After dropping another game last night in Dale Sveum’s debut as manager, the Brewers have now lost five in a row and are no longer leading the wild card chase. September has been a disaster for Milwaukee, as they are now 3-12 in the final month of the season, frittering away what seemed to be a pretty solid shot at a playoff berth.

Most of the blame lays squarely on the shoulders of the offense, and in particular, four hitters who have just laid a giant egg.

Ryan Braun: 11 for 56, .196/.286/.286
Corey Hart: 9 for 55, .167/.207/.255
Mike Cameron: 5 for 45, .111/.200/.222
Bill Hall: 5 for 30, .167/.219/.233

As a group, they’re 30 for 186, a nifty .161 average. Hart has the lowest WPA/LI of any player in baseball in September, while Cameron comes in 3rd and Braun comes in 4th. When you have three of the four worst hitters in baseball in a given month, it’s hard to score many runs. The simultaneous collapses of that foursome have basically sunk the Brewers offense, and potentially the Brewers season.

Even things that have gone well haven’t helped – J.J. Hardy has four home runs this month, but all four have been solo shots. Prince Fielder went deep twice last yesterday, but CC Sabathia chose the same day to take his first loss since coming over to the National League.

They’ve fired their manager in an effort to salvage what’s left of the 2008 season, but unless Sveum can figure out how to make half his offense remember how to hit, they’re in a lot of trouble.

Due to the trades of CC Sabathia and Paul Byrd, as well as the injuries to Jake Westbrook and Fausto Carmona, the Indians have cycled a lot of arms through their rotation this year. The newest of those arms, Scott Lewis, has made quite the splash, tossing 14 shutout innings in his two appearances so far. Neither the Orioles nor the Twins have been able to hit him so far, and as a kid who doesn’t turn 25 for a few more weeks, he’s getting some fans excited about his potential for 2009 and beyond.

However, a look beyond his early run prevention leads to some warning signs. Lewis has the classic pitch-to-contact skillset of a guy with fringe stuff – he’s not walking anyone (1.29 BB/9) but not missing bats either (5.14 K/9, 5.7% Swinging Strike%), and like most guys without a real fastball, hitters don’t have any problems putting the ball in the air against him (57.9% FB%).

Throwing strikes is nice, but if you’re giving up a ton of flyballs, you’re going to give up home runs. Lewis has managed to keep all 19 of his outfield flies in the park so far, but that’s just simply not going to continue – we’d have expected him to give up a couple of home runs by now, given this skillset, and if he was giving up 1.29 HR/9 instead of his current 0.00, he wouldn’t look quite so sparkly.

As we can see from the pitch data here on Fangraphs, Lewis’ fastball averages 86.5 MPH and his change and curve are both in the mid-70s. This is exactly the kind of stuff we’d expect from a strike-throwing flyballer, and it’s not the repertoire of a guy with much chance to get better.

Lewis is what he is – a younger, more orthodox Paul Byrd. He can pound the strike zone and look okay when the ball stays in the park, but his upside is that of a 5th starter. He can be useful as an innings sponge at the back of a rotation, but it’s unlikely a team would ever want Lewis pitching a meaningful inning in a playoff series.

After five disastrous appearances earlier in the season, the Tigers optioned Dontrelle Willis to the minors to overhaul his delivery and try to regain his form as a major league pitcher. Last night, he returned to the majors – let’s take a look at the start of his comeback.

Willis managed to get through 5 innings of work, giving up only two hits and three runs, but walked five and struck out four. Command was still a huge problem, as he threw almost as many balls (42) as strikes (47). Unbelievably, however, his five walks (out of 22 batters faced, or 22%) was a significant improvement over his early season performances, where he walked 21 of the 58 batters he faced (36%). You know you’re having a bad year when you can point to a 9.00 BB/9 and say “hey, it’s improvement”.

At this point, it’s pretty clear that his issues are more than just physical. He managed to limit his walk rate to just 10% in the minors, so he’s physically capable of throwing the ball over the plate. However, he’s been unable to find that rhythm against major league hitters, and the history of other pitchers who have had mental struggles with their command isn’t exactly pretty.

