Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Episode 557
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 4 min play time.)
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Milwaukee Brewers fans haven’t had much to get excited about this year. Their team’s 5-17 record is easily the worst in baseball, and with a BaseRuns differential of -45, it appears as though they’ve been about as bad as their record suggests. It’s unlikely the Brewers will continue to play this poorly, but it’s probably safe to say the they won’t be anywhere near the playoff race this fall. Our playoff odds calculator gives them a minuscule 1% of even making it into the Wild Card game.
The current iteration of the Brewers is pretty depressing — Adam Lind is literally their only player who’s hitting better than league-average. But despite their current struggles, Milwaukee has a few intriguing minor leaguers on the horizon, who represent beams of light for Brewers fans. One of those players is shortstop prospect Orlando Arcia. Kiley McDaniel deemed Arcia the Brewers best prospect over the winter, and the 20-year-old has lived up to that billing with a hot start to 2015.
Through 78 trips to the plate in Double-A Biloxi, Arcia’s hitting .409/.468/.545. This is obviously a very small sample of games, but still, a .409 batting average is pretty eye-popping. Arcia’s year-to-date numbers are almost certainly good enough to make us re-evaluate what we thought of him a month ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Of the pitchers expected to be selected in the first round of this year’s draft, Virginia lefthander Nate Kirby is one of the safer bets to remain a starter as a professional. But despite a clean profile, his limited upside restrains my enthusiasm as we head down the home stretch of the college baseball schedule.
The Cubs are a running team, now. Wasn’t always that way. Wasn’t that way even one season ago. One season ago, the Cubs finished with just 65 stolen bases, seventh-fewest in the majors. This year, they already have 25, second-most in the majors. If you fold unsuccessful steals into the mix, last year the Cubs were the worst stealing team in baseball. So far this year, fourth-best. No one ever wins the World Series because of the running game, but improvements are improvements, and this is a legitimate change.
And, well, this year’s Cubs have a bunch of new players. They also have a new manager, so maybe it’s not the most surprising thing in the world that they’ve become more aggressive with their legs. Joe Maddon liked to put the game in motion in Tampa Bay, and in spring training with Chicago he made baserunning a priority. On the other hand, here’s Anthony Rizzo, also from spring training:
“We don’t steal much on this team anyway.”
Rizzo, perhaps, wasn’t yet used to playing with Dexter Fowler. Fowler’s already stolen six bags. That’s good enough to tie him for eighth in the majors. But let’s keep that figure in mind. As of this writing, 15 players have stolen at least six bases. That’s a somewhat arbitrary line, but I chose it for a reason. Here are the 15:
It’s worth going over the stolen-base history of these guys. Generally speaking, guys who steal will steal, and guys who don’t steal will not steal. You know how stealing is. Let’s ask of each player a very basic question: Has the player ever before stolen 20 bases in a major- or minor-league season?
Over the winter, the Padres, Nationals, and Rays agreed on a big three-way trade that shipped Wil Myers to San Diego, Steven Souza and a bunch of other stuff to Tampa Bay, and a couple of prospects to Washington. Joe Ross was the only named prospect at the time of the deal, but the Nationals also received a PTBNL, who was quickly reported to be Trea Turner, the Padres first round selection from last June’s draft.
Because draft picks are not eligible to be traded for 12 months from their signing date, the Padres and Nationals are not allowed to confirm that Turner has indeed already been traded, and he remains in the Padres organization at this time. However, it’s public knowledge that Turner will be changing organizations mid-summer, creating an awkward situation where the Padres are stewarding another team’s asset. As I wrote after the trade was made and Turner was unofficially revealed as the PTBNL, this was a bad situation for all to be involved in, and likely required a rule change.
Well, as of today, that rule has officially been changed. An email has been sent to all 30 MLB teams regarding this adjustment, and reads as follows, as told to me by a source who got the email:
| 9:11 |
: Well, we’ve done it again
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| 9:12 |
: We’ve successfully opened a live baseball chat, ten minutes after the scheduled beginning
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| 9:12 |
: One of these weeks, I’m going to be early. Stay on your toes!
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| 9:13 |
When we say a hitter had a good game, what we really mean is that he got relatively lucky in his 5 or so plate appearances. Similarly, is a “good game” for a pitcher a real thing, or a result of stringing together lucky innings? It looks to me like there are days when pitchers have their stuff or don’t, and people talk this way, but has anybody looked into this? |
| 9:14 |
: The way I think of it, it’s easier to tell if a pitcher has a good game than a hitter. A pitcher goes out and throws 100 pitches or so against a bunch of different guys, while a hitter might see 15-20 pitches and he has no control over what they are or where they go
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| 9:14 |
: So while *all* single-game analyses are complicated, I think a single start is more revealing than a single game in the lineup. You can evaluate a pitcher just by seeing how he’s locating. What’s the batter equivalent?
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Chase Utley just finished the worst month of his major league career. The 36-year-old second baseman with knee problems in his past played well last season, hitting .270/.339/.407, with his 4.5 WAR leading National League second basemen. Last year was his his tenth straight season with more than three wins and the eighth time in his career he has had at least four wins in his career. An offseason ankle problem slowed his Spring Training regimen, and the results in April have not gone Utley’s way. Much of the underlying statistics are similar for Utley and pitchers do not appear to be pitching him differently, but the results have been lacking. For a player of Utley’s caliber, chalking up a bad month to a rough run of luck is simple for a player in his prime, but at Utley’s age, questions will linger whether he might be done as an effective everyday player.
Chase Utley hit a meager .114/.198/.200 in 81 plate appearances, and his wRC+ of 1 was second worst among the 186 qualified hitters, besting only Matt Joyce. Utley has played at an incredibly high level for a long time, and there are sure to be lengthy discussions about his possible induction to the Hall of Fame, but April’s production was far below the standards Utley has set over the course of his career. Utley had the worst month of any in his 13-year career.
A few weeks ago I took a look at Major League Baseball players’ declining share of overall league revenues, noting that the players have gone from receiving just over 56% of MLB’s revenues in 2002 to around 38% today. That post went on to identify a variety of factors that have converged to reduce the percentage of league revenues going to the players, including increased revenue sharing, MLB’s growing television revenues, and more efficient front office decision-making.
One factor that I touched upon briefly in my prior post, but that probably merited a more extended discussion, is MLB’s luxury tax. As I explained the last time around, the luxury tax has helped dampen many of the larger market franchises’ willingness to spend on payroll, as teams will now incur a fine ranging from 17.5% to 50% – depending on how many years in a row the club has exceeded the luxury tax threshold – for every dollar they spend on player salaries over $189 million per year.
Because most clubs will only raise their payroll when they anticipate that each additional dollar spent on player salary will generate more than that in added revenue, the luxury tax provides a natural disincentive for most teams to cross the payroll threshold. Now, rather believe that an extra dollar in payroll will generate at least $1.01 in added revenue, teams must instead anticipate that any increased salary obligations above $189 million will generate anywhere from $1.18 to as much as $1.51 per dollar in new revenue in order to justify the expenditure. As a result, the luxury tax has caused most of MLB’s largest market franchises – the teams that the Major League Baseball Players Association has historically relied on to help drive the free agent market – to become more financially prudent in recent years.
But even this basic account doesn’t fully reflect the impact that the luxury tax has had on the players’ declining share of league revenues, as changes to the luxury tax structure since 2002 have increased the penalties for teams exceeding the payroll threshold, while also significantly lowering the threshold as a share of the average MLB team’s revenues.
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
Arizona at Los Angeles NL | 22:10 ET
de la Rosa (25.0 IP, 84 xFIP-) vs. Frias (2.1 IP, 101 xFIP-)
Through four starts, right-hander Rubby de la Rosa has produced a strikeout- and walk-rate differential (18.9 points) roughly twice of what his career mark was entering the season. One possible reason for that: awful and inexplicable chance. Another possible reason, though: de la Rosa has reduced his fastball usage by about 10 percentage points while also increasing his changeup usage by roughly that same amount. He’s even thrown the latter pitch a quarter of the time to same-handed batters. With regard to Dodgers starter Carlos Frias, he throws hard and possesses above-average control — which profile suggests he might become the next Garrett Richards (who previously was a candidate to become the next Michael Pineda).
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.
