The Mets are about to get all six of their best starters healthy again, as Steven Matz just had his second rehab start yesterday in his return from a strained muscle in his side. It looks like they’ll return to the six-man rotation. They should. The circumstances on this particular team make the six-man rotation a perfect match.

Yes, Matt Harvey made some waves when he complained that he didn’t know what to do with his extra day off after the Mets went to the six-man rotation. Turns out, he’s not alone. And yet, his rotation mates have a lot to teach him about maintaining a schedule with an extra day of rest.

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Jimmy Nelson has emerged as Milwaukee’s best starter thanks to a pair of tweaks. The 26-year-old righty has unleashed a spike curveball and tightened up his delivery. The results are striking. Nelson leads Brewers hurlers in punch outs, wins, and innings, and his 3.61 ERA is as solid as his 6-foot-6, 245-pound frame.

Nelson discussed his adjustments, as well as his repertoire and approach, when the Brewers visited Wrigley Field earlier this month.

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Nelson on his delivery: “Before the season, I smoothed out the rhythm and timing of my delivery, which allows me to throw with less effort and to command the ball better. It was a mechanical change. Instead of going over my head with my hands to start my delivery, now I just keep them in front and drop them down. That allows me to be more consistent and repeatable, and a lot more relaxed. Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest story to come out of the Dodgers camp yesterday was the acquisition of Chase Utley from the Phillies for two minor-league prospects, Darnell Sweeney and John Richy. While Utley will no doubt provide support to a middle infield that is thinner with the injury to Howie Kendrick, there was another event going on in Oakland yesterday — a major-league baseball game, in fact — and one important part of the Dodgers pitching staff once again reminded us that it too might be in need of some help.

I refer to the current state of the Los Angeles bullpen, which has, by a multitude of measures, accounted for among the worst performances in baseball during the 2015 season. On Wednesday, the Dodgers were “swept” in a two-game series by the 53-69 Oakland A’s; this was made especially painful to players and fans alike, I can imagine, considering Clayton Kershaw started the opening game of the series.

Kershaw was able to go only seven innings during that game, exiting with the score tied, and he handed the ball over to a multitude of relievers who displayed various levels of ineffectiveness. That game resulted in a 10-inning Oakland walk-off win — with the bullpen blowing a three-run lead — while the second and final game of the series saw them unable to keep the A’s close in the final frames of another tight contest. The two-game series was probably an encapsulation of a lot of what Dodgers fans have become painfully accustomed to.

Today, we’ll highlight some numbers related to the Dodgers pen, and see what options the Dodgers might have in bolstering the current weakest part of their team.

We have two statistics here, created in 2010, called Shutdowns and Meltdowns. They’re a way of measuring a given amount of win probability added or subtracted (.06 or 6% WPA, to be exact) during a relief pitcher’s performance, and they help outline the struggles we’re talking about. First, let’s take a look at the 10 bullpens in baseball that have the most Meltdowns, i.e. occasions on which a relief pitcher lowered his team’s chances of winning by at least 6%:

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Every year, a number of starting pitchers seemingly come out of nowhere to become significant contributors at the major-league level. Sometimes, like in the case of Jacob deGrom, the sudden evolution is real and sustainable. In the case of the majority of short-term success stories, the league adjusts, the pitcher can’t respond to those adjustments, and he disappears from the major-league scene or he settles into a lesser role.

Earlier this week, we took a look at one such pitcher who got off to a fabulous start this season before crashing to earth: the Seattle Mariners’ Mike Montgomery. Today, we’ll take a look at the player dealt to the Rays by the Mariners for Montgomery at the end of the past spring training, right-hander Erasmo Ramirez. The 25-year-old was pummeled beyond recognition in his first two outings as a Ray, but has quietly fashioned a very nice season in Tampa, with a 10-4, 3.57, traditional line at present. Have the Rays uncovered a low-cost, high-performance starting pitcher, as they have so many times in the past? Or is it a matter of time until he starts being pounded on pitches in the fat part of the zone, as he did for much of his tenure in Seattle? Let’s take a look at Ramirez’ 2015 batted-ball data and make some observations.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers made another move after a very active trading deadline, trading for life-long Philadelphia Phillies’ player and icon Chase Utley. The Dodgers, attempting to hold off the San Francisco Giants for a division title are currently two games ahead of the Giants, but are also one game behind the Chicago Cubs in the wild-card standings, making the division title potentially the only real avenue to make the playoffs. The Phillies will reportedly pay $4 million of the $6 million that Utley is owed for the rest of the season and in return receive minor leaguers Darnell Sweeney and right-hander John Richy. While the players the Phillies receive are not non-prospects — each appeared in Kiley McDaniel’s Dodgers write-up this past spring — for this season, the trade is centered on Utley’s potential contribution to the Dodgers.

