The Cincinnati Reds attempted to strengthen their postseason chances by acquiring OF Jim Edmonds from the Brewers today for OF Chris Dickerson. Edmonds was apparently a decently hot commodity on the waiver wire with the lack of big bats available at the trade deadline, but the first place Reds were able to snag away a potential future Hall of Famer (*fingers crossed*) in hopes to bolster their outfield.

Cincinnati has an eclectic mix of outfielders that makes the addition of Edmonds all the more interesting. Jonny Gomes actually has a wOBA of .335, but his below average defense (-10.0 UZR, -10 DRS, generally poor scouting reports) and inability to play centerfield hurts his value tremendously. Second in wOBA is Laynce Nix, who, at .328 (100 wRC+), will probably see time reduced due to this trade. Last is Jay Bruce, whom R.J. Anderson wrote about at length a few weeks ago. Bruce is just at a .322 wOBA, and has never cracked the .330 wOBA mark throughout his three-year major league career. The best Reds outfielder this season has been rookie Chris Heisey, who has put up a .397 wIBA (147 wRC+) while playing solid defense. His bat is real, and hopefully Edmonds doesn’t cut into his playing time significantly. Drew Stubbs has played a bunch of centerfield this season, but his modest .316 wOBA doesn’t impress ZiPS; it projects him for .302 from here on out.

Meanwhile, Jim Edmonds is having a fantastic year all around. He’s played great defense in both center and right field, as well as shown his ability to play first base (although I doubt Joey Votto has anything to worry about). His .369 wOBA is generated by a .286/.350/.493 slash line, his highest slugging since 2005. However, he is walking at just 8.5%, but this may be due to pitchers being reluctant to pitch around him early on given that he missed the entire 2009 season. His walk rate has steadied around ~9.7% over the past two months, which is closer (but still significantly far away) from his career average of 12.5%. Edmonds is hitting right-handed pitchers this year to the tune of a .373 wOBA, but his peripherals all show an ability to hit lefties extremely well; most of the difference in production between facing righties and lefties has been due to an inflated BABIP versus righties. His .344 overall BABIP is well above his career average, especially his last few seasons. However, his LD rate is at an absurdly high 28.5%, a number that may be due slightly to scoring bias, but either way will probably regress. Still, even a regressed/adjusted LD rate will be generally favorable. Either way, the ZiPS projection likes Edmonds for a .340 wOBA going forward.

Going to Milwaukee in the deal is outfielder Chris Dickerson, who is a real nice grab for the Brewers for a few months of Jim Edmonds. Dickerson put up 3.2 WAR in 128 games from 2008-09, playing good defense in centerfield with an ability to play the corners well also. However, after a .339 wOBA last year, Dickerson struggled mightily in 2010 with a .205/.222/.273 line. Since being sent to Triple-A Louisville, Dickerson has raked; he’s hitting .442/.528/.767 in fifty-five plate appearances. Dickerson has MLB-ready talent both at the plate and in the field. He’ll have opportunities to teach his old team a lesson in the NL Central. ZiPS thinks he’s good for a .322 wOBA for the rest of the season, and at twenty-eight years old could be close to his offensive peak.

Overall, this wasn’t that poor of a trade for either team, although Cincinnati may have slightly overpaid for an outfielder who could see serious regression while giving up a much younger outfielder who could be useful in the future, maybe even now. They’re clearly going all out in the NL Central race, which they should, but I wonder if this move was necessary for them, or if the asking price for Edmonds was really as high as Dickerson. Milwaukee comes away with a big plus, acquiring a solid outfielder just because they offered a Spring Training invite to an older outfielder who hadn’t played pro ball in over a year.

During the off-season, Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels made an effort to become a new type of pitcher, opening his arsenal to more weapons in hopes of sustaining long-term success. He decided to incorporate a steady serving of curveballs and cutters into his healthy diet of fastballs and changeups, and so far the relatively superficial stats seem to be generally supportive of the process:

2008: 3.72 FIP, 3.63 xFIP, 4.26 tERA, 7.76 K/9, 2.10 BB/9
2009: 3.72 FIP, 3.69 xFIP, 4.15 tERA, 7.81 K/9, 2.00 BB/9
2010: 4.21 FIP, 3.66 xFIP , 4.38 tERA, 8.94 K/9, 2.98 BB/9

After a career-low walk rate last year, Cole has dropped to a walk rate worse than as any season since his rookie year by a significant margin. Still, his strikeouts are way up and it seems that his biggest issue in terms of performance has been the quality of his balls in play. His HR/FB rate is at a career-high 14.6%, as Cole has given up more homers per fly than the average pitcher each year in the big leagues. His groundball rate, however, is a career-high at 44.1%, but that may have more to do with a LD rate of 18.1%, which is as low as it has been since 2006.

