Author Archive
There’s Going to Be a Colby Rasmus Change
Colby Rasmus is amazing. Still just 26, and an elite-level talent, Rasmus is presently slugging .536. He’s a center fielder who clubs like a DH, and his slugging percentage is beating those of Albert Pujols and Anthony Rizzo. Rasmus owns a 135 wRC+, which was Joe Morgan’s career wRC+. It’s a better wRC+ than those being posted by Carlos Beltran, Andrew McCutchen, and Michael Morse. Rasmus is finally coming into his own, and he’s looking like the superstar the Blue Jays have wanted him to become.
Colby Rasmus is a nightmare. For every seven plate appearances, he’s struck out three times, whiffing more often than batters have whiffed against Max Scherzer. His on-base percentage is being supported by a lofty BABIP, and Rasmus has swung through the ball with nearly half of his swings. With nearly half of his swings! Rasmus’ approach has shown no signs of improvement, and it looks like he’s going to continue to be exploitable for as long as he’s a part of the game.
Shin-Soo Choo: Human Bruise
You like factoids, so go ahead and choose your factoid. Shin-Soo Choo has already been hit by nine pitches. Shin-Soo Choo’s hit-by-pitch total is more than twice as high as that of the current runner-up. Shin-Soo Choo has accounted for 5.2% of the league’s hit-by-pitches while accounting for 0.4% of the league’s plate appearances. No non-Reds team in baseball has been hit by more pitches than Shin-Soo Choo this season. Shin-Soo Choo has reached base more often by hit-by-pitches than Jason Heyward has reached base by hits. Shin-Soo Choo already has the second-worst UZR in baseball, ahead only of a guy with the yips. Whoops, I don’t know how that got in there. The point is this: Shin-Soo Choo has been hit a lot, already. There is a variety of ways in which this point can be illustrated.
It’s not a total negative, or even that much of a partial negative, because Choo is leading off for the Reds and leadoff hitters are supposed to get on base. When you get hit by a pitch, you are entitled to a base! Through three weeks or so, Choo has made fewer outs than non-outs, and this is a guy in the Reds lineup who isn’t Joey Votto. As long as Choo can get hit and not get hurt, it’ll be an overall positive, and Choo hasn’t gotten hurt to date.
The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Swings
And we’re to the second part of our third edition of The Worst Of The Best. As earlier, this has been delayed on account of current events, which have been making it difficult to concentrate. As earlier, I’ll acknowledge that not everybody wants to be reading about baseball right now, and this is simply out there for those who do. As earlier, I’ll note that I have no sympathy for people whose browsers lock up, because you ought to know by now that these posts feature a ton of .gifs and images. And as earlier, I’ll detail what you’re about to look at! This is a top five of the wildest swings of the past week, or the full swings at the wildest pitches. Checked swings don’t count as wild swings, for my purposes, and really awkward swings where the hitter falls down don’t count as wild swings, either. It’s all PITCHf/x-derived, so if you want to blame something for something, blame technology. Just don’t expect it to respond.
Maybe you saw a swing over the past week that you thought was really bad. Maybe you think that swing should’ve made the top five, even though it didn’t! Instead of assuming PITCHf/x got something wrong, assume that you got something wrong. It’s true, sometimes PITCHf/x has glitches, and sometimes PITCHf/x misses pitches. However, far more often, you misjudge something you see with your eyes. Your eyes are pretty great, considering how things would be without them. But relative to the PITCHf/x cameras, your eyes are feet. By which I mean they’re things that can’t see. The list is going to start now. This, by the way, is a link to last week’s edition.
The Worst of the Best: The Week’s Wildest Pitches
Considering current events, let’s acknowledge something up front: I am not composing this with my full, undivided attention, and you probably are not reading this with your full, undivided attention. That’s just fine, and maybe because of the latter, you won’t be aware of the former. But I wanted to open with an excuse, and it’s weird enough to be thinking and writing about baseball right now, or even this week. Some of you certainly won’t be in the mood to read about sports, although I suppose those who don’t care wouldn’t be looking at FanGraphs right now in the first place. Here is baseball content on a Friday. Read it or do not, and I’m okay with your decision.
