Archive for Daily Graphings

Last night, in the middle of his start against the Detroit Tigers, news leaked out that Stephen Strasburg had agreed to a seven year, $175 million extension with the Washington Nationals. As Jeff Sullivan noted last night, this is seen as surprising news, as Scott Boras clients usually end up testing free agency, and Strasburg was four months away from being not just the best free agent on the market this winter, but the only high-end pitching option available.

And it’s not like the Nationals broke the bank to keep Strasburg away from free agency. The 7 year, $175 million total essentially matches the contract figures that Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez received in their long-term extensions three years ago, except Strasburg’s actual contract is valued significantly less than those two, because it also includes $70 million in interest-free deferrals. Once you account for the payment structure of Strasburg’s deal, the net present value is $135 million, which is the NPV a player would get if he signed a 7 year, $158 million contract without backloading or deferrals.

That total puts Strasburg south of not only Hernandez and Verlander (not even accounting for the inflation that has happened in MLB salaries since those deals were signed) but even less annually than Jon Lester, who got $155 million from the Cubs for six years. Lester was selling his age 31-36 seasons when he signed with Chicago, while Strasburg would have been selling his age 28-34 seasons had he entered the market this winter; combined with his superior stuff and the dearth of alternatives on the market, I would have guessed that Strasburg would have been able to do significantly better than this as a free agent.

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Stephen Strasburg made his worst start of the season last night. At home, against the Detroit Tigers, Strasburg struck out 11 over seven innings, allowing four earned runs on six hits, three walks, and two home runs. The Nationals won the game on a walk-off home run by Clint Robinson in the ninth inning, and Strasburg took the no decision. A game in which Strasburg completed seven innings and struck out double digits was his worst start of the year in terms of ERA, and his worst start of the year in terms of FIP. It was his best start of the year in terms of signing massive contract extensions bordering on $200 million.

That last night’s performance was Strasburg’s least impressive of the season is impressive in and of itself. He’s been baseball’s third-most valuable pitcher by FIP-WAR, eighth-most valuable pitcher by RA9-WAR, and fifth-most valuable pitcher by an even mix of the two. And while what he’s done this seasons is an elevated level of performance relative to previous seasons, Strasburg’s been on this run for a while now. You could make the case that this is the best we’ve ever seen him.

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Deep in the bowels of Oakland’s Coliseum, you’ll see Ryan Madson working out with wires strapped to his body. The wires head to a little pack he carries with him, and in that pack is a machine that has helped him recover his career.

The device, pictured here, is the Accelerated Recovery Performance machine, which was administered to Madson by the EVO Ultrafit group in Arizona. The ARP sends electrical stimulation to your muscles much like the stim packs and microcurrent versions out there, but claims to have a proprietary wave form that allows for deeper penetration of the muscles.

The Oakland closer is not alone in believing in the benefits of the ARP machine — many out there tout its abilities to help the body recover and retrain — and yet there are equal shares of doubt about its efficacy.

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Buckle up, because this is going to be exhausting. Bryce Harper just batted 19 times during a four-game series between the Nationals and Cubs in Chicago. Harper batted a meager .250, and he slugged a meager .250, but he came away with an OBP of .789, thanks in large part to literally 13 walks. Joe Maddon acknowledged that the Cubs were pitching around him, but he didn’t really need to do so for us to get the message, given what was taking place. How did Harper get pitched? Here are all the final locations:

The expression of the day is “the Bonds treatment.” For one four-game series, Bryce Harper was getting pitched like the greatest hitter any of us have ever seen. What’s kind of funny is that Harper has recently been in a slump — he has five hits in 34 official at-bats over the past couple weeks. The Cubs didn’t care, seemingly preferring to go about their business with Ryan Zimmerman and one extra baserunner. At least, much of the time.

Just to what extent did Harper get pitched around? Below, you may behold all 19 plate appearances. For each, I’ll show the sequence, and I’ll assign a 1-to-10 grade indicating how little interest I think the Cubs had in attacking. The grade is entirely subjective and meaningless, but to give it the illusion of meaning, let’s say 1 is pure attack mode, and 10 is unabashed threat avoidance. Here come the Cubs, Bryce Harper, and the Pitching Terrified Index.

