Archive for 2017

Mound visits have long been a part of the game. They happen for a variety of reasons, but with one constant: whether it’s the catcher or the pitching coach who jogs to the hill, the ensuing confab delays the action. And while the delay is typically short of duration — the home plate umpire does his best to ensure that — the idiom “straw that broke the camel’s back” exists for a reason. In the opinion of more and more people, enough is enough when it comes to repeated trips to the mound.

Pace of play is an increasingly important issue for MLB, and some — commissioner Rob Manfred among them — have suggested limiting, if not entirely eliminating, mound visits. Fans would certainly be on board with such a change, but what about the people who be directly affected?

With the help of colleague Eno Sarris, I asked a cross section of players — mostly pitchers and catchers — the following question: “Just how important are mound visits, and how much would limiting, or even doing away with them, impact the game?”

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Larry Andersen, Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster: “I don’t know if you can get rid of them. If you have a starting staff like the Phillies had five years ago, with Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, and the like, then you don’t need the mound visits. Those guys were experienced veterans who knew how to slow the game down and make adjustments on the fly. But if you have a staff like we do now — a lot of these guys are young and don’t know how to slow things down. They need to be led a little bit. They need to be helped out. They need to be given a break.

“It’s hard to say that mound visits shouldn’t be allowed, but there are also times where… we had one recently where a pitching coach went out to the mound with two outs in the ninth inning when we brought up a pinch-hitter. It was a four-run game, and there was no one on. I mean, is that really necessary? There are coaches going out simply to give relievers more time. I don’t know where you draw the line, but I’d certainly like to see a line drawn.”

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather 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.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
St. Louis at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Martinez (100.1 IP, 80 xFIP-) vs. Walker (63.0 IP, 94 xFIP-)
The author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm has identified this game as today’s most compelling due largely to the quality of the probable starters. Cardinals right-hander Carlos Martinez is in the midst of his best season by whatever metric — FIP- or xFIP- or ERA- — one cares to utilize. In a not unrelated development, he’s produced what would amount to the highest strikeout rate of his career by some margin. Taijuan Walker, for his part, has recorded strikeout and walk rates commensurate with his established levels. While having traditionally underperformed his expected FIPs, however, he’s now outperforming that same metric with the D-backs.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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There, atop the home-run leaderboard for the year, are two young stars on great teams in big media markets: Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. That’s a match made in heaven, at least for barside arguments around the country. Which one would you rather have?

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Episode 751
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, during the course of which he discusses the logic of some under- and overslot bonuses to which recent draftees have already agreed, comments on some prospects in the delightful and free Cape Cod League, and reluctantly participates in an analogy regarding the author’s subpar contribution to a birthing-class potluck.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 13 min play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about high fastballs and the Red Sox, Carter Capps, the Nationals bullpen, the Giants’ clubhouse chemistry with Mark Melancon (and without Ángel Pagán), then discuss the Dodgers’ enviable present and future and whether anything can end their NL West hegemony. After that, they close with some episode-ending banter about the Adeiny Hechavarria trade and the official start of trading season.

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There’s a youth movement taking place in Oakland. The A’s jettisoned both Trevor Plouffe and Stephen Vogt in the last couple of weeks, replacing them with Matt Chapman and Bruce Maxwell. Another big splash came this weekend, when Oakland summoned prospect Franklin Barreto to play second base.

Barreto continued to hit for an encouraging amount of power as a minor leaguer this year, especially considering he played in a park that massively suppresses homers (by PCL standards). However, his strikeout rate spiked from 18% to 30% as he transitioned from Double-A and Triple-A and his stolen-base numbers plummeted. As a result, his KATOH forecast has taken a hit. I have him projected for 4.8 WAR over his first six seasons by stats-only KATOH and 5.4 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 90th and 55th, respectively, among prospects, down from 18th and 20th in the preseason.

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Adam Ottavino had three wild pitches this year before Sunday’s game.

That’s one of those opening sentences that doesn’t bode well for what happened next. You can’t reduce your wild-pitch total, and it’s generally not newsworthy when someone throws just one wild pitch, regardless of how devastating the ramifications of that errant throw are. For this sort of thing to be newsworthy, Ottavino would have had to commit a particularly nasty act of self-immolation.

