Archive for Daily Graphings

The last time I saw Drew Smyly, it was during one of the lowest points of his career. It was July and he’d just completed a stretch of 20.2 innings over which he’d allowed 21 earned runs. He’d been assured that his job was secure, for the moment, but when a local beat writer asked him how it felt, the pitcher had a hard time looking up, doing his best to provide an honest answer before moving on to the next question — any other question, please. I obliged, and asked him about the home runs, pointing out that his strikeouts and walks were fine. Up came the eyes, and on was the conversation.

Back then, the focus for me was organization-wide: the Rays got hit harder by the home run bug last year than most teams, perhaps because they threw more high fastballs than any other team in the league. And yeah, Smyly, because of the unique nature of his stuff, will always throw high in the zone, and will always give up a few more homers than most.

But we did talk about Smyly’s particular issues last year, and what he was planning on doing about it. And it looks like he capitalized on that conversation somewhat, because things changed a bit from that day forward. The real question, though, is did it change enough?

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Over the 50-plus years since their inception, the Mets organization has established a tradition of drama. When they win, they seem to win big. When they lose, they self-immolate in spectacular fashion. If I were to tell you a team were Metsing themselves, you’d probably know what I mean. There are likely many reasons for this — the local media, the size of the market, the team itself — but it seems true, nevertheless.

Despite their penchant for theatrics, the Mets have made the playoffs in each of the last two seasons. They’ve done it despite an avalanche of injuries and all sorts of extracurricular nonsense. They went all the way to Game Five of the World Series in 2015, and had the bad luck of running into the buzzsaw of Madison Bumgarner’s left arm in the 2016 Wild Card game.

They’re by no means done, of course. The Mets still have a dynamic young rotation, and they still have Yoenis Cespedes. That’s a great place to start when building a contender. They’ve also got good secondary players in guys like Asdrubal Cabrera, Lucas Duda, and Neil Walker, and a young bat with a bright future in Michael Conforto. Grizzled veteran? Have some Curtis Granderson. Local hero who’s also a capable utility bat, and can crush lefty pitching? Everybody loves Wilmer Flores. If you believe in miracles, they may even have David Wright (remember him?) back for a game or two. The Mets can play ball.

And yet, they still have so much work to do. The Mets are still on track to go into 2017 with real uncertainty behind home plate and a bullpen that leaves much to be desired — especially once you consider that they’ll probably be without Jeurys Familia for a month or so due to a likely domestic-violence suspension. Jay Bruce still doesn’t really fit onto the roster, especially since the re-signing of Cespedes and the need for Conforto to get consistent plate appearances, and the fact that the National League has yet to adopt the designated hitter.

There are still weeks to go before spring training gets into swing, and there are still plenty of free agents out there. A large number of them are relievers, and good ones at that. The Mets have time to make themselves better and ready for a true contention run. We’ll see if they do that.

We’ve not yet been blessed with Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for the kings of Queens, nor for that matter have we asked Kevin James for his feelings on the subject. In lieu of these, we’ll turn to our Depth Charts assessment of the Mets, and to their official depth chart. Because there are so many balls in the air with their position players (the health of Wright, whether or not Jay Bruce will be on the team, etc.), let’s focus on the bullpen for now. It’s pretty good at the top! Familia, Addison Reed and Hansel Robles can hold their own. It gets fuzzy after that.

The official Mets chart lists Josh Edgin, Josh Smoker, Erik Goeddel, and Sean Gilmartin. The Mets can do better.

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In recent times, pitchers generally been rewarded for three performance skills: strikeout rate, walk rate and ground-ball percentage. The influence of the BABIP Gods has largely been ignored or discounted.

Blaine Boyer has pitched in parts of 10 major-league seasons. He’s never earned more than $1 million in a given year for his efforts.

He had the lowest strikeout percentage – 9.2 % – in all of baseball last season. He’s just one of two pitchers to throw at least 50 innings last season and strike out fewer than 10% of batters faced. Zach Neal was the other culprit.

Since 2014, Boyer has the eighth-lowest strikeout percentage in baseball (12.4%). He’s not an elite ground-ball pitcher. And while he limits walks, he’s not an elite command-and-control artist. His fastball velocity, and modest strikeout rates, have declined three straight seasons. He’s 35. It’s not the most glowing free-agent resume.

