Three at bats by Miguel Cabrera against Junichi Tazawa went a long way in determining the outcome of the ALCS. Had the Red Sox set-up man not gotten the better of baseball’s best hitter, there is a good chance the Tigers would be facing the Cardinals in the World Series.

Cabrera is known for hitting fastballs a long way. Tazawa got him out by working away with fastballs.

In Game 3, with runners on the corners and one out in the eighth inning of 1-0 game, Tazawa struck out Cabrera on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-2 count. The Red Sox held on for a 1-0 win.

In Game 5, with runners on the corners with none out in the seventh inning of a 4-2 game, Tazawa got Cabrera to ground into a 4-6-3 double play on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-0 count. The Red Sox hung on to win 4-3.

In Game 6, with runners on first and second with two out in the seventh inning of a 2-1 game, Tazawa got Cabrera to ground out to shortstop on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-0 count. The Red Sox rallied from the one-run deficit to win 5-2.

Tazawa features a splitter, which he utilized 28 percent of the time in the regular season, but all seven pitches he threw to Cabrera were fastballs. That was the game plan, and not just for the 27-year-old reliever. The Red Sox attacked the hobbled slugger with hard stuff the entire series. Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers were really good in 2011, making it to the ALCS one year after finishing at just .500. Then 2012 went even better, where despite winning fewer regular season games they made it to the World Series, and 2013 was successful as well, going back to the ALCS. That’s a pretty excellent run of success, and they’re likely to be right back in the mix in 2014, since they return the majority of their core. But they still haven’t turned any of those seasons into a champion, and for a city that will next year be three decades past celebrating their last Tigers World Series winner, close isn’t good enough — and you start to wonder when this iteration runs out of chances.

That’s especially true for owner Mike Ilitch, who turned 84 this summer and has made it clear that he wants to see a winner in his hometown, for the first time since he purchased the club in 1992, while he’s still around to enjoy it. As if getting back to the ALCS (or beyond) for a fourth year in a row wasn’t going to be difficult enough, the Tigers find themselves contending with forces that make 2014 possibly their last best chance to get a championship out of this group. Read the rest of this entry »

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Episode 391
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 probably, like, every free agent.

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

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 35 min play time.)

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An hour ago, we released the results of our free agent crowdsourcing project, in the form of a list sorted by the highest projected contract values. On that list, Tim Lincecum was projected to sign the 10th largest free agent contract of any player this winter, coming in at $40 million over three years, even though it is pretty clear that the Giants are going to make Lincecum a qualifying offer, which will require any team signing him to give up a draft pick and the draft dollars that go along with that spot.

The crowd was not so optimistic about Dan Haren, however. He’s projected to earn $19 million over two years, and the two years is rounded up from an actual estimate of 1.76 seasons, so it might be fair to categorize that as one guaranteed year and the expectation of some kind of vesting or team option. There is basically no chance that the Nationals will make Haren a qualifying offer, so he will come free of draft pick compensation to any signing team.

That’s a pretty huge gap in expected cost, especially once you factor in the draft pick. We’re talking double the guaranteed money, plus whatever value a team places on the draft dollars it is giving up, which will almost certainly translate into a few million of extra lost value. Once you factor in the value of the draft pick, the projected cost difference between the two hurlers is around $25 million. And yet, no matter how you slice their recent performance data, they look pretty darn similar.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs once again facilitated this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2013-14 free-agent market.

Below are the results of same. For each player, respondents provided estimates of the years/dollars each free agent is likely to receive (denoted as Real) and also how much they — were they, themselves, actual GMs — would offer each free agent in terms of years and dollars (denoted as Fake).

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There is always a bit of a lull between the end of the minor league playoffs in September and the start of the annual top prospects lists in early November. Because of that gap, I’m breathing new life into an old feature that I wrote for the site in FanGraphs’ infancy back in 2008 and 2009.

The series ‘A Minor Review of 2013′ will look back on some of the major happenings in each MLB organization since the beginning of April as a primer for the upcoming FanGraphs Top 10+5 prospects lists. This series will run throughout September and October. I hope you enjoy the series and are eagerly anticipating the start of ‘Prospect List Season.’

The player listed in the sleeper section was featured in a pre-season series that looked at one fringe prospect in each organization that was expected to take a big step forward during 2013, chosen by myself, a scout or a front office talent evaluator.

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Ben, Sam, and BP’s Zachary Levine discuss the upcoming World Series.

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Hey there, baseball fans or people at least aware of baseball fans, and welcome to the first part of probably the year’s last edition of The Worst Of The Best. Beginning this Wednesday night, we’ll have the World Series, and this year’s World Series might well feature baseball’s two best teams in the Red Sox and Cardinals. A lot of good baseball allowed these players to become what they are today, and a lot of good baseball allowed these teams to get to where they are today. It’s arguably the right matchup, even if it isn’t necessarily the most compelling matchup. In honor of quality baseball, then, I thought I’d seize this opportunity to reflect on really bad pitches and swings. This is the post where we look at the bad pitches. Here’s a link to the full series archive.

What you’re going to see below are the five wildest pitches from the 2013 regular season, as determined, in three instances, by PITCHf/x and elementary math. In the other two instances, they were determined by visual observation, by me. The idea is to capture pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone, and you’re going to run across a lot of .gifs and screenshots, in case you’re worried about locking up your computer made of balsa wood. It’s been like this all season. There’s no sense in complaining today. I promise we’re almost through.

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Until recently, Cuba was known for producing great major league pitching. Brothers Orlando Hernandez and Livan Hernandez come to mind first perhaps, but Jose Contreras, Aroldis Chapman, Rolando Arrojo and even Danys Baez successfully made the difficult cultural and professional transition to Major League Baseball in the past.

But now we have Yoenis Cespedes and Yasiel Puig stateside, and Jose Abreu on the way, and it seems like a trend. The Dodgers got in line Monday, signing Alex Guerrero to a four-year, $28 million deal that could be worth as much as $32 million according to Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com. The risks with this newest signing — and the upsides — are considerable, even if both aspects aren’t on the same level as some of the recent deals with Cuban position players.

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