Apparently, Zack Wheeler is tipping his pitches, and it’s so obvious that the Mets manager Terry Collins got ten text messages on the subject during the game in Chicago on Tuesday. Is it obvious enough that we can tell?
Ben and Sam talk about whether Kawasaki being sent to the minors tells us anything about chemistry, then discuss how much the Tigers’ defense hurts them.
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I don’t know if you can really understand until he’s yours. You might’ve forgotten, but Cliff Lee pitched for the Mariners once, and while I knew Lee was an ace starter beforehand, it wasn’t until I watched him every five days that I really “got” it. Lee was perfect. He wasn’t and isn’t the best starting pitcher in the world, but he’s close, and he does everything perfectly, just like you’d want him to. He’s always pitching in the strike zone, so he doesn’t get himself in trouble. He works quickly, which is refreshing, and his command is as good as anyone’s. Because of the zone work, Lee doesn’t issue walks, and because of the command and the quality of the stuff, Lee manages to rack up the strikeouts. Lee’s quick and always ahead in the count, and if you’ve had the chance to watch him and root for him, you know the way that I feel. When Lee isn’t pitching, you wish that he were.
Lee, then, is a superior form, a rare form, and he shouldn’t be the subject of many comparisons. Certainly, you wouldn’t expect to see his name linked to that of a right-handed young starter with basically two pitches. In terms of scouting reports, Cliff Lee and Shelby Miller don’t have a whole lot in common, aside from the fact that they throw baseballs at guys in equipment. But when you look at the processes, when you look at the results, Miller’s following in the right footsteps from a very young age.
R.A. Dickey’s first half hasn’t gone that well, as both he and the team struggled early. Lately, though, the Blue Jays are baseball’s most interesting turnaround, with the other players on the roster carrying the team while the Blue Jays knuckleballer tries to get things straightened out. As Eno Sarris noted back in May, Dickey’s velocity has been noticeably down this year, and while that might not seem like a big deal for a knuckleball pitcher, Dickey’s velocity with the floater is what has set him apart from previous hurlers who threw the pitch.
In an interview with Sarris a few weeks back, Dickey noted that health issues have contributed to the problem, but he was hopeful that he’d be able to bounce back soon. Last week, Drew Sheppard created a series of images showing the movement on Dickey’s various knuckleballers, including these two showing the difference in arm speeds from 2012 to 2013.
Quick, non-Astros’ fans: who has been Houston’s best position player so far this year? No looking. It is Jose Altuve, right? It has to be Altuve. He had such a good year last year. You think. And he’s small and fun! And, uh, also, you can’t think of the names of any other Astros position players. It’s got to be either Altuve or Morgan Ensberg. Oh, right.
Wrong. It is not Altuve, Ensberg, or even Craig Biggio. The Astros’ best position player so far this year has been their starting catcher, Jason Castro. Altuve has taken a step back from his 2012 performance (.290/.340/.399, 104 wRC+; .295/.328/.379, 92 wRC+ in 2013), but it is not all about Altuve’s problematic plate discipline and lack of power. After having his first seasons in the majors marred by poor hitting, fielding, and injuries, Castro is having a legitimately good year at the plate so far in 2013.
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.
1. SCOUT Leaderboards for High-A
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
SCOUT Leaderboards for High-A
A Brief Introduction
Featured in this edition of the Notes are the SCOUT leaderboards for High-A. Briefly stated, SCOUT represents an attempt to use our knowledge of certain metrics, and at what sample sizes they become reliable, to measure run production/prevention in instances where small samples are all that’s available. Stated less briefly, is the explanation available here.
| 11:39 |
: You know the drill. Queue is now open, and we’ll get started in 15 minutes or so.
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| 11:59 |
How much faith do you have in the Pirates? |
| 12:00 |
: A good amount. This is a pretty decent team with some good players. They might be closer to a .500 team than a .600 team, but they’ve already got a 47-30 record, and there’s no reason to expect them to fall apart. At this point, they have to be a favorite for one of the two wild card spots.
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| 12:00 |
How did fangraphs get started? |
| 12:00 |
: David Appelman got bored and decided to build a site that would help him keep track of numbers he cared about for his fantasy team. Seriously.
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| 12:01 |
Is domonic brown for real, or is he gonna fall off like crazy in the second half? |
The Fringe Five is a weekly exercise (introduced in April) wherein the author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own heart to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.
