I recently posed a question to seven players and three coaches. 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, Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth?

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam talk about pitchers who are struggling despite lofty strikeout-to-walk ratios, then pick the perfect run environment.

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

1. Leaderboards of Yesterday
2. An Very Watchable International League Matchup
3. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
4. Today’s Complete Schedule, Featuring Entirely Discretionary Watchability Scores

 
Leaderboards of Yesterday

If you’re like me, you’re nostalgic for yesterday. If you’re exactly like me, you were hot-tubbing with several friends yesterday in a reasonably priced rental home in Salt Lake City, enjoying perfect weather, having just attended the most beautiful, perfectly-planned wedding you’ve ever attended, a wedding for two dear and generously talented people. Which means, of course, that you have little idea what went on in the world of Major League Baseball. In which case you’ll want to catch up quickly by viewing the following leaderboards of yesterday:

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Table of Contents
The following is the table of contents for today’s Daily Notes.

1. Regarding Who the Heck the Author Is
2. Regarding to What the Author is Listening
3. Rickey Henderson’s Base Stealing, Converted to Distance
4. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
5. Today’s Complete Schedule

Regarding Who the Heck the Author Is
The present author is David G Temple, i.e. me. I’m usually a contributor to NotGraphs, however Mr. Cistulli has trusted me with presenting the Daily Notes for this fine Saturday. My hopes are to a.) provide you with some interesting brain bits for your brain, and b.) prove my worth to my family, my friends, and myself.

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In his Major League debut for the Mets, 23-year-old Zack Wheeler struck out seven hitters in his six innings of work. Of those seven strikeouts, six came on fastballs — and of those six, four came on whiffs induced by fastballs.

This got me wondering, what pitchers this year have generated the largest percentage of their strikeouts off of their fastball? And how many generated those strike outs on swings and misses on fastballs*?

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Hey there, Internet users, and welcome to the second part of the 11th edition of The Worst Of The Best. This is the second part of the tenth edition, from last Friday, which you might have already read. If you haven’t already read it, maybe go ahead and keep it that way because I can never predict when I’m going to have to start recycling jokes and other material. Every single week I start conducting my research and I worry that I’m not going to have anything to say. Every single week so far, words have produced themselves, but I don’t know how it happens so I can’t just take it for granted. As I type this, I’m nervous. I’m nervous about whatever is going to happen down below. What if it sucks?

This is where we look at bad swings, which basically means this is where we look at two-strike swings at breaking balls in the dirt. Exceptions are special, but they’re also rare, which is what makes them exceptions. I am looking forward to showing you something about a particular matchup, but I won’t spoil the surprise in the introduction. You should also know that I’m writing this in an aggravated mood, because a bunch of the swings I looked at on video wound up being checked swings and I exclude those and that drives me crazy because it’s lost time. Stop going halfsies, hitters. You make my Fridays worse. The window examined: June 14 through June 20. Let’s look at some fools.

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Hey there, whoever you are, and welcome to the first part of the 11th edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here — right here — is a link to the first part of the tenth edition, from last Friday. Meanwhile, this is a link to the section containing every post in this series. For a few minutes I debated with myself whether to write “11th” or “eleventh,” and I settled upon the former, as evidenced conclusively above. Please do not interpret this paragraph as an indication of the paragraphs to come. I promise that things will pick up, if only because there are stills and .gifs below that interrupt the words that I type. It’s the words that are the hard part for me and the relatively unpleasant part for you.

Here we talk about wild pitches in the form of a top-five list, showing the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. The data window analyzed is from June 14 through June 20, of this year. Yes, the load times; yes, I get it; yes, I don’t care. In the event that candidate pitches are missing, that’s PITCHf/x’s fault, not mine, so feel free to yell at PITCHf/x. Here are some pitches that just missed the top five: Jeremy Affeldt to Logan Forsythe on June 18, Yovani Gallardo to Trevor Crowe on June 20, and R.A. Dickey to David Murphy on June 15. The list below is presented in descending order because the other way would be stupid.

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According to Buster Olney, the Chicago Cubs are open for business. They’re a rebuilding franchise with no real playoff aspirations and a bunch of interesting veterans who are free agent eligible at the end of the year, so it makes sense for them to make some present-for-future trades. The focus is likely going to be on their pitching, as Matt Garza and Scott Feldman will be two of the more common names you’ll hear talked about over the next month or so. However, there’s another Cub for sale that might be one of the more interesting players on the market: Nate Schierholtz.

Schierholtz has long been a bit of a favorite of mine, as he specializes in the skillset that I think is most often overlooked at the big league level. He’s basically a tweener, a guy with good corner outfield defense who probably can’t handle center field but doesn’t have the kind of power teams have historically associated with RF and LF. He’s been around for a while, and now 29-years-old, he has only hit 33 home runs in nearly 1,600 plate appearances, and he has a career slugging percentage of .426. That kind of moderate power profile generally gets overlooked when teams are looking for corner outfielders, even if the rest of the skillset makes the overall package pretty useful.

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Heading into last season, Devin Mesoraco was a consensus top-15 prospect, and it was thought that he would see significant time behind the dish with the Reds. After all, they had traded their other top catching prospect — Yasmani Grandal — away in the Mat Latos trade in order to supposedly clear the way for him. But instead, Mesoraco spent most of the season sitting on the bench, and things haven’t been much different this year. In doing so, Cincinnati and manager Dusty Baker may have squandered one of the rarest assets in baseball.

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Last year, Mike Trout was 20-years-old, and he did things that no other 20-year-old in history had ever accomplished. He’s the only 20-year-old in baseball history to post a +10 WAR season, and it wasn’t just driven by his positive fielding numbers, as his 166 wRC+ was the best hitting performance any 20-year-old has ever posted. It was an historic season in many ways, but it was also the kind of season that didn’t look repeatable.

His BABIP was .383, and both his fielding and baserunning numbers were among the best in the game, but all of those variables are heavily influenced by speed, and speed peaks very early. During his run last year, I repeatedly noted that I thought Trout would probably settle in as more of a +6 to +7 WAR player, because his defense and baserunning would regress faster than his offense would improve.

And, really, his BABIP, his defense, and his baserunning have regressed somewhat. Trout’s UZR is just +0.5 despite spending about half of his games in left field, his BABIP is down to .357, and he’s only stolen 16 bases this year after swiping 49 last season. Trout noticeably bulked up over the off-season, and he doesn’t appear to be quite as fast as he was last year. He’s still a burner, but he’s probably not in the fastest player in baseball conversation anymore. So, in that sense, my expectations for Trout regressing have been vindicated.

Except, you know, his wRC+ has fallen from 166 last year all the way down to 163 this year. The BABIP correction has essentially been canceled out by an improvement in his contact rate, so he’s just not striking out as often as he was last year and the increase in balls in play has allowed him to maintain his offensive levels from last season. And, while his stolen base totals are down, he’s still taking a ton of extra bases, which shows up in his league leading +3.3 UBR, the part of our baserunning calculation that measures value from advancing my means other than stealing a base. Trout had a +5.0 UBR last year, so he’s actually on pace to get more value from his non-steal baserunning this season than he did in 2012.

Last year, Trout was the best 20-year-old in baseball history. This year, his performance is going to give him a shot at being the best 21-year-old in baseball history.

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