I’ll be honest: three months ago, I had never heard of Andrew Toles. I first became aware of the 24-year-old’s existence back in July when I was finalizing my latest KATOH model, and Toles projected favorably. Even then, I didn’t give him much thought. Sure, his performance was encouraging, but he was hardly the only obscure player with a great projection. While I’d contend that all prospects of this ilk deserve more attention, most of Toles’ success had come below the Triple-A level. KATOH is built for the long game, and relatively few A-ballers have an immediate big-league impact.

Toles had an immediate big-league impact. He started hitting as soon as the Dodgers promoted him to the majors in July and he hasn’t stopped since. He ended the year with a .314/.365/.505 batting line in 48 games and played his way into near-regular playing time against right-handed pitchers. His .385 BABIP suggests luck played a role, but at the very least, he showed he belongs on a big-league roster.

Toles’ minor-league numbers from this year strongly resemble what he did in LA. In fact, they were a bit better. Between High-A, Double-A and Triple-A, he slashed .331/.374/.511. Toles made a reasonable amount of contact, showed a healthy amount of power and was active on the bases — all while playing mostly center field. From AbBall to the majors, it’s hard to poke holes in what Toles has done this year.

Read the rest of this entry »

After a few months of mostly meaningless regular-season baseball, the Cubs begin their pursuit of a World Series title tonight. This is the best team the Cubs have had in a very long time, and 108 years since their last championship, Cubs fans are understandably excited about the possibility this roster provides. After spending most of their lives waiting until next year, this really could be the year they’ve been waiting for.

Unfortunately, it feels like this Cubs team will be defined by these next three weeks of baseball. The team is so good that they’ve created their own heightened expectations, and with the best roster in baseball, anything short of ending the World Series drought will be seen as a failure. But the unfortunate reality of postseason baseball is that the Cubs are far more likely to fail than they are to succeed.

Read the rest of this entry »

You get into a bubble sometimes. Even when that bubble doesn’t look like other bubbles, it’s there insulating you from seeing something you should see. I’m always looking for that new thing, that change, that great new pitcher, that guy overperforming his expectations. That’s the fun thing to look at! An ace, pitching like an ace again, with wipeout stuff? Huh. Somehow, that might be my blind spot.

But then again, sustained excellence can do that to you. We didn’t really write about Jon Lester this year, for example. Jon Lester was excellent, of course. But he was excellent in the way he’s usually excellent. It’s worked out for the Cubs, but there’s material there for analysis.

Corinne Landrey’s been the only one to write about Yu Darvish so far this year, even though he was the second-best starter by strikeout percentage in 2016 while also the author of the best walk rate of his career. We should regularly write about excellence, and here’s Darvish taking on the Blue Jays for Game Two. Here’s an opportunity to pop the Yu bubble.

The thing is, it looks like he hasn’t changed much since he was so excellent before his Tommy John surgery. It looks that way. I’m not sure that’s true.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles lost Tuesday night without using Zach Britton, one of the game’s best relief pitchers. It was a do-or-die game that went to extra innings, but Buck Showalter held his closer for a save situation because the closer is the closer. While there’s some argument for maintaining bullpen roles and hierarchies over the course of a 162-game season, sticking to that kind of mentality in a single-elimination game defies comprehension. If there were ever a time to use your closer early, it’s when a single run could end your season. Showalter didn’t and he’s watching the ALDS from home rather than a dugout.

On Thursday, Terry Francona took a different approach. In Game One against Boston, Francona went to Andrew Miller, his own relief ace, with two outs in the fifth inning. His club led 4-3 with Brock Holt, Boston’s No. 2 hitter, coming to the plate. Francona made the decision that Trevor Bauer was done and it was time to go to the pen. Francona called on Miller for six outs, followed by Bryan Shaw for two and Cody Allen for five.

Read the rest of this entry »

The bullpen revolution was televised in Cleveland. While Buck Showalter was reaching for a short iron to lay up on a par five within reach of the green from the fairway of a golf course somewhere in Florida, Terry Francona was walking out to the pitcher’s mound at Progressive Field in the fifth inning of a one-run playoff game to summon the world’s best relief pitcher and make the bullpen of the future a reality in the present.