But our run value charts show that Hamels’ cutter has been a bad pitch for him, coming in at -4.3 RAA, compared to 5.3 for his fastball and 3.1 for this changeup. His curveball has been basically an average pitch at -0.1. Pitchf/x guru Harry Pavlidis at The Hardball Times discussed Hamels’ new repetoire and did a fantastic job breaking down the lefty’s performance in a two-part series using his rvERAa and rvERAe stats, eventually concluding:

-An increased rate of flies and liners turning into home runs is observed when Hamels adds a fourth pitch heavily to the mix. Coincidence?

-While the fastball and sinker may or may not have been compatible, the cutter and the fastball may be

-The jury is still out on the cutter, but the sinker is welcome to stay away

-His change-up is very good, it’s a shame it’s used less and less

-His curveball I can take or leave. As a commentor noted in part one, it’s more of a show-me pitch than anything

My vote: keep working on the cutter, but have some more faith in the change-up.

Using the Bloomberg Sports Pro Tool, I wanted to take a look specifically at Hamels’ cutter, which Harry suggests he should tune up even though the metrics say it has stunk. Here’s a look at the forty-seven cutters Hamels has thrown to lefties this season along with their corresponding location in play if they were hit for an out/base:

As you can see, Hamels has thrown his cutters mostly away to lefties in the limited time he has tried it, and so far the results are good. Lefties have yet to get a hit against the pitch, either grounding out or flying out each time. But here are the images for right-handed hitters:

Righties are simply crushing Hamels’ cutter this season. He’s thrown it 120 times against them in 2010, and thus far they’re hitting .412/.429/.882, which simply will not get the job done. His cutter has also averaged 88.8 MPH to righties while only 88.1 MPH to lefties, so it may just look and act like a flat fastball to righties, who have taken advantage of it. As you can tell from the last image, his HR/FB rate on the year has clearly taken a hit due to his cutter versus right-handers.

I agree with Harry’s ultimate conclusion that Hamels should continue to work on his cutter. But until Hamels has a firm grasp of it, he should toy with it versus lefties and only versus righties in games with an extremely low leverage index (i.e. big leads). Until then, it will continue to get hit far.

Let’s say you are building a dam, and you want to make sure this is the best dam that’s ever been built. You gather your logs, get some help from friendly beavers, and in two weeks have put together a pretty fine dam if you can say so yourself.

Then, when the river starts to actually run strong, you begin to see that some pieces of wood aren’t that great. But you know those holes are there; they’re always going to be there. Not every piece of wood can be equal. The foundation, the best pieces of wood, the core of your dam, is what makes it a great dam. The other logs are just inevitable imperfections that, even if they are mended, won’t ever make that big of a difference.

So, needing to strengthen your dam somehow, you push the strong logs of your dam. And you push them and push them until you can’t take it anymore; but you’re dam still isn’t as good as you want it to be. You give it a serious look-over. No, it’s not the minor logs that are serving their purpose. It’s not your building skills. It’s the damn supposed “best logs” not living up to their expectations. So you rip them out and try to get even stronger pieces of wood. Before you know it, you’re out of the logging business and trying to get a senior scouting job with some National League club.

By now, you get my drift. Unfortunately, not everyone does, and the problem isn’t as minor as it seems. When executives of any trade, but for our purposes baseball, refuse to improve on the margins, they are not only hurting their overall utility but creating future problems.

The best example I can give here is the Mets, although I’m sure you can think of examples with your own favorite team. The Mets started this season with the following lineup:

C Rod Barajas
1B Mike Jacobs
2B Luis Castillo
3B David Wright
SS Jose Reyes
LF Jason Bay
CF Gary Matthews Jr.
RF Jeff Francoeur

Do you see the weak logs? It shouldn’t be that hard. Mike Jacobs is now a Triple-A player for the Jays after proving he can’t hit major league pitching during his brief stay with the Mets. Gary Matthews Jr. had a .234 wOBA for the Mets, striking out in 41% of this plate appearances. Rod Barajas is currently on the DL, but has been below average with a .292 wOBA and 0.5 WAR on the season. Jeff Francoeur honestly doesn’t deserve to play baseball at any level professionally, despite how affable he may be. His .284 wOBA is made even worse by his tendency (or just self-afflicted rule) to swing at everything often and early. I won’t even mention Alex Cora.

