12:04

Dan Szymborski: THE APPOINTED TIME FOR CHATS HAS ARRIVE

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I dunno. Starlin Castro?

12:04

Dan Szymborski: He’s not good

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Well, not REALLY good

12:05

Dan Szymborski: but he’s acceptable

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On Tuesday night, the Dodgers were only a Gavin Lux home run away from falling to a .500 record. A .500 record isn’t generally cause for panic, but it would definitely have been a disappointment for the reigning world champions, a team that was expected to steamroll most of the rest of baseball this season. Just to match 2020’s regular season record, the Dodgers need to add another 24 consecutive wins to Monday night’s win over the Mariners.

So how worried should the third-place Dodgers be? Not very.

The Dodgers Aren’t Actually Playing Poorly

Okay, this header isn’t true if we engage in an ultra-literal reading, but in losing 15 of the last 21 games, the Dodgers have only been outscored by a total of seven runs in the aggregate. The team’s overall Pythagorean record puts them at a 94.5 win pace, below the preseason projections, but not alarmingly so. The bullpen had a 4.48 ERA over this stretch, and while there is a relationship between bullpen performance and Pythagorean performance, the relationship is fairly loose.

I went back through history to look at the Pythagorean performances of all teams that underperformed their expected record by at least two wins after 36 games. Over the rest of the seasons, those teams fell short of their Pythagorean records by about a tenth of a run on average. In other words, the discrepancy between expected record and actual record in the early season is mostly noise, as opposed to hiding something sinister about a team’s true abilities. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to early-season dominance or struggles, BABIP tends to be a featured player in many of the odder-looking lines. At the top of the league, you have the already amazing Mike Trout sporting a .519 BABIP, fueling a video game-like 236 wRC+ and a 1.224 OPS. On the flip side, quality players are still looking way up at the Mendoza line, such as Yasmani Grandal (.121 BA, .125 BABIP) or Kyle Tucker (.179 BA, .173 BABIP). Even though the evidence suggests that there’s more variability in BABIP ability among hitters than pitchers, a month of a season is a pitifully small amount of time to establish a new baseline expectation for BABIP. So, who is “earning” their BABIP and who isn’t so far?

Similar to the “x” Statcast stats, the ZiPS calculates “z” stats — I’ll let you guess what the z stands for — as part of its year-end projection model. These aren’t yet used in the simpler in-season model, though that’s in the works. Similar to Statcast, ZiPS estimates BABIP from the component parts: launch angle, exit velocity, speed data (for grounders), and so on. ZiPS also considers the direction a ball is hit, as a player’s pull tendency is a repeatable skill. This last data matters quite a bit. For example, grounders hit up the middle end up as singles about half the time, but grounders hit 15 degrees to the left or right of the second base bag are hits about a tenth of the time.

How does it work? The numbers are still volatile, but if all you have is zBABIP and actual BABIP, zBABIP is historically the better predictor. For all players with 50 PA in both 2020 and ’21, 2020 zBABIP is closer to 2021 BABIP than 2020 BABIP for 65% of players. Historically, the best predictor of actual BABIP, again using only these two stats, is a linear combination of 0.9 zBABIP and 0.1 actual BABIP.

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12:03

Dan Szymborski: He’s certainly *played* like a star the last 80ish games now. I’m not convinced that he’s quite that good, but he’s certainly proving me wrong.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I should note they have a 20-12 pythag record, which equates to a 101-win schedule. And that’s going to be far more predictive than their current record is

12:05

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t looked at injury rate compared to previous Aprils, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the weird 2020 made things riskier.

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The White Sox took a giant blow Sunday when young centerfielder Luis Robert injured his right hip flexor running to first while trying to beat out a grounder to third against Cleveland. As it turns out, the injury wasn’t minor, as he was diagnosed with a Grade III strain — a complete rupture of the muscle involved — and will not be able to resume baseball activities for 12–16 weeks.

Chicago hasn’t officially ruled out Robert for the season, but there’s enough uncertainty that senior VP/general manager Rick Hahn did not give a particularly optimistic assessment of when his return could be.

“But it’s safe to say in terms of projecting his possible return, it’s too soon to know. Quite frankly, we are not going to be able to provide you with an educated projection of that for another 12 weeks or so as we see how he progresses.”

The most serious consequence of Robert’s injury is naturally a painful recovery process for last year’s AL Rookie of the Year runner-up. But the White Sox have more than 130 games to play, meaning there will also be consequences for the team and some pivotal decisions to make.

Losing Robert is particularly unwelcome for the Sox, as he represents the second serious loss at a position at which they’re not terribly deep. In an unfortunately timely look I did last month at baseball’s most irreplaceable players, the ZiPS projections pegged him as the seventh-most crucial player in the majors in terms of effect on the playoff race.

From a straight-up projection standpoint, Robert falls short of most of the names on this list. Just on the Sox, ZiPS thinks Lucas Giolito is a significantly more valuable player overall, at least when he’s not pitching in the morning. But if something should happen to Giolito, Chicago has spare arms to patch up the hole. If the team loses Robert, let’s just say ZiPS does not have a case of Leurymania or Engelalia. The race with the Twins is likely going to be a tight one, and the Royals have shown surprising spunk. The White Sox could ill afford an injury to their center fielder.

