The last week of October is here; the clocks are about to be turned back, autumn is in full swing, and there are two teams left standing in pursuit of the World Series title. This week, we’re taking a look at the defining characteristics that have delivered the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals to the brink of the game’s ultimate goals. Earlier this week, we discussed the Mets. Today, it’s the American League champion Royals.

In 2014, the Royals snuck up on a lot of people, including myself. This year, not so much. They have once again ridden their own unique formula — a combination of contact hitting, speed, defense and a deep, flame-throwing bullpen — to the Fall Classic. While the Mets were a second-half phenomenon, the Royals sat at the front of the AL Central pack all season. The only doubt was whether they would earn home-field advantage throughout the AL playoffs, which they did with a productive final weekend of the regular season.

The postseason has been a little dicier. The Astros appeared to have them pinned in the ALDS, only to watch the Royals escape with a late Game Four rally. The ALCS versus the Blue Jays wasn’t quite as eventful, though the Royals needed to survive a classic Game Six at home to finally put away the Blue Jays. They unleashed a bit more of their blue magic in Game One of the World Series, winning an instant classic that featured everything from leadoff inside-the-park homers to Bartolo Colon–Chris Young relief pitching duels, to you name it. What are some of the distinguishing characteristics that have the delivered the Royals to this moment?

Their Position Players Show Up for Work
About a year ago, in this space, and a couple months back at ESPN Insider, I examined the continuity and dependability of the Royals’ position player corps. In 2014, they became only the sixth AL playoff team in the divisional era to return eight or nine of their position player regulars from the previous season. Last season, 84.9% of the Royals’ total plate appearances were recorded by their nine regulars, fourth highest among that group of six clubs.

Read the rest of this entry »

The last week of October is here; the clocks are about to be turned back, autumn is in full swing, and there are two teams left standing in pursuit of the World Series title. This week, let’s take a look at the defining characteristics that have delivered the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals to the brink of the game’s ultimate goals. Today, it’s the National League champion Mets.

On the last day of July, the Mets ranked 30th and last in the majors in runs scored. Just a couple of days before, shortstop Wilmer Flores was nearly traded in a deal that would have delivered outfielder Carlos Gomez to the Mets, and he stood in tears at his shortstop position as news of the trade swept through his home stadium. October glory seemed far away indeed in those seemingly long-ago days.

We all know what has happened since. The Flores-Gomez deal fell through, and the Mets’ big trade-deadline move eventually netted them Yoenis Cespedes. He ignited the offense almost immediately, and Curtis Granderson and especially Daniel Murphy joined him to catalyze a stretch run in which their bats nearly kept pace with their ever-present young arms. The Nationals imploded, and the NL East belonged to the Metropolitans.

They outlasted the Dodgers, and outclassed the previously explosive Cubs, never trailing for even a single moment in the NLCS. For all of the ups and downs this club has endured in recent months, their heart and soul has been easily identifiable all along.

The Lethal 1-2-3 Punch at the Top of the Rotation
The Mets have won two World Series titles in their history, and both were built on the backs of young, dominant starting pitchers. The 1969 Miracle Mets rode Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan, who started 112 of their 162 games. Koosman was the oldest of the group at age 26. Two more youngsters, Jim McAndrew and co-closer Tug McGraw, aged 25 and 24, started half of the remaining contests. They outdid themselves in 1986, when Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez and Rick Aguilera, all 25 and under, started 118 of the club’s 162 games. Ace Gooden was all of 21 years old.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball really is something else. Coming into this postseason, there was no shortage of potential playoff narratives. You had the teams with the three best records in baseball, all hailing from the same division. There was the Toronto offensive juggernaut, and the Royals proving they weren’t a one-year phenomenon. There was phoenix-like rise of the Astros, America’s introduction to Rougned Odor, the two-headed Kershaw/Greinke monster from Los Angeles, the Cubs’ young bats, and the Mets’ young arms.

Enter, against this backdrop, Mets’ second baseman Daniel Murphy, who prior to this October drew attention only for arguably being baseball’s most average regular, the game’s equivalent of vanilla ice cream, suddenly deciding to morph into a latter-day version of Babe Ruth.

