First unnecessary reminder: big-league baseball players are extraordinarily talented, each and every one of them. Second unnecessary reminder: big-league baseball players are also imperfect, prone to frequent mistakes. For evidence of the former, consider most of the action in every game, where pitchers are throwing balls that move at 95 miles per hour and hitters are sometimes hitting them fair and far. For evidence of the latter, consider missed spots or off-balance swings. Consider errors on what would ordinarily be routine plays. Baseball games are littered with material for the positive and cynical alike.

A fun thing to examine is pitcher strike rates in 3-and-0 counts against pitchers, or in 3-and-0 counts with the bases loaded. You’d expect much higher strike rates than you actually observe. In this way, we see that pitchers are flawed when it comes to their ability to throw to a rectangle. Sticking with 3-and-0 counts, we can find something of a hitter equivalent. In those counts, pitchers usually want to throw strikes. In those counts, hitters usually want to swing only at hittable strikes. So we can find hitter mistakes by exploring swings in 3-and-0 counts at pitches out of the zone. You can think of them as momentary breakdowns in discipline.

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The author has published a weekly statistical report for the Arizona Fall League each week since its brief season commenced back in October — not necessarily because such a thing is of great utility to prospect analysis, but more because, for those of us not currently present in the Greater Phoenix area, it’s one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league.

What follows is the the penultimate edition of this site’s weekly statistical report for the AFL, which league concludes with this Saturday’s championship game.

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When the American League Cy Young Award winner is announced on Wednesday night, Detroit’s Max Scherzer is almost certainly going to defeat Yu Darvish of the Rangers and Seattle’s Hisashi Iwakuma, potentially by a lot. Look at those wins! Twenty one of them, against only three losses! There’s absolutely no question that some percentage of the voters are going to simply see “21-3 for a playoff team” and cast their ballot without a second thought. It’s sad, even infuriating, but it’s true. Even though pitcher wins don’t matter, even though we’ve made progress from things like peak-level Johan Santana losing out to Bartolo Colon in 2005 because the Twins weren’t very good that year, in this context: yeah, they still do.

That fact of life has caused a nearly unlimited amount of aggravation among many of us, but it can also obscure this very important truth: just because Scherzer had the best record and we hate that many voters will focus on that, it doesn’t automatically mean that he’s not actually the best pitcher in the American League. He might be, or he might not be — there’s plenty of candidates — but nor is his likely victory going to be some sort of travesty. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday morning brought the startling news that the Atlanta Braves will be leaving Turner Field in downtown Atlanta at the end of the 2016 season for a new ballpark in neighboring Cobb County. The ballpark will be just 20 years old when the Braves depart. It opened in 1997, after the city of Atlanta converted its Olympic Stadium into what was then a state-of-the-art ballpark. But according to the Braves, Turner Field is in need of $150 million in renovations and upgrades, on top of the $125 million the Braves have spent on improvements to date. Even then, says the team, the ballpark would still sit in an area of downtown Atlanta that is not easily accessible by public transportation and that is surrounded by parking lots and little other economic development, which hampers the fan experience.

Instead, the Braves will reportedly invest that money and more into a new ballpark in unincorporated Cobb County, about 14 miles northwest of Turner Field.  The team purchased 60 acres near the intersection of Interstates 75 and 285 and plans to develop not just a new ballpark, but mixed-use properties (residential and commercial), parking lots, and open/green space.  Here’s a map showing where Turner Field is located (A) and where the new ballpark will be built (B).

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Players are sent to the Arizona Fall League for all sorts of reasons. The MLB-owned prospect-laden fall league serves as a domestic winter league, and so teams use it as they wish. But once you are selected as an all-star, an AFL Rising Star, you’ve got a unique stamp of approval, something akin to being an all-star in a league of all-stars. And now that the Rising Stars game has been around since 2006, we have some data to see exactly what that selection means for a prospect.

Some teams send players to Arizona because they were injured during the year and need to build up arm strength, innings pitched, or plate appearances. Some teams send players to try out a new position. Some teams send fast-track prospects from the low minors so that they preview what play in the high minors will look like. Some teams send polished picks straight from the college ranks so that they can skip a level on their way to the bigs. Some teams send prospects they might like to trade so that they might look better to future trade partners after some time in the offensive-friendly league. Most teams send players that face the Rule 5 draft if they aren’t moved to the forty-man roster.

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At around 11 pm eastern time last night, Philadelphia television and radio host Howard Eskin reported the following on Twitter:

#phillies GM Ruben Amaro deep in serious talks w #bluejays to acquire OF Jose Batista. Can also play 3rd. Phils would deal OF Dom Brown plus

— Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) November 13, 2013

As I write this several hours later, no other media entity has followed up on the report, either confirming or debunking, so as I get write this before I go to bed, I am unaware of whether this is a rumor to be taken seriously or something that is more conjecture than reality. So, consider this post less of an analysis of a potential Jose Bautista/Domonic Brown trade and more a collection of thoughts that I’ve had since reading the reactions to the rumor. I will note that these thoughts are mostly directed towards Phillies fans who find abhorrent the idea of acquiring one of the game’s best players.

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Ben and Sam talk to Evaluating Baseball’s Managers author Chris Jaffe about how to assess managers and what the latest managerial hirings mean.

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The relentlessly Canadian Marc Hulet published earlier today his first organizational prospect list of the 2013-14 offseason — in this case, for the Chicago White Sox.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, that Hulet has considered the overall value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the White Sox or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

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