Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Tommy John surgery, velocity limits, rooting for minor-league teams, and more.
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Let’s talk about something Yasiel Puig did on Monday. In the fourth inning, off Tom Koehler, he hit a home run. He does that. In the fifth inning, off Henry Rodriguez, he walked on four pitches. The same guy had just previously walked Dee Gordon and Dan Haren. In the third inning, Puig flied out. In the seventh inning, Puig grounded out. For good measure, Puig also got caught stealing. But let’s hone in on the bottom of the first. Gordon led off with a groundout, and then it was Puig vs. Koehler with nobody on.
First pitch, fastball, in the zone, foul. Second pitch, fastball, in the zone, foul. That quickly, Koehler was ahead of Puig 0-and-2, and there is no more advantageous count for a pitcher, aside from 0-and-3. Koehler could choose from anything to try to put Puig away, and Puig was put on the total defensive. At that point, he probably wished he would’ve put one of the fouls in play.
| 5:43 |
: Hi everybody!
Something something Tuesday the 13th something something Yamahama, it’s Fright Night!!! Jeff is off tonight — AGAIN — so it’s just you and me. Well, and you too. OK, and you too. Fire off questions, and I’ll try to cram as many into your baseball holes as possible starting at 9 pm ET. See you soon! |
| 9:03 |
: Hi guys, sorry for the brief delay. Let’s do this!
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| 9:04 |
Now that I’m healthy, what do you expect from me? |
| 9:04 |
: I’m not sure that I’m expecting top 25 wRC+ action from you like you have shown at times in the past, but I don’t think top 50 is out of the question. Keep in mind though that that might not translate to great 5×5 numbers.
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| 9:04 |
Is Seth Smith for real? |
| 9:05 |
: Seth Smith has ALWAYS been a great hitter against right-handed pitching. He has NOT always been given enough plate appearances for that to shine through. Right now, he is. Ride him while he’s hot.
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What follows is an exercise not very different than that one performed on a slightly larger scale by the author at the very beginning of the season. As was the case with that post, this one represents an attempt to identify the rookie-eligible players* who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). What it is not is an attempt to account for any kind of future value — for which reason it’s unlikely to resemble very closely those prospect lists which are typically released by more qualified writers at the beginning and middle of the season.
*In this case, defined as any player who’s recorded fewer than 130 at-bats or 50 innings — which is to say, there’s been no attempt to identify each player’s time spent on the active roster, on account of that’s a super tedious endeavor.
To assemble the following collection of 10 prospects, what I’ve done first is to calculate prorated rest-of-season WAR figures for all players for whom either the Steamer or ZiPS projection systems have produced such a forecast. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce approximately a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.
Owing to how the two systems are structured, the majority of the numbers which follow represent only the relevant prospect’s Steamer projection. Players eligible for the list either (a) enter their age-26 season or lower in 2014 or, alternatively, (b) were signed as international free agents this offseason.
Jose Fernandez is broken. After allowing him to throw ridiculous pitches that opposing hitters simply couldn’t touch, his elbow threw in the towel in the fifth inning of his start on Friday night. You can basically see the injury occur in his in-game velocity chart.
| 9:01 |
: Hey guys
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| 9:01 |
: This is going to be a baseball chat just as soon as there are people in it
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| 9:02 |
: And now there are people in it!
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| 9:02 |
hey you’re on time |
| 9:02 |
: From a separate location because I don’t have internet in my new apartment.
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| 9:02 |
: I *did* have internet in my new apartment, and then a construction worker literally cut the cable! The physical cable!
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Normally, when a championship season begins, there already is a pretty clear stratification of teams within a league. In the current 15-team league era, leagues often divide fairly neatly into thirds: five pretty clear contenders, five pretty clear laggards or rebuilders and five “meh” clubs in the middle. As the season begins to unfold, a game of musical chairs begins, with a contender or two often falling short and a club or two from the “meh” and rebuilder categories making a surprise run.
The 2014 American League breaks this mold. almost a full quarter into the season, there are two clear contending clubs — the Detroit Tigers and Oakland A’s — and only the Houston Astros are an obvious laggard. The “meh” pile is 12 deep. Let’s look at this group a little closer for clues as to who might emerge as the other three AL playoff teams. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Most Highly Rated Game
Tampa Bay at Seattle | 22:10 ET
David Price (53.2 IP, 71 xFIP-, 0.9 WAR) faces Hisashi Iwakuma (14.2 IP, 69 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR). The former, despite having recorded an average fastball velocity over 1 mph lower than last year’s mark — which itself was 2 mph lower than his career-high 95.5 mph fastball average in 2012 — the former, despite all that, has pitched brilliantly thus far in 2014. To wit: both Price’s strikeout rate and walk rate are currently better than his previously established career-best marks by those same measures.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay Radio.
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.
Summary
A small Venezuelan southpaw, Lopez has command of three solid pitches at a young age.
Note: This was written just before Monday night’s game, in which Bautista had three hits and a homer. So, most of his 2014 stats are even better than they appear below.
One of the more impressive active streaks in baseball ended recently, and I bet you didn’t know anything about it. No, not the end of Nolan Arenado’s 28-game hitting streak, as nice as that was. Jose Bautista went 0-4 in a loss to the Angels on Sunday, failing to reach base for the first time all year after doing so 37 consecutive times. It’s the longest streak since Michael Cuddyer (!) did so 46 consecutive times last year; it’s the longest to start a season since Albert Pujols had 42 in 2008; it’s tied with Carlos Delgado for the longest in Blue Jays history.
That’s interesting, but it’s not that interesting on its own, really. Bautista wasn’t even halfway to Ted Williams‘ record of 84. Orlando Cabrera once got on base 63 games in a row. Kevin Millar, 52. It’s hard to be a poor player and continually get on base, but it doesn’t on its own make you a great player. What’s interesting about what Bautista just did is that it’s a small part of the larger whole: After back-to-back seasons that were very good but hardly up to the standard he set during his insane 2010-11 run, and at age 33, Bautista is once again absolutely destroying baseballs, currently sitting with the fourth-best wRC+ in the game. Read the rest of this entry »
