Archive for March, 2017

Is MLB Already Shrinking the Strike Zone?

Some background: Last May, baseball floated the ideas of eliminating the four-pitch intentional walk, and also raising the strike zone’s lower boundary. This past February, there was a formal proposal. Everything was subject to the union’s agreement, and as you know, the union signed off on the intentional-walk part. But it didn’t agree to other stuff, including the strike-zone change. Although MLB is free to implement changes unilaterally, that can’t happen for a year after initially giving notice.

You’d think, then, that the strike zone is safe, for now. That nothing should look very different in the nearer-term future. After all, that’s how the agreement is supposed to work. But what if that isn’t how the agreement is working? Brace yourself as I make too much of what’s entirely too little data.

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Spring-Training Divisional Outlook: National League West

Previous editions: AL East / AL Central / AL West / NL East / NL Central.

Opening Day is less than a week away, so it’s time that we wrap up our preseason divisional previews, which utilize batted-ball data to hone in on each club’s 2016 true-talent level, and then identify areas of relative strength and vulnerability on each club, as well as key roster turnover. Last up, the National League West.

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The Rays Have the League’s Best Outfield Defense

The Rays just traded for Peter Bourjos, a soon-to-be 30-year-old worth zero WAR over the past two seasons. The Rays are giving up basically nothing, because just a couple months ago, Bourjos signed a minor-league contract with a go-nowhere team. You don’t want to read a blog post about Peter Bourjos. I don’t want to write a blog post about Peter Bourjos. But he’s one part of a bigger-picture collection — the Rays are assembling another fantastic outfield.

Another fantastic defensive outfield, I should say. Heaven knows if Bourjos is going to actually hit. As you know, it all begins with Kevin Kiermaier, who might be the best defensive outfielder in the world. And the Rays are no strangers to having good defense out there; they were fifth by both DRS and UZR last season, and they were first by both measures the season before. Kiermaier is good enough to carry a group by himself. This year, though, he won’t have to do that.

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Pete Mackanin on the Phillies’ Spring Standouts

My most recent Sunday Notes column contained a snippet from Pete Mackanin, those quotes coming from a longer conversation I had with the Philadelphia skipper on Saturday. Much of it is being shared here.

We sat down primarily to talk about this spring’s notable performers. Among them are a pair of veteran non-roster invitees trying to win a roster spot on a youthful club. Offseason signee Daniel Nava is slashing .361/.465/.444, while Brock Stassi, 27 years old and in the system since 2011, is slashing .320/.370/.680 with five home runs.

Outside of asking specifically about Nava and young third baseman Maikel Franco, I mostly let Mackanin lead the conversation. He brought up several of his players, with time constraints limiting his opportunity to cover even more.

———

Mackanin on the pitchers: “Our starters have been pitching well. Jerad Eickhoff is right where he should be. Aaron Nola has increased his velocity, and I’m thrilled about that. He’s touched 93, and even 94 once, which we’d never seen. If he can retain that throughout the season, that’s going to be a plus for him. Plus, he’s learned a changeup and he’s thrown that very effectively, as has Eickhoff. They’ve added that to their repertoire, which can only enhance their performance. We haven’t seen Clay Buchholz enough yet, and I think he’s a little sick again today.

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2017 Positional Power Rankings: Bullpen (#1-15)

And so we come to the end of our team-by-team positional reviews, with a topic near and dear to my heart: bullpens. In this case, specifically the top 15 projected bullpens, after Craig Edwards already examined the bottom 15. You can find his post linked above, if you haven’t seen it. You can find an introduction to this whole series linked above, if you haven’t seen that. I love to write about relievers, because just about every team has an underrated reliever in the upper system somewhere. In here we can think about some underrated relievers, as well as some relievers who are more properly rated. A plot, now, of the projected landscape:

There are some places where it’s clear that one team is the best in baseball at a certain position. Like, it’s obvious, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that no team is as set in center field as the Angels. This is not one of those places. Sure, we have all the bullpens ranked, and you can see those projections above and below, but think about the margins here, and various other factors. There’s a handful of teams out there that might claim to have baseball’s best bullpen. Maybe two handfuls! There are convincing arguments to be made, even beyond general reliever unpredictability. A good and deep bullpen might be more valued now than ever before, and it’s just my luck I get to write about a bunch of good and deep bullpens. Don’t fret too much about certain rankings. Plenty of bullpens here could be great. Let’s begin!

