Archive for Daily Graphings

While we don’t entirely understand the significance of exit velocity yet or how important that sort of data might be, here’s one aspect of it that does appear to be true: the higher the exit velocity, the greater the production to which it will lead.

Armed with that knowledge, I developed a theory — namely, that players who had recorded high exit velocities, but poor production numbers, could expect to see better results going forward. I suspected, conversely, that players who’d recorded low exit velocities and strong production numbers could expect to do worse. I first tested this theory in February, using 2015 data, and it mostly rang true. With 2016 in the books, we have another season’s worth of data to test.

Back in early August, I identified a collection of players with whom to test thistheory. The table below (from that post) features the players who outperformed their exit velocities over the first half of the season. As in the past, this is how I determined if a player was over- or under-performing:

I created IQ-type scores for exit velocity and wOBA from the first half of last season based on the averages of the 130 players in the sample. In each case, I assigned a figure of 100 to the sample’s average and then, for each standard deviation (SD) up or down, added or subtracted 15 points.

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The Pirates almost traded Andrew McCutchen. That’s all anyone could really think about when McCutchen was present at the Pirates’ annual PirateFest, the Saturday after the end of the winter meetings. Maybe the public never should’ve had any idea in the first place, but teams leak information, and the McCutchen rumors ran rampant. It made the occasion a little awkward, an occasion where fans would prefer to simply embrace the homegrown superstar, free of complicating thoughts. It’s anyone’s guess how much longer McCutchen might last where he is.

The reality of the Pirates’ situation is that the commitment to McCutchen probably isn’t forever. He’s under contract one more year, with a club option after that, and it’s hard to see the two parties together in 2019. It would’ve made plenty of sense for the Pirates to make a deal last week. It also made plenty of sense for the Pirates to hold off. It would now appear McCutchen will at least open the next season in Pittsburgh. Beyond that, it’s murky, but no one yet has to say their goodbyes.

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A lot of people were taken by surprise when the Diamondbacks non-tendered Welington Castillo, but it did at least set up an inevitability. It felt like a foregone conclusion that Castillo would end up signing with the Orioles. It was only a matter of the contract length. Castillo was said to want three years. The Orioles were said to want not that.

The arrangement now, as has been reported: Castillo has signed with Baltimore for one year and $6 million. He also has a second-year player option, worth $7 million. So Castillo won’t go broke, and now the Orioles have another power bat they can install in the lineup. In that sense, hey, mission accomplished for everyone. The only issue for the Orioles is that Castillo still doesn’t seem like he should be the starter.

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There are certain club options we just take for granted. Andrew McCutchen has only one guaranteed year remaining on his deal, but it’s almost unimaginable that his employer might turn down his $14.5-million club option for 2018. Similarly, Chris Sale has only one guaranteed year remaining, but then he has consecutive club options, worth $12.5 million and $15 million, respectively. These are very good players, so for all intents and purposes, McCutchen’s locked up two years, and Sale’s locked up three.

I was wondering last night just how bad McCutchen would have to be in 2017 for his option to be declined. I then quickly one-upped myself. The McCutchen answer was maybe somewhat interesting. But what about an even more team-favorable option? Enter Jose Altuve. Altuve is under guaranteed contract for 2017. Then he has a club option, worth $6 million. And, for the sake of being thorough, that’s followed by another club option, worth $6.5 million. The question to be addressed: How bad would Altuve have to be this year for the Astros to not want to pay him $6 million the year after?

This hypothetical is exceptionally stupid. Let’s get on with it, then.

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The Padres are going to be bad next year.

There, I said it. I know, it’s a controversial stance, and I’ll likely be roasted on a spit in the comments for so boldly stating it at the top of the article like that. But I’m a man of principle, damn it. I stick to my guns. The Padres are going to be bad and I’m not afraid to say it.

Of course, that’s not a controversial take, at all. In fact, it hasn’t been a hot take to say that the Padres are going to be bad since, oh, 2011. San Diego won 90 games in 2010 and haven’t topped 77 wins since then. Some of us got a little excited before the 2015 season because A.J. Preller showed up and decided to spruce up the joint with some interesting warm bodies, but then we quickly realized, no, wait, Matt Kemp can’t play defense, Wil Myers can’t play center field, and one can’t rely on James Shields to lead a rotation anymore. Oops.

So here we are, two years later. The Padres are once again rebuilding after their first effort crashed and burned. Myers and Brandon Maurer are the only remaining members of that group of players that was brought in. The Padres are going to be bad, but at least they won’t be entirely uninteresting. Austin Hedges, Manny Margot, Hunter Renfroe and a few others will be getting the keys to the car this time. The kids are here, and they’re going to play. These could be good players at some point. The Padre lineup could be worth keeping an eye on.

Each member of the Padre pitching staff has the air of an extra in Major League, each with the body of a real player, but a face one can’t immediately place. Quick, without looking, how many of the Padres’ starting pitchers can you name off the top of your head? One? Two?

