Madison Bumgarner has been having quite a month of August. He’s posted a 53:4 strikeout-to-walk ratio while allowing only six earned runs in 37.2 innings, and he’s looked almost as unhittable as he did last October, when he relentlessly took the ball for the Giants in high pressure situations during the playoffs. That’s not a coincidence, it turns out, as Bumgarner is currently exhibiting tendencies that are quite similar to the 2014 postseason version of himself.

Before we go down that particular road, let’s have a brief introduction to Bumgarner, 2015 starting pitcher. On these digital pages, we’ve featured an article on how well he hits — which is quite well indeed — but not much else in the way of analysis this season; I will remedy that fact in a brief, limited manner. We could spend an entire article about the minute changes Bumgarner has made in 2015. Instead, here’s a cliffs notes version:

• He’s throwing more fastballs than at any point since 2011.
• He’s basically ditched his changeup, as he’s relied almost strictly on a three-pitch combination of fastball, slider (referred to at times as a cutter), and curveball in 2015. Here is his pitch usage since 2010, his first semi-full season in the majors (courtesy of Brooks Baseball, which calls his slider a cutter):

• Finally, his command improvements from last season have stuck, as he’s posting a career-low walk rate (4.3%) and career-high strikeout rate (27.4%).

These are all good things. By the numbers, Bumgarner is perhaps the best version of himself that he’s ever been, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s posting the best xFIP of his career while challenging his best in ERA and FIP.

That’s why this month has been extra interesting; because, in the midst of one of his best seasons, Bumgarner seems to be up to something. And that something just happens to be intentionally throwing slower.

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Loudly and quietly, the Blue Jays made a series of improvements around deadline time. Very conspicuously, they added an incredible shortstop. Very conspicuously, they added an incredible starting pitcher. Somewhat conspicuously, they added a decent left fielder. It was the bullpen work that went almost unnoticed. Armed with some new personnel, and with some shifted personnel, the Jays came away from July with a stronger relief unit. Really, they came away with a stronger everything, and the team has taken off, but the bullpen, now, seems like it’s become a strength. It’s just not what drew the headlines.

The Rangers aren’t the Blue Jays, but they are in the race, and there are a few parallels here. Something in the vicinity of a .500 team around deadline time. A huge impact addition, in the form of Cole Hamels. And a very quietly strengthened bullpen, that’s given the Rangers some late-inning reliability for maybe the first time all year. Let’s face it — the second wild card isn’t going to a great team. The Rangers aren’t a great team. They’re becoming a solid team, however. A team that might as well deserve to keep playing. It was an awful big August, and it was a month made possible by improvement in a bullpen no one was paying attention to.

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Justin Bour is a big man who hits bombs. The 27-year-old Miami Marlins rookie is 6-foot-4, 250 pounds — and this season, 10 of his 14 home runs have gone at least 400 feet. On Saturday, he clubbed a 453 foot shot against Jordan Zimmermann at Nationals Park.

The lefty swinger has power to all fields. Seven of his Bour’s blasts have been to the pull side, while six have been from right-center to left-center and one has been to the opposite field.

Bour sees himself as more than a power hitter, although his numbers don’t necessarily reflect it. The slugging first baseman is slashing .257/.325/.449, in 326 plate appearances, and same-sided pitchers have mostly given him fits. He’s 10-for-43 versus southpaws.

As for the opportunity he’s getting in Miami, Bour is fortunate to no longer be buried in a star-studded Chicago Cubs system. The former 25th round pick was selected by the Marlins in the Triple-A portion of the 2013 Rule 5 draft.

Bour talked about his development as a hitter, including his all-fields approach, when Miami visited Boston earlier this summer. Read the rest of this entry »

Not all no-hitters are thrown by No. 1 starting pitchers. And, not all No. 1 starting pitchers eventually throw no-hitters. This is a crucial truth — randomness always plays a significant part, so a no-hitter can be meaningful without being predictive. Yet, when a No. 1 starting pitcher does throw a no-hitter, it feels a little like validation. It feels a little like a stamp, cementing the reality that said pitcher is an ace. Jake Arrieta spun a no-hitter on Sunday, after having made several earlier attempts. Arrieta was a No. 1 before the weekend, but now he’s more widely recognized as part of the group. Doesn’t need to work that way, but that’s the way it works.

And it’s never a bad time for a reminder of just how good Arrieta has been. See, this can benefit everyone. People who didn’t know Arrieta before now know that he’s good. And people who did know Arrieta before might be less inclined to underrate him. This has gone on for some time. Since the start of last season, Arrieta is tied for second in baseball in ERA-. He ranks third in FIP-. He’s fourth in xFIP-. If you add all the numbers together, Arrieta ranks second in the resulting statistic, sandwiched by Clayton Kershaw and Chris Sale. No-hitters are always a little lucky, but the bigger point is Arrieta required less luck than most. Because, simply, he’s far better than most. It’s been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

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Going into the season, Stephen Piscotty was projected to be a contact and patience guy because that’s what he’d been in the minor leagues for the most part. But this offseason, he had a plan, and he changed his approach and mechanics in order to be a better player. Perhaps the projections going forward are a little light, given the changes he’s made.

Preseason Steamer projections had Piscotty with a .114 isolated slugging percentage, on par with Logan Forsythe and Ryan Sweeney. After a power surge in Triple-A for 370 plate appearances, and four major league homers, the rest of season projection is now up to a .133 level, or Coco Crisp and Desmond Jennings level.

That’s improvement, but what if he’s fundamentally changed and the projections are still light?

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On Friday, in the midst of a fifth losing season in the last seven years, the Mariners fired general manager Jack Zduriencik. In the few hours that followed that announcement, I got a series of texts and emails from friends and acquaintances, all with the same general theme: “Congratulations, your team now has a chance to be decent again!”

And changing leadership probably will help the Mariners — though if the lingering Kenny Williams rumor proves true, this change could prove less like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and more like using those deck chairs to puncture all the remaining life rafts — given the struggles the team has had during Zduriencik’s tenure at the helm. But despite that fact, I didn’t react to the news with celebration, or even any kind of relief. Instead, my reaction to Zduriencik’s dismissal was pretty much the same one I had when the Brewers fired Doug Melvin.

While I generally prefer to write about baseball rather than provide commentary about myself or the nature of baseball commentary as a profession, this news provides an opportunity to write something I probably should have written a few years ago. Because the Mariners haven’t been “my team” for a while now. I haven’t written a post at USSMariner in 18 months. I probably haven’t watched more than 20 or 30 innings of the Mariners games this year. Over the last five or so years, my fandom has waned, and now it’s probably at the point of dormancy.

I will note that this wasn’t really a conscious decision. While I’ve long been aware of the traditional “no cheering in the press box” rule, I don’t spend much time in press boxes, and I didn’t choose to renounce allegiance to a specific team in order to try and appear more objective. It just kind of happened. And as it was happening, I’ve spent some time thinking about why we become fans, and why I’ve been unbecoming one.

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Major League Baseball’s pay practices have faced a series of legal challenges in recent years. The most notable of these cases center around allegations that MLB teams routinely fail to pay minor-league players in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the nation’s primary minimum wage and overtime law.

While the minor-league wage lawsuits have certainly generated the most attention to date, they were not the first in the recent wave of minimum-wage cases filed against MLB over the last few years. Instead, that distinction belongs to Chen v. Major League Baseball, a lawsuit alleging that MLB violated the FLSA by employing unpaid volunteers to work at the annual FanFest convention held in conjunction with the All-Star Game in New York City back in 2013.

The district court granted MLB an initial victory in the Chen case last year, determining that FanFest was not subject to the FLSA and therefore was immune from the federal minimum wage and overtime requirements. Now, in a recent decision issued earlier this month, MLB has scored yet another victory with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the trial court’s finding that the FLSA does not apply to FanFest.