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Shelby Miller just pitched six innings and allowed just two runs on Saturday. For a pitcher who entered that game having given up 22 runs in 23.1 innings — while also recording as many walks as strikeouts and averaging under four innings per appearance — the start was definitely an encouraging one.

However, there are some caveats, as well. For one, it occurred against a terrible Braves offense. And Miller still gave up another home run. And he recorded two walks against just one strikeout. Miller is far from out of the woods at this point. His main problems so far this season have been pitch selection and lack of velocity. The former is easily fixable. The latter could be a source of trouble if he can’t find the lost velocity at some point — or, alternatively, if the lost velocity is the result of some physical problem that has prevented him from maintaining consistent mechanics.

In each of the past two offseasons, Shelby Miller’s teams have decided to move him. Depending on your narrative, that’s maybe a sign that two organizations gave up on a young pitcher. On the other hand, though, the Cardinals’ receipt of Jason Heyward and the Braves’ massive haul a year later both contradict that narrative: both receiving clubs gave up quite a bit for Miller. When the Cardinals gave up Miller, he was coming off a relatively disappointing 2014 season where his 17% strikeout rate, 10% walk rate, 3.74 ERA and 4.54 FIP were all worse than his promising 2013 season. While the season overall was underwhelming, there were reasons for optimism on Miller when the Braves trade for him, and he delivered on that optimism last season.

During the 2014 campaign, the Cardinals made a deadline deal for Justin Masterson, and while Masterson did not pitch well for St. Louis and has yet to recapture his old form, he did teach Miller a two-seamer grip that Miller was able to use the rest of the 2014 season. At the time of Masterson’s arrival, Miller had recorded a 4.14 ERA and 4.81 FIP, with a 16% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate. To that point in the season, Miller was throwing his four-seam fastball 68% of the time along with a two-seam fastball less than 5% of the time. The rest of the season, Miller threw his four-seamer 48% of the time while upping his two-seamer to 22%. The result? An increased strikeout rate, fewer walks, a better, but not great 4.00 FIP, plus a nice 2.95 ERA over his final 10 starts.

Miller carried that two-seamer to Atlanta, throwing it even more last season (34% of the time vs. 33% on the four-seamer). His walk and strikeout rates remained the same as his late-season run in 2014. Halving his home-run rate helped Miller to a 3.45 FIP and 3.02 ERA — and Miller’s best season as a professional. Arizona made Atlanta an offer it couldn’t refuse and Miller headed into the season hoping to continue last year’s success. 

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Due to a fractured thumb, the Royals will be without Mike Moustakas for at least the next few weeks. No doubt, Kansas City will miss their three-plus win, All-Star third baseman. But as is often the case in baseball, one man’s misfortune is another’s opportunity. In this instance, the beneficiary is Cheslor Cuthbert, whom the Royals recalled from the minors to replace Moustakas.

Unless you’re a Royals fan or a prospect connoisseur, you might have no idea who Cheslor Cuthbert is, but my nerdily-sorted spreadsheets really like the Nicaraguan infielder. Last year, he hit .277/.339/.429 as a 22-year-old in Triple-A. He also struck out in an encouragingly low 14% of his trips to the plate. He already looks like a Royal.

That performance, along with the fact that he plays primarily third base — a somewhat premium defensive position — landed Cuthbert at 74th on KATOH’s preseason top-100 list, placing him tops among Royals farmhands. That was before he opened this season by slashing .333/.402/.624 in 24 games. He was one of the very best hitters at Triple-A over the season’s first month, and was quite possibly the best prospect-age hitter in Triple-A.

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The Cubs decided to position Dexter Fowler a bit deeper in center field this season, and it might have saved a no-hitter. Anthony Gose, vocal critic of defensive metrics, also finds himself a bit further from home plate, likely due in part to those same metrics which Gose called a “scam.” Research done by Baseball Info Solutions’ owner and chairman John Dewan in 2013 suggested that, generally speaking, fielders who play shallow in center, like Fowler and Gose used to, don’t save enough runs on the balls hit in front of them to make up for the runs lost on balls hit over their heads. The arrival of Statcast has given fans and teams alike previously unprecedented access to information regarding fielder positioning, and the most visible team-mandated adjustments this season have been those which move outfielders closer to the fences in an effort to prevent costly extra base hits at the expense of a few more singles.

But the Pittsburgh Pirates are their own team with their own identity, and if we’ve learned anything about how the organization operates during the Neal Huntington era, it’s that they’re constantly searching for ways to use data to their advantage, and that they’re not afraid to pull the trigger on a radical change. And so while a deeper center field may seem en vogue, the Pirates are zigging while the Cubs, Tigers and others zag, and have instead instructed not only McCutchen, who played one of the five deepest center fields in baseball last year, to bring it in, but also the rest of the outfielders, too.

From a Travis Sawchik story last month, for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

“In reviewing the numbers last year, there was so much collateral damage done in front of us, balls that fell in, extra bases that were taken by guys trying to get to balls,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. “It was glaringly apparent that we could make an adjustment, especially with the athleticism of our outfielders and change the dynamic of what’s gone on as far as run prevention.”

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A quick check of the pitching leaderboards for qualified starters reveals an unsettling fact for the Red Sox: David Price has the second-worst ERA in baseball. Cue the alarm bells! The Sox paid for an ace, and instead, they’ve gotten the exact opposite of an ace — as far as outcomes are concerned, at least. Seven starts into the season, some element of worry has to be merited, right? The answer is yes, of course, because an ERA of almost seven for a No. 1 starter after over a month of games has to be worrying. Price has been terrible, and if you’re worrying about him or would like to, that’s probably merited. The reason why we’re here is to look into whether his performance thus far is grounds to for worry in the future, as well: though Price can’t get any of his clunkers back from the past seven starts, we can certainly look into whether those clunkers might presage future clunkers.

First, let’s start with the bad news, because it’s always better to end with good news. The bad news has been right there in front of us in every single one of Price’s starts this season, flashed up on a board in the stadium or on our TV screens during every pitch: his velocity is down. Way down. Lowest it’s ever been. That’s worrisome not only because velocity loss leads to a smaller margin of error, but also because velocity loss is the most visible indicator of injury. The drop captured in the red box in the chart below — depicting Price’s velocity by month from 2011 to 2016 — ought usually to inspire some concern (chart courtesy of Brooks Baseball):

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Brewers pitching prospect Jon Perrin issued his first free pass of the season on Friday night. Accompanying that solitary walk on his stat sheet are 47 strikeouts and a 2.50 ERA over 36 innings of work. Pitching for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, Perrin has essentially been the Midwest League equivalent of Greg Maddux in his prime.

His long-term goal isn’t necessarily to be the next Maddux. Nor is it to be the next Josh Tomlin, a more realistic control-and-command comparable. Perrin aspires to be an attorney.

The 22-year-old right-hander graduated from Oklahoma State before being drafted by Milwaukee last year in the 27th round. He took his LSAT over the winter, and if he gets an acceptance letter from his target school there’s a good chance he’ll bid baseball adieu. Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball has taken steps toward becoming a truly global game in recent years. Cuban players have joined their Venezuelan, Dominican and other Latin American counterparts in making a significant impact on today’s game, and talent from the Far East, particularly from the Japanese and Korean Leagues, has made its presence felt as well.

This year’s most heralded Japanese rookie is Kenta Maeda, who signed a long-term deal with the Dodgers this past offseason. After concerns were raised following a medical examination, he signed a deal that was heavily discounted from the originally negotiated terms, paying him $25 million over an eight-year period. This put the Dodgers in a fantastic position: a low-risk, potentially high-reward scenario. One month in, the Dodgers simply have to be thrilled as Maeda’s posted a 3-1, 1.41 mark with a 28/6 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 32 innings.

Sure, the season remains young, and the sample sizes are small, but it’s not too early to form some early hypotheses regarding whether Maeda is for real. Today, let’s use granular batted-ball data, examining his plate-appearance frequency and production by BIP type data, to see how Maeda is getting it done, and whether we can expect his success to continue moving forward. Read the rest of this entry »