Most pitchers are bad hitters, as we all know. Most pitchers look so out of place at the plate that it is a great source of both comedy and debate. Why should we continue this charade? Why should this paean to a by-gone era, propped up under a pretense of “strategy,” continue to degrade the quality of the game we all love?

That debate is better left until another day in another setting with well-established ground rules and adult supervision. Today, we can just look at the impact of pitchers hitting, specifically on their impact on the Wild Card chase.

On Tuesday night, Clayton Kershaw made more than his typical contribution to the Dodgers’ cause. Sure, he pitched brilliantly and shut down an otherwise powerful offense. But Kershaw worked his way on base against Doug Fister in the fifth inning and then “helped his own cause” by dashing from first to third on a bounding single to center field. Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Nationals are a good team, probably the best in the National League. After they made headlines for winning games via walkoff only, they settled down and started winning games the traditional way. With a seven-game lead in the NL East, the Nats are all but a lock to at least qualify for the postseason this year. As of today, their playoff odds sit at 99.9%, with a 99.3% chance of holding on to the division crown, the highest marks in baseball.

By Base Runs and Pythag, their talent on-hand appears to be slightly better than their record shows. The Nats are a team best characterized as a great pitching team, with a formidable starting rotation and steady bullpen supported by strong defense. Their offense doesn’t get its due, boasting a 98 wRC+ for the season – though their non-pitchers rank among the best in the game.

It is somewhat surprising to see the Nats offense rank so high, given their high strikeout rate and lack of a single offensive force (Jayson Werth’s 136 wRC+ is best on the club, ranking him 21st among qualified hitters). But it is this offense that I believe makes them even more troubling for potential playoff opponents. The Nationals deadline deals and improving health might make the prospect of facing their lineup even scarier come October than a rotation stacked with studs. Read the rest of this entry »

“With his defense, he doesn’t need to do much at the plate” is a common refrain heard in regards to the best defensive players in the game. Elite players at premium positions get a lot of rope, so valuable is their glove work. Especially at key, up-the-middle positions, the offensive bar is set so low that any contribution from the game’s best defenders can be considered a bonus.

In 2013, Andrelton Simmons was among the most productive players in baseball, thanks to his beyond-superlative defense. To the surprise of many, Simmons also slugged 17 home runs, offsetting his struggles to get on base to produce a nearly-league average season. His 91 wRC+ surpassed the average shortstop last season, which is a recipe for a successful season. If you hit better than most of the peers while definitely fielding better than most of your peers, you’re doing something right.

As 2014 began, Simmons and the Braves were clearly not content with his production levels and vowed to change him, to bring his swing under control and make him a more complete hitter. In June, Braves hitting coach Greg Walker explained to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was a matter of identity for Simmons, one he needed to adjust. “You’ve got to make a decision on what type hitter you want to be. Do you want to be low-average guy, a power guy, and deal with a lot of failure?”

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The Toronto Blue Jays season is a two-part story. What began as a pleasant surprise quickly descended into a lucid, waking nightmare. Two Blue Jays’ outfielders heading into free agency embody each of those characteristics. While Melky Cabrera is putting together a brilliant platform season before heading to free-agency, Colby Rasmus seems to have spent all the good will he earned with his strong 2013 campaign.

Rasmus, as you probably know, was terrific last year. He hit 23 home runs and posted nearly 5 WAR in just 120 games. He looked every bit the future star the Blue Jays thought they had when they acquired him at the 2011 trade deadline. Unfortunately for Rasmus, his 2014 looks much more like his forgettable seasons in the woods following his 2010 breakout as a 23-year-old in St. Louis.

The soft-spoken Jays center fielder has long been a magnet for criticism and scrutiny, due in no small part to his frank father/coach/mentor and to the personality clashes with his former manager and Hall-of-Famer, Tony La Russa. On the field, Rasmus is a devoted tinkerer at the plate and the author of wildly divergent periods of production.

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Weird home runs have a very specific appeal. Most homers we see are products of bad pitches left in hittable spots. Flat sliders or errant fastballs, hangers and changeups left up in the zone, the usual. For folks who consume baseball in bulk, it takes something special to quicken our collective pulse.

It is hard to break through the din, however. While each homer is a tiny miracle in its own right, it takes something extra to stand out. This past weekend featured two very interesting and very noteworthy home runs. Two shots that stand out and demand a little extra attention.

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The National League Wild Card race is hardly a race at all. It feels as though the teams vying for the playoffs’ back door don’t actually want to claim the prize, struggling as the contenders have in recent months.

There is another team on the outside of that cohort or recent playoff squads, something of a darkhorse that sits just 2.5 games out of the Wild Card slots. A team that lost 100 games last year, the Miami Marlins. They sat in first place in the NL East as recently as June 8th, only to slip well below .500 in July. They’re a puzzle, an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a blood orange.

Are the Marlins good? Are they a legit Wild Card contender? Maybe not. One thing that isn’t up for debate is the strongest part of this Marlins team – their outfield is one of the best in baseball and could stay that way for a long while.

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Several unusual things happened in Sunday afternoon’s game in Arlington between the Rangers and Angels. Firstly, Huston Street blew a save, his first as an Angel. Second, Mike Trout got a hit, his first in 18 at bats as he suffers through the second prolonged slump of his otherwise Troutishly MVP-calibre season. Thirdly, Trout was caught stealing for the first time in 2014.

Given Trout’s recent inexperience in reaching base safely, one might understand his urgency to make something happen for the first time in a week. Which also explains why Rangers starter Nick Tepesch had an eye on the Angels’ centerfielder, promptly picking him off first base.

Though it wasn’t a straight steal of second base, it counts as just his 13th stolen base attempt and first unsuccessful try – that’s ten fewer than noted speedster and fellow New Jersey native Todd Frazier. A number difficult to believe for a player who gets on base 40% of the time and also successfully swiped 82 bases over the two previous seasons.

The lack of stolen bases highlights a soft spot in Trout’s game this year – he hasn’t been a particularly valuable base runner. One of the fastest players (and hardest runners) in the league, Trout’s work with his feet rates as a single run above average this season, a far cry from the two Wins he added on the base paths between 2012 and 2013. In each of those years, Trout added five runs by advancing extra bases when the ball was in play while the weighted stolen base metric values and reflects his efficient theft accordingly. This season, his UBR is essentially zero.

Given his speed, reputation, and the sheer volume of his opportunities (only four players reached base safely more than Trout this season), this result is somewhat shocking. Why is Trout suddenly less effective on the bases? Or, is Trout actually less effective on the bases, or is this just expected and normal variance?

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Sometimes you hear something, an anecdote or an observation, that sounds very obvious but, upon reflection, you realize you never pieced it together in such a succinct manner. All the ingredients might have been there but until somebody experienced or smart laid it out just so, it never really clicked.

A big league pitcher once explained to me that his catcher insists that when his pitchers miss, they miss on the “right” side of the target. The correct side, if you will. If the target it is inside, miss inside. Set up away, missing off the plate is preferable to a pitch leaking back over the heart. Same applies up and down, high and low.

In golf, they call it a “good miss.” Not quite on the target but a shot that avoids disaster and gives you a chance to salvage a decent score. In baseball, it seems simple and isn’t an earth-shattering revelation but, if you watch for it, it often reveals a lot about the pitcher. It is a window into the value of stuff and velocity, as brute force papers over a lack of finesse.

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Prepare yourself for an unpopular opinion – there is a difference between a well-pitched game and a low-scoring game contested by two bad offenses. Not every quality start is a gem, thanks to the current state of offense in Major League Baseball.

On the same night the defending World Series champions eked out seven total bases in a 19 inning game, the Baltimore Orioles slugged six home runs. The following afternoon, they hit another three bombs. After a fallow period of one day, the O’s got back on the bats, hitting three MORE home runs Monday night, fueling yet another win for the first place team in the American League East.

Over the past seven days, the Orioles hit SEVENTEEN home runs. That is more than the rest of the AL East combined in that stretch, more than 11 teams can claim in the second half. It is this power surge that keeps them afloat and in front. It is this suddenly rich mine of home run power that helps them overcome/offset an otherwise underwhelming squad from top to bottom.

While we all stare at their lineup and wonder how they manage to remain first in a deeply-flawed division, the O’s look like a club that zigged while the rest of baseball zagged. Always a team built to score runs, they simply struggled to get all their pistons firing in sequence – until now.

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The San Francisco Giants currently sit comfortably in a playoff spot in the National League. They are but 3.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West race. Only two teams in the NL have more wins than the Giants’ 62.

And yet, the Giants are probably not a great team. They project to land square in the middle of a Wild Card dogfight. They are either the worst good team in baseball or the best bad team in baseball. Sometimes they look the part, other nights their lineup betrays the mediocrity lurking within.

In my mind, these key traits of the the Giants are reflected in two of their best-known players, Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. Brilliant at times but perplexing at others. While Lincecum is quickly becoming a beloved enigma, Sandoval is a little tougher to figure. He’s not what he once was or what he might have been, but he remains a vital contributor to the Giants’ success.

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