However, while the Chen decision certainly represents an important decision with respect to the rights of FanFest volunteers, the appellate court’s recent opinion appears unlikely to have a significant impact on the other minimum-wage lawsuits pending against the league. Therefore, the various lawsuits challenging both MLB’s minor league and scout pay practices remain very much alive despite the recent rulings in the FanFest case.

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Since the start of the 2009 season, no team has won fewer games than the Astros, and during that window they’ve picked up a new general manager. The Marlins have won the second-fewest games, and they technically changed general managers. So did the Cubs, with the third-fewest wins. So did the Rockies, with the fourth-fewest wins. And now so have the Mariners, with the fifth-fewest. Word went out Friday morning, on the firing of Jack Zduriencik, and though no one expected the specific timing, the writing had probably been on the wall. Think about the Mariners. Think about what you think about when you think about the Mariners. That’s why they made this decision. It felt inevitable, with the only question being, when would the blade drop?

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re no stranger to FanGraphs. If you’re no stranger to FanGraphs, I’m guessing you’ve seen a certain reference once or twice before. It’s this one. Years ago, FanGraphs tried to feature organizational rankings, and though we no longer do that, people have long memories, and in between 2009 and 2010, the site ranked the Mariners at No. 6, just above — also hilariously — the Rockies. A big reason was because the FG staff at that time collectively believed in the new Zduriencik front office. People laugh because, by and large, the Mariners have sucked. People laugh because, by and large, the front office seemingly took a step back. But I think this is particularly interesting to reflect upon. Say what you will about the ranking, but that’s what the staff believed. And not too long after, the front office completely changed its identity.

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Andrew Heaney was pitching in the Arizona Fall League when I first talked to him. A member of the Marlins organization at the time, he was 17 months removed from being drafted ninth overall out of Oklahoma State. This was in 2012, and Heaney had a clean delivery and a bright future.

He still has a bright future, although it’s now with the Angels. Anaheim acquired the 24-year-old southpaw from Miami, via the Dodgers, last winter. As for his delivery, it’s back after a brief hiatus.

“I went through a little funk last year,” Heaney told me earlier this month. “It’s hard to say exactly when it happened, but I developed some mechanical issues. It was also gradual, so I didn’t even feel it. I wasn’t pitching as well as I could, and I wasn’t sure why.”

Film from his time in the Fall League provided the answer. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitching to contact is a much-maligned, sometimes misunderstood philosophy. Inducing contact results in a hit 30% of the time while a runner can reach base on a strikeout only on the rare wild pitch or passed ball. The strikeout is a considerably better outcome, but attacking hitters and getting strike one, the philosophy espoused by Dave Duncan, can combine strikeouts, weak contact, and quick outs to form an incredibly effective pitcher. A half-decade after Duncan’s retirement, one of his former pupils, Jaime Garcia, is throwing strikes, getting ground balls, and keeping hitters off balance, potentially resurrecting a career that appeared doomed by injuries.

Garcia, a 22nd-round draft pick of the Cardinals in 2005, made a brief appearance in the majors in 2008 before Tommy John surgery ended that season and cost him 2009 as well. Garcia came back strong in 2010, and in July 2011, he signed a four-year contract extension that included two team options. At the time, he had pitched nearly 300 innings with a 3.06 ERA and 3.46 FIP, but a year later he would suffer another injury, this time in his shoulder. Rehabilitation failed and in early 2013, he underwent surgery, missing the rest of the season and putting his career in doubt. He was not a part of the Cardinals’ plan to pitch in 2014, but he recovered and appeared briefly in 2014 before injuries again took over. This time, Garcia suffered from thoracic outlet syndrome, the same condition ended the career of teammate Chris Carpenter. Again, he had surgery, and again, he was not a part of the Cardinals’ plans.

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