| 9:04 |
: Hello friends
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| 9:04 |
: Welcome to Friday baseball chat
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| 9:04 |
: Hello, friend! Apologies for my absences. Bork Jr. can be very distracting.
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| 9:05 |
: Hello friend
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| 9:05 |
: Anticipatory: We don’t want to hear about the NFL!
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| 9:05 |
: The NFL is stupid
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So, things might be getting out of hand…
Also, Bud Norris has been activated. #Angels have 14 relievers.
— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) September 6, 2017
A lot of folks inside and outside the game don’t care for September roster expansion. After all, why play the game one way for five months, with one set of roster rules, and then in the most crucial month of the season change the limits of rosters?
Early Thursday, I listened to an exchange between Buster Olney and Indians president Chris Antonetti. As you’d expect, there was talk about the Indians’ winning streak, and about the impressive play of Jose Ramirez. But Olney also asked Antonetti about an observation that had been relayed to him by some number of league evaluators. In the opinions of those evaluators, one area where the Indians stand out is in their reluctance to throw predictable fastballs. Pitchers have been taught forever that the fastball needs to be established early on. What if a team simply didn’t believe that?
Listening to the segment got some gears whirring. This isn’t a post about the Indians. This is a post inspired by an observation about the Indians. Let’s have a little talk about fastball usage.
Episode 765
The 2017 season features the highest strikeout rate in the game’s history and the highest home-run rate and the highest collective fastball velocity and the most indulgent use of relief pitchers. The game, in short, is experiencing entropy — an inevitable descent into chaos or disorder. Is the destruction of the sport imminent? “Probably not,” says managing editor Dave Cameron, who uses evidence to support his claims.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 51 min play time.)
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Doug Fister has only made more and more sense. He was most surprising in the early days, the successful days, the days when Fister was a command-first No. 2. He was never considered much of a prospect, because prospect evaluators love them some velocity, but Fister made it work through his pinpoint location. He was, in a sense, in the same mold as Dallas Keuchel and Kyle Hendricks. And then, gradually, Fister got worse, as his repertoire eroded. He lost what speed he had, and he lost his results, having exceeded his own narrow margin of error. Fister joined the Astros in 2016 as a roll of the dice. He wasn’t very good, and then he was a free agent. He didn’t get a job until the desperate Angels signed him in May. He was dropped a month later. Fister became what he was going to become, having gotten to the end of the line.
Yet one last opportunity beckoned, one with the Red Sox. Dave Dombrowski had seen Fister’s best self, and he needed a pitcher. Over Fister’s first month, he allowed nearly a run per inning. A shift to the bullpen ended on July 31 anyway, and Fister has taken off. He’s thrown seven games, and he’s looked like…classic Doug Fister. I mean that. Seemingly out of nowhere, Doug Fister has turned back the clock.
As the only league among the four major North American sports to operate without some form of a salary cap, Major League Baseball has always been in somewhat of a unique position. Without the traditional ceilings on team salary, the sport has always left itself open to financial disparity and all the articles and opinions that go along with it.
For 20 years, baseball has tried to curb big spenders through the use of luxury taxes. Six teams paid a total of $70 million in taxes this past year, and baseball decided to continue hammering away on high-payroll teams in the new CBA approved last December. While the financial penalties maybe caused teams to think twice before spending on the free-agent market, the luxury tax never directly affected a team’s ability to access one key pipeline of talent: the Rule 4 (or, June amateur) draft.
This all changed last December. As noted by Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper, exceeding the luxury-tax threshold will result in draft-related penalties beginning in 2018. The full list of sanctions is described on page 110 of the 2017-2021 Basic Agreement, but for those who don’t have that kind of time, they can be summarized in two points:
For the first time, Major League Baseball has tried to affect a team’s ability to acquire amateur talent after spending large amounts of money. If a team wants to devote an outsized quantity of money (compared to the rest of the league) to acquiring established players, they have to risk the potential of their future by seeing a major source of young talent dry up slightly. However, if you look closely at the new penalties, you see less of a leash on high-payroll teams and more of an inadequate deterrent that will fail to provide any checks at all.
| 1:58 |
: Chat time!
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| 1:58 |
: How does a rotation of Carlos Rodon, Lucas Giolito, Raynaldo Lopez, and Michael Kopech look in the 2nd half of 2018?
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| 1:58 |
: Super-interesting at least. I think the White Sox rotation has the upside potential to come back super quickly.
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| 1:58 |
: Are the Diamondbacks a legit matchup problem for the Dodgers or have the last couple series just been noise?
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| 1:59 |
: I don’t think it’s a matchup problem. Head-to-head really doesn’t provide any predictive value above-and-beyond what the team records do.
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| 1:59 |
: The team-team interactions just aren’t as complex as they are in football or basketball.
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Baseball is getting chippy.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the Red Sox were being investigated by Major League Baseball for violating the league’s rule against using electronics in the dugout. Specifically, the Yankees filed a complaint alleging the Red Sox used an Apple Watch to receive information from their replay staff, who had used the video reviews to decode the Yankees signs. According to the report, the Red Sox did not deny the allegation, instead going with the playground favorite “they do it too” defense, filing a counter complaint stating the Yankees using a YES Network camera to steal signs.
Then yesterday, Athletics third baseman Matt Chapman got ejected after arguing with Angels catcher Juan Graterol over, you guessed it, sign stealing.
| 1:34 |
: i named my son Calvin so, even though I don’t mind the music, I think I’m rooting against this guy
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| 1:36 |
: nah, whatever, it’s fun
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| 12:00 |
: mookie has been playing like crap. is he still worth a $25 keeper for next year? I can only keep 4
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| 12:01 |
: Yeah man, I think he’s still a .300/25/20 type and that batting average is super rare. I know he’s not doing it now but he still has all the pieces he needs to be that guy.
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| 12:01 |
: Think Lyons is taking over the closer gig in St. Louis?
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| 12:02 |
: With Cecil and Duke in the fold, they can afford a lefty closer. Yes.
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I don’t know what brings you joy. Baseball, probably, or else you’re hopelessly lost on the internet. Chances are, you’re a fan of a team, so you root every day for that team’s success. Me, I’m less a fan of a team, and more a fan of players and subjects. One of the things that’s been bringing me joy is observing Mike Trout climb up the WAR leaderboard. It’s amusing because, obviously, Trout missed about six weeks due to injury, and it’s hard, obviously, to accumulate WAR when you miss a quarter of a season. Trout is amazing.
There’s a slightly lesser version of that same exact story. The best pitcher in baseball, by WAR, is Chris Sale. That’s not very surprising, recent stumbles aside. Yet, the second-best pitcher in baseball, by WAR? That would be Corey Kluber, who missed a whole month due to a back problem. Even though a month is a long time, in baseball terms, Kluber has put that unfortunate episode behind him, even threatening to create something of a Cy Young race. Kluber, generally, has been pitching like Corey Kluber. Just, an even better version. The Kluber of today might have baseball’s best pitch.