Last week, I addressed the Cy Young battle in the senior circuit and titled it “The NL Cy Young Showdown.” This time, it’s the AL’s turn — and “discussion” (as opposed to “showdown”) seems to be the proper way to characterize it. It’s been a low-key pitching season, comparatively, in the AL, with no one posting an ERA near Zack Greinke‘s, or pitching no-hitters or engaging in zany second-half shenanigans like Jake Arrieta. In fact, a general consensus seems to be building that the award is David Price’s to lose. Today, let’s have a full discussion, including utilization of batted-ball data, about the AL Cy Young and its three likely frontrunners, Price, Chris Sale and Dallas Keuchel.

Price, who turned 30 in late August, is the only one of the three with a Cy (2012) on his mantle, though he hasn’t finished above sixth in the annual voting since then. Sale has come progressively closer in the voting, checking in at sixth, fifth and third in the last three seasons, while this will be the first time on a ballot for Keuchel, 2015’s foremost pitching breakthrough.

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Gerrit Cole might not be the best player on the Pittsburgh Pirates — Andrew McCutchen probably still holds that distinction — but over the course of the next 10 days, perhaps no pitcher in the National League, or perhaps in Major League Baseball, will have a greater impact on his team’s season. Cole has slid under the radar of the Cy Young race as Clayton Kershaw, Jake Arrieta, and Zack Greinke are all having historically good seasons. While Cole is a bit behind that NL pitching triumvirate, his 2.60 FIP is third in MLB behind only Kershaw and Arrieta. His nearly identical 2.61 ERA is sixth, behind the above three, as well as Dallas Keuchel and David Price. Cole has already pitched some important games down the stretch this season, but how he pitches in the near future could frame how many people view the Pirates’ season as they head to the playoffs for the third straight year.

Cole has pitched very well as the regular season comes to a close. Over his last four starts, he has faced only playoff teams in the Chicago Cubs (twice), the St. Louis Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Pirates have won all four of Cole’s starts, during which time he’s recorded a 32:5 strikeout-to-walk ratio and allowed just one home run over 27.1 innings, good for a 2.30 ERA and 1.94 FIP. The starts against division rival were of particular importance. One September 6, the Pirates trailed the Cardinals by 6.5 games. A loss at that time would have put the team 7.5 games back, making their shot at a divisional comeback almost impossible. The win also kept the Pirates three games ahead of the Cubs. His next start, against those same Cubs, lengthened the lead for home-field advantage to five games and briefly put them within two games of the Cardinals.

Cole just recently turned 25 years old, and in his age-24 season, he has been one of the best in recent history at his age. Among qualified pitchers 24 and under, Cole’s 5.5 WAR is the best such figure, a full two wins better than Carlos Martinez’s mark. Since 2010, the only pitchers 24 and under with a season exceeding Cole’s current 5.5 fWAR are Clayton Kershaw (twice), Matt Harvey and Felix Hernandez.

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When the New York Yankees signed Jacoby Ellsbury to a seven-year, $153 million contract before the 2014 season, the team was certainly hoping for a version of the 2011 center fielder: a speedy, defensively-sound player with serious power upside. A prevalent thought was the short porch in Yankee Stadium’s right field might help him regain some of his power after injury-marred seasons in 2012 and 2013.

Following a healthy 2014 — in which the left-hander was able to post a respectable power/speed combination while staying relatively healthy — the 2015 season has seen Ellsbury take a step back. In recent weeks, during the thick of a September pennant race, he’s actually sat against left-handed pitching in favor of Chris Young. These are the depths of the slump that Ellsbury is currently in, and it’s obviously not the return on investment the Yankees had in mind when signing him to a long-term deal.

With New York headed toward a very probable Wild Card berth, it’s time to take a close look at Ellsbury. What are the driving factors behind his current struggles? What is the outlook for the Yankees without his production?

