is and what he does for a living. You might have an idea of how good he is at it. To you, this isn’t weird; Blevins is a baseball player, and you know a lot about a lot of baseball players. To other people outside the baseball-fandom bubble, you know a lot about a lot of guys you’ve never met. Speaking generally, it is profoundly unusual to be familiar with Jerry Blevins. Tuesday night, though, Blevins got himself in headlines, so it’s very slightly less unusual to be familiar with him than it was before.

As you might’ve seen or read about already, Blevins came through with a clutch ninth-inning relief appearance that allowed the A’s to beat the Angels, 6-5. According to Cool Standings, the win boosted Oakland’s playoff odds from 85 percent to 90 percent, and the loss dropped LA’s playoff odds from 32 percent to 26 percent. Recall that the Angels were supposed to be one of the best teams in recent baseball history. There is now a three-in-four chance they don’t even reach the one-game playoff. I don’t know how these odds would’ve swung had the Angels rallied and won, but suffice to say things would look very different indeed.

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FanGraphs Chat – 9/12/12


Samuel Deduno and Throwing Strikes

“I love his upside. If he can harness his fastball, throw a few more strikes, he’s got a chance to be pretty good. Guys have a tough time squaring up balls against him; it’s tough to make solid contact. When you see some of the reaction of some of the hitters, I don’t think there’s any fluke about it.” — Ryan Doumit on Samuel Deduno

Few things are inevitable in baseball. Preseason favorites fail to deliver postseason destinies, future Hall of Famers go through prolonged slumps both at the plate and on the mound, and under-the-radar prospects burst onto the big league stage and become household names in a matter of weeks. It’s one of the main reasons we so passionately follow the game.

As of mid-August, though, perhaps nothing seemed so inevitable as the downfall of right-hander Samuel Deduno.

The 29-year-old journeyman began his season in Triple-A Rochester for the Minnesota Twins — his third team over the past three years — and eventually worked his way into the big league rotation. He took advantage of the opportunity by only allowing eight earned runs in his first 29 innings, winning three of his first five decisions and posting a 2.48 ERA. Given the state of the Twins’ starting staff, that type of production secured him a permanent place in the rotation for the remainder of the season.

Plenty of reasons for concern existed, however. Our very own Mike Podhorzer outlined why Deduno was unlikely to continue his early success on the mound, which largely centered around his lack of command. He has historically struggled to command his pitches — particularly his fastball — and that resulted in an astronomical walk rate. Even today, his walk rate currently stands at 5.45 BB/9. Far too high for a guy who possesses a below-average strikeout rate.

Almost a month later, Deduno’s statistics continue to defy common sense. His 1.12 K/BB ratio currently ranks seventh-worst in the league amongst starting pitchers who have thrown at least fifty pitches this season. He owns a 5.06 FIP and 4.93 SIERA. His 80.3% strand rate continues to beg for a regression.

Yet, instead of experiencing a tremendous regression of his skills on the mound, Samuel Deduno has shown marked improvement in recent starts. He has only surrendered four earned runs in his last three starts (spanning 20 innings), while striking out 19 and only walking six. And as his catcher Ryan Doumit said in the quotation above, success for the right-hander begins with throwing more strikes.

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