While the effect of Murphy’s sudden power explosion on the Mets’ postseason run has taken center stage, the near-term future of both player and club has become an enduring secondary plot line. Will the Mets extend a qualifying offer to free-agent-to-be Murphy? Until yesterday, the answer appeared to be no, though the rumor mill is now listing in the opposite direction. Might Murphy accept? The odds of that appear to be declining, in inverse proportion to the possibility that at least one club could lob a lucrative four- or five-year deal in his direction.

Most observers tend to agree on one thing, however: Murphy’s power surge just has to be a fluke. While I’m not going to be the guy suggesting that Murphy has 30-homer seasons in his future, I am going to go out on a limb and state that Murphy is a better player than the 2.5 WAR guy we’ve grown to know and, well, like. It’s just not for the reason playoff observers might guess.

Read the rest of this entry »

It would be an understatement to say that these are pretty heady days to be a Cubs’ fan. In the last two games of the NLDS alone, an age-24-or-under phenom who will be under team control for the next five years or so seemingly drilled a ball into the stands or onto a scoreboard every five minutes or so. The present is extremely bright, and the near-term future potential seems nearly limitless. At this point, it might be prudent to take a step back and pay a little respect to the player who made it all possible, whose incredible second half cemented the Cubs’ wild card spot and then propelled them past the Pirates in the wild card game, ace starter Jake Arrieta.

These Cubs have been built quickly, and have excelled in many talent procurement areas. Hitting on high-end position player draft picks? Check, thanks to the likes of Javier Baez, Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber. Attacking the international market? Check, thanks to NLDS wunderkind Jorge Soler. Don’t forget the trade market, either. Anthony Rizzo was stolen from the Padres, but the biggest theft of all was the acquisition of Arrieta, along with key bullpen cog Pedro Strop, from the Orioles for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger.

Like our AL Contact Manager of the Year, Marco Estrada, who turned 32 in July, Arrieta wins NL honors in the very first season in which he qualified for an ERA title, at a fairly advanced age (29). Unlike the Blue Jay righty, Arrieta excelled in every way a pitcher can be measured, by missing bats, minimizing free passes — you name it — and is a leading contender for NL Cy Young Award honors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the postseason, the Blue Jays were regarded widely as the favorites to win it all. A historically great offense, a souped-up roster fueled by the trading deadline acquisitions of Troy Tulowitzki and David Price… what could possibly go wrong? Well, the vagaries of postseason randomness quickly paid them a visit, and within 24 hours from the first pitch of Game 1, they had found themselves Hanser Alberto-ed within one game of extinction.

Until Marco Estrada saved them, at least temporarily. A journeyman who turned 32 this summer and who, until this year, had never even pitched enough innings in a season to qualify for an ERA title. The same guy who this season nosed out the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Collin McHugh and Sonny Gray for AL Contact Manager of the Year honors.

Read the rest of this entry »

The book on the 2015 season is still being written, but when it is finished, at least a chapter or two will need to be devoted to Statcast. This year will likely go down as the one in which granular batted-ball data went mainstream. More data has been made public, and discussion of exit velocity, launch angle and even route efficiency has permeated the airwaves of even the most old-school broadcasts. All of the numbers, in and of themselves, mean very little. Only with the addition of context can they become meaningful.

A couple months ago in these pages, I detailed some of the limitations of the newly publicly available data. Today, let’s update those findings with an examination of the year-end data.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I took a look at the AL Cy Young race, utilizing batted-ball metrics to address the respective candidacies of David Price, Dallas Keuchel and Chris Sale. To make a long story short, I concluded that Sale’s strikeout-to-walk (K/BB) superiority, along with solid contact management skills that have been obscured by his horrendous team defense, placed him on top. Some readers expressed incredulity in the comment section, not believing that even the worst defense in the game could cost a pitcher one full point of ERA.

Today, let’s look at the counterweight to Chris Sale, Sonny Gray. Though he wasn’t quite the same guy in the second half as he was in the first, he has wrapped up a very strong campaign, especially in the more traditionally accepted statistical categories. He’ll finish third in the AL in ERA (2.73) and is likely to receive his share of down-ballot Cy Young votes, possibly enough to nose out Sale for third place overall. Sale’s ERA is 0.78 higher than his FIP, and as we saw the other day, 1.02 higher than his “tru” ERA, which incorporates Statcast batted ball data. Gray finishes 2015 with an ERA 0.73 lower than his FIP. What gives, and what is the true talent level exhibited by Gray this season?

