The MLB Network’s Brian Kenny wants to “Kill the Win.” As a FanGraphs reader, you’re certainly familiar with – and quite possibly supportive of – his stance. The stat is often misleading, and slowly but surely it’s becoming less of a barometer when assessing an individual pitcher’s performance. But should the win be “killed”? I recently posed that question to nine pitchers, two pitching coaches and a pitcher-turned-broadcaster. Here are their responses:

Chris Archer, Rays: “I don’t know if it should be killed. The emphasis behind it isn’t as great as people make it out to be. I think true baseball gurus, and players and management, know. It’s how a lot of fans may judge someone, but we know there’s not so much behind the importance of (an individual pitcher’s) win.”

Craig Breslow, Red Sox: “I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Unless we’re going to kill every single statistic, then we should spare the win. I don’t think you can make a good argument for killing a statistic for not telling the whole story. You just to have to explain it doesn’t give a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of a pitcher.” Read the rest of this entry »

Troy Tulowitzki has been in the news lately because of his desire to be traded away from Colorado (and then his desire not to be), but less publicized is the fact that he’s also in the midst of one of the least productive offensive stretches of his career. His above average walk/low strikeout plate approach has done a 180 this year, with the Rockies shortstop currently posting a career-low walk rate and career-high strikeout rate. With the trade rumors continuing to swirl, we have to wonder: what’s going on with Tulo?

Since first being promoted to the major leagues in 2006, Tulowitzki has shown one of the best all-around toolsets at the shortstop position: he’s hit for power, he’s walked at an above average rate, and he’s limited his strikeouts. Those abilities, combined with great defense, have made him one of the best players in baseball when healthy. Following another season that hinted at what could be if he was able to stay on the field, his numbers have been less than stellar in 2015. In addition to a conspicuous lack of home run power, other parts of his game have fallen off. To start with, let’s take a look at his career walk and strikeout rates compared to league average, updated with this season’s numbers:

As we can see, a slight uptick in strikeout rate might not be terribly worrisome, given the fact that we only have just over a month and a half of the season under our belt. However, the almost total cratering of Tulowitzki’s walk rate is concerning: after a career built on walking at an above average clip, he now has the 7th-lowest walk rate in the majors among qualified hitters. It’s unusual to see such a drastic decrease in walk rate among an established player, and it requires some attention.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Bruce Chen retired on Monday, which makes this a good time to talk about Michael Roth. Chen closed out his career with the Indians, and Roth, a fellow southpaw, signed with Cleveland this past off-season. That’s not their only connection.

A few days before Chen made his announcement, I suggested to the 25-year-old former Angel that he’s similar to the crafty 37-year-old. It turns out I wasn’t the first to do so.

“Bruce told me that after I finished throwing my second bullpen of the year,” explained Roth, who is 5-1 with a 2.39 ERA in eight starts for Triple-A Columbus. “He looked at me and said, ‘Wow, we’re exactly the same; we throw exactly the same way.’

“There are things in his repertoire I like to use. He drops down with his fastball, and throws a drop-down slider. He’ll flip his curveball in, 0-0, and I’m throwing my curveball more this year – a slow curveball. I mix and match angles and throw four different pitches, so I really enjoy talking to Bruce about how he approaches hitters.”

Charles Nagy, who took over as the Columbus pitching coach when Carl Willis left for Boston, agreed there are similarities. He also sees differences, one of which is in Roth’s favor. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2015 Athletics have been talked about more than one might expect given their place in the standings. It might actually be because of their place in the standings that they’re getting talked about so much. Having a record in one-run games of 2-13 will do that to a team. They’re unlucky. Their bullpen has chosen the worst possible times to implode this season. And, while this hasn’t gotten as much attention, their defense has been a serious problem, so much so that they might be one of the worst overall defenses in the past 15 years if they continue this level of play.

Those defensive issues are mostly on the back of the infielders, especially third baseman Brett Lawrie and shortstop Marcus Semien (the latter leads all MLB infielders with 15 errors and was profiled on these digital pages just last week). Last night, with a game against the Rays in the eighth inning, it looked like the A’s might put up a zero in the error column, which is more of an exception than a rule in 2015. Then this happened:

Read the rest of this entry »

Much of (baseball) history comes down to who you believe. Let’s take Gaylord Perry, for example. Here’s an excerpt from his Society of American Baseball Research bio:

Following the season, the rules committee finally outlawed the practice of a pitcher putting his hand to his mouth anywhere on the pitcher’s mound, instructing the umpire to call a ball upon each infraction. According to Perry’s later confession, spitballers had to learn to use foreign substances like Vaseline or hair tonic, rather than saliva. In Perry’s words, “That rule virtually eliminated the pure spitball in baseball. I had the whole winter and spring to work out an adjustment. It wasn’t easy.” Prior to the rule change, Perry would touch his cap and mouth, and fake a wipe of his fingers. Now he had to get his moisture somewhere else on his person, and also learn a new series of elaborate decoy moves. He spent the winter practicing in front of the mirror. After a rocky spring training, he managed just fine.

Seems pretty bad. And at the end of his long, illustrious/infamous career, Perry would actually be ejected for having a ball covered in vasoline. But then, consider his Hall of Fame plaque. Its second sentence reads:

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last six months, Lucas Duda has probably heard a lot about last season’s .180 batting average against left-handers. A quick search reveals more than half a million hits for “Lucas Duda .180” and all the results in the first five pages were relevant. Fortunately for Duda, that unsightly .180 batting average in just 125 plate appearances is not relevant when it comes to evaluating him as a hitter. Duda had an excellent season in 2014 that saw him record 30 home runs and establish himself as one of the better hitters in the league, despite questions persisting about his ability to handle left-handed pitching. With two home runs yesterday off left-handed pitchers, Duda equaled his total from all of 2014 in one day. With four of his five home runs on the season coming off of southpaws complementing his power surge against righties from last season, Duda has helped cement his status as an everyday player and removed the prospect of a platoon from the equation.