We assign many beginning and end dates to baseball statistics, which is a part of our natural desire to organize things we’re trying to understand. We’re going to do that now, because it’s necessary for us to understand Ellsbury’s season before and after a certain event. The Yankees’ center fielder has had two very different halves  — separated by seven weeks on the disabled list with a knee injury — and understanding how they’re different is the first step we’ll take in evaluating his performance.

During the first six weeks of the season, Ellsbury was putting up great leadoff numbers: Although the power stroke wasn’t quite there — he hit only one home run along with a .047 Isolated Power average before May 19 — Ellsbury was still creating runs for his team at a 25% greater rate than a league-average player.

The classic Ellsbury tools were on display during this stage of the season. He was hitting lots of line drives, showing great speed on the base paths and playing sound defense in center field. Between April and the first two weeks of May, the 32-year-old was even walking at a much higher clip than his career norm (11.2% vs. 7.0%). The caveat with those stats, of course, is six weeks is a small sample size, so whether he would have continued his early season production is hard to gauge.

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Sunday night, Jake Arrieta came within sniffing distance of doing the almost unthinkable. By which I mean, Arrieta made a serious bid to hit two home runs. He also, at the same time, flirted with a perfect game against the Pirates, but that part is very thinkable. I don’t know how many times this year Arrieta has grabbed attention for taking a no-hitter or a perfect game deep, but it numbers somewhere in the “a lot”s, with Arrieta more or less existing on the verge of history. It doesn’t take a no-hitter bid to put him in that position — the bid is practically a foregone conclusion.

Eventually, Arrieta gave up a hit and put multiple people on base, but none of those people happened to score, Arrieta spinning another seven shutout innings. Two batters of a total of 22 reached, and one of them only did so because Arrieta did him the privilege of hitting him with a pitch. The outing was timed well, what with the Pirates being a rival of the Cubs. The outing was timed well, what with Arrieta in the running for the Cy Young award. And the outing furthered Arrieta’s case for maybe having the best season half that ever there was. However arbitrary season halves are, we’ve been splitting seasons at the All-Star break forever, and what Arrieta has done since the break legitimately defies belief.

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We live in the age of multiple playoff levels and one of the results of this is we get many different playoff winners, and each playoff winner has to have a playoff winner celebration. Celebrations used to be more sedate than they are now, but things have changed since Don Larsen struck out Bill Mitchell and jogged solemnly off the mound after having thrown the first and to date only perfect game in the World Series. No big deal, really, when you think about it. Today, though, players never miss a chance to jump up and down and yell and celebrate and be happy. This being FanGraphs though, we can’t simply observe this behavior. We have to analyze it. Because we hate baseball.

Last Thursday in a match up between a team we thought might go to the post-season and a team named the Royals, the Royals beat the Mariners 10-4 to clinch their first AL Central division title ever. Seriously. The last time the Royals won a division title they were in a different division. The final out came when Kyle Seager grounded out weakly to first baseman Eric Hosmer. Here was the scene before contact.

Oops, sorry. Wrong kind of contact. Let’s try that again.

There we go.

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Other teams are clinching divisions, and Nationals players are fighting one another. Not that players on good teams haven’t fought, and not that the Nationals’ incident was in some way unique, but this isn’t how it was supposed to go. A few days ago, the Nationals were mathematically eliminated from winning the division, and in reality it feels like it’s been even longer. They haven’t been within three games of the Mets since August 11. They’re currently behind by 9.5, and only the AL Central has a bigger gap between first and second place — by a half-game. It’s not an exaggeration to say the Nationals are feeling pretty embarrassed.

This is all review to you, but it’s not like the Nationals were simply the favorites. They didn’t come in with slightly better odds than any of their rivals. After the Max Scherzer acquisition, Bryce Harper talked about rings, and the only issue there was Harper was expressing what the rest of us thought. It looked like the Nationals would win the East in a landslide. Our projections figured as much. The PECOTA projections figured as much. The Clay Davenport projections figured as much. The whole entire media figured as much. And it wasn’t just about looking forward. Between 2012 – 2014, the Nationals won more games than any other team in baseball. They had 280 wins, and their closest division rival had 269. Those were the Braves, who were rebuilding. The Nationals looked good, and they didn’t have a serious threat.