Andrew Miller pitched a fifth inning for the first time since 2013, and then he pitched a sixth inning, too, and a seventh inning for good measure. The Indians’ go-to high-leverage relief weapon — that’s the closest thing you’ll find to a properly titled relief role in Cleveland — struck out four Red Sox batters in two scoreless innings of work while throwing a season-high 40 pitches. Miller faced eight batters, though Terry Francona was reportedly willing to let Miller face as many as 12, a strategy that would have allowed him to face David Ortiz twice.

“He didn’t put a number on it,” Miller said when asked of his pregame discussions with Francona regarding what inning he would enter. “But I knew to be ready early.”

Read the rest of this entry »

When I used to come in to pitch, I’d take my eight warm-ups from the mound, and almost without fail I’d hear loud shouts from the other dugout that “this guy’s got nothing!” For the most part this was because they were right, I had nothing, I should’ve been terrible, but what I think kept me from being truly terrible was their own overconfidence. I was never the best pitcher on my team, and opponents would swing like I was the worst pitcher on my team, but thanks to that overeager aggressiveness, there were surprising numbers of clean whiffs and pop-ups. I was as surprised as they were, but at some point it stops being a fluke.

Marco Estrada is better than he’s ever been. When he was younger, he threw about a league-average fastball. Now he’s four ticks below the league mark. Marco Estrada is a finesse pitcher, and as a general rule, finesse pitchers are worse than non-finesse pitchers. But the best ones — they succeed in part because of their own abilities to locate, but they succeed also by turning hitters against their own selves. Power pitchers force a hitter to shorten up. Finesse pitchers tempt a hitter to lengthen. They tempt hitters to come out of their shoes, as if a 500-foot homer means more than its 400-foot equivalent. Facing a Marco Estrada is a test in self-discipline. As we’ve all experienced for ourselves, when pressure starts to mount, self-discipline can unravel.

Estrada dominated the Rangers on Thursday, Texas hitters frequently swinging out of their shoes. Even knocking Estrada around might not have done much: The Blue Jays won by nine runs. But Estrada came close to a complete-game road shutout, and his finesse-y repertoire worked out just peaches. Too often, the Rangers couldn’t help themselves but overswing. Here now are their five worst swings, along with one honorable mention.

Read the rest of this entry »

Come playoff time, you tend to see a lot of team-to-team comparisons. And when you see team-to-team comparisons, the people doing the comparing frequently lean on regular-season statistics. And, you know, in theory that makes plenty of sense. Those numbers are readily available all over the place, and, isn’t the regular season a hell of a sample? Doesn’t the regular season pretty adequately reflect the level of talent on a given roster?

I’m not going to argue that regular-season numbers are or aren’t more important than, say, postseason numbers. The regular season obviously has the biggest and therefore the most meaningful sample. But as should go without saying, things change come October. Rosters are optimized, and usage patterns shift. For example, during the year, Rangers hitters had a 98 wRC+. Rangers hitters on the roster today averaged a weighted 106 wRC+. During the year, Rangers relievers had a 100 ERA-. Rangers relievers expected to relieve in the playoffs averaged a weighted 75 ERA-. The Rangers aren’t what they were for six months. No team is, entirely. So what do we have now? What does the actual, weighted playoff landscape look like?

Time for some tables of numbers. That’s almost as fun as actual baseball!

Read the rest of this entry »

Johnny Cueto may have had the better 2016 regular season, but when the calendar flips to October, Madison Bumgarner becomes the unquestioned ace of the San Francisco Giants — their most important player. The postseason legend of Bumgarner grew last night, thanks to a complete game shutout in a 3-0 victory against the New York Mets at Citi Field in the National League’s Wild Card play-in game.

No Met hit better than Yoenis Cespedes this season, and Neil Walker, the only position player who accrued more value according to WAR, has been out since the end of August with a back injury that required surgery. Cespedes was the Mets’ most important position player last night, and he also had a team-worst -.101 Win Probability Added, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, helping to strand two of the only six batters Bumgarner allowed to reach base.

In a showdown between the Giants’ best pitcher and the Mets’ best position player, the most important showdown, Bumgarner won by KO in four rounds. And he did it by putting his hand on the “approach” lever and pushing it all the way toward the extreme.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »