Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the tenth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Zach Britton, Pedro Martinez, and Brandon McCarthy — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

———-

Zach Britton (Orioles) on His Sinker

“In 2007, I was in short-season Aberdeen and my pitching coach, Calvin Maduro, tried teaching me a cutter. It kind of developed from there. No crazy story, really. It’s just that, with my arm action, the ball never cut. It went straight down like a sinker. He said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing,’ and over the years I started throwing it more and more, and getting comfortable with it.

“A lot of guys throw cutters the way I grip my sinker, and others actually throw their curveball like that. Again, it’s arm action. I’ve shown it to guys and they haven’t been able to do it, so I can only assume it’s the way I throw.

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On May 9, the Mets batted out of turn against the Reds. You probably know this. Actually, you might have known this and then forgotten it already. May 9 was a while ago. A lot has happened since May 9. Like, just in baseball, a lot has happened. Why even talk about it further?

Because May 9 was also not that long ago. In the context of humankind’s march through history, for example, it’s basically yesterday. In the context of the universe, it’s like a second ago. In the context of the universe, our whole lives are no longer than the snap of a finger. So, from that point of view, any discussion of baseball is absurd. From that point of view, why not discuss the Mets batting out of order on this first day back from a long weekend?

So much of baseball is routine. We learn from the repetition, but sometimes we glean something new when the seams get pulled apart. Batting out of turn isn’t entirely new, but it is unusual: according to Retrosheet, it had happened just six times in the last decade prior to the Mets’ foul-up. In case you missed it live, the lineup the Mets shared with the media looked like this:

The trouble was that the lineup actually given to the umpires and Reds manager Jim Riggleman had Wilmer Flores and Asdrubal Cabrera flipped.

Shortly after the game itself began, Flores came up to bat and struck out. Riggleman said nothing. They tell you to say nothing unless something good happens. Then Cabrera came up and doubled, after which Riggleman pointed out the mistake. Rule 6.03(b) is one of baseball’s more complicated rules, but the gist of it is, if a team bats out of turn and the other team notices in time, it’s an out. Once Cabrera’s at-bat commenced, it legalized Flores’ previously illegal at bat, which meant that Jay Bruce ought to have batted after Flores. Because Bruce was the proper batter, he was called out, poor guy. Cabrera’s double was wiped from the books. The Reds would win on an Adam Duvall walk-off solo home run in the 10th. One could argue it would have been good for the Mets to have scored a run in first.

It was silly and embarrassing, but it also showed us some things. These are a few of those things.

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On the day the Stanley Cup finals start, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan talk to Baseball Prospectus writer Zach Crizer about how future MLB expansion clubs could construct baseball’s equivalent of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, the NHL’s sensational expansion team. Then (29:51) Ben and Effectively Wild listener Dom Guido reexamine the legendary 1888 poem “Casey at the Bat,” using advanced stats, historical context, and clues from the text to make the case that the mighty Casey has gotten a bad rap.

Audio intro: Albert Hammond Jr., "Holiday"
Audio interstitial 1: Joe Rathburn, "The Ballad of Casey at the Bat"
Audio outro: The Olivia Tremor Control, "Holiday Surprise 1, 2, 3"

Link to Zach’s expansion article
Link to “Casey at the Bat”
Link to Dom’s “Casey at the Bat” thread

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Since the beginning of the 2016 season, four pitchers who have thrown 100-or-more innings have an ERA under 2.00. Three of them — Zach Britton (1.38), Andrew Miller (1.72), Kenley Jansen (1.75) — rank among the most-accomplished bullpen arms in the game. The other name on the list might surprise you.

Since making his big-league debut on May 30, 2016, Baltimore Orioles left-hander Richard Bleier has boasted a 1.84 ERA in 112-and-two-thirds innings.

Bleier’s under-the-radar effectiveness has come over the course of 103 relief appearances, the first 23 of which came with the New York Yankees. His efforts went unappreciated in the Bronx. Despite a solid showing — five earned runs allowed in 23 frames — the Bombers unceremoniously swapped Bleier to Baltimore for a PTBNL or cash considerations in February of last year.

