Defensive errors have been a part of baseball history forever, but we seldom ever talk about them now. We’ve come to better understand the importance of range, and so we look beyond errors for our defensive evaluations. A guy might make an extra error or two simply because he’s covering a lot more ground than a peer. There’s also the matter of errors being subjective, some being obvious calls and some being coin flips. As for hitters, errors are mistakes by the other team. When a hitter smacks a ball in play and the defense makes an error, we tend to think of the hitter as lucky, because that shouldn’t have happened. So hitters don’t get a lot of credit.

But errors do happen, and they’re factored into some wOBA formulas, and there’s a line of thinking that faster runners can force more defensive errors, giving them a mostly unseen advantage. There’s the idea, then, that there’s indirectly some skill involved, which might mean a few extra runs. I, personally, have seen Ichiro reach a bunch of times on misplays, which might’ve had to do with his speed. The more a defender has to hurry, the more prone he might be to screwing up, which could be a thing worth talking about. We’re about to focus on Norichika Aoki.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know who sucks at hitting? Pitchers. Boy, they just really suck. Pretty much always have, probably always will. Sure, every so often, a random pitcher will run into one and blast a dinger out of nowhere. But the same could be said of Munenori Kawasaki (now), and while pitchers aren’t automatic outs, they’re as close as you’re going to get to automatic outs in a regular major-league baseball game. Maybe this calls for a reminder that pitchers only suck relative to big-league position players. They’re better at hitting than us. But their numbers are always deplorable, and we don’t always have to be all fair-like. When a pitcher bats in a rally, you assume that the rally is over.

The designated hitter became a thing in 1973, following various proposals. From that point on, pitchers stopped hitting in the American League, while they continued hitting in the National League. In the previous sentence I have explained the most basic of rules. Thus, NL pitchers faced a lot of pitchers, while AL pitchers didn’t, even after the advent of interleague play. Unsurprisingly, then, since the DH came into existence, NL pitchers have posted a higher strikeout rate than AL pitchers. They’ve posted a higher strikeout rate every single season.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know what the top story in baseball actually is, because we don’t have a measurement for that. I guess it could be anything. What it should be, though, is the fact that the Toronto Blue Jays have won 11 consecutive games. If this were a simple 11-game winning streak, it’d be newsworthy, just because of the odds. But adding to the richness here is the identity of the team, and everything it’s been through. A team that was supposed to be good then was not good, then suddenly became impossibly good, climbing all the way back into the race. Just when people were ready to start officially writing the Blue Jays off as a bust, they picked themselves up in the fastest way possible.

The standings, now, are incredibly tight. In the American League East, five games separate first from fifth, which is also fourth. The Jays are three back in the wild card, and while there’s a point at which the gap is too large to fancy yourself a contender, the point’s a hell of a lot bigger than three. This is a team that’s been banged up, and this is a team that’s about to have the return of Jose Reyes. Unless things quickly reverse course, the Jays won’t soon be selling any pieces. They’ve erased much of their disadvantage.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey there, Internet users, and welcome to the second part of the 11th edition of The Worst Of The Best. This is the second part of the tenth edition, from last Friday, which you might have already read. If you haven’t already read it, maybe go ahead and keep it that way because I can never predict when I’m going to have to start recycling jokes and other material. Every single week I start conducting my research and I worry that I’m not going to have anything to say. Every single week so far, words have produced themselves, but I don’t know how it happens so I can’t just take it for granted. As I type this, I’m nervous. I’m nervous about whatever is going to happen down below. What if it sucks?

This is where we look at bad swings, which basically means this is where we look at two-strike swings at breaking balls in the dirt. Exceptions are special, but they’re also rare, which is what makes them exceptions. I am looking forward to showing you something about a particular matchup, but I won’t spoil the surprise in the introduction. You should also know that I’m writing this in an aggravated mood, because a bunch of the swings I looked at on video wound up being checked swings and I exclude those and that drives me crazy because it’s lost time. Stop going halfsies, hitters. You make my Fridays worse. The window examined: June 14 through June 20. Let’s look at some fools.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey there, whoever you are, and welcome to the first part of the 11th edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here — right here — is a link to the first part of the tenth edition, from last Friday. Meanwhile, this is a link to the section containing every post in this series. For a few minutes I debated with myself whether to write “11th” or “eleventh,” and I settled upon the former, as evidenced conclusively above. Please do not interpret this paragraph as an indication of the paragraphs to come. I promise that things will pick up, if only because there are stills and .gifs below that interrupt the words that I type. It’s the words that are the hard part for me and the relatively unpleasant part for you.

