Archive for Daily Graphings

Just yesterday, I wrote about some concerns regarding Jake Arrieta. In particular, over time, Arrieta has gotten worse against left-handed hitters, losing the effectiveness of his best pitch while also losing his pinpoint command. This can be traced back to Arrieta losing the remarkable consistency of his mechanics. Arm speed and release point are everything, and for the last little while, Arrieta has been fighting uphill. He needs to get himself right before the playoffs.

Arrieta remains plenty good, but he has some stuff to work out. Kyle Hendricks, meanwhile, has nothing to work out. And compared to Arrieta, Hendricks has followed kind of the opposite course. He’s gotten better against left-handed hitters. He’s essentially added a new pitch while honing his pinpoint command. His mechanics are as consistent as they’ve ever been. Right now, we’re seeing the best version of Kyle Hendricks. You’ve probably read about him limiting quality contact. When you dig in, it’s no mystery how it’s happened.

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I’m writing this post as a favor to former colleague and friend-of-the-site Mike Petriello, who is now working as an analyst for MLB.com. Over the last few weeks, on Twitter, Mike has been doing his best to dispel the notion that teams have to set their playoff rosters today.

I think I annoy people by talking about postseason eligibility so much but this is why https://t.co/ackJTa7hbV

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) August 30, 2016

The myth of the August 31st playoff roster deadline is seemingly born out of the notion that, to be eligible to play in the postseason, teams have to acquire players from other organizations by the end of the day today. That part is absolutely true; any player acquired tomorrow will not be eligible to participate in the postseason. But beyond that restriction, anyone in a team’s organization today is effectively eligible for the playoff roster, no matter what part of the organization they are assigned to today.

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Two years ago, I wrote that the Blue Jays may have hit it big when they took Rowdy Tellez in the 30th round of the 2013 draft. So far, that suggestion looks solid. The 21-year-old first-base prospect logged an .801 OPS in A-ball last season, and this year he’s slashing .296/.384/.516 with Double-A New Hampshire.

Power is his calling card. Tellez has 50 extra-base hits as a Fisher Cat, and 20 of them have left the yard. When he really gets into one, they cross property lines. In our 2014 interview, Tellez told me he once hit a ball “over the fence, then a back yard, then a house, then over a cul de sac, and then into the next house across the street.”

He sees himself as more than a slugger. His minor-league numbers back that up, as does a left-handed stroke modeled after a pair of All-Stars’.

Tellez talked about his game — and the draft-snub chip that remains on his shoulder — prior to a recent game in Portland, Maine.

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Tellez on what has changed since two years ago: “A lot is different. I’m two years older and hopefully a little wiser. Defensively, I’m leaps and bounds ahead of where I was then. I’m a much more competent fielder. Everybody is confident in throwing the ball over to me and pitchers don’t worry about ground balls hit to me. Defense is what I’ve worked on the most. I’ve worked on it day in, day out.

“I’ve lost weight. I’m 245 now. The most I’ve been is probably about 275. That was around the time I signed out of high school.

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This is a guest post from our friends at NEIFI.co, who have built a projection system and systematic evaluation methodology about which you can read more at their site. They also tweet @NEIFIco and have started their own blog as well.

Back in November, we contributed a post about Japanese superstar Shohei Otani, noting that the 22-year-old hurler already projected as one of the best pitchers on the planet, and would be one of the most coveted international imports in baseball history if his NPB team, Nippon Ham, decided to make him available to MLB clubs. Since that time, Otani’s 2016 season has only expanded his legend.

On the mound, Otani has had another great year, allowing a 2.25 ERA in 16 starts and racking up 140 strikeouts in 116 innings. But his real coming out party has been at the plate, as he’s forced his way into the lineup on a regular basis, becoming a legitimate two-way player. In 301 plate appearances, he’s hitting .333/.435/.631, which means he leads the league in OPS. With all due respect to Madison Bumgarner and the #PitchersWhoRake hashtag, Otani looks like something the likes of which we don’t currently have in MLB.

That brings up the obvious question: do we have any relevant comparisons for Shohei Otani?

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Yesterday, we talked about Corey Kluber and Jose Fernandez, who have both made an effort to improve their arsenals in the second half by maximizing the usage of their best pitch — in this case, their similarly frisbee-like breaking balls. Kluber and Fernandez, in this regard, have been inching closer toward following in the footsteps of pitchers like Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda, Lance McCullers, Matt Shoemaker, and Masahiro Tanaka each of whom has thrown some version of a breaking or offspeed pitch this season more often than they’ve thrown a fastball.

A comment by Hill in May seemed to suggest that more pitchers could benefit from being told that they should simply throw their best pitch more often, regardless of whether that pitch is a fastball. Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway told me more recently that “traditional things take some time to change,” and that the thinking with Kluber was that he could become more efficient in getting ahead in counts by throwing his best pitch, the curve, more often, rather than the more traditional choice of his two-seam fastball.

