Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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“Grady did not know that. Grady had ignored Paul’s prodding to scout the players his computer flushed out. Paul had said the scouts ought to go have a look at a college kid named Kevin Youkilis. Youkilis was a fat third baseman who couldn’t run, throw or field. What was the point of going to see that? (Because, Paul would be able to say three months later, Kevin Youkilis has the second highest on-base percentage in all of baseball, after Barry Bonds. To Paul, he’d become Euclis: the Greek god of walks.)

Good nicknames in baseball are somewhat of a rarity these days. One of my favorite sections of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is “nicknames.” Nicknames like “Earache,” “Firebrand” and “The Grey Eagle” resonated a lot more than today’s silly trends of shortening people’s names, or adding “Y” or “IE” to the end of them. One notable exception was Kevin Youkilis. Blessed in the above passage in Moneyball as “The Greek God of Walks” nearly a year before his major league debut, the baseball world sat up and took notice of a previously anonymous player before his major league debut. No pressure. While that might not seem like much of an achievement in today’s prospect- and media-saturated world, things were quite a bit different back in 2003. Yesterday, it was reported that the Ohio native had retired. Throughout his career, he served as the perfect example for several well-worn baseball lessons.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into the 2012 season, Carlos Martinez was the 22nd-best prospect in the game, according to ESPN, and the 27th-best according to Baseball America. He was ranked in everyone else’s top 100 as well, including here. A year later, he was 38th, and 39th. Despite this, the Cardinals have never given him a real shot to prove that he can be anything other than a middle reliever. It’s time someone gave him that chance.

Armed with what has been referred to as two pitches near the top of the 20-80 scale, Martinez has talent that all scouts dream of. And when he reached the majors at age 21 last season, he put it on display. He didn’t get the chance to start, but with the Cardinals in the thick of the playoff hunt, this wasn’t a major surprise. He got one spot start at the beginning of August, didn’t fare very well, and was moved back to the ‘pen. Plenty of hot shot prospects have broken in via the bullpen, and then gone back to being starters when the season starts anew in April. But between the Cardinals’ seemingly crowded rotation and some excellent work as a reliever in last year’s National League Championship Series, Martinez found himself back in the bullpen to start 2014.

This time, he didn’t take to the bullpen as well. Perhaps that is because his manager, Mike Matheny, couldn’t figure out what to do with him. In one stretch in April, Martinez had consecutive gmLI’s of 3.02, 0.52, 0.75, 1.46, 0.14, 2.13 and 0.03. We rail against rote bullpen roles frequently, and with just cause — managers should try to put their teams in the best position possible to win games. But even this approach has its limits. In case gmLI’s are a little foreign to you, here’s what the situation was when Martinez entered the game in those seven appearances:

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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If there is one thing we have learned from the American League teams this postseason, it’s that defense and baserunning really are very important. No one person has better exemplified this than Royals outfielder Jarrod Dyson. You’ve already read Jeff’s article on how Dyson stole perhaps the biggest base since Dave Roberts in 2004. Eventually though, this postseason run for the Royals is going to end. Whether that is in four games or 14 games is not yet certain, but when it does end, the Royals will need to make a decision as to what they are going to do with Dyson next season. They should let him play.

Over the past two seasons, there have only been 29 outfielders in baseball more valuable than Dyson. Of those 29, only one of them had as few plate appearances as did Dyson. Most of them have double the plate appearances, and some have 2.5 times Dyson’s 529 PAs. Dyson is particularly adept afield. Over the past two seasons, only three outfielders have been worth more defensively per our Def statistic, and only 15 position players in general.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »

How many players per team would you say you know? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Even if you can easily rattle off 20 players per team, 600 of the 750 players on a normal active roster, the last five that you couldn’t name would probably include some relief pitchers. Unless you’re a first-round draft pick (like the Royals’ Brandon Finnegan) or the team’s closer, it’s hard for a reliever to gain much notierity — they’re rarely voted to All-Star teams, and very few people like the Hold statistic (I like Shutdowns and Meltdowns, but they’re not universally accepted stats). So, rookie relievers can sneak up on you when the postseason starts, just like Francisco Rodriguez did in 2002.

In case you’re too young to remember 2002, or are conversely too old to remember things that happened way back in 2002, Rodriguez came up as a 20-year-old on Sept. 18. In his five games, his leverage increased, until his pLI hit 1.54 in his final regular-season appearance, when he struck out five batters of the seven Mariners’ batters he faced across 2.1 innings on Sept. 27. Overall, he struck out 13 batters and walked two in 5.2 scoreless innings, which was good for a FIP- of 1. As in, 99 percent better than league average. A tiny sample, no doubt, and not even worth paying attention to. That is, until the now-famous loophole came into play.
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