The 31-year-old southpaw attributes an August 2016 addition to his repertoire for his late-bloomer breakthrough. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Red Sox designating Hanley Ramirez for assignment, what Mookie Betts and Barry Bonds have in common, Shohei Ohtani‘s “workload management,” Bartolo Colon’s 45th birthday, a John Jaso appearance at the Trop, a listener’s real-world use of tOPS+, and two more examples of players intentionally performing typically detrimental activities. Then Ben briefly brings on FanGraphs’ Meg Rowley (16:05) to discuss the latest Jerry Dipoto and Wilmer Font trades, work-related nightmares, and business words. After that, Ben talks to writer Rob Arthur (28:20) about the questions raised and the questions answered by MLB’s report on the ball being behind the game’s rising home-run rate, and Ben and Jeff get the skinny from sabermetrician Mitchel Lichtman (1:00:49) about his decades-long history of betting on baseball, how he built a model that beat the sportsbooks and made millions, and how and why his advantage evaporated.

Audio intro: The Rural Alberta Advantage, "45/33"
Audio interstitial 1: The Minus 5, "Smoke on, Jerry"
Audio interstitial 2: Dr. Dog, "The Truth"
Audio interstitial 3: Earlimart, "Burning the Cow"
Audio outro: Drive-By Truckers, "Checkout Time in Vegas"

Link to Jeff’s Mookie Betts post
Link to John Jaso sighting
Link to intentional HBP video
Link to Rob’s article about MLB’s report
Link to MLB executive report
Link to full MLB report
Link to Bloomberg Bill Benter story

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It’s funny the way little, unpredictable things can change the course of a season. Baseball is about more than BaseRuns, of course, but, according to BaseRuns, the Rays should have a winning percentage of .528. The Mariners, meanwhile, should have a winning percentage of .529, and both team would be looking up at the .539 Angels. It would be a half-game separation from the second wild card. Despite everything the Rays have experienced and encountered, they might say they should be in the thick of the hunt.

BaseRuns sometimes has only a loose relationship with reality. According to what has actually gone on, the Rays have a winning percentage of .479. The Mariners, meanwhile, have a winning percentage of .592. The Mariners are 5.5 games ahead of the Rays, and, in between them, there are also the Angels and the A’s, to say nothing of some other teams in the neighborhood. Thanks to the early standings, the Mariners’ playoff odds have increased from 9% to 30%. The Rays’ playoff odds have decreased from 5% to 1%. As similar as the Rays and Mariners have arguably been, their current circumstances are undeniably different.

The Mariners also found themselves in a recent bind, requiring an outfielder after Robinson Cano was both hurt and suspended. The Mariners want to win, and they’ve been desperate for help. The Rays have become increasingly willing to shed short-term help. Given everything, it makes sense that we have a pre-draft trade. Such deals are uncommon, but when you have these two front offices in these two situations, you should never allow yourself to be shocked.

Mariners get:

• Alex Colome
• Denard Span

Rays get:

• Andrew Moore
• Tommy Romero

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Words matter. In the context of the law, they can make all the difference.

They can also matter quite a bit in the context of PEDs and baseball.

Recently, Robinson Cano tested positive not for a steroid but rather for furosemide, a masking agent. This is how it was covered in the media.

ESPN:

A source familiar with the case told ESPN’s T.J. Quinn that Cano tested positive before the season and appealed. During the appeal, MLB apparently was able to determine his intent, which resulted in Cano dropping his appeal, the source said.

TJ Quinn himself:

Robinson Cano suspended for taking furosemide, a diuretic commonly used to mask PED use. It’s the kind of drug a player is likely to say he took by accident and didn’t help his performance. Eager to hear his explanation, because he has access to certified, clean supplements.

USA Today:

The IPA needed proof that Cano was using the drug as a masking agent.

The investigation revealed that Cano had clear intent to mask another illegal drug.

Cano was charged with a positive test, no different than if he were taking anabolic steroids.

That’s a loaded word, “proof.”

http://gph.is/2Be6wOf

The trouble is that different kinds of proof exist. First, there’s the burden of proof. In other words, whose responsibility is it to prove their case? In civil law, it’s the plaintiff who has the burden of proving its case, and the defense has the burden of proving defenses. But even that is a bit misleading; the defense doesn’t have to prove anything. If the plaintiff doesn’t prove every legally required part of its case, the defense wins even if the defense provides no evidence at all.

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Andrelton Simmons draws comparisons to Ozzie Smith for his defensive prowess. Both players are recognized as once-in-a-generation all-time greats at their positions, though Simmons has yet rival Smith’s Hall of Fame career.

Apart from the defensive skills, similarities have emerged between Smith and Simmons offensively, as well. Consider that, through the 2016 season, Simmons had taken roughly 2,500 plate appearances and put up a weak 85 wRC+. Compare that to Smith’s first seven seasons, through 1983, when he put up an even worse 74 wRC+ in more than 3,500 plate appearances.

Smith eventually turned his career around offensively, however, putting up a 103 wRC+ from 1984 through 1992 while producing 37 runs by means of the stolen base, a total which might even understate his total offensive value. Smith was bad on offense for quite some time, then he improved and was a good offensive player for a decent portion of his career. It’s possible we are seeing the same type of transformation from Simmons. The Angels shortstop put a 103 wRC+ last season at 27 years old; thus far this season, he’s doing considerably better, with a 143 wRC+ on the strength of his .331/.402/.466 batting line. Most remarkable about Simmons’ hitting numbers are the strikeouts — or lack thereof, rather — as Simmons has struck out in just 10 of his 200 plate appearances.

In 1998, Tony Gwynn stepped up to bat 505 times and struck out on just 18 occasions. The league-average strikeout rate of 17% at that point was nearly five times Gwynn’s 3.6% mark. Preston Wilson made his debut that season and struck out more times than Gwynn despite receiving only 60 plate appearances. Gwynn’s 3.6% strikeout rate isn’t the greatest of all-time. Joe Sewell struck out in under 1% of his plate appearances five times, while 68 players between 1919 and 1951 had qualified seasons with rates lower than 2%. There were 413 seasons during that time where a player’s strikeout rate was lower than Gwynn’s in that 1998 campaign. Gwynn himself even had four seasons with a lower strikeout rate than 1998, but when considering the overall context of strikeouts in the game, Gwynn’s 1998 season is probably the best of all-time. If Andrelton Simmons can keep this up, his season is going to be better.

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels, and (most importantly) FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel* and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated, midseason-type list will also be excluded from eligibility.

*Note: I’ve excluded Baseball America’s list this year not due to any complaints with their coverage, but simply because said list is now behind a paywall.

For those interested in learning how Fringe Five players have fared at the major-league level, this somewhat recent post offers that kind of information. The short answer: better than a reasonable person would have have expected. In the final analysis, though, the basic idea here is to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

*****

Cavan Biggio, 2B, Toronto (Profile)
Much of Cavan Biggio’s season thus far has been marked by an unprecedented display of power. With 12 home runs, the 23-year-old not only shares the Eastern League lead by that measure but has already surpassed the career total of homers with which he entered the season (in over 800 plate appearances).

Cavan Biggio’s past week-plus has been marked less by homers, however, and more by a different sort of true outcome, as the following video footage illustrates.

https://gfycat.com/SomberCookedFrenchbulldog

Those five walks are a product merely of Biggio’s last three games. Since last week’s edition of the Five, Biggio has recorded nine free passes in 30 plate appearances, recording walk and strikeout rates of 30.0% and 16.7%, respectively, during that interval. Walks themselves are not a great indicator of major-league success. In this particular case, though, it quite possibly represents an effort among Double-A pitchers to avoid Biggio’s barrel, as well as Biggio’s capacity to pass on pitches he can’t drive.

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