Many of those players have been replaced. Josh Thole has been very good during his limited time at catcher, Angel Pagan has been one of the best players in baseball this season, and Ike Davis is having a nice rookie year at first base. Still, this unsurprisingly hasn’t been enough for the medicore Mets. When you see that it took months for R.A. Dickey and Hisanori Takahashi to replace Oliver Perez and John Maine in the rotation, nobody should be surprised at the record of the Mets.

When James Kannengeiser of Amazin Avenue gave some wise ways the Mets could improve their ballclub, it was met with this reply from Matt Cerrone at the ever popular MetsBlog:

Sure, releasing Oliver Perez, Jeff Francoeur and Alex Cora might help, and it would sure get the attention of fans, but, at the end of the day, Mike Pelfrey, Carlos Beltran, Francisco Rodriguez, Jose Reyes, Jason Bay and others are still on the roster and still need to get their collective act together.

Matt saw that the weak logs were hurting the dam, and simply decided that the bigger logs had to get their “act together.” I guess it didn’t matter that Mike Pelfrey has a better ERA/FIP/xFIP/tERA than last year, or that K-Rod has been flat-out great, or that Jose Reyes has been incredible after a slow start thanks to coming back from an injury (and is still on pace for a 3-WAR year per 150 games), or that Carlos Beltran got back from serious knee surgery after the All-Star break. The strong logs were not strong enough.

I wish I could say that this is a problem that is just relayed via talk radio and blogs, but it’s not. General Managers consistently choose to ignore minor holes on their roster, and this comes from a lack of understanding the true value of stats like Wins Above Replacement (WAR). Solid roster management is one of the most valuable traits that any sports executive can have. Unfortunately, those strong logs can only take so much pressure until they break.

So the trade deadline came and went this past weekend, and in that time Adam Dunn remained a Washington National. The discussion about whether or not this move in and of itself was wise has been had at length, with most people comparing it to when the Nats didn’t trade Alfonso Soriano during the 2006 season. With Soriano, this move seems to have worked out. Washington used the draft picks from the Cubs, who signed Soriano to a long-term deal, to select pitchers Josh Smoker and Jordan Zimmerman. Zimmerman, who is coming off an injury that has prevented him from pitching thus far in 2010, was great in his rookie ’09 season with a 3.39 xFIP in ~91 innings. At twenty-one years old, Josh Smoker has stagnated with a rough season in A-ball. Still, that’s probably around what you’d expect to get from a few months of Soriano at the trade deadline.

However, the results don’t justify the process, and Adam Dunn isn’t Alfonso Soriano. The trade market was hugely underwhelming this year, and Dunn seemed to be the sexiest name on the block. Our own Matt Klaassen looked at Dunn’s value a few weeks ago:

ZiPS Rest-of-Season projections see Dunn as about a +18 hitter over the remainder of the season; let’s call him 2 WAR overall for the rest of 2010. He is probably owed between five and six million dollars for the rest of his contract, so unless Washington eats a substantial portion of his contract, there’s probably only three million dollars worth of projected surplus here — not bad, but probably not worth much more than a decent “C” prospect or two with some upside. However, because Dunn will likely be a Type A free agent in the offseason, draft pick compensation for the team offering him arbitration (assuming he turns it down) bumps the total projected surplus up to around nine million dollars, which means “B” prospects (plus filler) should definitely be in play.

According to Mike Rizzo, the offers for Dunn were just entirely below what they perceived his value to be. So there are a few outcomes that could come out of Washington’s passivity:

1) Dunn gets through waivers and gets traded to a contender (most likely San Francisco)

This one is possible, and Buster Olney thinks it can happen, but why would Mike Rizzo limit his trading pool, essentially lowering his expected returned value, by doing this? Also, the Nationals seemed to have made a strong PR move by keeping their franchise position player, making a potential waiver deal more unlikely.

2) The Nationals offer Dunn arbitration and he accepts it

This one would be bad. Baseball arbitrators like homers, RBI, and hometown guys a lot more than they like WAR, positional scarcity, or anything else of the ilk. Dunn could be looking at a big payday if he goes to arbitration, and Washington would probably be looking at getting a negative ROI via the contract.