Guys like Hill, McCullers, Shoemaker, and now potentially Kluber and Fernandez have already made the adjustment to lead with a non-fastball. Because this approach interests me so much, I’m now curious who else might benefit from such a change.

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In his last start, the Giants’ Matt Moore did something he’d never done before. Not no-hit a team through eight innings: he’d thrown an actual no-hitter before, in Double-A in 2011, on 98 pitches on his brother’s birthday. He’d thrown a one-hitter before, too — albeit over seven innings instead of 9.2, and earlier in his pro career.

What he did this Aug. 25 against the Dodgers that he’d never done before was throw a cutter 29 times. Only twice had he thrown the pitch even 10 times, but there he was going to the well, again and again, on his way to an oh-no instead of a no-no.

Weirdly, he didn’t get a single whiff on the pitch. But it doesn’t seem like the swinging strike is the point to the pitcher. Nearly everything else is.

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Some parts of the Brewers’ rebuild have been relatively easy. I mean, all trade negotiations are complex, but it was pretty obvious when it was time for the Brewers to trade Carlos Gomez, and they were inevitably going to get a strong prospect return. And, it was pretty obvious when it was time for the Brewers to trade Jonathan Lucroy, and they were inevitably going to get a strong prospect return. The Brewers did well with those moves, and now the Gomez trade looks even better, but just about any front office would’ve been able to help the organizational future there.

The Brewers have done well elsewhere, too. With some of the more creative, lower-profile moves, the Brewers have helped to prop themselves up. Very quietly, they’ve gotten good production out of Jonathan Villar. I wrote not too long ago about why I’m a fan of Keon Broxton. The Brewers were smart to be in on Junior Guerra. They were able to turn Gerardo Parra into Zach Davies. A lot of the buy-low transactions have worked out, and there’s another name to add to the list. If you knew Hernan Perez before, it wasn’t for anything good.

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It was roughly a month ago that I wrote the post that Ryan Schimpf made necessary. Schimpf is 28 years old, and 28-year-old rookies tend not to merit a lot of attention. There have obviously been some great, older players to produce fantastic debut seasons — like Ichiro Suzuki, for example, or Jackie Robinson. This post, however, isn’t concerned with those players who were kept from the game because they played professionally elsewhere or were unable to play due to systemic racism. Rather, the present post attempts to remedy the lack of awareness for players in a situation like Schimpf’s — older players who make the most of their opportunity — both this year and in those that preceded it.

While Schimpf is certainly the best of the lot this season, he’s not alone among older guys in their rookie seasons this year. The chart below shows the rookies who are at least 27 years old and have recorded at least 100 plate appearances (and who didn’t sign as professional free agents before the season e.g. Byung-ho Park).

Jeremy Hazelbaker took a path fairly similar to Schimpf, moving from the Red Sox to the Dodgers to the Cardinals, who finally gave him a bit of a chance this season. Parker was drafted by the Giants, has hit in virtually every stop and debuted last year for San Francisco — and is back with the team this season after spending much of the season in the minors. Merrifield progressed slowly with the Royals, eventually making Omar Infante expendable, but ended up back in the minors last month with Kansas City giving Raul Mondesi a shot. Shawn O’Malley was drafted 10 years ago and received only brief exposure at the major-league level in both 2014 and 2015 before appearing this season. Eibner was traded for Billy Burns earlier this year, and the A’s are making a bet that Eibner’s success in the minors can translate to the bigs if given the chance. Tyler Holt is a speedy, low-power player who has gotten to the majors in each of the past three years.

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Any Cubs fan could tell you Jake Arrieta just doesn’t seem quite right. This has been the case for a number of weeks, or months, and we’ve touched on it before. It’s funny to think about the hand-wringing over a pitcher sitting on a sub-3 ERA. But, he really has gotten meaningfully worse, and he’s the staff ace of a World Series favorite. Cubs fans don’t have a whole lot of negatives right now. Arrieta might be turning into one, and he had a clunker against Pittsburgh just Monday.

Last week, I wrote about the curious disappearance of Arrieta’s unbelievable slider. It hasn’t killed him or anything, with the fastball picking up the slack, but that’s not something Arrieta would’ve wished for. The slider going away is a symptom of something. I can present to you now another symptom of something. And it’s related to the slider’s deterioration — Arrieta’s developing a platoon split. He’s having some trouble with lefties, and, it turns out there are lefties everywhere.

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The college baseball season wrapped up in June when Coastal Carolina defeated Arizona in the College World Series, but most of the top college players’ seasons don’t end when their team’s season does. Players with dreams of going pro often spend the summer months playing in collegiate summer leagues to gain extra reps and exposure. Teams in these leagues are composed entirely of college players, and — unlike at the college level — hitters use wooden bats instead of metal ones.

The most well known of these leagues is the Cape Cod Baseball League, which aptly takes place along Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The Cape attracts most of the best college players, and many of today’s stars spent their college summers playing there. Josh Donaldson, Evan Longoria, Buster Posey and Mark Teixeira are just a few notable alumni.

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