If I were writing this piece five years ago, the entire premise of the article would seem contrived. Only two pitchers won MVP awards between 1986 and 2010, and no pitcher had won since 1992. Pedro Martinez led the AL by four wins in 1999 (although only 2.5 using RA9-WAR) and didn’t win the MVP. But thanks to Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw, voters have begun to acknowledge that pitchers are baseball players who are eligible for baseball player awards, so they’re worth considering in our MVP discussions.

Attempt, if you can, to remember April 2014. Entering last season, Dallas Keuchel had thrown just 239 major league innings over two years. He was entering his age-26 season, so he had youth on his side, but he had pitched to a 130 ERA- and 120 FIP-. He gave up home runs, didn’t strike batters out at an impressive rate, and allowed an average-ish number of free passes. Perhaps you may have seen some potential in the lefty who managed a 90 xFIP- in 2013, but the odds of him turning the corner and becoming an ace were long.

Yet here we are. The emergence of Keuchel as an ace isn’t a new story. He spun a 3.8 WAR season in 2014 (4.9 RA9-WAR) and while most people expected him to be respectable but not great in 2015, he responded by elevating his strikeout rate and leading the Astros into their real first pennant race in a decade.

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
New York AL at New York NL | 19:10 ET
Tanaka (143.0 IP, 81 xFIP-) vs. Matz (24.0 IP, 103 xFIP-)
None of today’s games — nor likely the larger series of which their part — feature the sort of consequences offered by either the recent Houston-Texas series nor the New York-Toronto one just before that. What this encounter does represent, however, is an opportunity to observe both a Yankees club not statistically eliminated from winning the division and also young Mets left-hander Steven Matz. The latter is scheduled to record just his fifth major-league start tonight. Over the first four starts, he’s produced an average fastball of 94.5 mph — the highest such mark (tied with Chris Sale) among all left-handed starters this entire season. In few instances does a young pitcher suffer from being mentioned in the same sentence as Chris Sale. Unless, that is, it were an instance like “Chris Sale informed Steven Matz that the latter would be the subject of an audit by the IRS.” Why Chris Sale would be serving as an intermediary for a government agency, this is unclear. That it would be unpleasant for Matz, this is obvious.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

To say Edgar Martinez knows hitting would be to state the obvious. The Seattle Mariners legend slashed .312/.418/.515 between 1987 and 2004, and he won a pair of batting titles along the way. He ranks 21st all-time in OBP and is 44th all-time in adjusted OPS.

Martinez is now entrusted with getting the most out of Mariners hitters. The should-be Hall-of-Famer took over as the team’s hitting coach in late June after beginning the season as a roving instructor. It’s a challenging job. Seattle ranks 11th in the American League in runs scored, and several players are falling short of expectations.

Martinez talked about the art of hitting — and how he evolved during his career — earlier this summer. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about Matt Albers and baseball cards, then talk to Adam Sobsey about Matt Moore and the dependability of top pitching prospects.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

It would be easy to argue Anthony Rizzo hasn’t gotten better. It wouldn’t even be an insult — last year’s version of Rizzo was super good. Not many people could improve on that. The wRC+? Down, from 155 to 147. The defense remains above-average. Rizzo seems like the same player. And he is, as a matter of fact, still quite similar.

But it’s also pretty easy to argue Rizzo’s taken a bit of a step forward. He’s given back nothing in terms of power. He’s given back nothing in terms of walks. He’s trimmed his strikeouts by 20%. The only reason his numbers aren’t up is BABIP, and, you know how that goes. Additionally, there’s this — there are 226 players who have batted at least 250 times in each of the last two years. Here are this year’s biggest increases in average fastball velocity seen:

• Anthony Rizzo, +1.5 miles per hour
• Justin Smoak, +1.2
• Chris Coghlan, +1.1
• Yoenis Cespedes, +1.1
• Cody Asche, +1.0

There’s not a perfect relationship between fastball velocity and pitcher quality, but overall, velocity correlates well with effectiveness. So what this suggests is that, this year, compared to last year, Rizzo has faced stronger opponents. Stronger opponents, with similar overall numbers and a reduced strikeout rate? That sure seems like a better player.

Read the rest of this entry »

Barry Zito is coming back! Zito, who hasn’t thrown a pitch in the majors since 2013, has been called up from Triple-A by the A’s. He’ll initially work out of the bullpen — which makes sense because what bullpen doesn’t need an old guy with no command who throws really slow? — but the A’s are so out of playoff contention they may as well clone an entire Zito army and deploy it in relief. “Looks like Clone Zito doesn’t have it tonight, and here’s Bob Melvin to make a change. He’s signaling for the left-hander, and here comes Clone Zito trolling in from the pen. This pitching change is sponsored by Firestone tires, by Zippo lighters, and by Shell Gasoline.”

