Archive for Daily Graphings

No matter what happens in the next seven games, we’ll be motivated to learn a grander lesson from it. Not many picked this World Series matchup anyway, so we’ll search ourselves for a takeaway. Why did we look the wrong way?

The problem with going too far down this rabbit hole, other than not finding very much, is that these teams couldn’t be any more different. Name a facet of the game and the Mets and the Royals are on opposite sides of the leaderboard. You have to squint to get them in the same neighborhood anywhere really.

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In any given nine-inning baseball game, there are upward of 250 pitches thrown. More than half of those pitches, more often than not, are going to be thrown somewhere in the range of 90-97 mph. They’re all going to move somewhere between two and 12 inches, and most of them will travel through the same theoretical three-square-foot box. It’s easy for these pitches to begin blending together. That’s why we appreciate the ones that truly set themselves apart. These ones are easy to spot.

This is similar to a post I did last year around this time. The mission: find the 10 individual pitches deemed nastiest by my subjective criteria, hopefully learn something about those pitches and what it is that makes them so effective, and then see them in action so we have a reference point and something extra to keep an eye out for the in World Series.

How it’s done: I expanded a bit on last year’s criteria. Last year’s criteria, it was just whiff rate and ground ball rate, per individual pitch. Those are the two best common results-based outcomes a pitch can have. A complete swing-and-miss, or the weakest contact of the three main batted ball types. This year, I folded in two process-based characteristics along with the results, adding velocity and spin rate, with spin data coming from Statcast. Two big things that make a pitch aesthetically pleasing, to us, are speed and movement. Velocity and spin rate should capture that. Two big things that make a pitch effective, to pitchers, are whiffs and grounders. We’ve got that down. Oh, also, an executive decision I made and forgot to mention: for four-seam fastballs, I substituted pop-up rate for ground ball rate. Felt like the right thing to do, given four-seams are the one pitch, more than any other, thrown up in the zone with no intention of getting grounders. Anyway, I calculated z-scores for each of the four selected characteristics, for each pitch type, added them up, and found 10 pitches that stood above the rest. These are those 10 pitches.

No. 10: Wade Davis – Knuckle Curve

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There’s something that would bother me about Kelvin Herrera. To be clear, it had nothing to do with his personality. And it had nothing to do with the fact that he was successful. Herrera should be successful. Have you watched him? The last two years, he’s run a 2.06 ERA. He’s allowed a .570 OPS, and while maybe that doesn’t mean a lot to you without context, how about this as context — Kenley Jansen has allowed a .569 OPS. David Robertson, .581. The numbers have been there for Herrera. He’s been a reliever with a triple-digit fastball and some statistics to match. Nothing about that is weird.

What would bother me was that, just from watching Herrera for a few minutes, you’d think he’d be a high-strikeout pitcher. Just from being aware of his velocity, you’d think he’d be a high-strikeout pitcher. I know we might make too much of strikeouts around here. I know I shouldn’t have been too bothered when Herrera was still finding ways to succeed. But the last two years, he’s been a flamethrower with the same strikeout rate as Chad Qualls. Compared to the league, Herrera actually ran a strikeout rate that was slightly below average for a reliever. It’s a small thing, maybe a petty thing, but it’s a thing my brain struggled to understand. Whenever I looked at Herrera’s numbers, I’d expect them to be something different.

Something like, say, what Herrera’s done in these playoffs. Since really emerging as a shutdown reliever for the Royals, Herrera’s struck out a little more than a fifth of the hitters he’s faced. Against the Astros and Blue Jays, however, he’s struck out about half of the hitters he’s faced. Herrera in this postseason: 33 batters, 16 strikeouts, .438 OPS. The heat, as you know, has been there. But it’s been accompanied by something different, something new. Kelvin Herrera tinkered with a slider, and he learned to harness it just in time.

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Mounds are set to specifications. They need to be elevated 10 inches above the rest of the field and slope at a rate of one inch per foot over a span of at least six feet. The front edge of the rubber has to be exactly 60 feet, six inches from the rear point of home plate.