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Jacob deGrom was his usual sterling self on Wednesday night, striking out nine Red Sox batters against no homers, one walk, and just three hits over his six innings of work. For his troubles, the Mets dropped the game 1-0, leaving deGrom with his second loss of 2021. A month into the season, deGrom now has the same number of losses as total earned runs allowed. He’s upped his Cy Young-worthy game to such a degree that allowing a single run nearly doubled his ERA, from 0.31 to 0.51. And with the Mets’ bats not cooperating, he’s even tried to help his own case, with hits in four of his five starts for a .462/.462/.538 line, though that performance might not continue. It certainly feels like of all the pitchers who have their health, deGrom is the unluckiest in baseball.

The Mets right-hander has never had a poor season, but he’s kicked his career into a new gear in recent years. Since the start of 2018, he sports a very healthy 1.99 ERA, a 2.21 FIP, and nearly 12 strikeouts per game. His total of 20.8 WAR is four more than the next-best pitcher, Gerrit Cole. And though he’s on the wrong side of 30, deGrom has even seen his velocity increase. While that’s not unheard of — Charlie Morton is the most obvious recent example that my brain trudges up — it’s not typical. If the season ended right now, he’d be the only starting pitcher to finish the season with an average fastball velocity of 99 mph of those with 20 innings thrown in a season since 2002. Not bad for a guy who broke into the league averaging 93!

Despite all that good performance, one of baseball’s cruelest stats, pitcher win-loss, has shown little mercy, leaving deGrom with a 27-21 record that looks more like what you’d expect from a good No. 3 starter than an ace. Is deGrom really the unluckiest pitcher in the game, at least when it comes to team support? Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Dan Szymborski: The appointed time for chat has arrived.

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Also changed my avatar. Some of you were confused why I looked so old at 42. That was the Old Dan Szymborski avatar.

12:06

Dan Szymborski:

12:08

Dan Szymborski: I do worry about two-pitch starters. I’ve wanted Kevin Gausman to develop an actually effective breaking pitch for years now to at least a cutter or something.

12:10

Dan Szymborski: Hitters are very adaptable creatures. I’d love if Ynoa’s occasional change was more of a weapon he could use

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On Monday, the Rockies announced that executive vice-president/general manager Jeff Bridich would be leaving his role with the team. Whether or not this amounts to a resignation or a “resignation” allowing a long-time employee to save face, the result is the same: there will be a new face responsible for personnel decisions in Colorado. (For now, that’s team COO Greg Feasel, who will serve as the interim GM, but the team expects to hire a full-time replacement after the end of the season.) This organization generally has had a great deal of loyalty to its general managers over the years: After nearly 30 years of existence, the team has only had three GMs in Bridich, Dan O’Dowd, and Bob Gebhard. But will this be enough to right what’s gone horribly wrong in Denver?

The Nolan Arenado trade this winter may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for the team’s chances of a longshot wild card run in 2021 and the fanbase’s feelings about the Rockies. Bridich’s relationship with Arenado soured the team’s relationship with its franchise player, but ownership was a key player in making the trade happen.

In February, the Rockies bowed to the pressure, trading Arenado and $51 million to the Cardinals for a package that included pitcher Austin Gomber and four mid- to low-level prospects. Monfort was largely the architect of the trade, sources told The Athletic, but blame fell to Bridich. There is enough to go around. Bridich was the one who alienated Arenado; Monfort is the one who allowed it.

“We lack process in so many ways,” one now-former member of Colorado’s front office said. “We lack leadership in most ways. And there’s very, very little accountability.”

So, how did the Rockies get here? Where they sit now, firmly at the bottom of the NL West, is a product of long-term decision-making failures, not just the recent drive to save money or a few poor moves in recent years.

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If you pulled up the AL Central standings today, you’d find that the team currently sitting at the top isn’t the favored Chicago White Sox or the Minnesota Twins, but the Kansas City Royals. While 90% of the season remains, it’s hard to object to the notion that it’s better to be in the lead at this point rather than the basement. It’s still reasonable to believe that the two preseason favorites are better teams than the Royals overall, but that doesn’t mean the season can’t end with Kansas City in possession of a golden ticket to the AL Division Series.

Long-time readers will know that I’ve never thought the Royals were particularly well run, at least not since Ewing Kauffman, the team’s owner from the 1969 expansion, passed away in 1993. During Kauffman’s tenure, Kansas City was arguably the most successful team created in the expansion era, ranking eighth in winning percentage (.517). By 1993, only two other expansion-era teams were even at .500: the Blue Jays at .511 and Houston at .501. At the organization’s peak, from 1975 to 1989, only the Red Sox and Yankees won more games, and at one point, the Royals went to the playoffs in seven of 10 seasons.

Since 1993, the organization has generally been unsuccessful. In about a quarter-century, the Royals have only had four winning seasons. While they bagged a World Series title in 2015, they only made the playoffs twice, despite playing in what was arguably baseball’s weakest division. Under Kauffman’s successor, team CEO, and eventually full owner David Glass, the team fared much worse. In 1993, Kansas City had a $40 million payroll, the fourth-highest in baseball. By the post-strike 1995 season, they ranked 21st. There they stayed, usually in the bottom third of the league and frequently in the bottom five. Since Dayton Moore’s first full season as the general manager in 2007, Kansas City has ranked 28th in wins and 22nd in payroll:

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12:01

Dan Szymborski: Greetings all!

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Sorry for the lost chat last week. I was getting COVID vaccine deux.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: And definitely felt awful afterwards!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Thanks for the support! I’d grumble about you winning on a technicality but…

12:02

Dan Szymborski:

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