As I wrote yesterday, I have an NL Cy Young vote this year. It is a remarkably tough year to pick a winner, as there are three pitchers having award-worthy seasons; you can make a really good argument for any of the three. The reality is that those of us with votes are going to have to split the slimmest of hairs in order to sort out the top three spots on the ballot, and yesterday, I tackled the question of catcher influence.

In response, someone left this comment.

This is a great suggestion; when the overall influence of combined season numbers are this close, looking at the individual distribution absolutely could be a source of differentiation. And since I know at least one other puzzled Cy Young voter read yesterday’s piece, I figured it was worth exploring this idea, plus a couple others by the responses to the piece.

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I have an NL Cy Young ballot this year, and with 10 days left in the regular season, I legitimately don’t know who I’m going to vote for. If I was the kind of voter who looked only at run prevention and credited that entirely to the pitcher on the mound, it might be a fairly easy decision in favor of Zack Greinke, given that he’s at +9.4 RA9-WAR, putting him in pretty historic company in terms of keeping runs off the board. If I went solely by the measures that we have a pretty good idea are primarily influenced by the pitcher and not his defenders behind him, it would be pretty easy to cast a vote for Clayton Kershaw, given that he’s leading the fielding in FIP-based WAR by a pretty good margin.

But as we’ve discussed many times here over the years, both of those extremes are clearly incorrect; giving a pitcher no credit or blame for all the non-HR contact he allows is definitely wrong, but so is assigning the entirety of the results of those balls in play to him and pretending that defense does not play a role in run prevention. In reality, a pitcher should get credit (or blame) for some of the impact of events that FIP does not capture, so FIP-based WAR is definitely an incomplete measure of a pitcher’s performance. How much credit or blame should be assigned isn’t entirely clear, and if you just throw your hands up in the air and split the credit down the middle — blending FIP-based and RA9-based WAR together — you’ll note that Jake Arrieta ends up in the top spot, though the differences between all three pitchers at that point are so small as to be insignificant.

As you probably know if you’re reading FanGraphs, I’m not going to simply cast my vote based on total run prevention, since I believe in attempting to isolate player performance when handing out individual awards, and simply using run prevention metrics and pretending like defense isn’t a thing strikes me as a particularly lazy shortcut. But I’m also not going to just use FIP, and not just because it ignores a bunch of plays that do matter; it also has (albeit to a smaller degree) issues with teammate interaction. As our ability to measure a catcher’s impact on balls and strikes has grown, it has become clear that no pitching event is really “fielding independent”, and a pitcher’s walks, strikeouts, and home run rates are indeed impacted by the performance of the guy he’s throwing the ball to.

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The current version of the Kansas City Royals are primarily known for two things: playing amazing defense and having a dominating bullpen. That combination of elite glovework and unhittable relievers carried them to the World Series a year ago, and helped them run away with the AL Central this season; they entered the month of September with 13 game lead over the second-place Twins.

But despite a pre-punched playoff ticket, September has provided plenty of reason for Kansas City fans to worry about their chances headed into October. After an 11-2 drubbing at the hands of the Mariners last night, the Royals are now just 7-13 this month, thanks to a pitching staff that apparently is coming apart at the seams. In those 20 contests, the Royals have allowed 120 runs, for an average of 6.0 runs allowed per game. Up through August 31st, they allowed just 484 runs over 130 games, or 3.8 runs allowed per game.

This month, opponents are hitting .290/.364/.474 against the Royals; only the Phillies and A’s are allowing opponents to do more damage in September. And it’s not just a couple of guys; almost the entire staff is getting lit up.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

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Here’s a statement I think most people would agree with: Bryce Harper has been the best player in baseball this year.

Harper leads the majors in batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, so naturally, he also leads in wOBA, wRC+, and just about any other offensive metric you can find here on FanGraphs. In most cases, it isn’t even close; his 205 wRC+ is 30 points better than the next best hitter (Joey Votto), and no one is within +1.5 WAR of his current total (+9.7, with Josh Donaldson’s +8.1 coming in second). Harper is having one of the best offensive seasons of all time, and while some other guys are having excellent years as well, no one is really performing at Harper’s level this year.

Now here’s a statement that I’m guessing would be a bit more controversial: the Washington Nationals are having the best season in the National League East.

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Going into the season, we expected the NL East race to be fairly boring by the end of the year, and as expected, there’s not a lot of drama left about the likely outcome; of course, the fact that it’s the Mets and not the Nationals running away with the race is a pretty big surprise. Led by a quality rotation and a surging second-half offense, the Mets have put themselves in prime position to get to the postseason for the first time since 2006.

Of course, this being the Mets, there is still plenty of drama to go around, even with a big lead over the second-place Nationals and just two weeks left in the regular season. Lately, that drama has come from the team’s handling of Matt Harvey. It started off with a public disagreement between Scott Boras and the team about whether doctors recommended or required a 180 inning limit for Harvey this season, with Harvey initially appearing to side with his agent, but then coming around to the team’s side of things, stating that everyone is on the same page about his usage over the rest of the season. With Harvey quickly approaching that 180 inning threshold, but the Mets also wanting to retain the ability to use him in the postseason, the Mets are now shortening his remaining regular season innings in order to reduce the amount of stress his arm takes in his first year back from Tommy John surgery.