They may be the same, but they don’t all feel the same. Jonathan Broxton, Steve Cishek and Jason Motte told me that each one is a little different. Cardinals pitching coach Derek Lilliquist opined that they’re all the same, but then compromised his claim by saying “some can change your feel, change your mechanics a little bit.”

But again, they’re set to specifications. Motte told me he saw the grounds crew measuring the Wrigley Field mound as the team was preparing to travel to Pittsburgh for the Wild Card game. As Lilliquist put it, “At the end of the day, it’s still 60 feet, six inches, with the same slope.”

Motte also told me that “It’s not like you can do anything to try to gain some kind of home field advantage by giving pitchers an advantage, or a disadvantage.”

Why then the different feel? Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals put me in a weird position. It’s not because their two consecutive pennants make skeptical and critical analysts look stupid — we went over that a year ago, and previously, we went over the same stuff with the Giants. If anything, that part of this is just funny. No, the Royals put me in a weird position, because they make it tempting to believe in ideas that run contrary to what I’ve been taught. I’m not supposed to believe in a team’s vibe. I’m not supposed to believe in a team’s unkillability. I’m not really supposed to believe in powerful and particular things, because baseball is intensely competitive, and it doesn’t make sense that one team would ever have a secret. I’m not supposed to believe the Royals are more special than any other team. Than, say, the Blue Jays. And I’m not saying I do believe in the Royals’ magic. They’re just pretty good at sucking me in. It’s a baseball team that makes me think twice about assumptions I have about baseball teams.

The ALCS isn’t going to have a Game 7. Would’ve been fun, but this was a plenty good way to wrap up. The ALDS between the Rangers and the Blue Jays came to an unforgettable conclusion, a very wild and unpredictable conclusion, but aside from the tie-breaking home run, that memorable inning turned on a series of defensive mistakes. Just before the homer, the whole inning was sloppy. That might’ve been baseball around its most entertaining. What we just saw in Game 6 was baseball in the vicinity of its best. The Royals and Blue Jays competed in a classic, and, of course, the Royals won. They’re the Royals, after all. I don’t know exactly how we got here, but I can tell where we are on the map.

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Daniel Murphy chose a really good time to play some really good baseball. He’s hit home runs in six straight games, with a chance to extend that streak once the World Series commences on Tuesday. This is a record for postseason play, as you may have learned if you’ve paid any attention to baseball reporting in the last three days.

However, it’s certainly not unheard of. Since 1914, as far back as Baseball-Reference’s game-by-game records go, 28 players have managed a regular-season home run streak of six or more games*. I will not overload you with the full list, but it includes names both very familiar (Gehrig, Mays, Griffey, Bonds) and obscure, folks you’d fully expect on the list and others who would make you scratch your head.

* The standard I used allows a streak to remain intact if a player had no plate appearances in a game, similar though not identical to the official rules governing hitting streaks. This actually arose among the 28, notably with Graig Nettles. In 1984, Nettles hit homers in two straight games, got two games off, homered in his next two, took two more off, and homered in the following two. I also permit a streak to carry over between seasons, which put 1997-98 Mark McGwire on the list.

Going into October, Murphy would have been one of the head-scratchers. In his seven seasons, his highest home-run total is 14, produced this season. He simply lacked the power to be a reasonable candidate for such a feat — until he flipped the switch and lit up the Dodgers and Cubs.

Is Murphy the unlikeliest of the players who have put together a homer streak of six games or more?

To produce an answer, I looked at the seasons in which those on the list did the deed, and took their rates of home runs per plate appearance (HR/PA). I went by season rather than career because such a streak is an event likeliest at a player’s peak, and the chances go up much more than linearly with rising rates. The HR/PA stat seemed better than raw homer totals because probability per time up is more germane to the nature of a streak than mere accumulation.

As I’ve noted, homer streaks are no shock with some players. In 2001, Barry Bonds homered in 10.99% of his plate appearances. He had two separate six-game homer streaks, one in April and one in May. This inaugurated the golden age of home run streaks. Ten of the 28 streaks occurred in just six years, from 2001 to 2006. (As for why they happened in that span, discuss among yourselves.)

Bonds’ 2001 is the top HR/PA rate on the list. The lowest would belong to… Daniel Murphy, with 14 homers in 538 PA for a 2.60% rate. The hitch is that he’s made his streak in the postseason, so regular season numbers are, if not irrelevant, at least incomplete. Adding his postseason numbers to the regular season gives him 21 for 577, coming out to a 3.64% rate.

That’s a very low rate for a homer streaker, but two other players beat him out. Second lowest on the list is George “Highpockets” Kelly. He made his streak for the New York Giants in July 1924, in a year when he hit 21 round-trippers in 627 appearances for a rate of 3.35%. (Interestingly, despite the Polo Grounds being a great place for dead-pull power, Kelly’s whole streak was on the road, mainly at Wrigley Field.)

For the lowest rate on the list, we go to someone who actually beat the streak criterion. Out of the first 28 players with homer streaks at least six games long, six have gone longer. Tied for the record at eight are Dale Long (1956), Don Mattingly (1987), and Ken Griffey Jr. (1993). Behind them, at seven games, are Jim Thome (2002), Barry Bonds (2004), and the 2006 season of our homer-rate anchorman… Kevin Mench.

Mench, who honest to goodness I did not remember had played baseball until he popped up on this list, did not string together his streak in his best power season, or second-best, or third-best. He did it with a mere 13 home runs in 482 PA, a rate of 2.70%. He hit more than half of his season’s homers in an eight-day, seven-game stretch in late April, against the Devil Rays, A’s, and Indians. Six of the games were at home in Arlington, Texas.

That combination of obscurity, low power, and pushing his streak to a seventh game makes Mench’s run easily the most improbable of the 28 who did it in the regular season. As for being more unlikely than Murphy’s, so far it is, with two caveats.

First is degree of difficulty. Murphy’s done his streaking against, not just playoff teams, but super pitchers. His streak includes dingers off Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, and Jake Arrieta, who will be gold, silver, and bronze in some order in the NL Cy Young race. Jon Lester’s no slouch either. Mench’s streak included three games against the Devil Rays, who were still in the laughingstock phase of their existence.

The second caveat is that Murphy’s streak is not over yet. It may fade out in the long wait for Game One, but it’s a bold prognosticator who would take that as a given. If he can stretch it for one more game, the title may be his. If he manages two, it’s definitely his.

That just one more reason to look forward to Tuesday. And maybe Wednesday.

Allow me to argue something that isn’t going to matter in a day or two. That’s the thing about writing about playoff series — no matter what, the relevance is fleeting. It all seems so important in the moment; it’s all over in just a few blinks of the eye. This argument probably isn’t going to mean very much, and it would’ve been better made before the ALCS began, but think about series keys. A full series is almost entirely unpredictable, only a little less unpredictable than one or two games, so think of this as a general series note, being made with the series in progress.

What it is, I think, is a matter of team identities. When people think about the Kansas City Royals, they think about defense, clutch hitting, and the bullpen. Holy crap, the bullpen, that’s been so valuable for them in the past. It seems like they got past the loss of Greg Holland without even missing a beat. The Toronto Blue Jays? When people think about the Blue Jays, they think about home runs, and David Price, and Marcus Stroman, and home runs. They’re the could-be and should-be and have-already-been offensive juggernaut put together to blast its way to the Series. The Blue Jays are supposed to have the obvious strength. The Royals are supposed to do more of the little things.

One of those being, get the late outs. And even the middle outs, depending on things. The Royals bullpen has a reputation, now, and it’s been fairly earned. The Royals bullpen is thought of as shortening ballgames, a group of arms the opponent doesn’t want to see because it means a total offensive shutdown. The way the pen gets talked about sometimes, it’s like it’s almost invincible. It is, without question, very good. Even without Holland. But an easy thing to miss is the Blue Jays aren’t much worse. Even without Brett Cecil. I don’t know to what extent the bullpens will matter over what’s left of this series, but it doesn’t look like a terrible mismatch.

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Earlier this week, Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski compared the current Red Sox roster to the one currently featured by the Kansas City Royals. For those readers just arriving here today in a time machine from three years ago, that might be surprising. Because for a long time, that would not have been a gesture of praise. For a long time, the Royals were bad; the Red Sox, typically better. But last year Boston missed the playoffs and Kansas City went to the World Series. This year, again, Boston missed the playoffs and Kansas City is very possibly on its way to the World Series. It’s not particularly daring to suggest that the Royals are better than the Red Sox wherein baseball is concerned.