Name IP K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BABIP LOB% ERA FIP WAR
Kenley Jansen 65.0 13.2 2.1 0.9 .302 80.6 % 2.38 2.22 2.6
Grant Dayton 65.0 11.7 2.7 1.0 .305 78.3 % 2.92 3.02 1.5
Pedro Baez   55.0 9.8 2.7 1.1 .299 74.8 % 3.44 3.49 0.7
Sergio Romo 55.0 9.5 2.1 1.3 .301 76.5 % 3.48 3.61 0.5
Ross Stripling 45.0 7.3 2.7 1.1 .306 70.4 % 4.21 4.11 0.0
Chris Hatcher 40.0 9.6 2.9 1.0 .305 75.4 % 3.49 3.53 0.3
Josh Fields 35.0 10.5 3.0 0.9 .311 73.3 % 3.45 3.21 0.1
Luis Avilan 30.0 8.5 3.4 1.0 .302 74.9 % 3.66 3.98 0.0
Adam Liberatore 25.0 9.8 3.2 0.9 .302 75.2 % 3.44 3.49 0.1
Alex Wood 20.0 8.0 2.7 1.0 .306 73.1 % 3.77 3.82 0.0
Brock Stewart   15.0 8.5 2.5 1.3 .305 72.3 % 4.07 4.06 0.0
Josh Ravin   10.0 10.9 4.0 1.3 .299 75.0 % 3.89 4.02 0.0
Jacob Rhame 10.0 9.8 3.7 1.0 .306 73.3 % 3.86 3.83 0.0
The Others 21.0 8.3 4.2 1.3 .324 69.1 % 5.10 4.74 0.0
Total 491.0 10.0 2.7 1.0 .305 75.0 % 3.45 3.45 5.9

I don’t know how many people would pick the Dodgers as having baseball’s best bullpen. I don’t even know if the Dodgers would pick the Dodgers as having baseball’s best bullpen. As shown here, though, there’s at least a strong argument to be made, and it has to begin with Kenley Jansen, who — do I even need to tell you what he’s about?

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Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat, All the Brewers, all the Angels

12:01
Eric A Longenhagen: Howdy, is this thing on?

12:01
Eric A Longenhagen: ‘Tis.

12:01
Eric A Longenhagen: Let me tweet a link to the started chat and we’ll get rolling.

12:03
Eric A Longenhagen: Okay. How are you folks? I am well. Walker Buehler is pitching in the Dodgers big league road game today so if you’ve got MLB.tv and that game is on, you should check that out.

12:03
Gary: Are you heading to Florida for camps there at all or just staying in Arizona?

12:03
Eric A Longenhagen: Just here, if I do Florida it will be to straddle Extended and the FSL while also hitting draft stuff.

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About the Back End of the Yankees’ Rotation

The American League East is going to be tough this year. The Yankees are projected to win 81 games and yet still finish last, is how tough. That same win total, for example, would place a team in a tie for second in the AL Central’s projected standings.

There are reasons to be more bullish on the Yankees than the projections suggest. Plenty of smart people around the team are. The young core, consisting of Gary Sanchez, Greg Bird, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Judge, and Clint Frazier, provides a fair amount of upside. If the bullpen proves to offer as much depth as it is does excellence at the top, you’d have two-thirds of a really good team.

About the rotation, though. First, there’s the front three. Opening Day starter Masahiro Tanaka has been great since he signed with the team — among the majors’ top-20 starters by most metrics. Michael Pineda remains an enigma, a pitcher with elite strikeout-minus-walk rates paired with bottom-tier ball-in-play results. Even with his contradictions, though, Pineda can still provide value for a team that scores runs. At 36, CC Sabathia isn’t a front-line starter anymore, but a discovery of a cutter last year may have given him a few more years of usefulness on the back end.

And then what? Who will finish out the rotation this year? Who will step forward between Luis Severino, Bryan Mitchell, Chad Green, Luis Cessa, and Jordan Montgomery? If they’re any good, they could help fuel a surprise team in a tough division.

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You Actually Will Believe Who Signed Derek Norris

Earlier this offseason, the Rays signed the player who served as last year’s starting catcher for the Washington Nationals, Wilson Ramos. Ramos & Co. produced 4.4 WAR from the catcher spot last season for the Nats, the position’s second-most production.

Over the weekend, the Rays reportedly agreed to terms with Derek Norris, a player with whom the Nationals recently cut ties for an arguably inferior catcherMatt Wieters. (Wieters projects to produce 0.7 bWARP — a metric that includes framing value — in 2017, Norris 1.1 bWARP.) As to why Washington might make such a curious decision, there are a number of theories. One possible explanation, however, is the relative chumminess of Wieters’ agent with Nationals ownership.

So, in summary, the Rays now have the Nationals’ starting catcher from a year ago, and one of Nats’ top replacement options for Ramos as recently as a month ago.

