Ben and Sam reevaluate the Dodgers’ mega-trade from 2012 and discuss how far Carl Crawford, James Shields, and Ryan Howard have fallen.
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Back in July of 2013, I put together a little bit of research to put Michael Cuddyer’s 27-game hitting streak into perspective. I had been quite critical of Mr. Cuddyer at that time, and it only seemed fair to show him a little love. At the time, I mentioned that I might look into some more hitting streak data in the near future. Turns out the “near future” was three years later. Spurred on by the recent hitting streaks from the killer B’s on a swarm — Jackie Bradley Jr. and Xander Bogaerts — I thought I’d wade back in.
First, as I mentioned last time, a couple of ground rules. I don’t count streaks that span two seasons. I don’t like doing it, and you can’t make me. Second, there are some streaks that took place from the time before we have game logs. When I first conducted this research, the earliest season for which we had game logs was 1916; now it’s 1913. Fortunately, for the sake of convenience, no relevant hitting streaks occurred during 1913-1915, so we’re not getting any new information in that respect.
We are getting some other new information, though. For instance, Baseball-Reference has WPA calculated further back than they did before, so where before we didn’t know the WPA of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak, now we do have that figure. We also have a few more years of streaks in the mix. The cut-off for WPA data now seems to be 1930, though there was one streak from 1943 for which WPA information appears unavailable.
Jon Gray had one of his best starts of the season on Sunday. The Colorado Rockies right-hander fanned 12 while limiting the Padres to two runs over seven innings. It was his third straight solid outing following a a nine-run dud against the Cardinals on May 19.
A few days after his St. Louis shelling, the 24-year-old University of Oklahoma product threw a pre-game bullpen session at Fenway Park. On his way back to the clubhouse, he stopped in the outfield grass and conferred with his pitching coach, occasionally mimicking his pitching motion.
After the confab concluded, I approached him to ask what they’d been working on. I had other questions in mind as well. I’d interviewed Gray a few months after he was taken third overall in the 2013 draft, and a lot of development had occurred since that time. A follow-up was in order.
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Gray on his development and needing to stay in sync: “There’s a lot more to this game than it might seem. You’re constantly making adjustments in order to compete. I’ve done a lot of things with my delivery, as well as mentally. You have to make adjustments a lot faster at this level. If I know something isn’t right in my delivery, I have to change it as soon as possible, otherwise it’s going to get bad. Same thing mentally. I have to really keep tabs on myself, with each pitch, each approach.
Last week, I wrote a piece about where the struggling Diamondbacks go from here, given their current position in the NL West race despite high hopes for their season. This week, on the back of the Padres dumping what they could of James Shields‘ remaining contract, it’s time to talk about the other NL West team whose hopes of contention have been dashed on the harsh rocks of reality.
During the Diamondbacks big splashy off-season, comparisons between Arizona and San Diego have been pretty common, as the Padres spent the prior winter making big moves in an attempt to skip the rebuilding line and get back to the winner’s circle. The moves mostly failed, though, with the Padres finishing 74-88 despite the roster makeover, and 2016 isn’t going any better; they’re currently 23-35 and just agreed to pay $31 million to make James Shields pitch for someone else over the next few years. But even as I write a piece with the same headline as the one that I wrote about the Diamondbacks last week, it’s important to note that the D’Backs and Padres aren’t really in the same boat. In fact, at this point, it’s not actually clear that the Padres even have a boat.
Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.
The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.
Recently, the author published an updated version of the television rankings according to the site’s readership. This week: the results of that same exercise, but for radio broadcasts.
Below are the 30th- through 21st-ranked radio-broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.
But first, three notes:
30. New York Yankees
Main Broadcasters: John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 2.5, 1.7, 2.0
Representative Reader Comment
“As a Yankee fan, I am thankful for MLB At Bat.”
Notes
It’s difficult to find any feedback among the readers’ comments that doesn’t merely resort, at some point, to an ad hominen attack on the Yankees’ radio team. Which, that’s unfortunate. But also: probably indicative of the sort of frustration a FanGraphs reader might have attempting to comsume a Yankees game by way of the radio feed.
| 12:03 |
: BOOM
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| 12:03 |
: MIC
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| 12:04 |
: I don’t have one. Because you need one of those boom guys and I’m not hiring someone to stand around my office with one.
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| 12:04 |
: Do you know of a metric that addresses disruption? That is, does having a pesky baserunner like Billy Hamilton (assuming he can get on base) affect a pitcher’s performance?
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| 12:04 |
: Generally speaking, hitters do worse in at-bats in which there is a pickoff attempt than when there is not and the more pickoffs, the worse the batters do.
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| 12:04 |
: If Joey Gallo were called up today to play regularly for the rest of the year, where would you set the over/under for his K%?
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CHICAGO — Cubs ace Jake Arrieta continued his year-long run of brilliance on Sunday afternoon, striking out 12 batters with one walk in a 3-2 home loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Tampa Bay at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Archer (66.1 IP, 89 xFIP-) vs. Ray (57.0 IP, 92 xFIP-)
In 2013, Arizona’s Robbie Ray appeared several times among the Fringe Five. What qualified him for inclusion within that weekly exercise were his excellent fielding-independent numbers. Over 148.2 innings between High-A and Double-A, the left-hander (then a Nationals prospect) produced one of the top strikeout rates among minor-league starters — ahead, for example, of Archie Bradley and Lance McCullers. That was encouraging. What rendered him eligible for the Five, however, was his omission from any of the industry’s notable top-100 lists. The reason why, it appears? A lack of arm speed. Ray possessed merely average fastball velocity. Now, however, that’s no longer the case.
Regard, the top-five average four-seam velocities among pitchers who’ve recorded 50-plus innings:
| Name | Team | IP | vFA |
| Robbie Ray | D-backs | 57.0 | 93.5 |
| Carlos Rodon | White Sox | 63.1 | 92.9 |
| Martin Perez | Rangers | 72.1 | 92.9 |
| Clayton Kershaw | Dodgers | 92.2 | 92.8 |
| Matt Moore | Rays | 62.2 | 92.7 |
Ray, who’s also passed through the Detroit system en route to Arizona, is now among the hardest-throwing left-handed starters in baseball, and he’s recording numbers commensurate with the stuff.
Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Tampa Bay.
Last year’s brilliant rookie class was exciting for many reasons, one of which was that it brought the arrival of an infusion of talent to the shortstop position in Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and Addison Russell. Remarkably, we were assured that even more young shortstops are on the way – an assurance reinforced by Corey Seager’s strong debut last September and his near unanimous presence atop top-100 prospect lists this past winter. But, at the start of the season, it was less-heralded rookie shortstops Aledmys Diaz and Trevor Story catching all the headlines. Where was Corey Seager?
While Story spent the month of April hitting 10 home runs and Diaz spent it batting .423, Seager posted an unremarkable 92 wRC+ through 106 plate appearances. He put up decent enough plate-discipline numbers — a 8.5% walk rate and 14.2 strikeout rate — but a low BABIP (.275) and low ISO (.146) kept him from producing at the level expected of the sport’s top prospect, whether those expectations were fair or not.
Ever since the end of April, however, Seager has been quietly reestablishing his place among the league’s best players. Well, he was going about it quietly, until this weekend. On the off chance anyone had forgotten about Seager or prematurely written him off as over-hyped, he reminded the baseball world Friday night that he’s exceedingly worthy of our time and attention when he did this to Braves pitcher Julio Teheran:
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 NL at Miami | 13:10 ET
Harvey (60.1 IP, 101 xFIP-) vs. Fernandez (32.2 IP, 88 xFIP-)
Child prodigy and Ohio native August Fagerstrom explored recently for the benefit of these pages both how (a) the Marlins and Jose Fernandez himself had planned this spring for the right-hander to adopt a more contact-oriented, ground-ball approach in 2016, but then also how (b) Fernandez had produced almost identical numbers so far in 2016 as he had in previous campaigns. In Fernandez’s lone start since Fagerstrom’s piece, however, Fernandez exhibited a more contact-oriented, ground-ball approach.
Regard, an illustrative table:
| Dates | GS | IP | Zone% | K% | BB% | GB% |
| 4/6 to 5/26 | 10 | 60.2 | 49.8%* | 36.7% | 10.2% | 38.4% |
| 5/31 | 1 | 7.0 | 54.6%* | 27.3% | 0.0% | 60.0% |
One, so motivated, might consider monitoring Fernandez’s approach this game. To monitor it and ask a questions like, “Is he throwing more or less than 50% of his pitches in the zone?” And also: “Is he inducing ground balls on more like 40% or more like 60% of his balls in play?” And also: “By using my time in this way, am I endeavoring to pursue happiness or ignoring my obligations to liberate others from suffering or both or neither?”
Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: New York NL.