That limitation was on full display last night, when the Mets and Yankees met up on Sunday Night Baseball. With ESPN’s cameras showing the game across the country, Harvey dominated the Yankees, allowing just one hit and one walk in his five innings of work, striking out seven of the 18 batters he faced on the night. And with the Mets holding a tenuous 1-0 lead entering the sixth inning, Harvey was replaced by Hansel Robles, who proceeded to give up five runs in the sixth inning; his fellow relievers would give up six more, and the Yankees eventually won 11-2.

Predictably, the reaction to removing Harvey after just 77 dominating pitches is not a positive one this morning. Here’s Anthony Rieber from Newsday, for instance.

Harvey threw five innings. Gave up one infield hit. Walked one. Struck out seven. It was the Dark Knight at his best. His last pitch was 95 miles per hour. He made the Yankees look like minor-leaguers.

None of that mattered. What you saw with your own eyes on the baseball field didn’t matter. What the Mets needed as they try to nail down the National League East against the suddenly showing-late-signs-of-life Nationals didn’t matter.

All that mattered was a line on a chart somewhere that said Harvey could only go five innings — not six, good heavens not seven — because of some unproven benefits that might come his way in the postseason, or next year, or after he leaves the Mets as a free agent following the 2018 season.

Ridiculous. Arrogant. Unfortunate.

New York’s papers are filled with this same kind of criticism this morning; since Robles and the rest of the bullpen struggles, removing Harvey was clearly stupid, given how well he was pitching at the time. Except, it wasn’t, and more often than not, it’s probably going to work out just fine for the Mets.

First, let’s present a few pieces of actual facts. Here are the opposing batters lines against Matt Harvey this year, based on how many times they’ve faced him previously in that game.

Times Through The Order

At-Bat	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	0.191	0.242	0.320	0.562
2	0.214	0.259	0.308	0.567
3	0.253	0.291	0.419	0.710

The first and second times through the order, hitters have done next to nothing against Harvey this year; he’s been nearly as dominant as he was pre-surgery. Beginning the third time through the order, however, Harvey has been decidedly mediocre, and this is true of most every starting pitcher in baseball. The times-through-the-order penalty is a well established effect that has been documented countless times, and applies to everyone, even pitchers who are throwing really well early on.

Despite the temptation to buy into the “he was throwing well, thus he would have continued to throw well” logic, the data simply refutes the idea that we could look at Harvey’s early-game dominance and presume that the Yankees would have continued to struggle against him simply because he pitched well the first five innings. Starting pitchers perform much better earlier on in the game than they do in the middle and later innings, and we simply can’t take their early-game performance and extrapolate it forward into the later innings.

Then, there’s the little matter of the fact that Hansel Robles has actually been quite good for the Mets this year. He’s struck out 28% of the batters he’s faced this year while allowing roughly average walk and home run totals, and while it’s probably not predictive of anything, his .240 BABIP suggests he’s at least not just throwing the ball down the middle to try and maximize his strikeout rate. Even after last night’s meltdown, opposing batters are hitting just .190/.267/.379 against Robles this year. To illustrate the point, here’s opposing batters lines against Robles this year, and against Harvey the third time through the order.

Harvey vs Robles

Comparison	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Harvey, AB3	0.253	0.291	0.419	0.710
Robles	0.190	0.267	0.379	0.646

Yes, last night, Robles performed poorly, and it was juxtaposed against Harvey’s early-pull, making the narrative an easy one to sell. But thinking that taking Harvey out after facing 18 batters — meaning he would have begun the third-time-through-the-order with the next batter he faced — and replacing him with Robles made the Yankees more likely to put up a big rally is unsupported the evidence. A tiring Matt Harvey is just not much more (if any more) effective at getting outs than even just a reasonably decent middle reliever. And there’s plenty of reasons to think Robles is a reasonably decent middle reliever.

Last night’s results made for a very easy Monday morning story. For everyone who wants to rail against innings limits and modern pitcher usage, there is no better time to get on the soap box than when a starter is throwing well, is removed for an inferior-talented reliever, and then that reliever immediately gives up the lead. The problem is that the same soap box isn’t revisited when tiring starters are left in to face hitters a third or fourth time within the same game, and that lead disappears before the bullpen is ever called upon; this happens all the time, but the story told then is that the pitcher simply failed to do his job, rather than that the manager failed to recognize that going to to a reliever would have provided a better opportunity for a good outcome.

It might be frustrating to watch, but the reality is that if you’re going to limit a pitcher’s workload, the most rational way to do it is to shift as many innings as he can throw towards the beginning of games, when he’s facing hitters only two times each, rather than skipping starts; these shortened starts allow Harvey to still pitch when he’s most effective and rest when he’s likely to be least effective. If you’re going to enforce an innings limit, this is the best way to do it, even if you’re going to take heat for it on the days when the bullpen doesn’t live up to Harvey’s early-inning standards.