3) The Nationals offer Dunn arbitration and he rejects it, signing elsewhere

This seems to be what the Nationals are hoping for (again similar to the Soriano situation). With Strasburg and Bryce Harper, the Nats are poised to build a strong team in the near future, and good prospects can either surround those guys later on or become trade bait for MLB-ready players. Still, a late first round draft pick can fizzle out before you can say “Harrisburg.”

4) The Nationals re-sign Dunn either during the rest of the season or during the offseason

If this happens during the latter timeframe then the Nats will be competing with the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox, ballclubs with much bigger payrolls. If it happens during the season, then Washington is probably overpaying considering people have said Dunn will not give a home discount and wants to test the free agent waters.

Mike Rizzo made a strong stand for the Nationals franchise by not trading Adam Dunn. However, the question still remains if Washington is better off for it.

Ned Colletti looked to be done after acquiring Scott Podsednik, Ryan Theriot, and Ted Lilly, but with minutes to go before the deadline bell rang, the Dodgers GM pulled off a deal that will send Pittsburgh closer Octavio Dotel to Los Angeles for RHP James McDonald and OF Andrew Lambo. The Dodgers will reportedly receive cash from the Pirates as well, as Dotel has $3.5 million left on his contract.

Dotel will certainly help the Dodgers bullpen, but as was discussed in the Lilly deal, the question is how much. He has a 3.84 FIP/4.06 xFIP/3.50 tERA on the season, pretty much right around where he was in 2009. ZiPS thinks he’ll have a 3.50 FIP for the rest of the season (as well as a 3.86 ERA). He’s a solid upgrade to the bullpen, but I’m still not sold that this is what puts the Dodgers over the top. There’s a lot of baseball left to play and they’re pretty far back (seven back of San Diego, four and a half back of San Francisco), having to climb over two good teams.

What did they give up? Well, too much. McDonald is still a young, live arm who has had MLB success and is doing very well in Triple-A this season. Meanwhile Andrew Lambo was rated as the Dodgers #3 prospect this off-season by our own Marc Hulet. He currently is hitting .271/.325/.420 as a twenty-one year old in Double-A, and is highly regarded among prospect enthusiasts.

The Dodgers bullpen has had some serious struggles, and it doesn’t look like Jeff Weaver or any of the other guys recently used by manager Joe Torre were going to become saviors any time soon. However, the question isn’t whether or not Dotel upgrades the pen (he definitely does). It is still whether or not these deals will be the tipping point in LA’s hopes of making the playoffs. If they are not, then Ned Colletti just paid a whole lot in cash and prospects for marginal help than won’t have any real impact.

Word is coming out that the long-awaited rumor of Ted Lilly to the Dodgers is happening, and the Boys in Blue will also be receiving infielder Ryan Theriot when the dust settles. However, for a Dodgers team that is currently seven games out of the race in the NL West, this move is a bit puzzling.

Ted Lilly is not having that good of a season, despite what the shiny 3.63 ERA will lead you to believe. His 4.50 FIP (4.49 xFIP) means he actually is having a pretty medicore year, especially since he’s coming off a solid 2009. In a post detailing Sell High Candidates on July 12th, I wrote the following of Lilly:

Lilly is comimg off of a huge 2009 where he posted a 3.65 FIP and 3.98 xFIP, good for 3.7 WAR. His K and BB rates, however, have been disturbingly poor this season, as his K/BB went from 4.19 last year to 2.71 this year. But for teams that aren’t looking too deeply at those numbers, Lilly’s 4.08 ERA may be appealing. Teams will envision him as a 3-4 starter in a good rotation, when really he’s just not pitching well right now. If the Cubs could pry away outfield prospect Kirk Nieuwenhuis from the Mets, it would be a steal.

I’d say Lilly’s BABIP hasn’t fully regress at .261, but he may be a pitcher who is able to get low BABIPs against (stress the “may”), as his career BABIP is .285. Here are his marks over the latter part of his career:

2002: .241
2003: .303
2004: .272
2005: .301
2006: .300
2007: .272
2008: .283
2009: .270
2010: .261

Still, Lilly’s peripherals are not holding up, as the lefty is striking out less batters and walking more. Still, ZiPS thinks he’s good for a 4.19 FIP for the rest of the season, and he’s a free agent after the year. The Dodgers currently have Carlos Monasterios starting games, but the usual reliever has a 5.14 xFIP and ZiPS thinks he’d have a 5.68 FIP the rest of the way. While that’s an upgrade of about ~1 run per game, the Dodgers probably could’ve found a replacement pitcher for Monasterios that didn’t cost as much as they gave up (prospects Brett Wallach and Kyle Smit).