If you’re still here, and if you’re still interested, this is the first part of the third edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to last week’s version of this, in order to bring you up to speed. Top five wildest pitches, relative to the center of the zone, derived via PITCHf/x. It’s not relative to intended location because we have no way of reliably measuring that. Yes, that would be better, in theory. No, that is not doable, in reality. Please do not complain about these .gifs locking up your browsers because you should understand by now that these posts have .gifs in them. All of the posts in this series will have at least five .gifs in them. You should know whether or not your browser sucks at .gifs. You do not get my sympathy. To be honest nobody ever gets my sympathy just because they have a frozen Internet window. This seems like enough of an introduction, so let’s advance to the more meaty bits.
Mike Pelfrey and Standing Around
Let’s go ahead and get one thing clear up front: nobody thinks about pitcher pace, firstly. Firstly, one always thinks about pitcher performance, and then after that come the various watchability factors. What matters most is that a pitcher is good, and when a pitcher is consistently effective, nobody really cares how he gets it done, so long as he does. But pitcher pace lurks in the background, and when a guy isn’t effective, a slow tempo won’t score him any points. One tolerates a slow pitcher when the slow pitcher helps. One quickly runs out of patience when a slow pitcher hurts.
Slow and bad — it’s the worst of the four boxes to occupy. Of course, there’s some relationship, as pitchers tend to work slower with runners on base, and bad pitchers have more runners on base. There’s more to think about, more people to pay attention to, more importance behind every delivery. But when Mark Buehrle sucks, he still sucks quickly. Not everyone is Mark Buehrle, and this is how we get to talking about Mike Pelfrey.
The Pittsburgh Pirates Have a Receiver
A.J. Burnett made some history Wednesday night when he recorded his 2,000th career regular-season strikeout. Of course, he also has 31 career postseason strikeouts, and I don’t know why those don’t matter — but they don’t matter, and this isn’t even the main point of this piece. Burnett nearly made some more impressive history Wednesday when he carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Cardinals. Carlos Beltran knocked a two-out double, and Burnett was removed before the eighth. But even without the history and the complete game, Burnett turned in a hell of an effort and the Pirates improved to .500. Now all the team needs to do is hold this for another five-and-a-half months.
But this post isn’t about Burnett. It’s about is Russell Martin. While that’s a bit of a stretch, Martin was at least catching Burnett on Wednesday, and I needed some sort of topical introduction. When the Pirates signed Martin as a free agent, they presumably considered both his defensive and his offensive skills. In the early going, his offense has been entirely absent, but at least a part of his skillset shows up in the numbers.
The Top of the Tigers and Hitting the Baseball
Used to be one of the principal complaints — nay, the principal complaint — about Austin Jackson was that he struck out too much. He had all the tools, but the strikeouts were limiting his upside. Similarly, used to be one of the principal complaints about Torii Hunter was that he struck out too much. It was the same conversation, years and years earlier, and now both Jackson and Hunter are teammates. Funny thing about that.
Paul Swydan just posted about Austin Jackson’s dramatic strikeout reduction. Jackson’s strikeouts are down this season more than you would believe, and that’s given even more life to the top of the Tigers’ order. But I became independently interested in Jackson while conducting my FanGraphs chat on Tuesday, wherein I was asked plenty of times whether or not I’m buying Jackson’s early success and change. We’re always looking to make something of the early numbers, because they’re the only numbers we have and we want for them to be meaningful. Most of the early numbers are bad and stupid, but we know that certain stats stabilize faster than others, and Jackson’s stable stats are eye-popping, if you’re familiar with the previous versions of Austin Jackson.
A Brief Examination of Intentional Balls
Before we get started, I find appropriate two words of warning. One, this post contains .gifs, like many of my posts on FanGraphs. If your browser locks up from too many .gifs, I think the bigger story is that you’re visiting the present-day Internet from 1997, but it’s at least right of me to give you a notice. Two, this is maybe the dumbest and most pointless thing I’ve ever put together. And it wasn’t that long ago that I wrote a post about bunt doubles. In terms of determining wins and losses, you aren’t about to learn anything the least bit meaningful. On the standards of significance, this post sucks.
All right. This is a post about intentional walks, and, more specifically, intentional balls. People don’t really notice intentional balls because they don’t matter. The outcome is pre-determined, and throwing and receiving intentional balls isn’t a skill. Nobody is thought to be “good” at it or “bad” at it because it’s just a simple game of catch that maybe shouldn’t even be necessary in order to advance a hitter to first base. Once every several years or so, a hitter will swing at an intentional ball, just to take the other side by surprise. Once every year or month or something, an intentional ball will be thrown too wildly, and bad things will happen. This is when intentional balls are noticed, but those events are infrequent.