Unless the Baltimore Orioles advance to the World Series, the 2014 book is closed on their slugging first baseman, Chris Davis. After breaking out in a big way with a 53-home-run tour de force in 2013, Davis crashed to earth this season, hitting half as many homers while losing 90 points off of his batting average before a 25-game suspension for Adderall usage brought his campaign to a premature halt. Just by watching him for even a couple of days, it’s easy to see that Davis is a high variance, all-or-nothing hitter, but even then such a sudden decline at age 28 is beyond the pale. Which Davis — the 2013 MVP candidate or the 2014 Mendoza Line flirter — is closer to the real thing? Read the rest of this entry »

There are a number of reasons that the Seattle Mariners find themselves in a heated race for a playoff spot as the 2014 season winds down. Felix Hernandez for one, and Robinson Cano and Hisashi Iwakuma, for two and three. And Kyle Seager, for four. They upgraded both their outfield defense and the back of their rotation from awful to fairly solid, both massive upgrades. On top of it all, their bullpen has by far the best ERA in the major leagues at 2.41, effectively shortening games to six or seven innings. In 2013, the Mariner pen, with many of the same pitchers in place, was not very good. This leads one to a number of questions regarding reliever performance. How does bullpen performance correlate with winning? What have similar frontrunning pens of the past few years had in common? Do high-end pens stay on top for very long? Read the rest of this entry »

The introduction of sabermetrics into general baseball discussion over the past generation has brought the concepts of random chance and, dare I say, “luck” into the daily discourse surrounding the game. Hardcore opponents of analytics tend to deride the entire notion of luck, while analysts may too quickly ascribe variations in performance to random chance. The more factors we are able to quantify, the more easily we can decide what is random variation, and what isn’t.

Into this esoteric debate steps Royals’ lefthander Danny Duffy, who has posted a subpar 8-11 won-lost record – and a glittering 2.42 ERA, through his abbreviated one-pitch outing (due to shoulder soreness) on Saturday. And then that ERA is way out of whack with his fairly ordinary 3.68 FIP. Has he been as unlucky as his record tells us, or as lucky as his ERA might indicate? Let’s see what we can measure about both Duffy and the context surrounding him, to get a better feel for his true talent and the role random chance has played in his odd 2014 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Sparks of enthusiasm are once again kindling among Chicago Cubs’ loyalists, as the long-awaited influx of position-player talent onto their major league roster has begun in earnest. The club is far from a finished product, and a loaded minor league system is no guarantee of major league success — just ask some of the teams I’ll discuss below. It’s an exciting time on the North Side, however, and this is before Kris Bryant — arguably the best of the lot — has been penciled into the big-league lineup. How does this group match up with some other recent talent infusions? Read the rest of this entry »

They encountered one another on a major-league field for the first time this past weekend — the first two picks of the 2009 draft, the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg and the Mariners’ Dustin Ackley. The two names are forever linked in Mariner lore, as it was their ill-timed winning streak at the end of the 2008 season that landed both players in their eventual homes. Strasburg made the Mariners look silly on Saturday night, but Ackley got in a solid counterpunch, drilling a late homer that cost the Nationals’ righty his shutout, ending his night a bit earlier than expected. Truth be told, the Mariners’ return on their first-round selection has looked better of late, as Ackley’s second-half surge has helped keep his club firmly entrenched in the wild-card race. Which is the real Dustin Ackley? The one that struggled for the better part of the last three seasons, or the guy who has shown up for the last month and a half? Read the rest of this entry »

As we head down the season’s home stretch, the AL MVP race isn’t shaping up to be the neat, two-horse race it was in both 2012 and 2013. Miguel Cabrera hasn’t quite been Miguel Cabrera, and though he still could win the award, Mike Trout hasn’t exactly been Mike Trout. As occasionally happens when there is no slam dunk position player candidate, the leading contender might be a pitcher, in the person of Felix Hernandez. In such a circumstance, sleeper candidates lacking the typical statistical “oomph” often possessed by MVPs can often emerge from the position player ranks of contending clubs. The Mariners boast two worthy contenders in Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager, the A’s have Josh Donaldson, and the Royals boast Alex Gordon, just to name a few. The Indians are not too far off of the wild card pace, and are one hot week away from injecting the name of Michael Brantley into the discussion. Read the rest of this entry »

We spend a lot of our time writing about outliers on these pages. Performance outliers, such as Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout on the offensive side, and Clayton Kershaw and Felix Hernandez on the pitching side. We focus on those who took outlier paths to the big leagues, such as Cuban imports like Aroldis Chapman and Yoenis Cespedes, or even late-career conversions like Jason Lane. As far as outliers go, Hall of Fame pitcher Dazzy Vance has them all beat. Read the rest of this entry »

Much of modern sabermetric thought regarding pitcher evaluation has been based upon the theory that most types of contact are created somewhat equally. High and low BABIPs allowed are usually attributed to good and bad luck, and FIP, which is directly based upon BABIP, is oft cited as the go-to individual pitching statistic. Well, not all contact is created equal. This week, we’re using a fairly basic method of evaluating contact management ability, and looking at the leading contact managers in both leagues. As it turns out, there’s a head-to-head battle for supremacy in both the AL and NL. Read the rest of this entry »

Much of modern sabermetric thought regarding pitcher evaluation has been based upon the theory that most types of contact are created somewhat equally. High and low BABIPs allowed are usually attributed to good and bad luck, and FIP, which is directly based upon BABIP, is oft cited as the go-to individual pitching statistic. Well, not all contact is created equal. This week, we’re going to use a fairly basic method of evaluating contact management ability, and look at the leading contact managers in both leagues. As it turns out, there’s a head-to-head battle for supremacy in both the AL and NL. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time in seemingly forever, a new GM hire was announced on Wednesday, with A.J. Preller tabbed to take the reins of the San Diego Padres. For such a change to occur, things typically need to go seriously wrong, and in the Padres’ case, it was offensive issues of epic proportion that did the trick. Ranking last in the NL in runs, AVG, OBP, SLG, doubles and total bases, to name just a few categories, is no way to go through life. How did the Padre offense get that bad, and is there a layer of bad fortune working against them to go along with the cold hard facts? Read the rest of this entry »