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: Hey there everybody. Still sick, still tardy like usual, but still present to talk about baseball. So let’s talk about baseball!
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: And probably exclusively baseball!
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: Except for this:
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Holy crap is this a new record for lateness |
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: I was just as late last week!
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Victor Martinez has a 3.5% strikeout rate |
When discussing the positive surprises of the first month of the 2014 baseball season, the words “Milwaukee Brewers” and “Charlie Blackmon” are sure to come up very early in the conversation. While Blackmon has clearly not been the most valuable player on his own club – Troy Tulowitzki says hi – he does deserve every bit of attention and scrutiny that has come his way. Who is Charlie Blackmon? Where did he come from, figuratively? What is he, and where might he be going? Let’s look at the track record and attempt to make some educated guesses. 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
Houston at Detroit | 19:08 ET
Brett Oberholtzer (32.0 IP, 108 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR) faces Robbie Ray (29.1 IP, 18.3% K, 4.4% BB at Triple-A). The latter was notably acquired from Washington this offseason (along with Ian Krol and Steve Lombardozzi) in exchange for right-hander Doug Fister — a move which seemed to represent a miscalculation of Fister’s value. Owing to a pair of spring injuries, Fister actually won’t make his season debut until Friday — i.e. three days after Ray makes his major-league debut tonight.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio.
Ben and Sam banter about hustle and drug suspensions, then talk about how Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, and Giancarlo Stanton have been pitched this season.
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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
Part of the Jake Peavy bounty, Montas combines premium arm speed with a few other developing skills.
Josh Tomlin will be on the mound tonight for the Indians. It will be the 29-year-old right-hander’s first start in a Cleveland uniform since he underwent Tommy John surgery late in the 2012 season. The opportunity is well-earned. Tomlin has thrown 17 scoreless innings in his past two outings for Triple-A Columbus and has a 2.06 ERA overall.
Tribe fans can expect to see a revamped-velocity version of the pitcher who went 12-7, 4.25 in 2011. Tomlin still relies on cutters and command – he’ll never be confused with a fire-baller – but he’s throwing harder than he has at any point in his life. More importantly, he’s throwing free and easy.
“The injury prevented me from doing the things I need to do,” Tomlin said. “In 2011, maybe a month after the All-Star break, I started feeling like something wasn’t right. I tried to pitch through it late in 2011 and early 2012, but couldn’t command the ball and couldn’t cut it when I wanted to. I didn’t have the extension to get the ball down and away to righties. Subconsciously, I knew it was going to hurt when I did that, so I kind of cut the ball off trying to get it there. It got to the point where righties could eliminate a pitch away and sit middle in, and lefties knew I was going to work away. When a hitter can take away one side of the plate against me, it’s going to be tough for me to compete. Now I’m able to get the ball to that side and move pitches around to keep hitters off balance. That’s my game.”
Tomlin’s radar gun readers are also healthier. His fastball sat in the upper 80s before the surgery. Now it’s north of 90 mph.
“My velocity has crept up a little bit,” Tomlin said. “I’ve been 91-93 throughout the game with my fastball. My arm speed is better since the surgery. The crispness of my pitches is back to what they were before. Right now I feel like I’m a 15 or 16-year-old kid playing catch again. It doesn’t hurt, I don’t feel it, I don’t think about it. I just take the ball and pitch.”
Tomlin was reminded in spring training that he still has to “pitch” to be effective. He’s never been a power guy and a little extra octane isn’t going to change that.
“I got myself hurt against that Abreu guy with the White Sox,” Tomlin said. “I got him down 1-2 and tried to blow a fastball by him, in. I basically tried to throw the ball too hard – I guess I was overconfident – and left it over the plate. He hit it pretty good. That’s something I had to learn in spring training: How to hone in my new-found velocity and new-found feeling. I can throw pretty hard right now – at least for me – but throwing the ball by someone isn’t my game. I need to set them up to where 89-90 is still effective. It’s about making a quality pitch and missing a barrel, not lighting up the radar gun or trying to get too cute with my fastball.”
