The Boston Red Sox beat the Detroit Tigers tonight and are going to the World Series. It seems an odd time to criticize lineup decisions by John Farrell. That is especially true when his two most-questionable moves turned into gold. Jonny Gomes doubled to lead off the seventh inning. Four batters later, Shane Victorino sent Fenway Park into a frenzy with a grand slam.

Leading up to the game — a 5-2 Red Sox win — I opined on Twitter that Gomes shouldn’t be in the lineup, and Victorino should be moved to the bottom of the order. There was logic behind my opinions. In retrospect, I still think I was right, even though I may have been wrong.

Farrell put it this way prior to the game: “At this point in time, gut feel comes into it a little bit more than numbers on a stat sheet or a given category. The way players respond in this environment has got equal weight, if not more, than what the numbers might indicate, or drive you to make a decision over the course of a regular-season game. This is a different environment.”

The Red Sox manager wasn’t referring specifically to his decision to play Gomes over Daniel Nava. The question posed to him was more general in nature, but for all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what he was referring to. Read the rest of this entry »

In a playoff atmosphere, everything gets magnified a bit. Situations are always more tense, every little thing seems to carry more weight. It seems that, if you ask enough people, almost every play could be labeled as a “game-changer” by someone. That’s because there are only so many plays to go around. Outs are finite. In the playoffs, they seem astronomically finite. So when a home run is hit, or a great defensive play is made, it seems to matter more. An approving eyebrow raise in the regular season turns into a full-on shout in the postseason. A minimal eye roll on a random Wednesday in June morphs into an audible “UGH” sound in October.

Nothing can produce an audible reaction faster than a double play. The double play seems to be the only situation where both sides react in an equal and opposite way. Home runs are one-sided. Run-scoring singles are one-sided. Double plays raise sounds out of both sides. Someone is quite happy and someone is quite upset. This is because the twin killing is seen as such a momentum changer — it’s two outs for the price of one. The idea of momentum is something some in the statistical community scoff at a bit. They scoff because they scoff at things they can’t measure, at least accurately. But I’ll come right out and say it, I believe in momentum. I believe that when I’m in a good mood, I do better work. I pay more attention, I get things done quicker, and the overall product is of higher quality. I don’t know how to measure this on a baseball field, but I believe it exists there, too. To think that everything on a baseball field is static and has no affect on anything else in the entire game seems shortsighted. Double plays take wind out of sails, so to speak. They bother people.

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If the Cardinals are to earn a berth in the World Series Friday night, they’ll have to do so opposing a team starting Clayton Kershaw, presumably baseball’s best starter. Taking the mound for the Cardinals will be a still-mostly-unproven rookie in Michael Wacha, and on the face of it, that puts the Cardinals at a considerable disadvantage. But, a few things are working in their favor. One, the Cardinals are at home, and the home-field advantage is undeniable, even if it’s almost impossible to observe in the moment. Two, Wacha and the Cardinals just beat Kershaw and the Dodgers earlier in this very series, by a 1-0 final. So nothing here is impossible. And three, some people figure that by this point in the season, pitchers are pitching on fumes. Wacha, however, only seems to be getting stronger. The gap between Kershaw and Wacha exists and is big, but right now it’s probably not as big as you might’ve thought.

There’s something to be said for postseason adrenaline. There’s something to be said for Wacha still finding his way as a starter in the bigs. And there’s something to be said for the way Wacha has been handled this year, as the Cardinals didn’t want a repeat of the Strasburg Shutdown in 2012. The Cardinals anticipated the future, they wanted to have Wacha available down the stretch, so they gave him some breathers over the course of the summer. As a result, Wacha’s stabilizing a late-season rotation that’s missing Shelby Miller. He’s not just throwing his pitches — he’s throwing his pitches better.

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Episode 390
Brian Burke is the proprietor of the internet’s very excellent Advanced NFL Stats, itself roughly to football what FanGraphs is to baseball. He’s also the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 45 min play time.)

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating 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.

Note that, this year, in addition to asking readers to estimate the years/dollars each free agent is likely to receive, FanGraphs is also requesting that readers make note of how much they’d pay each free agent were they, themselves, actual GMs.

In this edition: Jesse Crain.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating 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.

Note that, this year, in addition to asking readers to estimate the years/dollars each free agent is likely to receive, FanGraphs is also requesting that readers make note of how much they’d pay each free agent were they, themselves, actual GMs.

In this edition: Grant Balfour.

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The Reds and their fans are likely understandably disappointed in their first-found playoff loss to the Pirates after a 90-win season. Still, the Reds gave themselves a shot by making the playoffs. It was their third playoff trip in four years, and though they did not make the Divisional Series as they did in their most recent two prior appearances, it was still the team’s third time in four years in the playoffs.

Nonetheless, this is the time of year for speculation on what a team should do to position itself for the future, especially in the suddenly very competitive National League Central. The Reds are likely facing at least one major departure as Shin-Soo Choo hits free agency after a monster season at the plate. They still have a good core of players who will be around, among them Joey Votto, Mat Latos, Jay Bruce, Aroldis Chapman, and Homer Bailey. Brandon Phillips also has been a big part of that core during the Reds’ recent run of success, and is under contract through 2017. However, earlier this week John Fay wrote that the Reds apparently had interest in Cuban infielder Alexander Guerrero, who is projected to play second base in the big leagues. With Phillips’ perceived down performance and the organization’s reported irritation with some of his comments, reading the tea leaves could mean the team is ready to see if they can trade Phillips this winter.

Phillips did have a down year by recent standards, but the question is whether 2013 indicates a greater-than-expected drop in his skills, and how that might influence his value to other teams given his age and the $50 million left on his contract.

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According to multiple reports, the White Sox have agreed to terms with free agent first baseman Jose Abreu on a six year, $68 million contract. Abreu, who turns 27 in January, has been a star slugger in Serie Nacional, the premier baseball league in Cuba, and played for the Cuban team in the World Baseball Classic this past spring. The $68 million guarantee shows that Major League teams are beginning to put a little more faith in players from Cuba, as the big successes of Yoenis Cespedes and Yasiel Puig have likely instilled some confidence in players coming over without needing a long transition period.

However, there’s a pretty big difference between Puig, Cespedes, and Abreu: they were signed in part because of their athleticism. Cespedes was signed as a center fielder, and though Puig was reportedly out of shape when other teams scouted him, the Dodgers clearly saw the dynamic tools that allowed him to make a huge splash this summer. Both Puig and Cespedes had Major League skills that went beyond what they did at the plate, and didn’t necessarily have to develop into upper level sluggers in order to justify their paychecks.

Abreu is, by all reports, strictly a 1B/DH type, and comparisons to guys like Ryan Howard don’t exactly inspire confidence that he’s more 1B than DH. The entirety of Abreu’s value is likely going to come from how well he hits. And $70 million for a guy who has to hit in order to be a big leaguer seems like a bit of a gamble, given that hitting seems to be the single hardest thing to forecast.

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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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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating 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.

Note that, this year, in addition to asking readers to estimate the years/dollars each free agent is likely to receive, FanGraphs is also requesting that readers make note of how much they’d pay each free agent were they, themselves, actual GMs.

In this edition: Ervin Santana.

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