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Even Jackie Bradley couldn’t have guessed it. Before the start of the 2014 season, the Red Sox outfielder told the Boston Herald’s Jason Mastrodonato that he wanted to steal more bases. That’s become something of a Spring Training trope over the years, but Bradley did his best to keep good on his word and went 8-for-8 in steals.

Bradley’s a former running back who certainly has the speed to steal bases at the major league level, but lacked the instincts and experience to do it at an efficient clip. He was just 31-for-49 (63%) in the minor leagues, well below the major league average success rate of 73%. He knew he had the explosiveness, likening the necessary jump of a base stealer to that of a running back accelerating to hit a hole. He just needed to get better at identifying the pitcher’s movements and understanding the profitable situations to take off.

Seems he’s done a good job. Jackie Bradley Jr. is 13-for-13 on steal attempts to begin his major league career.

It may not seem like a large number, but since the beginning of the expansion era in 1961, Bradley’s perfect 13 is tied for the 11th-longest streak to begin a career, and is halfway to the record:
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If Xander Bogaerts were a video game character you’d hold down the A button for three seconds and he’d start to glow red. Hitting for power is really easy when you’re glowing red. Bogaerts is a real person, not a video game character though, so hitting for power is considerably more difficult. Last season Bogaerts managed all of seven homers in 654 plate appearances. The fact that I can spell the number of homers means he didn’t hit many. Don’t let me mislead you though. The Xander Bogaerts of 2015 was a very good player. He played good defense, hit for average, and even stole some bases. He just wasn’t a power hitter. And that’s fine. Good, even. The odd part is the Bogaerts we saw last year was almost the opposite of the player we were expecting as he was coming up through the minor leagues.

Bogaerts’ calling card as a prospect wasn’t just his power, but that was an important feature. And yet last season the homers just weren’t there. That’s not how it was supposed to be. And so we’re left to wonder, what happened to the power bat we watched so intently zoom through the minor leagues?

To get a better picture of where Bogaerts will end up, it’s instructive to look at where he’s been. The Red Sox shortstop of the present has been the Red Sox shortstop of the future for going on six years now. In 2011 he hit 16 homers in 72 games in A-ball as an 18 year old. The next year he hit 20 homers combined while splitting time between High-A and Double-A at age 19. None of the teams he played for play in particularly homer-prone ballparks, so the power was legit. After the 2012 season Baseball America ranked Bogaerts as the eighth best prospect in baseball. At the time they gave his bat a 60 on the 20-to-80 scale. They gave his power a 70.

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From last Friday’s chat:

10:30
Denji: I’m expecting the average Orioles game to be a 7-5 loss where they hit 3 solo home runs and strike out 15 times. Could they threaten both HR and K team records?

10:32
Jeff Sullivan: They’re not going to hit 264 home runs.

Twist!

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Torii Hunter is a bit of an enigma when it comes to discussing defense. The now-retired outfielder isn’t a big believer in shifts — or data in general — yet he understands the importance of positioning. A nine-time Gold Glove winner, Hunter had a way of being in the right place at the right time when he patrolled center (and sometimes right) for the Twins, Angels and Tigers.

Hunter was at Twins training camp earlier this spring, working with the club’s young fly-chaser mix. His tutorials were called for. Minnesota’s starting outfield projects to be still-wet-behind-the-ears Byron Buxton, flanked by former infielders Eddie Rosario and Miguel Sano. Compounding the trio’s inexperience are a large Target Field outfield and a pitching staff that induces a lot of balls in play.

Talking to Hunter a few weeks ago, I was struck by his paradoxical approach to positioning. Yes, you need to know where a batter is likely to hit the ball. No, data isn’t particularly helpful. Shifting is overdone, if not unnecessary.

When Hunter and I parted ways — our conversation continued beyond what was captured here — he smiled and said, “That was a good argument.” Regardless of how you define it, our back-and-forth elicited some interesting commentary. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam preview the Astros’ season with Houston Chronicle Astros beat writer Evan Drellich, and George talks to Evan’s Houston Chronicle colleague, Jesus Ortiz (at 31:38).

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Don’t lose sight of the fact that the biggest story in baseball right now could have been the smallest. Adam LaRoche up and retired because the White Sox wanted to cut down on his son’s presence around the clubhouse. I’m sure you’ve already read all about this, but Drake LaRoche has a history of being around all the time, going back to when Adam was with the Nationals. The White Sox requested that Drake not be around so much, and they probably didn’t anticipate that LaRoche would walk away from thirteen million dollars. This could’ve all stayed behind closed doors, and we never would’ve known, but it’s a story because it’s been blown up to the greatest possible magnitude. The regular season is right around the corner, but this is what matters today.

The story presents with two sides, so it’s only natural to want to pick a favorite one. It’s no different from when people want to figure out the winner of any trade. On one side, there’s the organization, that says it wants to do what it can to keep the team focused and disciplined. On the other side, there’s LaRoche, who obviously cares enough about this to willingly forfeit an absurd amount of money, not to mention the rest of his career. Ultimately, this is a clubhouse matter, and barely public, so we’ll never be sufficiently informed. Yet based on what’s knowable, it’s challenging to arrive at any conclusion other than “well I’ll be damned.”

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This is the leaderboard. It actually shows up under “Pitch Value,” and not “Run Value,” but I prefer “Run Value.” For the sake of being most accurate, it might be filed under “Pitch Run Value,” but now that’s too many words. Don’t worry about it. Let’s move ahead.

I feel like we don’t use these numbers enough. What they show, for hitters: how many runs above or below average a given hitter has been against the various pitch types. We don’t use the numbers much because we don’t understand them very well, and because maybe they don’t stabilize very quickly, but the results aren’t all random. I went ahead and did some exploring, and I’ve pulled some nuggets of interest below. This way, all of us can learn together!

My pool of players: players who batted in 2015, and who have also batted at least 750 times since 2002. Why 750? Because 750 is what I used. The exploration I did grouped everything into two columns. I looked at performance against hard pitches, those being fastballs and cutters. And I looked at performance against everything else, those pitches being sliders, curveballs, changeups, splitters, and knuckleballs. These are the “softer” pitches. For hard and soft, I calculated run values per 100 pitches. Off we go!

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Addison Russell already had one of the twenty-best debuts by a shortstop we’ve seen in the free agency era. But two adjustments — one made last year, and one made this spring — could end up driving the 22-year-old beyond his projections this year. Particularly because both adjustments spoke to his biggest flaws.

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So, on Tuesday, I announced a meetup I’d be hosting in Toronto on April 8th, for those of you who won’t be attending the home opener to get together at a bar and watch the game. The space we had reserved at Tallboys had room for 30 people, and you guys bought up all the available spots in less than a few hours. In order to try and accommodate more people who expressed interest in attending, we’re moving the get together to a different bar: Firken on King.

This new space has room for 100 people, so we’re opening up 70 more spots as of today. If you purchased a ticket on Tuesday, don’t worry, that will still be honored, and you don’t have to buy a new ticket to get into the event. Because of the larger space, however, we’ve had to up the price slightly for this second round of tickets; the cost is now $8, but still includes your first beer, so it’s still close to free to attend. The event will start at 6 pm, and we’ll hang out and talk baseball before the game starts, then settle in and watch the game together starting at 7. For space reasons, you’ll need to be at Firken by 6:30 in order to have your space guaranteed, as they’ll be opening up the area to walk-ins after that point.

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