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I addressed the Cy Young battle in the senior circuit and titled it “The NL Cy Young Showdown.” This time, it’s the AL’s turn — and “discussion” (as opposed to “showdown”) seems to be the proper way to characterize it. It’s been a low-key pitching season, comparatively, in the AL, with no one posting an ERA near Zack Greinke‘s, or pitching no-hitters or engaging in zany second-half shenanigans like Jake Arrieta. In fact, a general consensus seems to be building that the award is David Price’s to lose. Today, let’s have a full discussion, including utilization of batted-ball data, about the AL Cy Young and its three likely frontrunners, Price, Chris Sale and Dallas Keuchel.

Price, who turned 30 in late August, is the only one of the three with a Cy (2012) on his mantle, though he hasn’t finished above sixth in the annual voting since then. Sale has come progressively closer in the voting, checking in at sixth, fifth and third in the last three seasons, while this will be the first time on a ballot for Keuchel, 2015’s foremost pitching breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

As September draws to a close, postseason baseball beckons, and prospect-ranking season is in full bloom. I’m going to take a slightly different approach than most, and simply focus upon overall organizational depth rather than the players specifically. Which systems have the most and least talent on hand, and which have taken the largest steps forward on backward in 2015?

Up front, let’s lay out the basics of my prospect-ranking system. I evaluate position players and starting pitchers separately. All full-season league position players’ on-base (OBP) and slugging (SLG) percentages are compared to the average of their league’s regulars. A sliding scale of performance targets, dependent on players’ age relative to level, are utilized. All players meeting such targets are included on my list; there is no limit as to the number of players who qualify. This year, 329 position players made the cut.

The system is very similar for starting pitchers; the statistics measured are strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB). The same age-dependent performance targets, measured by standard deviations above/below league average, are utilized. This year, 179 full-season league minor league pitchers made the cut.

On the position player side, Carlos Correa lapped the field, with last year’s #1, Joey Gallo, finishing second. This year marked the third consecutive season that Correa ranked within the top-11 position players, and Gallo’s third straight in the top 17. On the starting pitcher side, it was a much tighter battle, with the Dodgers’ Julio Urias finishing first for the second straight season, nosing out the Twins’ Jose Berrios. Prior to finishing first in 2014 and 2015, Urias ran second in 2013, while Berrios’ runner-up finish was his second in the top 10 and third in the top 50.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s almost that time of year again, when individual hardware is bestowed on the best players in each league, complete with the requisite hue and cry from constituencies exhorting the merits of their respective choices. In general, I tend to not get too worked up about such things, but will dip my toe into such discussions when my interest is piqued. Last year, I thought that Felix Hernandez deserved to win a close decision over Corey Kluber in the AL Cy Young race. This year, the NL Cy race is a particularly interesting one, a three-way dogfight among Dodgers Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw and Cub Jake Arrieta. Today, let’s utilize the batted-ball data at our disposal and try to make a call on this exciting race.

For the two Dodger aces, this is not their first Cy Young rodeo: Kershaw has won the award in three of the last four seasons, and Greinke won one with the Royals back in 2009. As for Arrieta, well, this is the first time he has even pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. Kershaw, 27, and Greinke, 32, were slam-dunk, top-half-of-the-first-round high school blue chippers. Though Greinke has had some unique roadblocks along the way to perennial excellence, there likely aren’t many scouts who’ve watched either him or Kershaw from the beginning who are very surprised by what either has accomplished in the game.

Arrieta, 30, on the other hand, was a humble fifth-round Oriole draft pick out of TCU in 2007 who had previously been drafted out of high school and junior college. His progress through the minors was glacial compared to his Dodger peers, and he was eventually, famously dealt from the O’s to the Cubs along with Pedro Strop in exchange for Steve Clevenger and Scott Feldman in the summer of 2013. Now Clevenger has done a nice job for the Orioles of late, but I’d still surmise that they would like to have a do-over on this deal.

Read the rest of this entry »