All throughout the winter — and for the last few winters, really — the Philadelphia Phillies have been the go-to for easy jokes to make about seemingly terribly-run baseball teams. We’ve wrung years of hilarity out of the Ryan Howard extension, dating to basically the exact moment it was signed. We cringed at the riches awarded to the declining Jonathan Papelbon in an era where teams are getting smarter about the values of closers. We watched GM Ruben Amaro, Jr. squeeze a few more good years after Pat Gillick’s 2008 World Series champs once he was promoted in Nov. 2008, then ride the team downward from 102 wins in 2011 to 82 in 2012 to 73 in 2013, all while refusing to trade any of the team’s clearly aging core. Just days ago, the Sporting News ranked all 30 GMs. Amaro came in last, and while none of those rankings have a lot of science to them, it’s hardly the first time.

And really, it was a different kind of bad for the Phillies. The Astros are worse on the field, and so are the Cubs. But those teams, and others like them, seemed to have a plan. They were willing to suffer the pain of 100-loss seasons in order to rebuild barren farm systems. They’re not there yet, but they’re both going in the right direction. The Phillies, meanwhile, refused to trade Cliff Lee or Cole Hamels or Chase Utley or Jimmy Rollins for talent that could have been on track to form the core of the next good Phillies team with J.P. Crawford and Jesse Biddle. Amaro, likely with his own employment status in mind, chose to retain or re-sign all while reloading with the likes of Michael Young and Delmon Young in 2013, then to get even older with his main moves for 2014: Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night, I sat down to watch a presumed pitchers duel featuring successful AL West starters Garrett Richards and Dallas Keuchel, which I suppose says something about both the 2014 baseball season to this point and me as a person. Richards, who’d entered the game with a top-10 FIP in baseball, disappointed, needing 27 pitches to get through a three-run first inning. He managed to avoid a disaster and actually stuck around through seven innings, but allowed 12 base runners, five runs and a mere lone strikeout, if whiffing Chris Carter even counts. I’m sure there’s a good starter in there, but being as this was the first time I’d had the opportunity to really watch him this year, I haven’t seen it yet.

And Keuchel? Well, I’m fairly certain this is the first time we’ve ever written about Keuchel on the main page of FanGraphs. He shut down the Angels on two runs over 8.2 innings for what was very nearly his second career shutout, five days after shutting out the Rangers for his first career shutout. After entering the season with a 5.20 career ERA in 239 innings, he’s now got a 2.92 ERA over the first 61.2 innings of his 2014 — numbers emphatically backed up by a 2.81 FIP and 2.68 xFIP. That xFIP is No. 5 in baseball, tied with Zack Greinke, just ahead of Johnny Cueto and Jon Lester; his swinging-strike percentage is No. 13, right in between Madison Bumgarner and Corey Kluber.

You know what? I think we’re finally going to have to talk about Dallas Keuchel. Read the rest of this entry »

In baseball, as in life, perspective is crucial. In terms of the terribly struggling Atlanta Braves offense, Jason Heyward’s 79 wRC+ is merely one issue among many, because this is a team that’s also rolling out Ryan Doumit (34 wRC+), Dan Uggla (40), B.J. Upton (68) and Chris Johnson (also 79) on a semi-regular or more basis. When the entire offense is so wretched that as a team, their .302 OBP — and yes, I have filtered out the pitchers, so this is only the guys actually paid to hit — is No. 28 in baseball, it’s hard to single out the guy who’s been more “meh” than “flaming poisonous tire fire” when there’s more than one of the latter around.

In terms merely of Jason Heyward, who debuted at 20 with hype commensurate to Bryce Harper, homered in his first plate appearance, and is the owner of seasons of 4.6 and 6.4 WAR, this can only be seen as a huge disappointment. That 79 wRC+ is equal or essentially so to Curtis Granderson and Carlos Santana, each hitting under .200; to Allen Craig, who has looked like he’s playing a different sport; to Eric Young, who is inexplicably getting playing time over Juan Lagares; to Chris Colabello, all but assured of a minor league stint in his future.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just over a month ago, Dave Cameron made an astute observation: Kenley Jansen was suddenly throwing harder in the earliest part of the season. Or as he put it, “PITCHF/x has already classified more 97+ mph pitches from Kenley Jansen this year than it did all of last year.” And since Jansen was already a hard-throwing and dominant closer with an unhittable pitch even before the velocity jump, it made for an interesting proposition. Namely, what would hitters do against a Jansen who was actually throwing harder? What happens if you take someone who is one of the three or four best in the world at what he does, and then give him something more to work with? What then?

Six weeks into the season, Jansen now has one more 97-plus mph pitch (21) logged than in his entire career through 2013. He’s also already allowed more than half as many earned runs as he allowed in any of the last three years, and he has four meltdowns as compared to eight in all of 2013. Hitters have a .276/.349/.408 line against in 2014, as opposed to .158/.245/.249 previously. He’s throwing harder, finding less success despite it, and, well, baseball is just the worst sometimes. (This may be residual Jose Fernandez anger.)

This has led to a pretty predictable narrative: Jansen is throwing harder…

…and it’s because of that that he’s had problems. Causation! It implies correlation, except when it doesn’t.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This was written just before Monday night’s game, in which Bautista had three hits and a homer. So, most of his 2014 stats are even better than they appear below.

One of the more impressive active streaks in baseball ended recently, and I bet you didn’t know anything about it. No, not the end of Nolan Arenado’s 28-game hitting streak, as nice as that was. Jose Bautista went 0-4 in a loss to the Angels on Sunday, failing to reach base for the first time all year after doing so 37 consecutive times. It’s the longest streak since Michael Cuddyer (!) did so 46 consecutive times last year; it’s the longest to start a season since Albert Pujols had 42 in 2008; it’s tied with Carlos Delgado for the longest in Blue Jays history.

That’s interesting, but it’s not that interesting on its own, really. Bautista wasn’t even halfway to Ted Williams‘ record of 84. Orlando Cabrera once got on base 63 games in a row. Kevin Millar, 52. It’s hard to be a poor player and continually get on base, but it doesn’t on its own make you a great player. What’s interesting about what Bautista just did is that it’s a small part of the larger whole: After back-to-back seasons that were very good but hardly up to the standard he set during his insane 2010-11 run, and at age 33, Bautista is once again absolutely destroying baseballs, currently sitting with the fourth-best wRC+ in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Henderson Alvarez isn’t the best starter on the Marlins, obviously. He isn’t the second-best either, unless you really dislike Nathan Eovaldi. Tom Koehler has his supporters, and a lower ERA. Andrew Heaney is coming, and so is Justin Nicolino. If you’re looking for young pitching, the Marlins have lots of it, some younger than Alvarez, others with more talent. And yet here we are, in our second Marlins-related post of the last 24 hours — let it never be said that we only love the big-market teams — focusing on Miami’s mid-rotation starter, because he might just be the most fascinating player that no one seems to know about, for just so many different reasons.

Alvarez, of course, shut out the Mets on Tuesday night, his second shutout of the season, his third in his last eight starts, and we’ll get to that in a second. But first, think about what we knew about him already. He is, so far as I can find, the only player in the history of professional baseball to have the first name of “Henderson.” He’s one of the only players to participate in a political protest outside his own clubhouse. (Not against the Marlins, as justifiable as that would be.) He is, I imagine, the only pitcher to have a novelty windup for the first pitch of every game:  Read the rest of this entry »

In one way, CC Sabathia is having the best season we’ve seen him have in years. In another, much more real way, he’s having the worst season of his long and valuable career. Baseball is a weird game sometimes.

When you look at the current ERA standings, from worst to first, a few things jump out at you. (Yes, besides, “ERA is dumb,” because for the moment this is more about what has happened than what might have happened.) You see Kevin Correia and Ricky Nolasco showing absurdly low strikeout numbers (along with Kyle Gibson, the Twins have the three lowest K% pitchers, because Twins) and you understand that pitching to contact in front of a lousy defense might not result in runs being prevented. You see a lot of high BABIP (I see you, Homer Bailey’s .385), and guys who have had a disaster start or two that inflate the number (Bartolo Colon), and guys who either can’t miss bats (John Danks) or throw strikes (John Danks) and find that the end result is poor (John Danks). As it turns out, there’s a lot of different ways to allow runs to score in Major League Baseball.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re into that sort-of in-between part of the early season, the part where it’s early enough where you can see ridiculous things like Charlie Blackmon hitting .379/.425/.621 and know that the dreaded “small sample size” caveat is absolutely in play, but also to know that it’s not that early any longer and that the things we’re seeing count. Whether it’s to further inform us about a player or a team, or just to have added value and wins now that will be important later even if the current production can’t be maintained, what we’ve seen over the first month matters. It’s just up to us to decide how much it matters.

That’s where we are with the Atlanta Braves, who have somehow managed to keep their early run of insanely good pitching alive and well through the end of April. And when I say insanely good, I mean just that. Even after Alex Wood got hit hard in Miami on Tuesday night, Atlanta’s rotation ERA- is 55. Since Jackie Robinson integrated the game in 1947, the lowest rotation ERA- we have on record for a full season is 73, by three teams, including the 1997 and ’98 Braves of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. If it’s unfair to compare a month of play to full seasons, well, then you might like to know that since the 1968 “Year of the Pitcher,” only three other teams have had a rotation ERA below 2.00 in a month of at least 25 games, as the Braves currently do. Each of those teams — the 1976 Dodgers, 1992 Braves and 2011 Phillies — had at least one Hall of Famer in the rotation or someone with a strong case to be there in the future.

That the 2014 Cardinals sit second behind the Braves on the ERA- list further shows you how early it is, that the Braves won’t continue pitching like this, and that regression is coming. Obviously. Aaron Harang and Ervin Santana aren’t going to pitch like Maddux and Smoltz all year. I imagine it isn’t shocking, breaking news that the 2014 Braves aren’t going to end up as the pitching version of the 1927 Yankees.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals, as you most likely know, are something far from a powerful team. It took them until April 9 to hit their first homer of the year, an Alex Gordon shot that likely wouldn’t have made it out of any ballpark in the big leagues had it not been wind-aided. It took them until April 15 to hit their second. Even now, 24 games into the season, they have only 10, four coming in the span of a week from Mike Moustakas, who has just 13 total hits — and a .159/.213/.354 line — all year. They have as many homers as a team as Jose Abreu does on his own. Their isolated power is .001 better than that of the Mets, and is in shouting distance of the worst mark we’ve seen in decades. They’re on pace for 67 homers. No one has hit fewer than 70 since the 1991 St. Louis Cardinals, who had only Todd Zeile break into double-digits with 11.

This isn’t a surprise. The Royals hit the fewest homers in the American League last year, and they tied with Minnesota for the fewest in 2012. This wasn’t built to be a powerful team, and it’s not.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitching and defense are inextricably intertwined, and that shouldn’t be a controversial statement. Any pitcher who isn’t striking out 100 percent of the batters he’s facing is relying on his defense for help. Any defense can only do so much to stop an opposing offense when their pitcher is giving up an endless amount of homers and line drives. It all comes together as run prevention, which is a team effort, and it’s why we have things like FIP & xFIP and de-emphasize or totally ignore things like ERA & wins that attempt to give the pitcher all of the credit (or blame).

That being the case, sometimes it’s fun to look at ERA-FIP, which shows you the gap between the two, and is a nice rough way to look at what pitching staffs are being helped (or not) by their defenses. Ideally, the teams with the biggest gaps, in either direction, should correspond to the teams with great or terrible defenses. If you look at starting rotations in 2014, you’ll see a few things stand out. First, you’ll notice that the Diamondbacks have an ERA 2.00 runs higher than their FIP, which is probably less about defense than it is about the fact that they’re a flaming dumpster fire that, if they keep things up like this, will give me a nice juicy “this is among the worst rotations ever” topic in a few days. But among teams functioning on some plane of reality, you’ll see that the Indians are the next-worst team, with an ERA 1.62 runs higher than their FIP, and that the Braves are the best, with an ERA 1.42 runs below their FIP.

Read the rest of this entry »