ALDS Coverage: Dream Weaver

Perhaps you’ve heard this story. It’s about an old man with a long beard. The man is famous and the beard famouser. People come from all over the land to see him and it. It’s quite the attraction, this beard.

Well one day, one of these “beard pilgrims” (as I’ll call them) comes to the old man, marvels at his (i.e. the old man’s) beard, and asks, quite innocently, “Do you sleep with it under or on top of the covers?”

The old man can’t remember off-hand, and, when he goes to bed that night, he’s unable to sleep. He’s thinking about where he should put the beard. Always, his whole life, he’s slept just fine without ever once considering whether his beard ought to go under or on top of the covers. But now — now that he’s become conscious of it — he’s unable to think of anything else.

This story is a basic illustration of the significance of what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and other positive psychologists refer to as “flow.” Flow, as the interweb tells us, “is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

I don’t know what the opposite of flow is, but whatever its name, that’s what the old man is feeling when he becomes conscious of his beard.

What does this have to do with baseball? Barely anything. But enough to keep going.

There’s a saying in my country — which, on account of my country is the US of A, it’s probably your country, too. The saying is “try easier.” Any English-speaker probably has an intuitive sense of the phrase’s meaning. But one way to define it might be to say that to “try easier” is to re-find a state of flow — not by “efforting,” but by relaxing.

In the case of the old man, the way for him to fight his insomnia is not by continuing to dwell on the positioning of his beard, but forgetting about it entirely.

It’s something you see in baseball all the time. A batter goes through the sort of slump — 0-for-12, 1-for-17 — that’s almost entirely the product of random variation. I don’t know what the exact odds are of it happening, but even a platonic .300-hitter can go 1-for-17 with some degree of frequency. Only problem is, sometimes when a guy goes 1-for-17, he starts “pressing.” Maybe he re-examines his swing. Maybe he switches something around. Instead of “trying easier,” he goes the other way. He efforts.

I’m not sure if Los Angeles Angel Jered Weaver is familiar with the concept of flow. (Given the way he spells his first name, all bets are off in re his body of knowledge.) But his manner of pitching ought to serve as an object lesson in trying easier.

I mentioned in the preview to Game Two that, while Weaver’s fastball checks in as below average according to Pitch Type Value, all of his secondary pitches rate above average. If you take his wFB/C (-0.33) and subtract from it both his wCB/C (0.58) and wCH/C (1.87) you get -2.78. Do the same thing to all 77 pitchers who qualify on the FanGraphs leaderboards, and Weaver ranks 13th, behind some other guys notable for their excellent offspeed/breaking pitches, such as Adam Wainwright, A.J. Burnett, and Javier Vazquez.

Furthermore, among those same qualified pitchers who throw a curveball more than 5% of the time, Weaver has the sixth lowest average curveball velocity (71.7 mph). Among the pitchers who throw a change-up at least 5% of the time, Weaver has the 11th slowest (80.4 mph).

Friday night versus Boston, Weaver threw 12 change-ups and 17 curveballs. His Whiff% on the former was 50%, which compares favorably to Rich Harden’s league-leading 48.6%*. His Whiff% on the latter was 30% (3/10, plus three called strikes and two foul balls), which is close to Adam Wainwright’s fifth place 36.7%*.

*Small sample sizes be damned!

There’s something captivating about a pitcher who not only gets by but gets ahead while throwing slowly. I’m sure there’s more than one reason why we like it. But my guess is that this idea of “trying easier” is one of them.

Obligatory Preview of Game Three

I used up all my words eulogizing Jered Weaver. Sorry about that. Still, believe me when I say that Game Three (a) takes place in Boston, (b) airs Sunday around noon EDT, and (c) features L.A. of Anaheim’s Scott Kazmir versus Boston’s Clay Buchholz — or “Kid Clay,” as he’s known to no one but R.J. Anderson.