Ben and Sam talk about how a player’s willingness to crash into walls affects their expectations for him, then discuss whether Albert Pujols can improve if he keeps playing.
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Knuckleballers aren’t like other pitchers, or so the saying goes. Their pitches flutter like butterflies, they pitch at less than max effort, they don’t depend on velocity, and they can pitch into their fifties. All of these things seem true, and yet the more we know about knuckleballers the more they might actually be more like all the other pitchers out there. So when 38-year-old R.A. Dickey has lost some oomph on his seminal pitch, maybe it means something, just like it usually does for other pitchers.
A few weeks ago in one of my FanGraphs chats, I was asked who had a better chance of rediscovering his old self, between Scott Kazmir and Ubaldo Jimenez. I made the same sort of crack any one of us would’ve made at the time, like how you’d respond to the idea of Rich Harden or Nick Johnson staying healthy. Kazmir or Jimenez getting on track was practically unthinkable, or so I assumed, before Kazmir turned it on and Jimenez turned it on also. Now the Indians are tied with the Tigers for first place in the Central, with a suspect pitching staff looking a little less suspect than projected.
Jimenez has been one of the more perplexing starters in baseball over the years, thanks in large part to the fact that he used to throw a hundred miles per hour. He doesn’t do that anymore, and people want to know why. He ran into some unsightly struggles, and people want to know why. Jimenez tried to win himself a Cy Young in 2010, and he hasn’t been the same pitcher since, and these sorts of guys are always fascinating. Proposed explanations for Jimenez’s decline have concentrated on his mechanics, which sounds insightful until you realize, well, yeah, of course. But Jimenez’s mechanics have always been unusual and complicated. So they’ve drawn attention.
If you google for the phrase “pitching and defense wins championships”, the search engine returns 28.8 million results. Even if you put the statement in quotes, requiring that the exact phrase be used, there are still 99,000 pages where Google will show you that statement being written on the web.
Not all of those pages are advocating on behalf of that statement’s truth, but some of them certainly are. And, perhaps most recently, this sentiment was argued for on MLB Now, when White Sox broadcaster Hawk Harrelson lectured Brian Kenny about the merits of statistical analysis in baseball. In that conversation, Harrelson said, among other things:
Episode 336
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes a portion of baseball closest to 100%.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 43 min play time.)
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It’s hard to imagine the White Sox having a more depressing start to the season. They are stuck in last place in the American League Central, and their hitting has been abysmal. When you remove pitchers’ hitting from the equation, the White Sox wRC+ is tied for dead last in baseball with the Marlins, who are not even trying to field a competitive team. And while usually the team has fan favorite Paul Konerko to look to as a bright spot, even he has stumbled badly out of the gate. With the AL Central suddenly seeming rather competitive, the question arises — is it time for the White Sox to blow it up and sell?
Give this to Jeff Keppinger: he’s a long way from history. Keppinger, to date, has started 29 games for the White Sox, and he’s still searching for his first base on balls. That’s a long streak to start a season, but it’s far from the longest streak. Two years ago, Brent Morel of the same White Sox didn’t draw his first walk until start 33. In 2009, John McDonald went 35 consecutive starts without a walk. In 2003, it was 39 consecutive starts for Jose Molina. In 1995, Mariano Duncan didn’t walk until start 46. And blowing everybody else out of the water, there’s Rob Picciolo circa 1980. That year, Picciolo walked on October 2 and October 5. Through October 1, Picciolo had zero walks, 77 starts, 92 games, and 267 plate appearances. Picciolo’s streak isn’t out of Keppinger’s reach, since Keppinger’s streak is still active, but it’s not unlike thinking about a perfect game in the top of the fifth.
Give this to Jeff Keppinger: he isn’t the only player in baseball this year without a walk drawn. There’s also Jarrod Dyson, and Joe Mahoney, and Brent Lillibridge, and dozens and dozens of others. All the players without a walk have totaled 1,275 plate appearances. But 125 of those belong to Keppinger, and no one else without a walk has more than 31. Among the walkless, Jeff Keppinger has more than four times as many plate appearances as the runner-up.
After a rough start to the season, the Rays have clawed their way back over .500 via a five-game winning streak with a series win over the disappointing (to put it mildly) Blue Jays and a three-game sweep of the Padres this weekend. Tampa Bay is still in fourth place in the American League East, four-and-a-half games back of the division-leading Yankees, but this early in the season, they are still in it. The East looks like it is going to be entertaining all season.
The Rays, like pretty much every team at this point in the season, has had their share of surprises and disappointments. Evan Longoria is back to being awesome, if he ever really stopped. David Price has had his frustrations. On Friday, Alex Cobb had one of the most incredible sub-five inning starts ever. Among the hitters, though, easily the most effective Rays hitter this season has been off-season stopgap acquisition James Loney, who is currently hitting .376/.429/.560 (176 wRC+), including homers in each of the last two games. This early in the season, is there any indication that Loney has made some changes that would mark improvement after five disappointing seasons (mostly with the Dodgers), or is just another instance of the Rays catching a Case of the Kotchmans?
A little over a year ago, Jed Hoyer acquired Anthony Rizzo for the third time; he was an Assistant GM with Boston when the Red Sox drafted Rizzo in 2007, he was the Padres GM when they acquired Rizzo from the Red Sox in the Adrian Gonzalez deal in 2010, and then he was the GM of the Cubs when they acquired him from San Diego for Andrew Cashner in 2012. In all three cases, it looks like Hoyer came out on the winning end of the deal, as Rizzo was clearly worth a sixth round pick, is more valuable than Gonzalez by himself at this point, and is certainly a bigger building block for the Cubs future than Cashner would be.
The well traveled youngster can go buy a house now, though, as his days of getting shipped from one city to the next are likely over. Ken Rosenthal first reported that the Cubs signed Rizzo to a seven year, $41 million contract extension that includes a pair of team options, ensuring that Chicago will own his rights through his age-29 season and could retain him through his age-31 season if both options are picked up. And with that deal, it looks like Hoyer and the rest of the Cubs front office is likely to once again come out on the winning end of a deal involving Anthony Rizzo.
| 12:00 |
: It begins. 30 seconds to turn down your speaker.
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| 12:00 |
could you see any smaller market fringe contender like Pittsburgh, Colorado, or Baltimore going all in and trying to deal for Cliff Lee? |
| 12:01 |
: I don’t think so. Even if they were willing, I don’t think the Phillies are living in reality land.
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| 12:01 |
which happens first: keppinger walk, hr, or sb? |
| 12:02 |
: starting to think sun turns into a red giant first.
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| 12:03 |
Espinosa vs. Daniel Murphy RoS in a 12-team H2H 5×5(OBP)? |