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There is no one single way to be good at baseball, which is part of why it’s so amazing. Just last week we peeked into the mind of a man with one of the lowest swing rates in baseball when we asked Joey Votto how he does it. And this week? Let’s ask Adrian Beltre.

“I’m probably the opposite,” Beltre laughed when he heard Votto’s name. “I’m thinking swing first and take second. I don’t have that discipline.”

It’s hard to argue with him, but he has been a top-ten all-time third baseman. “It’s probably not the way to do it,” he said with that trademarked smile, “but it has worked for me.”

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Logan Forsythe isn’t sure he can explain his breakout. At least not definitively. The Tampa Bay infielder points to consistency, but that’s more byproduct than causation. He indirectly cites BABiP – “I’ve had some balls fall this year” – but it’s not as though his .323 mark is outlandish.

Opportunity might be a bigger factor. His high-water mark for seasonal plate appearances had been 350 – with the Padres in 2012 – and he’s already come to the dish 606 times. He’s taking advantage of the increased playing time. A .235/.343/.303 hitter coming into the campaign, Forsythe is slashing .282/.359/.446, and his 17 home runs are nearly double his career total. He’s been worth 4.1 WAR.

The 28-year-old second baseman was fielding a familiar question when I inquired as to why he’s having a good year. He’s been asked that a lot – not a bad problem to have – and his response suggests it’s largely the regular reps.

“The biggest thing is being consistent,” Forsythe told me. “That’s the recurring word I keep using. I expected to be that super-utility type again, but we had a few guys go down with injuries. That sucked, but it did give me an opportunity. I’ve had stints in my career where I’ve taken a simpler approach – I’ve just stayed in a routine – and the consistency of my play took over. This year reminds me of when I was playing every day in the minor leagues.”

It’s hard to say whether the Rays expected this type of production when they acquired Forsythe from San Diego in a seven-player deal prior to last season. His versatility was his calling card, but he possessed other qualities as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Toward the end of April, things weren’t looking so hot for Pirates relief ace Mark Melancon. His velocity was down — way down — and Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was beginning to field questions about Melancon’s job security. Fast forward to September, and it seems like ages ago that we were even discussing this in a serious matter, because Melancon is on the verge of a historic season.

It would have been hard to claim that Melancon would go on to have such a great season back in April. Hurdle’s proclamation that Melancon would remain the closer was met with derision. The Bullpen Report guys moved Melancon and the Pirates closer situation into the red for the first time on April 22. The velocity on his cutter, which in the past had averaged 92 mph or faster, was averaging 88 mph. In the days immediately after April 22, his velocity would dip into the 87 mph range. Hardly big league worthy. At the same time, Arquimedes Caminero was making a name for himself, and it seemed like only a matter of time before the guy who might just be the right-handed Aroldis Chapman would take over as the Pirates closer. Or if not him, then perhaps the dependable Tony Watson. Or maybe Jared Hughes. Either way, it looked like Melancon’s days were numbered.
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As I wrote yesterday, I have an NL Cy Young vote this year. It is a remarkably tough year to pick a winner, as there are three pitchers having award-worthy seasons; you can make a really good argument for any of the three. The reality is that those of us with votes are going to have to split the slimmest of hairs in order to sort out the top three spots on the ballot, and yesterday, I tackled the question of catcher influence.

In response, someone left this comment.

This is a great suggestion; when the overall influence of combined season numbers are this close, looking at the individual distribution absolutely could be a source of differentiation. And since I know at least one other puzzled Cy Young voter read yesterday’s piece, I figured it was worth exploring this idea, plus a couple others by the responses to the piece.

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