The key is to remember that Harvey probably wouldn’t have lived up to those standards either. The choice the Mets made wasn’t to take out a guy who going to continue to be unhittable and replace him with a batting practice machine. In reality, the Mets took out a starter who has been roughly an average pitcher the third time through the order this year, and replaced him with a perfectly solid reliever. It didn’t work this time, and it happened on a national stage, but it’s certainly not ridiculous to realize that letting Harvey pitch deep into games has only a marginal benefit versus handing those middle innings to relievers who are likely to perform at a similar (or better) level.

If you want to debate the merit of managing workloads in general, that’s another story, but given that the Mets are going to manage Harvey’s workload — and with the fact that he wants his workload managed, they don’t really have a choice — giving him shortened outings is probably the best way to go about this. Despite a highly-publicized failure last night, concluding that the Mets plan is “arrogant” or “unfortunate” is simply ignoring the pertinent facts.

One of the great things about baseball is that it’s always changing. The changes don’t happen quickly, in most cases, but the game being played today is quite a bit different from the one being played 10 years ago, and the one 10 years before that, and the one 10 years before that. Baseball has eras where no one could hit and eras where even a shortstop could launch 20 homers a year; it has had eras where starters pitched nearly every inning and eras where managers would bring in his specialist to counter the other team’s newly-inserted specialist.

The current era is all about pitching, as the rise of hard-throwers on every roster and an expanding strike zone have made this a great time to throw the ball for a living — so long as you can manage to keep from visiting Dr. Andrews, anyway — and a rough time to try and put up big offensive numbers. This is a drastic change from the style of play that we saw during the Steroid Era, where players used copious amounts of PEDs and offensive rates neared all-time highs. If you’ve been watching baseball for since we entered the 21st century, you’ve seen the game change in pretty dramatic ways, even while it is still the same sport.

Over the last 50 years, one of the most interesting changes has been the rise and fall of the popularity of the stolen base. Aggressive baserunning reached its peak in the 1980s, when teams like the St. Louis Cardinals featured line-ups of slap hitters who could run and field, while stars like Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines were also setting the standard for what leadoff hitters should be. But when home run rates surged in the 1990s, stolen bases were de-emphasized; why risk making an out when the next guy up can hit one over the fence?

Now, with the strike zone getting bigger and PED testing getting more sophisticated, offense is back to the levels we saw back in the 1980s, with teams averaging roughly 4.25 runs per game over the last five years. With runs being more scarce, it was thought that perhaps MLB would move back towards 1980s-style players, and we’d see a resurgence in stolen bases once again.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been kicking around a few thoughts in my head, and so today, I’m going to try and turn them into a cohesive post. I can’t guarantee I’m going to succeed, given that I’m writing these sentences before I write the rest of them, but after pondering these in my head for a while, it’s probably time to put them down on virtual paper and get some feedback on the ideas presented.

The primary genesis of these thoughts are spurred by the fact that, with three weeks left in the season, the battle for the second AL Wild Card is being contested by the Twins and Rangers. Entering the year, our Playoff Odds gave the Twins a 4.6% chance of making the postseason (based on a 74-88 projected record), and the Rangers a 3.5% chance (with a 73-89 projected finish), and now it seems quite likely that one of the two is going to end up playing the Yankees in the Wild Card play-in game. The American League as a whole has been pretty weird this year, or if you take a different perspective, our preseason projections have performed poorly in forecasting AL team records this season.

Rangers fans — or a segment of their fanbase who use Twitter, anyway — have been particularly loud in their objections to our evaluation of their team, and understandably, 140 games of their team winning games at a .525 clip has reinforced their belief that our methodology of team evaluation is incorrect. Or that I personally have a bias against their team. Or some combination of the two.

From my perspective, though, the disconnect is mostly just a philosophical choice, and is the same choice that drives a lot of the disagreement around many of our less popular evaluations. Primarily, we evaluate players and teams by their inputs, not their outputs.

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Over the last few years, Matt Carpenter developed into one of the game’s most underrated stars by exceeding at the skill set embodied by the likes of Mark Grace and Joe Mauer over the last few decades; be extremely selective at the plate, rarely strike out, hit a ton of line drives, and create value through elite levels of walks and doubles.

From his rookie season of 2012 through the end of last season, no one in baseball took a higher percentage of pitches than Carpenter, and he ranked 14th overall in contact rate when he did offer at a pitch in the strike zone. Carpenter’s unwillingness to chase pitches out of the zone, and his ability to rarely whiff on swings in the zone, allowed him to post nearly even walk and strikeout rates in an era when pitcher dominance has become the norm. While he wasn’t a big power guy — he hit just 25 home runs during those three seasons — he made up for it by posting one of the highest line drive rates in the game, which allowed him to rank in the top 10 in doubles, so he wasn’t just a slap-hitting singles machine like some other elite contact batters.

This year, though, Matt Carpenter is different.

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