Because of interleague play, many of this season’s All-Stars have already seen who’s on the other side. But there’s a unique opportunity to see the best of the other league on one field in Minnesota. So I asked some All-Stars if they were looking forward to a particular matchup today.
Tommy La Stella doesn’t have the lowest isolated-power figure of the 310 batters to have compiled 150-plus plate appearances this season. Indeed, he has the 19th-lowest. What distinguishes La Stella from the 18 players above him on that particular laggardboard, however, is that La Stella has also recorded a park-adjusted batting line above league average. La Stella’s ability to draw walks (he has a 10.8% walk rate) while limiting strikeouts (and 11.4% strikeout rate) — plus the influence of a probably fortunate .333 BABIP — have all conspired to produce a 107 wRC+ over 176 PAs.
Nor is any of this unexpected, really. Over parts of four minor-league seasons, La Stella recorded about a third more walks than strikeouts. This past March, both Steamer and ZiPS projected La Stella to produce an above-average park-adjusted offensive line. Right now, in mid-July, both Steamer and ZiPS project La Stella to produce an above-average park-adjusted batting line for the rest of the season.
The utility of a player with minimal power will always be a concern. What La Stella’s first 40-plus games as a major-leaguer suggest, however, is that, given sufficiently competent plate-discipline skills, a batter can render himself useful despite an almost total absence of power.
In fact, La Stella has produced so few extra-base hits that a sufficiently motivated weblogger could theoretically compose an entire post featuring animated GIFs of those same extra-base hits without unduly taxing either the relevant site’s server or a reader’s capacity to load that post comfortably.
As I say, one could theoretically do that. One could also actually do it, as well — in fact, has actually done it, today and here.
As I see it, there are three ways to determine which is better, between the American League and the National League. Those ways:
The easiest way is to just pick one and stand by it. Think the National League’s better? Declare as much and refuse to give any ground, no matter the evidence. You have made your determination!
That leaves two ways to do this with actual math. The more complicated way is to look at the performances of players who’ve switched leagues, and compare those performances to expected performances. That’ll get you somewhere, but that’ll also cost you a good amount of time, most probably. Thankfully, there’s an easier way that works just fine. Want to know which league is better? Look at how each league has performed against the other league! This is the 18th year of interleague play. It’s as old as Brady Aiken. It’s not new anymore — it’s old enough to join the army — and we can make use of the data it provides.
Welcome to the second part of this year’s Trade Value series. If you haven’t already, read the intro and get yourself acquainted with what question this is trying to answer, as well as an incomplete list of guys who missed the cut for one reason or another. And then read the first ten entries on the list from yesterday.
There will be a couple of formatting changes this year. Instead of doing two posts per day, with five players in each post, I’m consolidating those posts into one longer list per day. Additionally, instead of having a player listed and then some paragraphs about his ranking, I’m going to list all ten players in a table at the top of the post, and then write about all ten in more of an article style than a selection of blurbs. Having all of the names available in a single table makes for easier comparison of some relevant facts, and in past years, the player capsules started to feel pretty repetitive by the end. Hopefully, this cuts down on some of the redundant text. We’ll find out, I guess.
| 9:04 |
: Hello there, friends
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| 9:04 |
: Hello there, friends of friends
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| 9:04 |
: Let’s chat baseball. I chat at a slower rate than Dave does for a variety of reasons. Don’t ask me fantasy baseball questions because I don’t know how to answer them. You know, the usual stuff
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| 9:05 |
Thoughts on Aiken and the Astros? |
| 9:06 |
: From the outsider perspective, it’s easy to say, oh, they’re just trying to make the numbers work, and they found something of a medical facilitation. But while I don’t know the severity of what Aiken might be dealing with, it sure seems like he isn’t really hurt, so I understand why people are upset
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| 9:07 |
: I think it was Olney who was talking about what Aiken might get paid as a free agent. Which is interesting, but also unhelpful since all high draft picks would get bank as free agents
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With the season on hiatus for the playing of the Midsummer Classic, we might recall some of the best players never to play on all All Star team. My personal nominations for such an award, if it were to exist, would be for Garry Maddox, one of the best center fielders I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch, and Tim Salmon, a consistent, prolific middle-of-the-order power threat. Toss in Kirk Gibson for good measure. Articles are also written about the worst players ever to play in All Star Game, but this is not one of them. This is about an unlikely participant – the Reds’ Alfredo Simon, who was yesterday named as a late addition to the NL roster. Anyone who had him in the “Future All Star” pool at any time in the last decade and a half, please step to the head of the line. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
In this installment of the PW, I’m focusing on three hurlers in the Appalachian League who were just selected in the top three rounds of the 2014 draft.
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Foster Griffin, LHP, Kansas City Royals (Profile)
Level: Rookie-Advanced Age: 18 Top-15: N/A Top-100: N/A
Line: 8.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 6/3 K/BB, 1.04 ERA, 5.15 FIP
Summary
More about projection than current ability, Griffin is nonetheless off to a good start in pro ball.
In 2012, the Orioles — fresh off a losing streak dating back to the Cal Ripken / Mike Mussina / Davey Johnson squad of 1997 — shocked all of baseball by winning 93 games and the American League wild card game. Backed by what seemed like completely unsustainable one-run luck and with the knowledge that the rest of the AL East was still dangerous, most analysts said something along the lines of “that was fun, good luck doing it again.” They didn’t quite get back to the playoffs in 2013, but 85 wins was still something to be proud of, thanks mostly to 53 homers from Chris Davis and the smashing defensive debut of Manny Machado.
Once again, no one thought much of them headed into 2014. The Red Sox had just won the World Series; the Yankees had added Masahiro Tanaka, Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran. The Jays couldn’t possibly be as bad as they’d been in 2013, and the Rays might have been the best team of any of them. In our 2014 predictions, only two writers picked the O’s to win the division.
Ben and Sam revisit their discussion of early-season statistics to see whether potential trends held up.
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Used to be I’d refer to these as the worst called balls, or something. But I feel like that puts too much of the blame on the umpire. Which isn’t to say the umpire doesn’t deserve blame, because of course he does, but when an obvious strike gets called a ball, it tends to be due to a number of things, involving a number of people. I’m not here to umpire-shame. I just want to show off some called balls on pitches thrown basically down the heart of the strike zone, because it’s a fun thing to look at while baseball takes a little vacation.
According to Baseball Savant, in 2009, there were 111 balls on pitches middle-middle. Here are the year-by-year rates, calculated as balls / all pitches taken down the gut:
2009: 1.01%
2010: 0.37%
2011: 0.28%
2012: 0.34%
2013: 0.27%
2014: 0.25%
In a sense, 2014 is showing overall improvement. But 0.25% isn’t 0.00%, and pulling up balls on pitches in the middle third yields 15 different instances. Whenever anything is controlled by human observation, there are going to be mistakes, and when there are mistakes, there are going to be worse mistakes. Standard deviations, and everything. Out of those 15 different instances of pitches down the middle being called balls, here are the top five strike-iest since the start of this regular season.