After Duda’s poor results against left-handers last season, the New York Mets could have placed Duda in a platoon, benching him against lefties. Duda never had particularly good minor-league numbers against lefties, either, reinforcing the logic of such a move. After the signing of Michael Cuddyer, there was some talk of letting Cuddyer take plate appearances at first base against lefties and making Duda a straight platoon player. After the signing, Duda said all of the right things but maintained confidence that he could still hit lefties. Read the rest of this entry »

Cardinals pitching prospect Alex Reyes is putting up some gaudy numbers in High-A Palm Beach. Through seven starts, the 20-year-old owns a sparkling 1.78 ERA and an equally sparkling 1.80 FIP. FIPs below 2.00 don’t come around all that often, even in the minors. In fact, Reyes’s mark is the lowest among qualified pitchers in the Florida State League.

Given these figures, it goes without saying that Reyes has done plenty of things right this year. But there’s one particular aspect of his performance that really jumps off of the page: his strikeout rate. Reyes has struck out 58 of the 142 batters he’s faced this year, which gives him an Aroldis Chapman-esque 41% strikeout rate. That’s a higher rate than any qualified starter in affiliated baseball this year. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been known for a while that the Reds are in a difficult place. Stuck somewhere between contending and rebuilding, they’ve had good talent — but not enough of it — and it figured they’d have to make some decisions in 2015. There was sense in trying to win — in this wild-card era, it doesn’t take much — but, failing that, tearing down appeared to be the right course. And while it’s not like the outcome has already been determined, the 2015 Reds are coming into focus.

And they’re not great. Nor are they good. And at a few games below .500, it doesn’t seem like this is the year. Odds are, these Reds aren’t going to win the World Series. Now, to be fair, the World Series odds work against every team, and that’s not always a reason to sell off valuable pieces. But, for the Reds, this is Johnny Cueto‘s contract year. Next year is Aroldis Chapman’s contract year. Doesn’t make much sense to keep Cueto if you’re not contending down the stretch. And without Cueto for 2016, it’??s tougher to see Chapman belonging. Contention-wise, the Reds aren’t in a good position. But trade-wise, they’ve got some power.

Since the end of the winter, we’ve been waiting to see where the Phillies might send Cole Hamels. The rest of the trade market has been relatively unclear, because pretty much every other team had better chances of playing competitive baseball than this year’s Phillies. We have heard recently that the Brewers are somewhat open for business. The Rockies seem open to mixing things up, even if those things don’t yet include Troy Tulowitzki. But the Reds could offer two of the premier pieces. Cueto’s as good as almost any other starter. Chapman’s definitely as good as any other reliever. In one course, they could be dealt separately; in another, they could be packaged.

So it leads you to the question: What might the Reds be able to get back for their ace starter and their ace closer?

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

Eight Major League Baseball teams won an initial victory on Wednesday in two federal lawsuits contesting MLB’s minor league pay practices under the minimum wage and overtime laws. At the same time, however, the judge denied the league a potentially more sweeping victory in the cases.

The two lawsuits were filed in California last year by former minor league players who allege that they received as little as $3,300 per year, without overtime, despite routinely being required to work 50 or more hours per week during the playing season (in addition to mandatory off-season training). MLB and its thirty teams responded to the suit by challenging the plaintiffs’ claims on a variety of grounds. Wednesday’s decision considered two of these defenses in particular.

First, 11 of the MLB franchises argued that they were not subject to the California court’s jurisdiction and therefore must be dismissed from the lawsuit. Second, all 30 MLB teams argued that the case should be transferred from California to a federal court in Florida, which they argued would be a more convenient location for the trial.  In its decision on Wednesday, the court granted MLB a partial victory, agreeing to dismiss eight of the MLB defendant franchises from the suit due to a lack of personal jurisdiction, but refusing to transfer the case to Florida. Read the rest of this entry »

As far as health is concerned, the Orioles have had something of a middle-infield catastrophe, with injuries to J.J. Hardy, Ryan Flaherty, and Jonathan Schoop. Injuries sometimes force teams to do creative things, and what we saw Buck Showalter do was push Steve Pearce to second base on the fly. Pearce had never played the position before, but Showalter liked his potential over the somewhat defensively-challenged Jimmy Paredes, even though Paredes had experience. That wasn’t the whole story, though: Paredes remained at DH. Showalter said he still wanted to keep that bat in the lineup.

Which is a funny thing to say about a guy who’s been a terrible hitter for most of his big-league career. Granted, it’s not like Paredes has a decade-long track record, but through his first four years, when he batted almost 500 times, his wRC+ ranked right between Yuniesky Betancourt and Freddy Galvis. There are reasons why Paredes was dumped by the Astros, when the Astros couldn’t afford to be liberal with their dumps. Showalter, though, has been a believer. You could say he’s seen some things. And right now, if you sort by wRC+, with at least 100 trips to the plate, Paredes finds himself sandwiched by Paul Goldschmidt and Miguel Cabrera. What those players have in common with Betancourt and Galvis is that they’re players in major-league baseball.

Read the rest of this entry »