“A pitcher, you throw 100 miles per hour, you are the shit.”

That’s Omar Vizquel, former longtime Cleveland Indians shortstop and current Detroit Tigers first base, fielding and baserunning coach, in a Maxim.com article by Hunter Atkins last month.

Vizquel’s not wrong. We love guys who can throw 100. It’s not much different than throwing 99 — no more different than 99 is to 98, at least. But there’s something about that number, 100, that appeals to us. For a while, there just weren’t that many guys who could do it, so the ones who could really stuck out. Even now, when plenty of guys can do it, the number is enticing. Maybe it’s the third digit. Maybe it’s the fact that the number starts with a one, when all the rest start with sevens, eights and nines. Maybe it’s those nice, round zeroes, their cleanliness and sense of closure. In the Maxim piece, Joba Chamberlain describes it as “sexy.”

So we’ve got 100, this big, clean, round, even, sexy number that pitchers can make appear on a radar gun for which crowds cheer regardless of the result or quality of the 100. But there are times when baseballs travel 100 miles per hour not having been thrown by a pitcher, and those aren’t given nearly the same attention.

This was the year of the exit velocity. It was our first season with Statcast data, and the number that infiltrated the public domain more than any other was batted ball velocity. Hitting 100 off the bat is nice, too, but it isn’t nearly as impressive as a pitcher throwing 100. For exit velo, the holy 100 is more like the holy 110, and that’s not nearly as fun a number. Let’s stick with 100.

Occasionally, an outfielder will get a running head start, whether on a single or a sac fly, and throw a bullet to home plate, just like a pitcher, and it elicits a response. We can see with our eyes that the ball was thrown exceptionally hard, but we don’t see it on the radar gun, so these throws go unrecognized. You’ll hear about “pitchers who can throw 100,” but you never hear outfielders regarded in the same light. The pitchers who can throw 100 have their own exclusive, little clubs. Some can do it, but most just can’t. Outfielders are the same way, just without the club.

This season, there were 24 pitchers who threw a pitch that registered in the triple digits. There were 15 outfielders. Let’s give them their own club.
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Ian Desmond is 0-for-14 with 10 strikeouts and zero walks against Craig Kimbrel.

I know, I know. Small samples, noise, predictive value and whathaveyou — I get it. Usually, it’s best not to read too much into batter-pitcher matchup stats. Sometimes, though, it’s clear that a certain batter just doesn’t stand a chance against a certain pitcher. Sometimes, it’s clear that a Craig Kimbrel can turn an Ian Desmond into a helpless puddle of mush in the batter’s box simply by standing on the mound.

What if I told you that, in rare cases, fielders could possess the same ability? What if I told you that, in early 2014, Andrelton Simmons learned he had such a power? That simply by taking the field, he could render Travis d’Arnaud completely and utterly powerless? Not only that, but that Simmons could actually control the game with his mind, so long as d’Arnaud was on the field with him?

* * *

The date was April 9, 2014. Spirits were high in the Mets’ clubhouse. The season was young. They’d shut out the host Braves in their home opener the night before. Young catcher Travis d’Arnaud had collected his first two hits of the season and scored a run. He hoped to build upon that success against Braves hurler Ervin Santana the next day. He strode to the plate, confident and unknowing.

This was young d’Arnaud’s first encounter with Simmons. The result was unexpected, yet also unsurprising. d’Arnaud had heard tell of Simmons’ skills. Now, he’d experienced them firsthand.

“What can you do?” d’Arnaud thought to himself. “Gotta tip your cap.”

In fact, as he lunged toward first base, d’Arnaud did tip his cap. It fell right off the back of his head and down to the Earth behind him. As the helmet hurtled toward the dirt, it eclipsed the print on the back of d’Arnaud’s jersey, momentarily displaying the word “dUD.”

This could be interpreted as foreshadowing.

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The American League edition of this post ran yesterday, and can be found right here.

There’s no sense in bogging the top of this down with words, really. My comments on the history of the Gold Glove, its improvements, and defensive metrics can be read in yesterday’s post. For those interested, I will re-publish the qualification rules and selection process before we begin:

Regarding eligibility, I used the same qualification rules used by Rawlings for the official award. If you’d like, you can find those here. Once having my player pool, I pulled three advanced defensive metrics for consideration: Defensive Runs Saved, calculated by Baseball Info Solutions, Ultimate Zone Rating, calculated by Mitchel Lichtman and used as the in-house FanGraphs metric, and Fielding Runs Above Average, calculated by BaseballProspectus and used as their in-house defensive metric. I summed the three, then averaged them together to figure a “total” defensive runs saved number.

For catchers, things are a bit trickier, so instead I’ve just broken it down to the three major components of catching: controlling the run game (rSB, from FanGraphs), framing (from BaseballProspectus) and blocking (also from BP). These numbers are all represented in run values above or below average, and summed to give us a total defensive runs saved figure for catchers. UZR doesn’t exist for pitchers, so only DRS and FRAA are used.

To the awards!
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The Gold Glove Awards are getting better. They really are! Two years ago, when I did this post for the first time, the numbers and the MLB finalists agreed on 28 selections. Last year, it was 30. This year, it’s 32. Furthermore, there appear to be fewer notably egregious selections. There are still a couple here and there, and we’ll get to those, but the days of Rafael Palmeiro — or even Derek Jeter, for that matter — winning Gold Gloves are behind us. When MLB decided to begin folding advanced defensive metrics into the selection process, everything improved markedly.

For the thousandth time: no defensive metric is perfect. However, they’re the certainly better than fielding percentage, the eye test, and “who is the best hitter,” and they’re currently the best public way we have to evaluate defense, so they’re what we use. For a while, Gold Gloves were held to a high standard. It was an honor to win them. They meant something. Then, there was a stretch when the Gold Glove became a farce. People realized they weren’t being given to the best defenders — they weren’t being given to good defenders, even — and it was all a joke. Now, the Gold Gloves are earning their back their status, and that’s a good thing. The awards should matter. It’s nice to see the players who deserve to be recognized, recognized.

So let’s recognize. The way the finalists are determined now is part manager/coach vote, part metrics. But what if it was all metrics? Just the objective numbers, and no human bias. That’s what I aim to do here.
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In the opening minutes of his great documentary Baseball, Ken Burns characterizes the sport in terms that are both pleasing on their own and also relevant to yesterday’s post regarding Mike Trout‘s peak, and now today’s on Clayton Kershaw‘s:

“It is a haunted game, in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time, and timelessness.”

It’s a much more succinct and effective way of making the point I attempted to make yesterday, in that today’s players don’t yet have the luxury of having a legacy, in turn making it tough to contextualize their potential place in history while that legacy is still being built. Looking at what today’s players accomplished in their primes, relative to the primes of the ghosts (both figurative and literal) who have gone before can help us do that.

Trout’s place in history has been well documented and updated since the completion of his 10-win rookie season. For the better part of three years now, you’ve been hearing all types of Trout stats, included with some sort of “under __” age filter that places him alongside the game’s all-time greats like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays for his production, relative to his age. It’s been hard to avoid the company which Trout has kept.

With Kershaw, seems we haven’t heard that as much. Part of it, likely, is just Trout stealing the thunder. Part of it, likely, is that Kershaw didn’t begin truly dominating until his age-23 season, so the fun “under-21” stats weren’t as fun. Part of it, perhaps, is the ridiculous Kershaw postseason narrative. Probably the biggest part of it is just that pitchers are tougher to compare across generations, and it might be easier to “dismiss” the historic nature of what Kershaw has done by recognizing that it’s happened during one of the most depressed run environments the live-ball era has ever seen.

Even with the run environment considered, what Kershaw has done these past five seasons is absolutely historic.

Trout’s “peak” — his first four seasons in the Majors — already ranks as one of the 10 greatest peaks by a position player in baseball history. He’s not alone. Kershaw is currently in the midst of a top-10 all-time peak himself. We’re lucky enough to experience them both.

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We’ve gone exactly one day without baseball, so it’s probably time to write another post about Mike Trout.

The framing device I used the first time I wrote this post was LeBron James. I’m a Cavaliers fan, and when I’d written the post, LeBron James played for the Miami Heat and I didn’t think I’d ever see him play for Cleveland again. When LeBron first left for Miami, I was sad, of course, but the initial sadness was simply “my favorite team is bad again.” The later sadness, the sadness that stuck, was the crippling fear that I’d taken James’ time in Cleveland, his truly historic time, for granted. That I hadn’t appreciated him enough. That I’d gotten too used to how incredible he was, rather than being thankful each and every day that he existed, and that I could watch him do the things he does, feeling pride that he represented my city. The thing about realizing you took something special for granted is, you almost never get another chance to re-do it. I got lucky with LeBron.

Mike Trout just posted another nine-win season, and he’s likely to finish as runner-up MVP yet again. Another indisputably historic season that won’t be recognized as such at year’s end. It’s not anyone’s fault, really. The first year, Miguel Cabrera won a freaking Triple Crown. The next year, he had an even better season. Then Trout had his “worst” year yet and finally got his MVP. This year, Josh Donaldson will absolutely deserve the MVP he most likely wins. More than one person can, and usually does, deserve it, after all.

It feels like Bryce Harper helped take some of the shine away from Trout this season. Perhaps rightfully so. But there should be enough shine to go around for the both of them. Not to say Trout goes unappreciated. Fans of the game recognize that he’s special. They recognize Harper is special. But do we appreciate them enough? Is it possible to appreciate them enough? Baseball hasn’t seen a pairing like Trout and Harper since Mays and Mantle in the mid-50’s and, no, that’s not an exaggeration. Maybe I’m overstating it, but I guess I’m just terrified that, down the road, once the inevitable darkness that is Father Time has shown up and done his bidding on Trout and Harper, that too many people will look back at what we once had the same way I’d looked back on LeBron before I was lucky enough to be given a second chance. Wondering why they didn’t go to more games, wondering why they took something so special for granted. See Mike Trout play as often as you can. Watch a few Angels games on television, even if you’re not a fan. Drive an hour or two to a ballpark, if you have to.

One of the great things about modern baseball statistics is the ability to compare across generations. It’s what makes wRC+ so invaluable. Fifty percent better than league average will always be fifty percent better than league average. Nine Wins Above Replacement now is worth the same as Nine Wins Above Replacement in 1940. The greats of years past have a legacy. The players of our age don’t yet have that and, on the fly, it can be hard to contextualize what the accomplishments of today’s players mean. Where they stand in the bigger picture, and what their eventual legacy may become.
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You’ve got an opinion on the Eric Hosmer play. Y’know, the one where he broke from third on a ground ball that didn’t get out of the infield grass and scored the tying run in the ninth inning of the World Series? Y’know, the one where if he would have been out, the game would have been over but he wasn’t and now the Royals are world champions? That’s the one. You’ve got an opinion on the Hosmer play, I’ve got an opinion on the Hosmer play, and even if you say you don’t have an opinion on the Hosmer play, well, that’s your opinion.

Immediately, people began debating whether he’d have been out with a good throw. Because Lucas Duda didn’t make a good throw. But that’s not the part that has my attention. The result was the result. I’m more interested in the process.

You see, the legend of the Kansas City Royals’ advance scouting department has grown to near-mythological proportions. The stories say it was the advance scouting department that discovered David Price tipping his changeup. Price’s Jon Lester-like avoidance of pick offs to first base. Jose Bautista’s inclination to throw to second base from the corner in right field — which allowed Lorenzo Cain to score from first on a single in the ALCS. Now, the advance scouting department has struck again:

@AmazinAvenue How does it make assumptions when the Royals internally talked about taking chances against Duda? This wasn’t willy-nilly.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 2, 2015

This has been the set-up. I want you to now forget everything you know about the Hosmer play, about Lucas Duda, about what the metrics say about him and what you’ve seen with your eyes, about the Nostradamus-like premonitions of the Royals advance scouts and about everything you’ve read since last night. To the best of your abilities, wipe the slate clean.

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