The Tigers owe Willis another $20 million to cover the 2009 and 2010 seasons, so it’s likely that they’ll continue working with D-Train to try to get him back on track and throwing strikes. But, once it becomes a mental issue instead of a physical one, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether it will ever get fixed.

They should be somewhat encouraged that he was able to get through 5 innings against a good Texas line-up, but he’s got throw strikes far more often if he’s going to get major league hitters out with any consistency. Getting back on the big league mound was just the first step – the big test will be figuring out if he can ever find his command in the majors again.

As we talked about this morning, Carlos Zambrano had the best pitching performance of the day yesterday, throwing a no-hitter against the Astros. But it might not have been the most remarkable performance of the day – that award has to go to Radhames Liz, who tossed eight shutout innings at the Twins. He gave up five hits and walked a batter, so he clearly wasn’t as good as Zambrano, so why is this performance notable?

Because, before yesterday, Liz had been the biggest disaster of any starting pitcher in baseball this year. He entered the game with a 7.75 ERA in 65 innings, spanning 14 starts for the Orioles. He was averaging less than five innings per start on the season and had given up at least two runs in every single appearance on the year. His longest appearance, before yesterday, was 6 1/3 innings against the Pirates back on June 14th. He gave up four runs in that appearance.

His average game score for the season was 38. His FIP was a staggeringly horrible 6.88. He walked a bunch of guys, gave up a lot of home runs, and didn’t strike out that many batters. He also struggled to strand the runners he put on base. Even though he threw hard, he got hit harder. He wasn’t a major league quality pitcher.

And then, yesterday, facing a Twins team fighting for their playoff lives, he did the best impression of a major leaguer that we’ve ever seen him do. He threw strikes, got groundball outs, and managed to keep the ball in the yard. He got within three outs of a shutout – not bad for a guy who had never pitched into the 8th inning before.

Despite yesterday’s performance, Liz has still been a total disaster this year – he’s at -1.58 WPA/LI despite only getting 15 starts. Over a full season, this kind of performance would be about 3.5 wins below an average pitcher, or about a win and a half below replacement level. Liz’s ’08 season is truly one of the worst we’ve ever seen, but for one shining day, he actually showed some major league ability.

Congratulations to Liz – hopefully this isn’t the highlight of your career.

23,441 people showed up in Milwaukee to watch the Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros play last night. Those fans who showed up to watch two out of market clubs battle were rewarded by a gem of a performance from Carlos Zambrano, who tossed the second no hitter of the season and the first by a Cubs pitcher in 36 years.

He faced one batter more than the minimum, walking Michael Bourn – one of the worst hitters in the game – and hitting Hunter Pence with a pitch. But beyond those short command lapses, he was dominating. He stuck out 10 Houston batters and, more impressively, only let two balls out of the infield – Migeul Tejada flew out to right fielder Mark DeRosa to end the first inning and Geoff Blum flew out to DeRosa to start the eighth. He got 13 groundball outs and an infield fly, so even when the Astros were making contact, they weren’t doing much with it.

The results are obvious, but for fun, let’s take a look at the process. Here’s a graph of each of Big Z’s pitches with velocity on the vertical axis and the pitch count on the horizontal axis.

One thing should really stand out – he threw fastballs on nearly every pitch. Look at all those dots up around the 95 marker, and how few there are below 90, especially at the start of the game. It was just one fastball after another, overpowering Houston with heat.

All told, of the 110 pitches Zambrano threw, Pitch F/x classified 86 of them as fastballs, plus another three sinkers and four cutters, which are basically just variances of the fastball. If you include those, he threw 93 fastballs, nine change-ups, and eight sliders.

85 percent of his pitches were fastballs of some sort, and just 15 percent could be called an off-speed pitch. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the advantage a pitcher can get from mixing his pitches and keeping hitters off balance, but Zambrano took the exact opposite approach, throwing an overpowering fastball and not backing off of his best pitch. It obviously worked.

Congratulations to Zambrano on his first career no hitter, and to the 23,441 who had the good sense to drive to the park.

When we talk about pitchers, we often refer to a pitcher’s FIP, which builds an expected ERA based on a pitchers walk rate, strikeout rate, and home run rate. In general, FIP works a lot better than a stat like ERA, because it removes a lot of the noise from results that pitcher’s don’t have a lot of control over.

However, one of those components is a bit more fickle than the other two, and it can have a huge effect on a pitcher’s performance – that component, of course, is the home run rate. Let’s take Roy Oswalt, for instance.

In March through May, he made 12 starts, pitched 76 innings, and had a respectable 20/55 BB/K rate. However, he gave up 16 longballs during that stretch, so his FIP was a downright poor 5.35, which nearly matched his 5.45 ERA. Those home runs were killing him, even though he was commanding the strike zone fairly well.

Since June kicked in, though, no one’s been able to take Oswalt out of the park. In his last 17 starts, he’s thrown 114 2/3 IP, posted a better 23/95 BB/K rate, and cut his home runs allowed down to 5. He’s certainly pitching better, as the increase in strikeouts and decrease in walks show, but five home runs in almost 115 innings? That’s nutty. As such, his FIP for that stretch is 2.93.

Just so you can see how much the home run rate affects FIP, if we change Oswalt’s HR rate in his first 12 starts to match what he’s done in his last 17 starts, his FIP drops from 5.35 to 3.31 – in other words, that difference in the home run rate is worth two runs a game. As much as we love to evaluate pitchers by walks and strikeouts, home runs have a massive effect on their performances, and a pitcher can succeed in MLB simply by keeping the ball in the park.

However, because home run rate is far less of a skill than walk or strikeout rates, most pitcher’s can’t succeed for a long team just through HR suppression. That’s why BB/K rates are a better predictor of future success than HR rates, even though HR rates have more of an impact on run scoring.

Just a little reminder that while FIP is a nice tool, if you see a guy running strong based on a remarkable HR suppression streak, it’s not as likely to be real as if he’s doing it with no walks and lots of strikeouts.

As you’ve probably heard, the Dodgers offense is currently being carried by an outfielder in the midst of one of the best offensive stretches of his career. He’s absolutely crushing the ball, and his surge the last month has been one of the main reasons why LA has been able to overtake the stumbling Diamondbacks for first place in the N.L. West. Every time you turn around, he’s getting another big hit or rounding the bases after a home run.

Oh, you think I’m talking about Manny Ramirez? He’s okay, but I was referring to Andre Ethier. Check out their respective performances the last 30 days:

Manny: .362/.467/.745, 94 AB, 1.42 WPA/LI
Ethier: .396/.462/.802, 106 AB, 2.13 WPA/LI

Ethier has 23 extra base hits in 26 games – Manny has 16 extra base hits in 28 games. There’s no doubt that Manny is hitting the ball well, but there’s no argument that he’s outplaying his teammate right now. Ethier’s just outhitting him, despite get approximately 0% of the recognition. Some BBWAA voters are even talking about casting their NL MVP vote for Ramirez. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess – these same people tried to give Shannon Stewart an MVP award, after all. However, there’s just nothing that supports the idea that Ramirez is even the best outfielder on his own team, or that his performance is the one that actually matters.

If the MVP award, as the BBWAA defines it, is actually “best performance in August and September by a team going to the playoffs”, Andre Ethier is their guy. Will he even get a single top ten vote? I doubt it. The writers will be too busy justifying their votes for Manny or Delgado.

Reason #134,324,986 why there’s no reason to care about the official postseason awards.

On August 23rd, the Diamondbacks beat the Marlins to improve their record to 68-61, taking a three game lead over the Dodgers with 33 games to play. They had acquired Adam Dunn a couple of weeks earlier to counteract the Dodgers pickup of Manny Ramirez, and their pitching staff had the look of a potential World Series champ. Things were going well in the dessert.

Since that day, Arizona is 3-13, now trail the Dodgers by 3.5 games in the standings, and have about a one in 10 chance of even making the playoffs. This isn’t some stretch of bad luck, either; Arizona has been getting their tails kicked. The last two and a half weeks have been a total disaster – everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.

