Episode 327
Jim Deshaies was a major-league pitcher for 12 years and Astros broadcaster for 16 more of them (i.e. more years). He’s currently both (a) in his first season as a Cubs broadcaster (alongside Len Kasper) and (b) a guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 14 min play time.)

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The first two-and-a-half weeks of the season have been a struggle for Red Sox prospect Xander Bogaerts. Last year, the shortstop excelled in the Eastern League and earned his place as one of baseball’s elite prospects. But his return to Double-A Portland has been underwhelming thus far. Against New Britain, Bogaerts went 0-for-6 with a strikeout, a walk and a groundball double play. His frustration was palpable. But there were still plenty of positives too.

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

1. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
2. Today’s Notable Minor-League Games
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Oakland at Tampa Bay | 13:40 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Tommy Milone (18.2 IP, 97 xFIP-) faces Roberto Hernandez (18.2 IP, 92 xFIP-). Regarding the latter: he’s posted a 21.2% strikeout rate and 10.6% swinging-strike rate thus far, both figures considerably better than his previously established levels. A brief inspection of his PITCHf/x data reveals that, rather than having demonstrated improvement with any one pitch, that all of Hernandez’s pitches are currently eliciting more whiffs than in 2011, for example, when he last pitched significant innings.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay Radio.

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

1. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
2. Today’s Notable Minor-League Games
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Kansas City at Boston | 13:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
One assumes that this game will have something of the celebratory feel after Friday night’s nearly ideal resolution to an otherwise startling series of events. That will make Fenway Park and its occupants a compelling spectacle in and of themselves. Incidentally, there’s also rather a promising pitching matchup between James Shields (21.0 IP, 74 xFIP-) and Clay Buchholz (22.0 IP, 86 xFIP-). Regarding Buchholz: he’s posted a 27.4% strikeout rate so far, about 10 percentage points above his career average. That’s encouraging. Less encouraging is how his swinging-strike rate — which correlates very highly with strikeout rate — is basically the same (8.5%) as in previous seasons.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston Radio or Television.

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And we’re to the second part of our third edition of The Worst Of The Best. As earlier, this has been delayed on account of current events, which have been making it difficult to concentrate. As earlier, I’ll acknowledge that not everybody wants to be reading about baseball right now, and this is simply out there for those who do. As earlier, I’ll note that I have no sympathy for people whose browsers lock up, because you ought to know by now that these posts feature a ton of .gifs and images. And as earlier, I’ll detail what you’re about to look at! This is a top five of the wildest swings of the past week, or the full swings at the wildest pitches. Checked swings don’t count as wild swings, for my purposes, and really awkward swings where the hitter falls down don’t count as wild swings, either. It’s all PITCHf/x-derived, so if you want to blame something for something, blame technology. Just don’t expect it to respond.

Maybe you saw a swing over the past week that you thought was really bad. Maybe you think that swing should’ve made the top five, even though it didn’t! Instead of assuming PITCHf/x got something wrong, assume that you got something wrong. It’s true, sometimes PITCHf/x has glitches, and sometimes PITCHf/x misses pitches. However, far more often, you misjudge something you see with your eyes. Your eyes are pretty great, considering how things would be without them. But relative to the PITCHf/x cameras, your eyes are feet. By which I mean they’re things that can’t see. The list is going to start now. This, by the way, is a link to last week’s edition.

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Considering current events, let’s acknowledge something up front: I am not composing this with my full, undivided attention, and you probably are not reading this with your full, undivided attention. That’s just fine, and maybe because of the latter, you won’t be aware of the former. But I wanted to open with an excuse, and it’s weird enough to be thinking and writing about baseball right now, or even this week. Some of you certainly won’t be in the mood to read about sports, although I suppose those who don’t care wouldn’t be looking at FanGraphs right now in the first place. Here is baseball content on a Friday. Read it or do not, and I’m okay with your decision.

If you’re still here, and if you’re still interested, this is the first part of the third edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to last week’s version of this, in order to bring you up to speed. Top five wildest pitches, relative to the center of the zone, derived via PITCHf/x. It’s not relative to intended location because we have no way of reliably measuring that. Yes, that would be better, in theory. No, that is not doable, in reality. Please do not complain about these .gifs locking up your browsers because you should understand by now that these posts have .gifs in them. All of the posts in this series will have at least five .gifs in them. You should know whether or not your browser sucks at .gifs. You do not get my sympathy. To be honest nobody ever gets my sympathy just because they have a frozen Internet window. This seems like enough of an introduction, so let’s advance to the more meaty bits.

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Sometimes players are described as “bad-ball hitters.” Or, sometimes players will be described as having strike zones that range from the head to their heels. Vladimir Guerrero used to own these tags, and once upon a time, so did Nomar Garciaparra. It is possible to succeed while swinging at everything, and nobody personifies that today better than do Robinson Cano and Pablo Sandoval.

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Since Clubhouse Confidential is an off-season only show, the MLB Network has created a new show called MLB Now, where Brian Kenny and Harold Reynolds frequently disagree on differing topics. On yesterday’s show, the two briefly discussed the value of pitcher wins, as you can see in this clip below.

In that segment, Harold Reynolds cites CC Sabathia as an example of a pitcher who pitches to the score, noting that he performs differently when the game is on the line than when he’s just trying to get outs and has some runs to give up. While one will never be able to definitively prove or disprove the intent of a pitcher, given that we are left to only measure what they do rather than what they are thinking, Reynolds’ claim is testable. If Sabathia pitched dramatically better in close games than with a big lead, it would show up in the data.

It does not. Read the rest of this entry »

Jackie Bradley Jr.’s fantastic spring did not turn into April results. The highly regarded Red Sox prospect was sent down to Triple-A Pawtucket following Thursday’s game after he managed just three hits and six walks in 38 plate appearances. It’s clear what Bradley needs to work on with his everyday at-bats at Pawtucket: hitting advanced changeups and curveballs.

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In a deal announced on Tuesday, the Seattle Mariners will become the majority stakeholder in ROOT Sports Northwest, the regional sports network (RSN) owned by DirecTV. ROOT Sports NW currently broadcasts Mariners games under a 1o-year rights fee contract that pays the Mariners $45 million per year. That agreement gave the Mariners an opt-out clause after the 2015 season, which led many to speculate that the team would look to match the mega deals recently struck by their American League West rivals.

In 2011, the Angels inked a new local TV deal with regional sports network Fox Sports West, valued at $2.5 billion over 17 years, plus a 25% equity stake in the RSN. The Texas Rangers kicked off this new frenzy in late 2010 with its 20-year/$1.7 billion deal with Fox Sports Southwest. After the Angels’ new deal, the Houston Astros cashed in, joining with the Houston Rockets to create a new RSN with Comcast, called Comcast SportsNet Houston. The Astros will receive $80 million a year for the next 20 years, plus income generated from its 45% equity stake.

Instead, the Mariners are headed in a different and somewhat surprising direction. The new deal — estimated by Forbes at $2 billion over 17 years — will give the Mariners broader control over the RSN’s programming. But that control may come with some financial uncertainty.

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