Dombrowski’s decision to compare his roster favorably to the Royals’ make sense: there’s a natural inclination in all of us to imitate the qualities of those we perceive to be better. So of course Dombrowski would compare his last place team to the club that has now reached the ALCS (and, maybe soon, the World Series) in two consecutive seasons. Heck, who wouldn’t want to be like the Royals?

To what degree, though, will the complexion of that Kansas City club, and the means by which it was built, actually influence Dombrowski’s choices this offseason when considering how to construct his own major-league roster? And to what degree will it influence other front offices? If the Royals win the World Series and become the chosen franchise to emulate, can we expect relievers to command top dollar, maybe more than otherwise? To find teams clamoring for contact-oriented athletes? A secret trustworthy source thinks so. Okay, fine, it’s Theo Epstein. Here’s what Epstein said to reporters this past Monday.

The only thing I know for sure is whatever team wins the World Series their particular style of play will be completely in vogue and trumpeted from the rooftops by the media all offseason — and in front offices — as the way to win. If we win the World Series it’s going to be a necessity for every team to develop their own core of young, homegrown position players. If the Mets win it will be required that you have four ridiculous young starting pitchers on the same staff. If the Royals win you need to have speed and athleticism and contact up and down your lineup. If the Blue Jays win you need to fill your lineup with righthanded, epic mashers and make a huge trade at the deadline.

It’s tempting to say Epstein is overstating the case. After all, are MLB teams, ridiculously rich enterprises increasingly run by the cream of the Ivy League, really so susceptible to something as frivolous as who wins a single four-game series? Hell if I know, but even if I did know I’d take Theo Epstein’s opinion over mine. And faced with a choice between conducting a tedious study to verify the truth of his claim or just blindly accepting it blindly, well, in Theo we trust, eh?

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Sitting on the desk of nearly every manager in baseball before any given game are several large packets of information, compiled by that team’s analytics department about that day’s opponent. The packets are thick, and the front pages typically contain images with which you’re likely familiar simply from reading FanGraphs every day. Red and blue heat maps, sometimes varying by handedness, pitch type or count. Spray charts, usually with lines as the visual component rather than dots, and almost always split up by ground balls, fly balls and line drives. The middle and back pages, presumably, get more and more detailed, and the most interesting thing I’ve seen is command data for each opposing pitcher, split up by pitch type.

Condensed versions of these packets are placed in players’ lockers several hours before first pitch, met with varying levels of reception. Some can be seen rigorously studying them, others will give them one quick glance over before crumpling them up and throwing them in the trash.

Information is a good thing, but sports are still physical and reactionary by nature, and for some players, information overload certainly exists as a con. In all reality, for a middle-of-the-season noon game against the Phillies on getaway day, it probably doesn’t matter too much. We’re past that point in the season, now. The scouting reports are to be read. The packets are to be studied.

Over the next week, one American League team will be learning everything there is to know about the New York Metropolitans. Their unique individual tendencies, strategies, weaknesses and strengths. Where they hit the ball, where they pitch the ball, where they stand in the field, how they react to different situations and more. In the grand scheme of things, the advantages to be gained from this information are small, sure, but every little advantage in the World Series is an advantage in the World Series.

Somewhere in the middle of that packet in the manager’s office may exist a page about a team’s tendencies, at the plate, by count. It’s a page that might be skipped over in July. It’s not a page that gets skipped in October. No pages get skipped in October.

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Twitter was apoplectic. Drug tests were demanded. Old suspensions were being brought up. Hands were wrung. Edinson Volquez? Throwing 96s and 97s deep into his start? Where is this velocity coming from? This can’t possibly be right.

Turns out, Volquez hasn’t even added the most velocity this postseason. He’s fourth or fifth among starters, depending on your definition, and he’s not too far from the the norm that we should be bugging out. The postseason, like the debut, comes with adrenaline, and that adrenaline leads to a bump in velocity. Baseball is that simple sometimes.

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