In those 16 games, the defense has allowed 91 runs, or 5.69 RA/G. Opposing batters are hitting .305/.379/.488 against the Snakes, and it’s not just the supporting cast letting down the rest of the team.

Dan Haren, the big off-season acquisition that gave the D’Backs two all-stars in their rotation, has managed just 21 innings in his four starts during the stretch, putting 39 men on base and allowing 14 of them to score. The D’backs have lost all four games he’s started during this collapse.

He’s been better than Brandon Webb, however. Webb’s made three starts, managed only 13 2/3 innings, put 34 men on base, and allowed 21 of them to score. That’s a 13.82 RA/9, which is just miserable. Webb has gone from a favorite for the Cy Young award to a guy whose health is certainly in question – it’s hard to imagine a guy with his consistent success being this bad without being hurt. Not surprisingly, the D’backs have lost all three games he’s started as well.

We can’t just blame the pitchers, though – they’ve clearly missed Orlando Hudson, both in the field and at the plate. David Eckstein was acquired to help replace him, but he’s 4 for 26 since coming over to the NL, good for a .361 OPS. That’s not helping, and the struggles of guys like Eckstein, Conor Jackson, and Auguie Ojeda are a significant part of the reason that Arizona has only scored 50 runs during this stretch. If you’re giving up 5.69 runs per game, your offense has to do better than 3.1 runs per game, or you’re going to get beat a lot.

It’s going to be tough for Arizona to bounce back from the hole they’ve dug for themselves, and if they can’t figure out how to get Webb and Haren going again, they don’t have a prayer.

Pitcher Batter/Runner Outs Base Score Play
Mike Timlin Carlos Pena 2 12_ 1-4 Home Run

At 11:45 pm eastern time, Carlos Pena took a Mike Timlin fastball over the Green Monster for a three run home run, breaking a 1-1 tie in the 14th inning at Fenway Park. With that home run, the Rays were able to go on and take two of three from the Red Sox and open up a 2 1/2 game lead over Boston in the AL East.

In terms of making the playoffs, the series didn’t matter all that much, as the wild card makes this pennant race mostly irrelevant. The loser of the AL East race will still qualify for postseason baseball, and while I’m sure both teams want to win the division, the stakes aren’t as high as they might be without the wild card.

However, for Tampa Bay fans, it’s hard to overestimate just how much fun those games were. As a Mariner fan growing up in Seattle, 1995 was like living a movie, with walkoff wins and upsets over the teams that always came into the Kingdome and cleaned house. For Rays fans, I’m sure the late game longballs from Dan Johnson on Tuesday and Pena last night will be prominently featured in their postseason hightlight reel.

It’s things like Tampa’s emergence this year, and especially games like the last two days, that make baseball so great. No matter how bad your team is now, we’ve all got memories of improbable wins and late game heroics – I’m happy for Tampa fans that they finally get to experience the joy of meaningful wins in September.

When I think of a guy who gets a lot of infield hits, a short slap hitting speed burner comes to mind. Willy Taveras, Michael Bourn, Carlos Gomez… those are the kinds of players that I think of when I imagine the league leader in infield hits. And those guys are all on the list, but they’re nowhere near the top. In fact, no one’s particularly close to the guy who has racked up 38 infield hits this year, six more than the next best guy and 13 more than the guy after that.

So who is the king of successful worm burning?

Hunter Pence.

Yes, the same Pence with 21 home runs and a career .498 slugging percentage. The same Pence who has laid down exactly one bunt in his two years in the big leagues and had 13 infield hits last season.

Pence has seen his IFH% increase by 150%, going from 7.3% last year to 17.4% this year. That infield hit rate is also the best in the majors, where he’s followed by Jason Bay and Ryan Braun.

Pence, Bay, and Braun – infield hit machines? You could have given me 1,000 guesses, and I’d have never come up with those three names. I’m sure there’s a real correlation between infield hits and speed (Ichiro doesn’t get 57 infield hits in 2004 if he runs like Prince Fielder), but there’s pretty clearly a big luck factor as well.