Is Lilly the tipping point in the Dodgers’ playoff run? Probably not, and neither is Ryan Theriot, also acquired in the deal. Jamey Carroll, the current Dodgers second baseman, has a .322 wOBA thanks to a .374 OBP. ZiPS thinks he’s good for a .311 mark for the rest of the season. Theriot currently has a .291 wOBA and ZiPS likes him for .310 for the rest of the season. Not much of an upgrade; in fact, probably not an upgrade at all. However, Theriot is gritty, and looks like a younger version of the Janitor from the show Scrubs (who, ironically, played the first baseman for the Cubs in the movie Rookie of the Year, an all-time classic). Moreover, the Dodgers are trading Blake DeWitt in the deal, who has a .319 wOBA and is predicted to go .323 the rest of the way via ZiPS. So the Dodgers trade for one second baseman for a worse one while probably cutting playing time for another good one. That doesn’t help you make the playoffs.

With Ian Kinsler being placed on the Disabled List yesterday with a strained groin, the recently free-wheeling Jon Daniels wasted no time finding a temporary replacement, trading currently unknown prospects for veteran middle infielder Cristian Guzman according to MLB.com’s Bill Ladson. While the Kinsler move to the DL was more precautionary than potentially serious, the Rangers are taking no chances.

Guzman will also give the Rangers needed insurance up the middle, as backup infielders Andres Blanco and Joaquin Arias are not very slick with the bat. ZiPS projects Arias for a .292 wOBA going forward and a .295 mark for Blanco. Although Guzman only has a .304 wOBA on the season, ZiPS likes him for a .319 rate the rest of the way. The main issue for Guzman this season has been his power; after slugging .440, and .390 over the past two seasons, he has dropped down to .361 in 2010, his lowest total since his horrendously terrible 2005. The combination of summer and Arlington may give Guzman a little power boost.

Defensively, Guzman has adjusted decently to second base this season according to UZR (although Baseball Info Solution’s Defensive Runs Saved does not think as highly). Guzman shouldn’t be called on to spell Elvis Andrus very often, as the former’s range at shortstop is well below average.

For Washington, they’re capitalizing on an aggressive market that is lacking in the available stars of recent years. After snagging Wilson Ramos from Minnesota for Matt Capps, the prospects they get back from Texas could be pretty good considering that the Rangers are overpaying in farm talent for salary relief in lieu of their recent bankruptcy. However, we’ll wait and see if the bigger dominoes (Adam Dunn and Josh Willingham) fall before tomorrow’s deadline.

For most baseball players, having Juan Uribe’s recent track record after the 2008 season meant you had a nice little career and could either retire or play independent league ball somewhere. Uribe, who also got into trouble when he was alleged to have been involved in a 2006 shooting in the Dominican Republic (his name was cleared in 2007), simply was not producing on the field. Here are Uribe’s respective AVG/OBP/SLG lines and WAR from 2006-2008, which were his Age 27-29 years (when hitters normally peak):

2006: .235/.257/.441, 1.2
2007: .234/.284/.394, 0.3
2008: .247/.296/.386, 0.2

Not pretty. Uribe was simply refusing to take a base on balls during that timespan, with a BB% of 2.6% in 2006 and 6.0% and 6.2% from 2007-08. With the drop in power, Uribe’s lack of patience was frustrating to say the least. His five-year career with the White Sox, which included a World Series Championship in 2005, ended after the 2008 season; he latched on with the Giants for 2009.

Despite his pathetic walk totals, there were some reasons to think that Uribe may be able to be a useful bench player. He could play shortstop, second base, and third base, and was solid defensively according to UZR. His BABIPs were brutally low during those years, and he had a HR/FB% in 2008 that was less than half of what it was in 2006. Brian Sabean knew the Giants’ offense wasn’t guaranteed for anything last year, and gave Uribe a chance. Uribe signed a Minor League contract, but made the team’s final roster out of Spring Training.

Since his arrival in San Francisco, Uribe has been an important part of the lineup, contributing 4.6 WAR in 215 games. Last season, his wOBA was .351 thanks in part to a rejuvinated .325 BABIP. The power also came back, as Uribe slugged .495, the best mark of his career since 2004. His walk rate decreased to 5.8%, but with the extra bases coming, nobody complained.