Well, he did. Ottavino threw four wild pitches, and runs scored on all four of them. The Rockies scored six runs. Because of the wild pitches, though, they lost. It’s not what you want if you’re a Rockies fan.

A Tommy John survivor, Ottavino’s had a much rougher time putting the ball where he wants it to go this season. He carried a 14% walk rate into Sunday, the ninth-worst mark among qualified relievers. Then he walked three of the nine batters he faced. A walk rate that high is never all that great, but it helps that Ottavino can also strike guys out. He boasts a mid-90s fastball and a slider so notorious that it has its own Twitter account. When it’s on, it’s disgusting, and that’s the state it’s usually in. When it’s not, things can get hairy. The slider wasn’t the issue yesterday. His fastball is what got him in trouble.

Tony Wolters wants the fastball away from Yasmani Grandal’s bat with the bases loaded. The fastball didn’t go away. It went in, and bored a hole to the backstop. Ottavino’s release point is all out of whack, so he’s throwing across his body far more than usual. By the time he releases the ball, it’s got nowhere left to go. Justin Turner jogs home, and it’s a one-run game.

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Having taken advantage of a recent Yankees slump, the Red Sox are tied for first in the American League East. Though one of the big conversations about the team was how it would respond to losing David Ortiz, the Sox so far have also gotten very little from David Price. They’ve gotten nothing from would-be shutdown relievers Carson Smith and Tyler Thornburg. On the pitching and health side, things have gone anything but smoothly, and yet the Red Sox are fifth-best in runs allowed per game. By overall pitching WAR, they’re fourth. Their rotation ranks fourth, and their bullpen ranks fifth. The Red Sox have had one of the more effective pitching staffs in major league baseball.

Of course, so much is about the personnel. The Sox have seen the very best of Chris Sale, and they’ve also seen the very best of Craig Kimbrel. It’s not easy to find a better starting pitcher, or a better option to close a game down. But we can talk at least a little about team strategy. It’s not something we talk about often, but pitching staffs can and do have tactics, and the Red Sox are aiming their fastballs higher than anyone.

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Last Monday, I wrote this:

If you went to bed on the eve of the season and woke up today, you’d think everything was in order in the American League Central.

At that time, the Cleveland Baseball Club had compiled a 2.5-game lead on the Minnesota Twins. Cleveland had won six in a row and seven of their last 10, while Minnesota had lost four straight, and lost seven of their past 10. The preseason narrative looked to be crystallizing. Unfortunately, Minnesota wasn’t much interested in that narrative. The Twins proceeded to run off five wins in six ballgames, including three on the road in Cleveland, to take back control of the division.

Down south, the Brewers salvaged their week with a 7-0 win in their series finale with the Atlanta Baseball Club. Zach Davies pitched a very odd game, in which he tossed seven shutout innings, allowing just five baserunners (four hits and a walk) and didn’t strike anyone out. It was just the fifth time such a game had been pitched in the 2000s, the sixth time in the Wild Card Era, and the 129th time in baseball history.

The Brewers have been pretty disruptive to the main narrative, as well. When the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series, Dave wrote a piece entitled “This Is How Dynasties Begin.” I nodded along, as it seemed, on that night, that the Cubs would be a force with which to reckon for some time to come. Today, I still believe that, but there have been cracks in the facade, certainly. Since May 17, the Brewers have been in sole possession of first place for every day save four — they spent two days 0.5 games back and two days tied for first place. They’ve had a tenuous grasp on the lead, as they haven’t pulled more than 2.5 games ahead, but they’ve been in first place nonetheless.

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Over the weekend, the Rockies came to LA to show everyone that the NL West was really going to be a fight, that this wasn’t just the Dodgers’ division to run away with. At 47-28, the Rockies were just behind the 48-26 Dodgers, and with a successful weekend in LA, they could even retake the division lead.

It didn’t go well. They Dodgers won 6-1 on Friday, 4-0 on Saturday, and 12-6 on Sunday, outscoring the Rockies 22-7 on the weekend. The Rockies are now 4.5 games back in the NL West race. Their chances of winning the division, which we had at 9.0% on June 20th, are now 1.3% on June 26th. And it’s not like the Rockies have fallen apart; the Dodgers are just proving to be an absolute behemoth.

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