Central to this exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe. For the first two-plus months of the season the author has considered eligible for the Five any prospect who was absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists. It stands to reason, however, that — with the accumulation of substantial plate appearances/innings, the graduation of certain prospects to the majors, and the release recently of two midseason prospect lists — that the prospect landscape has changed and that certain prospects who were omitted from preseason lists have now been included on midseason ones.
*Baseball Prospectus and Bullpen Banter.
It was originally the author’s intention to change the criteria for inclusion among the Five as the season progressed and the prospecting community’s knowledge base changed. What the author didn’t originally account for, however, is the potential utility of the Fringe Five Scoreboard (which one can find at the bottom of this, and every other, edition of the Five). The Scoreboard, which accounts for appearances both among the Fringe and Next Five, provides a brief portrait of the season as a whole. Looking at it now, for example, we find both Rafael Montero and Maikel Franco at seventh and eighth, respectively, among the season’s most compelling fringe prospects. Those same players, however, appear at 57th and 58th, respectively, on Bullpen Banter’s midseason prospect list. Were their inclusion on that Bullpen Banter list to render them ineligible for future edition of the Fringe Five, their place on the end-of-season Scoreboard wouldn’t represent the considerable rise in their value — which, it seems as though there might be some value in representing their considerable and respective rise in value.
For the time being, at least — and for the reasons stated above — the author will continue to use the preseason lists as the determinant of eligibility for the Fringe Five.
Moving on, the reader will find that three players retain their place this week among the Five: well-educated Mets pitching prospect Matthew Bowman; young Philadelphia third baseman, the recently promoted* Maikel Franco; and weekly fixture here, Cardinals Double-A outfielder Mike O’Neill.
*To Double-A Reading, that is.
Departing from the Five proper — mostly for reasons that concern the author’s Whim — are Pirates right-hander Nick Kingham and Athletics first-base prospect Max Muncy — about all of whom one can learn more via technicolor prose in this week’s installment of the Fringe Five, below.
Matthew Bowman, RHP, New York NL (Profile)
Were the author to suggest that the 22-year-old Bowman’s place among the Fringe Five is due solely to his (i.e. Bowman’s) excellent performance so far at High-A St. Lucie, he would be lying*. Were the author to suggest that Bowman’s place among the Five is due even, like, 25% or 15% to his (i.e. Bowman’s) excellent performance so far at High-A St. Lucie, he would still be lying. In point of fact, the author is impressed by privilege and Bowman is an alumnus (or maybe near-alumnus) of Princeton, at which prestigious university students can famously receive credit for murdering an Irishman.
*Although it should be noted that Bowman is pitching well at High-A St. Lucie. Some numbers to that effect: 50.0 IP, 54 K, 9 BB.
There are some things that it makes sense to hold on to. A collector’s item, perhaps, that’s gaining value every year. Your first childhood teddy bear, or some family heirloom. A new car you literally just bought. Then there’s Ricky Nolasco, of the 2013 Miami Marlins. Nolasco is about as obvious as trade bait gets. At its simplest, you could just refer to Nolasco as the expensive Marlin. He’s a free-agent-to-be, and the team around him is terrible, and it’s not like people show up to the ballpark in droves specifically to watch Ricky Nolasco pitch. Contending teams want starting pitchers, and Nolasco’s an available starting pitcher, and there’s a non-zero chance he’s traded by the time this very post is published. It’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen soon, by the sounds of things. The Marlins have nothing to gain by holding on to him, and they’re sure as hell not going to issue him a qualifying offer.
So Nolasco’s going to get moved, which means people — fans of contending teams — are going to be curious about Ricky Nolasco. What’s this guy’s deal? Here’s where we begin: Ricky Nolasco, as a starting pitcher, is fine. That’s the best, most accurate label I can give him. The question is how fine; is he more like a 3 who can look like a 2, or is he more like a 4 who can look like a 3? This is what’s most worth examining.
I recently posed a question to six players, three coaches and a play-by-play broadcaster. It was a question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Given the subjectivity involved, it may not even have a right answer.
Who was better: Pedro Martinez or Nolan Ryan?
The question was phrased exactly that way. It was up to the people responding to interpret the meaning of “better” and to elaborate accordingly. They were asked face-to-face, with no opportunity to reference statistical data on their phones or on their laptops. Their responses — listed below in alphabetical order — were both interesting and varied.
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