This season, Uribe’s BABIP has turned Mr. Hyde to 2009’s Dr. Jekyll. Aat .268, one would think a drop that dramatic would cripple Uribe like it did from ’06-’08. However, the infielder currently has a .328 wOBA, solid stuff from a guy playing premium positions. But how has he been able to relatively maintain his offensive value? He’s walking more. A lot more. He’s walking in 8.4% of his plate appearances in 2010, the single highest rate of his career. He does have three intentional walks this season to last year’s two, but that hardly makes up a significant chunk of his newfound patience. ZiPS thinks he’s good for a .330 wOBA for the rest of the year. Simply put, Uribe has adjusted his game this season in light of a depressed BABIP. As has been said before, staying afloat in Major League Baseball requires Darwinian-like adaptation. Juan Uribe has learned how to survive.

Batted balls are a funny thing. I previously looked at the 2009 Yankees‘ propensity to hit fly balls and came to the conclusion that it must have something to do with the New Yankee Stadium being characterized as a huge hitter’s park. I figured that the Yankees players thought they could get more bang for their buck by hitting balls in the air at home, prompting them to attempt to lift the ball more in New York. However, this was before we had Home/Road batted ball data here at Fangraphs. I went over my analysis after the introduction of the splits and came to the following conclusion:

The short moral of the story? More data is always a good thing. While a few players saw leaps in their overall Fly Ball %, this was ironically due mostly to their road numbers as opposed to an air-driven frenzy at the new Yankee Stadium. The only real guys you can say were trying to get under the ball were Teixeira, Matsui, and Molina. Considering Teixeira’s 2008 was not with the Yankees and Jose Molina didn’t have that many at-bats, the conclusion has to be changed. It would appear that the 2009 Yankees did not have a conscious effort to hit more fly balls, apart from Hideki Matsui, who saw a staggering 14.3% increase in his fly balls at home from 2008 to 2009.

However, shortly after the original Yankees piece I looked at the 2004 Phillies, who similarly were opening up at a new ballpark that was well-known to be hitter-friendly, and found similar results. Almost all of the Phillies players had increased their fly ball percentage from 2003. I’ve gone back and looked at the Home and Road fly ball numbers from the team.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since his arrival in the big leagues, the best way to describe Luke Gregerson is simply “unhittable.” Last season, Gregerson posted a 3.24 ERA/2.50 FIP/3.11 xFIP in seventy-five innings with a K/9 of a whopping 11.16. This year, he’s walking two batters less per nine innings, and with some BABIP help is down to a line of 2.66 ERA/2.43 FIP/2.60 xFIP. However, he’s also decreased his tERA from 2.56 to 2.13. The groundballs are down while the flyballs have increased, which isn’t usually a good sign, but it is partially due to the decrease in line drives (which is most likely going to regress a bit). Gregerson has also begun to throw his slider a bunch more this year, up to 61.4% from 49.6% last season. Joe Pawlikowski wrote about about Gregerson’s nasty slider in early June:

The Padres’ bullpen has benefitted greatly from Gregerson and his slider. The unit claims the NL trifecta of fewest walks, most strikeouts, and lowest batting average against. They’re getting help from everywhere, but Gregerson has been a particular bright spot this season. The high slider frequency does cause a little concern, but for right now it’s his nearly unhittable weapon. I can’t imagine being an opposing hitter and standing in to face him.

Using the Bloomberg Sports Pro Tool, I wanted to take a closer look at Gregerson’s slider:

The top image shows all sliders thrown by Gregerson in 2010 to right-handed batters, while the bottom image shows the batted ball location of all those pitches. The highlighted balls in the top image correspond to the highlighted balls in play in the bottom image. As you can see, when Gregerson leaves his slider up and in/over the plate to right-handed hitters, it tends to get hit relatively far compared to all of his balls in play. Still, there’s only one homer there and a bunch of flyouts and a few groundouts, so even Gregerson’s hung slider isn’t all that bad. Here are the pitches from the lower-right quadrant of the batter’s box:

When Gregerson is able to locate his slider, batters don’t stand a chance. This also only includes batted balls. Look at Gregerson’s swings-and-misses generated by his sliders versus righties in 2010:

Gregerson’s slider has been worth 12 runs above average this season (from our own numbers here at Fangraphs) after an outstanding 18.7 mark last year. You can see why.