I mention that so I can mention this: I wonder if Barry Zito can throw the slowest fastball this season? Zito is renowned for his fastball velocity like Metallica is renowned for their depth and subtlety. Back in 2007, Zito’s fastball reached 93 mph, but over the years he lost velocity like a ship made of chicken wire loses buoyancy. In his most recent season, 2013, his four-seamer averaged 82.6 mph with a high of 85.6 mph and a low of…

[Drum roll]

…

[More drum roll]

…

Read the rest of this entry »

When discussing Bryce Harper’s year, the challenge is not to try and show that it’s been great. Rather, the challenge is to show how great his season has been. Harper leads the National League in home runs, and he leads all of major league baseball in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, as well. The last player to lead the majors in every triple-slash category was Barry Bonds in his 13-win 2002 season. Only a lack of RBI will prevent Harper from winning a traditional Triple Crown. Perhaps the most impressive number for Harper this season is 204 — that his, his current weighted batting line (wRC+) where 100 equals average. Harper is seeking to become only the 12th player in the last 100 years to hit the 200 makr, and only the 10th in a non-strike season, potentially joining Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds.

Before getting to wRC+, a discussion of Harper’s offensive runs above average should be helpful to frame the discussion. Harper’s offensive runs above average this season, shortened to “Off” on the FanGraphs leaderboards and player pages, is 74.2 — currently the 53rd-best mark over the past 100 seasons — and he will have shot to get in the top 40 by the end of the year. Off is a counting number and, due to its fairly direct relationship with wRC+ (Off adds BsR), we can get a general idea of how many runs different wRC+ is worth. From the FanGraphs Glossary:

Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) measures how a player’s wRC compares with league average after controlling for park effects. League average for position players is 100, and every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. For example, a 125 wRC+ means a player created 25% more runs than a league average hitter would have in the same number of plate appearances. Similarly, every point below 100 is a percentage point below league average, so a 80 wRC+ means a player created 20% fewer runs than league average.

The chart below shows Off, wRC+ for a small collection of players this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s almost that time of year again, when individual hardware is bestowed on the best players in each league, complete with the requisite hue and cry from constituencies exhorting the merits of their respective choices. In general, I tend to not get too worked up about such things, but will dip my toe into such discussions when my interest is piqued. Last year, I thought that Felix Hernandez deserved to win a close decision over Corey Kluber in the AL Cy Young race. This year, the NL Cy race is a particularly interesting one, a three-way dogfight among Dodgers Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw and Cub Jake Arrieta. Today, let’s utilize the batted-ball data at our disposal and try to make a call on this exciting race.

For the two Dodger aces, this is not their first Cy Young rodeo: Kershaw has won the award in three of the last four seasons, and Greinke won one with the Royals back in 2009. As for Arrieta, well, this is the first time he has even pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. Kershaw, 27, and Greinke, 32, were slam-dunk, top-half-of-the-first-round high school blue chippers. Though Greinke has had some unique roadblocks along the way to perennial excellence, there likely aren’t many scouts who’ve watched either him or Kershaw from the beginning who are very surprised by what either has accomplished in the game.

Arrieta, 30, on the other hand, was a humble fifth-round Oriole draft pick out of TCU in 2007 who had previously been drafted out of high school and junior college. His progress through the minors was glacial compared to his Dodger peers, and he was eventually, famously dealt from the O’s to the Cubs along with Pedro Strop in exchange for Steve Clevenger and Scott Feldman in the summer of 2013. Now Clevenger has done a nice job for the Orioles of late, but I’d still surmise that they would like to have a do-over on this deal.

Read the rest of this entry »

12:06

Comment From Eddie Brock Hello Eno

Read the rest of this entry »

“So you’re just studying oddity pitchers,” said Zach Britton over my shoulder as I took our conversation over to Darren O’Day. I bristled at the word oddity, because it implied some sort of freak-show gawking. “No! I’m into pitching, and you guys have interesting pitches,” was my earnest response. Eventually, most of the Orioles bullpen was in our scrum, talking pitching and pitches.

He wasn’t wrong, though. At the heart of that bullpen are three very… odd pitches. And checking out the three of them can teach us something about arm action.

Read the rest of this entry »