Archive for May, 2014

Wade Davis, Dominant Reliever

If one were to review the data for pitchers with the highest strikeout rates in baseball (at start of play Thursday), they would rightly expect to see names like Kenley Jansen, Jose Fernandez, and Max Scherzer near the top. All three are in the top 15, but a surprising name owns the top spot on that leaderboard – Wade Davis.

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Effectively Wild Episode 451: Cueto, Greinke, and Green Lights

Ben and Sam reach into the topic grab bag and discuss Johnny Cueto, Zack Greinke, when to give hitters green lights, and more.


The Underappreciated and Evolving Rick Porcello

As of this writing, the Detroit Tigers are the only team in the AL Central with a record above .500. They rank sixth in all of baseball in both runs scored per game and runs allowed per game. While their offense ranks in the top 10 in WAR, their pitching is what is really shining — ranking second in all baseball just behind the Red Sox. The claim that the Tigers have good pitching is not an original one, certainly. They have a pair of Cy Young award winners in Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, as well as Anibal Sanchez, who would be the ace of a lot of teams.

Other members of the rotation pique certain interests as well. Drew Smyly is getting another shot at starting, and Robbie Ray has been more than adequate while filling in for an injured Sanchez. Applying a sort of family dynamic to the team — Verlander, Scherzer, and Sanchez are the older kids that are just kind of doing their own thing while Smyly and Ray are the little ones that garner all the attention. This leaves Rick Porcello, the Jan Brady of the Detroit Tigers.

Porcello isn’t a dominant strikeout artist. He doesn’t have amazing “stuff” that gets featured via GIFs. Though he’s only 25 years old, he isn’t seen as part of an exciting new crop of pitchers. He isn’t flamboyant, he doesn’t say crazy things to the press. On the surface, Rick Porcello is boring.

But do you know what else Rick Porcello is? A top-25 starting pitcher. Since 2012, he’s been the 24th best pitcher by WAR and ranks 25th so far this season. He doesn’t walk many, he keeps the ball on the ground and in the ballpark. He may not have the dazzle of a Jose Fernandez (RIP), but he’s a vey effective pitcher in his own right. And he may be getting more effective. Read the rest of this entry »


The Slowest(-Working) Team in Baseball History

The Mariners and Rays played a Wednesday matinee that featured extraordinarily little in the way of offense. Following the conclusion, there was this simple throwaway tweet:

Seems long. Seems like too much. An isolated instance is an isolated instance, and you shouldn’t focus too much on anything unless it repeats, but it turns out, for the Rays, this is a reflection of the norm.

Granted, there was a variety of reasons for Wednesday’s duration. Mariners starter Brandon Maurer struggled, and Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon went and got himself into an on-field argument. The day before, the Rays won 2-1, and that game took less than three hours. But a few days ago, the Rays lost a nine-inning affair 6-5, and they played for 228 minutes. Not long before that, they lost a nine-inning affair 6-3, and they played for 250minutes. In terms of footspeed, the 2014 Rays presumably are not the slowest team in baseball history. In terms of game pace, they most probably are.

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Replacing Martin Perez with Martin Perez

The Rangers, already the most injury plagued team in baseball, got a double dose of bad news on Wednesday.

Matt Harrison’s lingering back problems have simply not abated, and now he’s looking at either trying to pitch through serious pain or face a spinal fusion surgery which could potentially threaten his Major League career. Meanwhile, Martin Perez — who lasted just 3 2/3 innings on Saturday — was diagnosed with a tear in his UCL, and is probably going to join the Tommy John parade. The Rangers were already trying to get by without Derek Holland, Jurickson Profar, and Geovany Soto, as well as a host of role players who had been pushed into larger roles due to the team’s injury epidemic.

With both Perez and Harrison potentially out for the season, the Rangers rotation is in shambles, and some national pundits are already writing the team’s obituary. And certainly, losing 40% of your rotation on one day is not going to improve your team’s chances of making the playoffs. The Rangers are worse today than they were yesterday. But let’s keep some perspective; few players are so good that their loss would dramatically the needle for a team’s playoff odds, and the Rangers replacement for Martin Perez might actually be just as good.

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Eno Sarris Baseball Chat — 5/15/14

11:48
Eno Sarris: I should just open this like a minute before we chat, that way I could maybe keep up with the stream of questions. Nevertheless, I’ll be here in ten minutes.

11:49
Eno Sarris: And in the meantime, enjoy the song that introduced me to indie hip hop.

11:49
Th1zzardOfOz:

12:00
Comment From Pale Hose
Hey Eno. If you’re asked about a player is your default response based on real baseball or fantasy?

12:00
Eno Sarris: Great question. Real, I think, but context is huge. Here, fantasy.

12:00
Comment From Michael
Think Zach Britton is worth a stash at this point?

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Quarterly Report: Masahiro Tanaka’s Dominance

Roughly a quarter of the 2014 season is in the books, and the sample sizes are creeping toward a representative level. Over the next couple of weeks, let’s take a somewhat deeper look at some of this season’s more noteworthy players and performances to date. “Noteworthy” doesn’t always mean “best”, though it does in most cases. Let’s kick it off today with a look at Masahiro Tanaka’s first seven starts as a Yankee. (This article was written prior to his eighth start, on Wednesday night.) His 58/7 K/BB ratio obviously speaks volumes about his ability. Is his future success based almost exclusively on this solid foundation, or is there even more to him? Read the rest of this entry »


NERD Game Scores for Thursday, May 15, 2014

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

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Most Highly Rated Game
San Diego at Cincinnati | 12:35 ET
Ian Kennedy (49.0 IP, 71 xFIP-, 1.3 WAR) faces Johnny Cueto (63.0 IP, 71 xFIP-, 1.1 WAR). In addition to having produced uncharacteristically excellent defense-independent numbers, the latter has also recorded a 99.5% left-on-base rate. By comparison, league average typically sits at ca. 73%. For further comparison, the best single-season mark among qualified starters since 2002 is 85.2%, care of then-Philadelphian J.A. Happ.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cincinnati Radio.

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Prospect Watch: Today’s Actual Starters for the Mets, Yankees

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

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The New York Mets and also Yankees play each other today at 7:10pm ET. Both clubs feature a right-hander making his major-league debut. What follows is a brief report on both of them.

Jake deGrom, RHP, New York Mets (Profile)
Level: MLB   Age: 26   Top-15: 7th   Top-100: N/A
Line: 38.1 IP, 6.8 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, 0.5 HR/9, 3.72 FIP at Triple-A

Summary
Despite his age, deGrom has demonstrated promise, if also a lack of true swing-and-miss secondary pitches.

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The Old Mark Buehrle’s New Trick

Dave observed the other day on Twitter that, over the past calendar year, Mark Buehrle has been one of the better and more valuable starting pitchers in baseball. A lot of that has had to do with home-run suppression, and if you read FanGraphs often, you know how we generally feel about home-run suppression, but the larger point is that, after getting off to a rough start in Toronto, Buehrle turned things around and continues to get batters out to this day. His strikeouts right now are basically the same as ever, and every game batters against Buehrle return to their dugouts shaking their heads. He is what he has been, allowing him to feel ageless.

Consider everything about Buehrle and you might assume that he’s pitching like he always has. Why mess with what’s been working? Buehrle’s always been a little bit deceptive and a little bit finesse, and it’s not like you very often see a pitcher in his mid-30s make an approach adjustment. But if you dig beneath the 2014 Mark Buehrle surface, you notice something you can’t un-notice. Of his 31 strikeouts, 20 have been called. This is unusual, and this has an explanation.

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