Tomlin’s cutter is his most attractive offering. It is also the shapeliest. Thanks to his rebuilt arm, he can tempt hitters with it in two different ways.
“I’m able to do things with my cutter now,” explained Tomlin. “I’m able to make it move horizontally if I want it to. If I get a guy 1-2 with a fastball, I can make it a little bigger. I also have one with more of a slider depth to it. Basically, I’m throwing two different cutters – one more horizontal to miss the barrel and one with a little more depth to try to get ground balls, maybe even a swing-and-miss. But for me, the cutter is a pitch to get weak contact early in the count to keep my pitch count low.”
Tomlin’s repertoire includes a curveball. It’s his third-best pitch and yet another that’s been rejuvenated by his surgery.
“My curveball is the pitch that’s probably been helped the most,” Tomlin said. “Again, I’m not thinking about it. I can grip it without that feeling of ‘I hope it doesn’t hurt.’ The conviction I have behind all of my pitches is the biggest change. It’s not like it was when I was struggling and my arm was bothering me a little bit. Not to make excuses, or anything like that, but the conviction I had then is nothing near what I have now.”
Episode 446
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 discusses a documentary concerning the murder of his grandfather that’s featured this coming weekend at the Maryland Film Festival.
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 50 min play time.)
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Understand, immediately: Mike Trout is currently first in the American League in WAR. In the majors, he’s sandwiched between two Rockies, one surprisingly healthy and one surprisingly awesome, and Trout’s current season pace puts him at 13 WAR, which would eclipse what he’s already done, and what he’s already done has been basically impossibly good. That Mike Trout doesn’t lead the majors in WAR isn’t a reflection of Trout; it’s a reflection of, hey, sample sizes, and also, don’t forget about Troy Tulowitzki, who is also amazing.
But let’s talk about something, just because it’s interesting. Trout is so good, so almost perfect, that we’re at heightened awareness when something might not be right. At the moment, he’s running an extraordinary 161 wRC+, which is an almost exact match for his career mark. But behind that summary number is another number that doesn’t look like the numbers that’ve come before it. What I’m referring to inspired an article in the LA Times.
As promised a while ago, our Playoff Odds page is, in time, going to feature the old Cool Standings functionality, where you’d be able to click on a team and track its past odds day by day. That way you’d be able to monitor winning and losing streaks, as well as, somewhat indirectly, the impact of injuries and acquisitions. I suspect that it’s going to become one of FanGraphs’ more popular tools.
As promised a while ago, the Cool Standings functionality is coming in time, and that time remains in the future. It’s a priority, but it’s not a top priority, and the result is posts like these, periodic check-ins on how the odds have changed since the start of the season. On April 4, when I did this the first time, the Mariners’ odds were up about eight percentage points, and the Angels’ odds were down about ten. What does the picture look like today, on May 5? Let’s dive right in.
In one way, CC Sabathia is having the best season we’ve seen him have in years. In another, much more real way, he’s having the worst season of his long and valuable career. Baseball is a weird game sometimes.
When you look at the current ERA standings, from worst to first, a few things jump out at you. (Yes, besides, “ERA is dumb,” because for the moment this is more about what has happened than what might have happened.) You see Kevin Correia and Ricky Nolasco showing absurdly low strikeout numbers (along with Kyle Gibson, the Twins have the three lowest K% pitchers, because Twins) and you understand that pitching to contact in front of a lousy defense might not result in runs being prevented. You see a lot of high BABIP (I see you, Homer Bailey’s .385), and guys who have had a disaster start or two that inflate the number (Bartolo Colon), and guys who either can’t miss bats (John Danks) or throw strikes (John Danks) and find that the end result is poor (John Danks). As it turns out, there’s a lot of different ways to allow runs to score in Major League Baseball.