For the Phillies, this trade is another in a series of transactions which represents a move away from their World Series’ runs at the end of last decade and toward rebuilding. For the Dodgers, in a tight playoff race where any additional help could mean the difference between the playoffs and going home despite a $300+ million outlay in salaries, the move for Chase Utley is no guarantee of success, but the possibility, especially when Utley had been rumored to go to the Giants, likely makes the move worth the effort. Read the rest of this entry »

For patient sluggers, strikeouts are a necessary byproduct of an approach designed to draw walks and hit home runs. We are well past the point of ridiculing strikeouts as bad when there are tangible trade-offs in on-base percentage and slugging. Those trade-offs are generally good for the player, but for players like Chris Carter this season, the three-true-outcome approach can go very wrong if the power drops or if the (relatively few) balls in play are not falling. For Chris Carter, a drop in both power and BABIP has resulted in a below replacement-level season despite leading the the league in Three True Outcomes.

Trying to get walks and home runs is generally a good strategy for hitters. Adding strikeouts to the mix is fine as evidenced by the leaders in Three True Outcome percentage (HR+K+BB/PA) below: Read the rest of this entry »

Kiley McDaniel put out his 2015 In-Season Prospect Update on Wednesday, which got everyone up to speed on the game’s most noteworthy prospects. Among other things, Kiley included an ordered list of the top-26 prospects in baseball. To follow suit, I put together an updated top-100 list, according to my KATOH system. Additionally, I produced KATOH forecasts for Kiley’s top 26, the 18 players on his “Minor-League Pop-Up Guys List.”

I know you probably know this, but I’d like to reiterate that you shouldn’t think of this as “Chris Mitchell’s Top 100 List,” and certainly not “FanGraphs’ Top 100 List.” This is simply the output from a flawed statistical model that fails to take into account many of the factors that go into evaluating a prospect. In particular, it ignores a player’s physical tools. As always, you should never choose between beer and tacos if you don’t have to.

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There’s a new trend in baseball: fire your outgoing GM on a Tuesday. Two weeks ago, it was Dave Dombrowski getting the axe in Detroit, and last week, the Brewers announced they were going to move Doug Melvin out of the top spot in baseball operations department. Yesterday, the Red Sox joined the Tuesday makeover party, announcing that they were bringing in Dombrowski to serve as their President of Baseball Operations, and as a result, current GM Ben Cherington would be leaving the organization.

So, as we’ve done the last few weeks, let’s take a look at what led to the fall of the Red Sox GM.

Cherington’s story is quite a bit different than either Dombrowski’s or Melvin’s, with both higher highs and lower lows than either managed to reach. Promoted to the GM position after Theo Epstein left for Chicago following the 2011 season, Cherington’s initial impression in Boston was a train wreck. The team dropped from 90 wins in Epstein’s final season to 69 wins in Cherington’s first year, and there was so much internal strife that the team fired manager Bobby Valentine less than a year after they hired him.

But during that miserable last place run, Cherington and his staff did one very wise thing, trading Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and Carl Crawford to the Dodgers for a package of prospects and a mountain of salary relief. It was Cherington’s first big move as a GM, and clearing the roster of dead weight contracts gave the team the flexibility they needed to overhaul the team in quick order. That winter, the front office reallocated that money to sign a series of mid-level free agents, and hit on just about every single one; Shane Victorino, Stephen Drew, and Koji Uehara were significant contributors, and even depth pieces like David Ross and Jonny Gomes helped the team come together.

The result was a worst-to-first turnaround that resulted in a World Series title, the organization’s third championship in 11 seasons after not winning one for 84 years. Cherington’s spread-the-wealth plan was a massive success, and seemed to put him on the path to a long run with the club. And now, less than two years later, he’s being replaced. How did it all go so wrong?

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Fresh off of the worst start of his career, Felix Hernandez is in the rundown for every baseball show on television. Often so far, the producer’s notes have asked the analysts to wonder if the team left their ace in too long, and what that means about the relationship between the player and his management and coaches. Here’s another reason to wonder if he was left in too long: is he hurting?

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David Cone was a thinking-man’s pitcher before he became a thinking-man’s analyst. The New York Yankees’ television color man took the mound for five teams in 17 major league seasons, and he logged lots of big wins along the way. Moxie played a role. The right-hander augmented his plus stuff with the same cerebral approach he now takes to the broadcast booth.

Cone shared some of his views on pitching when the Yankees visited Fenway Park earlier this summer. As you ‘d expect, he had a lot of interesting things to offer.

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Cone on Don Mattingly going 1-for-17 against him: “I can’t really explain it, but generally speaking, my formula for getting left-handed hitters out was fastball, split. Against right-handed hitters it was fastball, slider. Maybe I threw some decent splitters to him that promoted ground balls. It’s possible that he hit some balls pretty hard at defenders, too. It was probably a combination of both. Of course, 17 at bats isn’t a very big sample, either.

“A lot of times when I was throwing a splitter to a left-handed batter, it was either-or. It was to get a swing-and-miss, or to get the hitter out front – get his timing thrown off – and induce weak contact. I’d take either one, so it was sort of the same pitch, looking for two different outcomes. Read the rest of this entry »