Here’s what the club’s official depth chart looks like. Here’s what ZiPS thinks of that group.

That’s not great, Bob. But really, who are these guys? As in literally, who are they? I’m glad you asked.

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I was drinking a beer with Kevin Youkilis — or rather, I was drinking one of his new brewery’s beers, and he was drinking water — and we were talking about the state of the game. I think I mentioned something about chopping wood — how young players are coached (badly?) to hit down on the ball, and how that leads to a lot of swing and miss as players have to try to swing to a point in space — and he stopped me. “Nobody ever swings out to a specific point in space when they’re told to chop wood or swing down on the ball,” Youkilis said. “What actually happens is that they end up quicker to the ball.” My mind was blown.

Youkilis pointed out that he spent his whole career with that philosophy, and though one player’s strikeout rate (18.7%) and power (.197 isolated slugging percentage) don’t prove anything, it was an eye opener for me. He basically was saying that the power of suggestion might actually have some value, even if the content of that suggestion was technically wrong. And once I thought about it, I realized I’d heard a few smart hitters — including Mark Trumbo — tell me something similar before, but I hadn’t been listening right.

In any case, this is one of those testable situations with today’s tools of the trade. I asked Jason Ochart of Driveline Baseball if he could create two situations and chart the outcomes using the data collection devices for which Driveline is famous on the pitching end.

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A couple years ago, I wrote an article titled “Dan Duquette and Avoiding the Awful.” Within, I ran a pretty simple study, adding up every team’s negative WAR. The Orioles came away scoring pretty well — that is, one of the explanations for the Orioles’ overall success was that they hadn’t given very much playing time to players who performed below replacement-level. It was far from a perfect study, but I liked it anyway, for how it worked and what it said. And so now I’m providing an update!

In that post, I mostly focused on 2012 – 2014. In this post, I’m going to focus on 2014 – 2016. Why not just get things started? Here’s a long table, showing every team’s combined negative WAR from individual players over the past three years.

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We’ve entered the relatively dead zone between the Winter Meetings and the holidays, but our position-by-position look at hitter contact quality rolls on. In case you haven’t been in on this from the beginning, we’re utilizing granular exit-speed and launch-angle data to measure how position players “should have” performed in comparison to their actual stat lines. The last group at which we looked was NL shortstops. Now: AL third basemen.

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Over the past couple months, I’ve felt somewhat bullish regarding the Angels’ chances of being competitive in the season ahead. They’re not a great team, and they’re maybe not even a good team, but they feel to me like an underrated team. Everyone points to a shaky pitching staff and, indeed, there’s not much in the way of depth there. The bullpen could use some assistance. But there should, at least, be solid arms in the starting rotation. Matt Shoemaker ought to make a successful return from his brain injury, as crazy as that sounds as a sentence. Tyler Skaggs is finally all recovered from his elbow surgery. And Garrett Richards is going to pitch. That’s the way things look right now, anyway.

The Richards case is going to be a big one. If he’s able to regularly take the mound and throw five or six innings, that could prove to be a game-changer, in the smaller and bigger pictures. Richards’ health won’t affect only Richards and the ballclub around him. All of baseball is going to be paying attention closely, because a successful future could spark a revolution.

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The Minnesota Twins have a different, and far more analytical, front office than in years past. Following the World Series, the AL Central club formally introduced Derek Falvey as executive vice president, chief baseball officer, and Thad Levine as senior vice president, general manager. Falvey, who has an economics degree from Trinity College, had been an assistant GM with the Cleveland Indians. Levine, who earned an MBA at UCLA, was an assistant GM with the Texas Rangers.

The new leadership team stressed collaboration when I talked to them during the Baseball Winter Meetings.

According to Falvey, he, Levine and (former interim Twins general manager) Rob Antony “shared practices from all three organizations” during November’s GM Meetings. He explained that the newly formed front office “is taking unique things from each place, and trying to blend the best of all operations together.”

Levine concurred, saying, “The combination of those three mindsets can lead us down a path of building a sustainable winner.” The former Rangers assistant GM went on to say that he and Falvey “wouldn’t have engaged in this partnership if we weren’t open-minded to the evolution of what we’ve been exposed to leading to something even greater. It’s not rigid.”

It’s also not without levity. Both are adept at tongue-in-cheek, especially Levine. He piggy-backed his comments with a wry, “We view it as very organic and evolutionary, and we hope that it will continue to grow. For one thing, we brought almonds to this meeting. We did not have almonds. That’s a ‘for instance.’ I’m not saying it’s the extent of what we’re doing here.”

Here are highlights from the Winter Meetings conversations, which took place in a group setting in the Twins suite.

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Impact Players

Falvey: “We factor it all in. Every aspect. We’re not making decisions in a vacuum. We talk about some of the metrics we know and what a player’s value is. We can quantify some of that, but we can’t quantify all of it. It’s our job to be thoughtful about that — the long-term culture that we’re looking to build and how it impacts our team.”

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