The Rays’ interest in Norris was one of the more seemingly inevitable news items in recent weeks, as the devoutly analytical club otherwise appeared ready to enter the season with only inexperienced catchers — a combination of Curt Casali, Luke Maile and Jesus Sucre — from which to choose as they patiently wait for Ramos to return from the torn ACL he suffered last September.

Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the one-year deal is worth “less than $2 million.”

Writes Topkin:

Signing Norris gives the Rays a more experienced option behind the plate …. Norris has made 446 big-league starts for Oakland and San Diego, Casali has made 116, Sucre 77 and Maile 43.

He chose the Rays over several other teams based on the opportunity for more playing time.

Perhaps the signing also speaks to the team becoming more conservative — or pessimistic, perhaps — regarding Ramos’s timetable to return behind the plate. MLB.com reported last month that Ramos might not be able to catch until August.

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2017 Positional Power Rankings: Bullpen (#16-30)

The positional power rankings continue. If you’ve come across the 16th- through 30th-ranked bullpens by accident or are otherwise unfamiliar with these power rankings, feel free to read Dave Cameron’s introduction. If you’re interested in any other positional rankings, use the links above this paragraph. For the start of the relief-pitcher portion, read on.

The graph below contains half the major-league teams. If you don’t see your favorite team below, congratulations: you cheer for a club that ranks in the top half of baseball when it comes to relievers. Those teams will be covered in short order, and if there’s a link at the beginning of this post to them, that means they’ve already been published.

While this post covers the bottom half of the rankings, the first few teams included here are extremely close to the teams just ahead of them, and there are a few bullpens whose projections potentially underrate them. Add in some reliever volatility and random fluctuation, and we could see a number of these clubs among the league’s top 10 at the end of the year.

A note: while you won’t find Andrew Miller’s club here, you’ll find his name invoked with some frequency. There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about deploying elite relievers in non-traditional but high-leverage situations. Cleveland’s use of Andrew Miller in last year’s postseason is about the purest expression of this concept in some time. While that sort of usage isn’t sustainable over the course of a full regular season, there are times when it represents the best option for a team.

To that end, I’ve provided a rating (out of 10) of every team’s capacity to use a reliever in these non-traditional situation. I refer to this as the Andrew Miller Situation Scale. The ratings are subjective and somewhat arbitrary, but tend to be higher for clubs whose best reliever isn’t also their closer. Secondary considerations include the club’s motivations for using the strategy (if it’s financially motivated, for example) as well as the actual quality of both the “elite” reliever and closer. Basically, the higher the number, the more the situation resembles an Andrew Miller situation.

Name IP K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BABIP LOB% ERA FIP WAR
Roberto Osuna   65.0 10.3 2.3 1.1 .297 77.8 % 3.13 3.34 1.5
Jason Grilli 65.0 10.9 3.8 1.3 .305 76.4 % 3.82 3.92 0.6
Joseph Biagini 55.0 8.0 2.8 1.0 .314 73.4 % 3.89 3.96 0.4
J.P. Howell 55.0 7.4 3.4 0.9 .316 74.0 % 3.90 4.04 0.2
Joe Smith 45.0 7.8 2.9 1.0 .306 73.9 % 3.77 4.07 0.2
Aaron Loup 40.0 8.6 3.1 1.0 .309 74.1 % 3.76 3.94 0.2
Ryan Tepera 35.0 8.7 3.5 1.1 .309 73.8 % 3.99 4.13 0.0
Danny Barnes 30.0 9.8 2.4 1.1 .311 74.3 % 3.63 3.55 0.2
Christopher Smith 25.0 8.3 4.2 1.3 .324 69.1 % 5.10 4.74 0.0
Bo Schultz 20.0 6.9 3.1 1.3 .305 70.5 % 4.57 4.54 0.0
Matt Dermody 15.0 6.5 2.5 1.2 .313 69.1 % 4.59 4.37 0.0
Mat Latos 10.0 6.6 3.0 1.3 .309 70.2 % 4.77 4.69 0.0
Glenn Sparkman   10.0 7.6 2.5 1.4 .312 71.1 % 4.47 4.43 0.0
The Others 15.0 8.3 4.2 1.3 .324 69.1 % 5.10 4.74 0.0
Total 485.0 8.7 3.1 1.1 .310 73.7 % 3.93 4.00 3.3

The list of relief pitchers with a better projection than Roberto Osuna isn’t long. None of the other pitchers I’m covering today are superior, in fact, and he ranks 10th overall. Osuna is just 22 years old and is entering his third MLB season. He struck out nearly 30% of batters and walked just 5% last season, and led American League relievers with a 21% infield-fly rate. The Blue Jays rank this low not because of Osuna, but because of the rest of the pen.

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FanGraphs Audio: Dayn Perry, Reluctant Teetotaler

Episode 727
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 old man on this dry edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 9 min play time.)

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