But since 2014, he owns a 3.31 ERA – and 3.73 FIP – despite striking out just 88 batters in 171 innings.

Boyer is interesting because he’s a pitcher of extremes. When taking into account exit velocity and pitches barreled, no pitcher induced weaker contact last season. And no pitcher missed fewer bats.

If Boyer’s agent were looking for a gift to help shop his client, it arrived Thursday when MLB.com released a list of its top-five Statcast stunners from 2016. Wrote Andrew Simon for MLB.com:

Out of 265 pitchers who had at least 150 balls put in play against them, Boyer allowed the lowest rate of barrels (1.0 percent), on the strength of an average 86.2 mph exit velocity that ranked 11th.

That avoidance of solid contact is how a pitcher with a fastball averaging less than 93 mph and with MLB’s lowest strikeout rate (minimum 40 innings) managed to survive in the big leagues. Boyer posted a 3.95 ERA across 66 innings, with only 26 Ks.

Want to see some weak contact?

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Part of growing up is realizing that some no-hitters aren’t necessarily great pitching performances. Try telling an eight-year-old that the six-walk no-hitter she’s watching is less impressive than a one-hit, no-walk shutout and she’ll look at you like you’re from another planet. If you explain that same thing to an adult, she probably won’t turn off the TV, but will probably concede you have a point. No-hitters have a magic that transcends the actual logic of the achievement. That’s perfectly fine, of course, as one’s enjoyment of an event doesn’t need to correlate precisely with it’s degree of difficulty.

But it’s worth considering why the no-hitter is magical. Most of it is probably the name and the history, but I’ll propose another reason: it’s a razor’s edge accomplishment. In other words, as soon as the pitcher allows a hit, the entire thing is over. When Barry Bonds was chasing Hank Aaron, if he failed to hit a home run, there would always be another chance. If a batter falls below .400, he can always bring his average back up. When you’re dealing with an accomplishment based on a zero, everything is exciting because it could be gone at any moment.

This is why I was so interested in Chase Utley‘s no-double play season. Every single plate appearance mattered. Well, in preparing last week’s post on Derek Dietrich’s elite ability to get hit with the baseball, I noticed another zero-based accomplishment that’s pretty extraordinary: Coco Crisp hasn’t been hit by a pitch in more than five years.

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We know a few things for certain regarding Mallex Smith, who was acquired by Tampa Bay along with two prospects for left-handed starter Drew Smyly on Wednesday.

For starters, he’s fast.

And that speed allows him to cover considerable ground, and overcome less than perfectly efficient routes, in the outfield …

He has 80-grade speed, according a number of evaluators, and stole bases at a 79.2% rate over five minor-league seasons.

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When it comes to batted-ball exit velocity, its a lot easier to write about hitters. It’s become fairly clear that hitting the ball hard is a skill, and that the numbers are mostly consistent from year to year.

When it comes to pitching, however, things are much less clear. Given the outcomes for individual batted balls based on exit velocity — even in the absence of the complementary launch angles — suppressing exit velocity appears to be a benefit for pitchers. Given how much control hitters exert over exit velocity, it stands to reason that pitchers have considerably less control. Whether they have any control at all is something we can begin to determine by looking at Baseball Savant’s full-season data from 2015 and 2016.

First, let’s take a quick look at the relationship between exit velocity and ERA and FIP compared to a few other stats: K/9, BB/9, HR/9, and BABIP. I took a look at the 93 pitchers who recorded at least 100 innings in both 2015 and 2016 for comparison. The chart below shows the r-squared figures between the single-season stats for ERA and FIP with the stats mentioned above. The higher the number, the stronger the relationship.

As we might expect, strikeouts, walks, and homers all have a pretty strong relationship with FIP. Those, of course, are the three variables used to calculate FIP. BABIP has zero relationship with FIP, which isn’t surprising, given that FIP purposefully excludes balls in play. Exit velocity doesn’t have an incredibly strong relationship with FIP, but it does seem like one exists. On the ERA side, exit velocity has the same r-squared as in FIP, but BABIP becomes more of a factor for ERA, bringing homers down some, walks down a little, and strikeouts down to close to the same relationship on ERA as a pitcher’s average exit velocity.

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The New York Yankees are supposedly rebuilding — and, in a sense, it’s true. They didn’t make the playoffs last season, and they haven’t seen the American League Division Series since 2012. They started the winter by trading the guy who had been their starting catcher for the past three seasons. Those are all some traits that might be representative of a team in transition.

On the other hand, they haven’t dropped below .500 in forever. You have to go back to 1992 to find the last time the Yankees failed to break even. They’ve never been the bad team that one now commonly associates with a tear-down effort. Also, they’ve spent some money in free agency this offseason, on Aroldis Chapman and Matt Holliday. These aren’t the types of players/deals — closers, short-term deals for aging superstar — that teams who are far from contention typically sign/make.

So who are the Yankees? If you had to pick between pretender and contender, you’d have to land on the latter. Let’s take a look at the potential starting lineup. As always, the venerable Mike Axisa has done much of the legwork for us. In his recent piece on how the Yankees may split Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury in the lineup, here was his best guess as to how the Yankees’ lineup will shake out this season.

1. LF Brett Gardner
2. 2B Starlin Castro
3. C Gary Sanchez
4. DH Matt Holliday
5. SS Didi Gregorius
6. CF Jacoby Ellsbury
7. 1B Gregory Bird
8. RF Aaron Judge
9. 3B Chase Headley

Not bad, right? Let’s take a look at the projected wOBAs for all of the AL teams, according to our current depth charts.

The Yankees are in the middle of the pack, but there are a few caveats here. First, the projections may be conservative on Bird and Sanchez, which is understandable in both cases. Certainly, we shouldn’t expect Sanchez to repeat his blistering .425 wOBA from last season, but the .348 wOBA for which he’s pegged for seems like it could be a little conservative. The early returns from our FANS projections seem to agree, pegging him for a .355 wOBA.

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The Seattle Mariners made a pair of moves yesterday, the first of which featured the acquisition of OF Mallex Smith from Atlanta in exchange for pitching prospects Thomas Burrows and Luiz Gohara. They then turned Smith around and sent him to Tampa along with teenage INF Carlos Vargas and LHP Ryan Yarbrough for LHP Drew Smyly. Below are scouting reports on the prospects involved — as well as for Smith himself.

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In my introduction post last week, I mentioned how I had given Yasmani Grandal an MVP vote. When voting totals were finally released, it turned out I was the only writer to grant Grandal a place on a ballot. I ranked him as the seventh-most valuable player in the NL. It’s an interesting feeling to stand out there all alone. I’m the reason Grandal will be forever credited with a 22nd-place finish in the 2016 NL MVP race.

I’ve been asked by some FanGraphs readers why I voted for Grandal, who was certainly not a name-brand candidate. So for accountability and transparency purposes, I will answer that question.

As for my vote, I’m not the first person (or projection system) to suggest Grandal is really, really valuable.

Last May, Grandal thought the idea of his name appearing on an MVP ballot was “absurd” when LA Times reporter Bill Shaikin asked him about a PECOTA forecast suggesting he would be one of the best players in the NL.

In October, ESPN’s Sam Miller asked Grandal about his fancy-stats candidacy. Grandal, again, was not inclined to cast a ballot for himself.

Much of Grandal’s candidacy centered on pitch-framing statistics.

According to the methodologies employed both by Baseball Prospectus and StatCorner, Grandal was the game’s second-best pitch-framing catcher after Buster Posey. (Posey was also on my ballot.) The drop off to third place was steep.

Think Zack Greinke missed Grandal last season?

I understand some view framing as “cheating,” but as a voter, I viewed it as a skill that added real value in 2016. I chose not to ignore the value it created. The teams themselves certainly haven’t ignored the power of framing, as evidenced by a number of transactions in recent years.

But a conversation about Grandal’s value doesn’t end with his defensive contributions.

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To keep us entertained during this lull of baseball activity, Seattle Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto keeps making trades — and he acquired an interesting bullpen arm in Shae Simmons on Wednesday.

In the trade, Seattle dealt one of its top prospects, Luiz Gohara, to Atlanta for center fielder Mallex Smith and Simmons.

Simmons doesn’t headline the trade, but he’s an intriguing component of it at a time when the industry is paying premium prices for relief help.

A 22nd-round pick by the Braves in 2012 out of Southeast Missouri State, Simmons rose from obscurity to become the Braves’ second-best prospect by WAR prior to the 2015 season.

Prior to that 2015, former FanGraphs prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel ranked Simmons as the Braves’ No. 15 prospect and was given a “poor man’s Craig Kimbrel” comp on Simmons.

Wrote McDaniel:

“Simmons shot through the upper levels in 2014 and posted 21.2 quality innings in the big leagues on the strength of his 93-96 mph fastball that hits 97 mph. Simmons also has a 55 curveball and 50 splitter, but they can waver at times when his delivery and command get out of whack. There’s setup potential here and Simmons may get there early in 2015.”

Did “poor man’s Kimbrel” grab your attention?

Simmons employed his fastball-slider combo to strikeout 12.9 batters per nine innings over the course of his four years in the minors, allowing just 76 hits in 120 career minor-league innings en route to a sparkling 1.80 ERA. (Kimbrel averaged 14.4 strikeouts per nine in the Braves system, posting a 1.85 ERA and 75 hits allowed in 151 innings.)

All those nice things were said and written of Simmons in January of 2015.

In February of 2015, however, Simmons had Tommy John surgery.

For many pitchers, TJ is simply a bump in the road thanks to modern medicine and strength and conditioning programs. Fellow right-handed reliever Bruce Rondon had Tommy John a spring prior to Simmons, and he was as good as he had ever been when he returned to the Tigers late last summer, striking out 11.8 and walking 3.0 batters per nine — the latter figure representing an improvement for Rondon — in 26.2 second-half innings. Rondon pitched last season at 25; Simmons is entering his age-26 season.

Daniel Hudson had a second Tommy John surgery at age 26 in the spring of 2013, and he’s posted FIPs of 3.49 and 3.81, respectively, in 2015 and 2016. In a market paying a premium for relief pitching, the small-market Pirates signed Hudson to a two-year, $11 million deal last month.

Hunter Strickland had Tommy John at 24 in 2013 and has been a quality reliever for the Giants since returning.

Of course, not every reliever returns successfully. Bobby Parnell has struggled mightily since his spring 2014 procedure, though Parnell had the surgery as a 30-year-old. Jonny Venters could never catch a break. And it’s important to note: a return from Tommy John surgery is not the same as a successful return. Perhaps success rates have been overstated, as Jon Rogele’s research for the Hardball Times indicates.

In trading for a player with a limited track record coming off surgery, risk factors increase. But Simmons is still in his mid-20s and the early signs following his return have been encouraging.

We have two small samples of Simmons’ work at the major-league level.

In 21 innings with the Braves in 2014, Simmons recorded an average fastball velocity of 94.9 mph, which he threw nearly 70% of the time. He also featured a breaking ball (which is classified alternately as a curveball and slider) and rare split-finger fastball.

In a seven-game major league sample after returning from surgery last season, Simmons’ fastball velocity was up a full mph to 95.9.

See Simmons’ fastball in action here:

According to our PITCHf/x data, he threw his breaking pitch 32% of the time last summer in his brief showing with the Braves.

This is evidence of his lone swinging strikeout with the pitch as he back-footed a breaking ball against left-handed hitting Danny Espinosa last September:

The Mariners hope he can hone his delivery and command, which have been inconsistent. He walked more than six per nine during two minor-league rehab stops last season. But he’s limited opponents to 11 walks in his brief 28 innings of major-league work to date, and his stuff appears to be intact, if not improved, following his injury.

Dipoto offered some thoughts on the trade to the Seattle Times. “Shae has had success pitching at the back end of games in the minors and has shown strikeout ability at all levels,” Dipoto said.

Dave Cameron wrote earlier this week about how the Mariners are perhaps trying to model their outfield defense after the Royals. And every team is trying to assemble a Royals-like bullpen. So perhaps trying to identify a future quality back-end arm before it becomes a present quality back-end arm is a smart play in a market that will pay a premium for it.