Here we talk about wild pitches in the form of a top-five list, showing the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. The data window analyzed is from June 14 through June 20, of this year. Yes, the load times; yes, I get it; yes, I don’t care. In the event that candidate pitches are missing, that’s PITCHf/x’s fault, not mine, so feel free to yell at PITCHf/x. Here are some pitches that just missed the top five: Jeremy Affeldt to Logan Forsythe on June 18, Yovani Gallardo to Trevor Crowe on June 20, and R.A. Dickey to David Murphy on June 15. The list below is presented in descending order because the other way would be stupid.

Read the rest of this entry »

The most exciting play in baseball, within context, is presumably the walk-off grand slam with two outs and a three-run deficit. Within context, I imagine it’s almost a perfect correlation between play excitement and Win Probability Added. This is why WPA works as both a baseball statistic and emotion statistic. Any immediate reversal of deficit to victory is going to be outstanding. From the other side, perhaps a game-ending and game-preserving strikeout or double play. Context leads to leverage, which leads to excitement, which leads to viewing satisfaction.

The most exciting play in baseball, removed from context, is up for debate. Some people say triples; some more adventurous, aggressive people say inside-the-park home runs. Some people say steals of home. Some people say other things. What a lot of these have in common is maximum hustle, or maximum effort. People respond well to players putting everything they have into a play, because then you’re watching world-class athletes at their most athletic. That’s one of the points of all this.

As it happens, there was particular hustle on display on Wednesday. And hustle from two of baseball’s premier emerging stars, in Mike Trout and Yasiel Puig. On the road in Yankee Stadium, Puig gathered for himself a hustle double. At home in Anaheim, Trout managed a hustle double of his own. To have two hustle doubles on the same day by different half-player/half-phenomenon entities — the two can’t not be compared. So, below, they’ll be compared, somewhat or mostly arbitrarily.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know about pitch-framing, and you’ve seen a lot of the numbers. Wow! Take a minute to step back and realize how incredible that is. A few years ago, we wouldn’t have thought this possible. A few years ago, people leaned mostly on catcher reputations. Then there was PITCHf/x and research and genius, and now we have an idea which catchers get the most and least favorable called strike zones. You’re tired of hearing about Jose Molina being great, and you’re tired of hearing about Ryan Doumit being terrible. In a short amount of time, framing details went from unknown to common knowledge. That’s wacky!

A lot of the time these days, when people talk about pitch-framing — or pitch-receiving, to be used interchangeably — they’re looking at specific examples. They’re looking at specific balls or specific strikes, and examining how that particular pitch was caught. Relatively little time is spent talking about changes in framing, on a player or team level. But that can be of interest, just like with any other stat, so I thought I’d take a stab right here. Let’s take a look at some 2012 and 2013 pitch-framing comparisons.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals allowed four runs Tuesday night. Fairly ordinary total, four runs. Not too few to score; not too many to allow. There were 16 games on Tuesday. In 13 of them, at least one team scored at least four runs. In two of them, both teams scored at least four runs. Four might be the least remarkable run total. But then, there’s a thing about these Royals. That was only the second time all month the Royals allowed more than three runs in a game. The other time, they allowed five. It’s been a good month for the Royals’ pitching staff, and so it’s been a good month for the Royals.

It was an impressive streak they put together. Between June 1 and June 14, the Royals played 13 games, never allowing four or more runs. In 2010, the Giants had such a streak of 18 games, but previous to that, you have to go back to the 2002 Diamondbacks to find a streak of at least equal length. Then you have to go back to the 1993 Braves. A few weeks ago, people wondered whether Ned Yost was on the hot seat. Now the Royals have pulled themselves back into the race, and they own the American League’s fourth-best run differential. Thanks in large part to their run prevention, the Royals presently have the look of a contender.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Harvey didn’t throw a no-hitter against the Braves on Tuesday, but he did almost do that, not allowing a hit until the bottom of the seventh. It’s not that Harvey relied entirely on the strikeout — of the batters he faced, 13 didn’t whiff. But then, of the batters he faced, 13 did whiff, and Harvey’s season rate is verging on 30%. Matt Harvey was already good a year ago. Since then he’s only induced more grounders and cut his walk rate in half. Harvey, at this point, is in the argument for being the most valuable young pitcher in all of baseball.

Against the Braves, Harvey registered 15 swinging strikes on secondary stuff, which is outstanding. Yet he also picked up eight whiffs on his heater, which is kind of par for the Harvey course. No other starter’s fastball has led to so many swinging strikes, as Harvey can just be completely overwhelming. Instead of just using his fastball as a foundation, Harvey uses it also as a weapon, which is a rare gift. To have a swing-and-miss fastball is to have one hell of an advantage, and though fastballs tend to get slower over time, for now, at least, Harvey’s elite.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »