Archive for Daily Graphings

So here’s something weird. I’ve noticed on Twitter that when Blue Jays fans refer to last night’s ALCS Game Three, they seem to give the credit to the Jays. They say things like, “The Jays were crushing the ball.” But when Royals fans talk about the game, they do it in a Royals-centric context, taking credit away from the Royals, as in, “Cueto sucked.” This isn’t to knock on either fan base. We all do this. I sure do. The truth though, as is often the case, lies in the middle somewhere. The Royals, Cueto especially, pitched badly. The Blue Jays, Troy Tulowitzki and Ryan Goins especially, hit well. But, when parcelling out the blame and/or credit, one can’t be binary about it. Unlike pooping the bed, it’s not an all or nothing thing.

Cueto ended up with a final line of two innings pitched and eight runs allowed. To my eye he struggled, and I doubt your eye would say much different, but based solely on his stuff I wouldn’t have guessed he was eight-runs-in-two-innings bad. Partially because that’s reeeeeeally bad (that’s an ERA of 36.00!), but partially because he just didn’t appear all that awful. So maybe more of the credit/blame for the outcome should fall on the Blue Jays. But then again, I’m not a scout, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.* I was curious to see if I could figure out who should get the credit and how much.

*Maybe?

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Back in July, the Royals and Blue Jays added big name stars to load up their rosters for a deep postseason run. Looking at their team, Kansas City decided they needed a #1 starter, and so they gave up a trio of good young pitching prospects to bring Johnny Cueto over from Cincinnati. The Blue Jays also landed an ace of their own in David Price, but they didn’t stop there, also making a big move to bring Troy Tulowitzki north of the border to take over at shortstop and bolster their offense.

To this point, neither player has quite lived up to expectations. Cueto ran a 4.76 ERA after coming over to the American League and his first round playoff performance was a mixed bag. Tulowitzki, meanwhile, didn’t hit for the kind of power he’s known for, and after missing most of the final season due to a shoulder injruy, he’s been overmatched by the high quality pitching teams have thrown at him in the playoffs.

So in the third inning of the third game of the ALCS, the two July acquisitions met in a moment that looked like it might define the 2015 postseason for one or the other. The Blue Jays already led 3-2 and had a couple of runners on base, but they’d seen the Royals come storming back before, and with Marcus Stroman looking hittable, building a big lead early was going to be important. For Cueto, a double play or strikeout that could let him squash another rally would give him a chance to turn his outing around, as he did after a poor early start in the deciding game of the division series.

And given how poor Tulowitzki has looked in the playoffs, the Royals had to like their chances. A big part of Tulo’s excellence has been his ability to avoid strikeouts in an era where everyone swings and misses with regularity. In 32 postseason plate appearances this year, however, Tulo had already struck out 10 times, and on Sunday, he looked like he just didn’t want to swing. Despite his pedigree, Tulo hadn’t exactly struck fear into anyone’s heart with his recent at-bats.

So, in the biggest at-bat of the game, Cueto decided to go after him. He threw a first pitch cut fastball at 88 mph at the top of the strike zone, and Tulo fouled it off. Perhaps emboldened by the shortstops inability to get around on a pitch below 90, Cueto decided to challenge him with a 93 mph heater, going even higher up the ladder, to see if he could get a swinging strike to get the count to 0-2. Only, this happened.

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The people are growing accustomed to watching the Mets win, and as a side effect of that, the people are growing accustomed to watching Jeurys Familia come in to try to finish the job. Familia has yet to allow a postseason run, and even if you didn’t know anything about him before, you’d be able to tell just from observation that he’s far from a weakness. They say the biggest vulnerability on the Mets is the soft underbelly of the bullpen, and though that would be true for most teams, the Mets make it extra tricky, because the starters often work deep, meaning they can hand the ball to Familia almost directly. Which means there’s almost never any let-up.

What Familia has turned himself into is one of the true reliever elites. It hasn’t always been a smooth and easy path to the top, as Familia has previously fought his own command and struggled to retire left-handed hitters. Both of those are common problems for hard-throwing righty relievers, but Familia this year has overcome them, blossoming into a shutdown closer Terry Collins will trust to get more than three outs. And the thing about Familia is that it goes beyond just his being successful — these days, he arrives at his success on a path all his own.

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Johnny Cueto’s changeup is currently flatter than it’s been in five years. Literally. To some extent, everything in his arsenal is flat right now, but it’s most radical when you look at the changeup. With that wiggle in his delivery and a possibly falling arm slot, it’s easy to find a culprit. But he’s wiggled forever, why has he lost his drop now?

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The wheels started spinning for me Friday afternoon. I was absentmindedly scrolling through numbers, looking for anything relevant to the NLCS, when I came upon something on the Baseball-Reference Cubs splits page. I’ll show you the exact thing I saw:

Go ahead and squint. You’ll make it out. You see categories, designating power and finesse pitchers. Then you see the Cubs’ hitting statistics. They’ve been much, much worse against power pitchers, and while everyone is much, much worse against power pitchers, the Cubs still look worse if you adjust for that. That’s what the last column shows. I made a note to try to write this up. See, the Cubs are playing the Mets, and a lot of the Mets happen to throw super hard.

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Last night, the Cubs saw their ace, Jake Arrieta, give up four runs in five innings in their Game Two loss to the Mets. Given how recently he seemed completely impossible to hit, it was bit jarring to see Arrieta struggle, and multiple observers noted during the game that his velocity appeared to be down from what he was throwing during the regular season. Jesse Rogers post-game recap on ESPN was even headlined “Jake Arrieta’s velocity dip spelled doom for Cubs…”

In discussing the issue with various Cubs after the game, Rogers noted that Joe Maddon saw it as well.

“In the game there, if that [radar] gun was correct on the field, he might have been down a mile an hour or two, that’s what I saw,” Cubs skipper Joe Maddon said. “And when that happens, the breaker, the commitment to the breaking ball is not as definite from the hitter’s perspective, because they’re able to see everything better.”

Arrieta himself noted that he knew his stuff wasn’t as good.

“I knew the high-end velocity wasn’t necessarily there tonight,” he said. “Threw quite a few changeups to offset that.”

He’s not kidding. After throwing just one change-up total in his previous two postseason starts, Arrieta fired off 10 change-ups against the Mets last night. The change-up isn’t a pitch he features much, as only about 5% of his total pitches this year were changeups. The fact that 11% of the pitches he threw were change-ups last night does suggest he didn’t trust his normal repertoire as much, and was looking for ways to get outs without his best stuff.

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Once upon a time, this was a post about how the Cubs lineup was a good matchup for the Mets pitchers. It’s what I’d planned to write if/when the Mets knocked out the Dodgers in Game 5 of the NLDS, but then Corey Seager forgot to cover third base and Andre Ethier caught a foul ball so that became a thing instead.

Now, here we are. The Mets-Cubs series was billed as a battle between New York’s young pitching and Chicago’s young hitting. There were a couple things in the numbers that initially led me to believe the Cubs might have a neutralizer but, so far, it’s been all Mets.

That neutralizer was fastballs. The Mets pitchers, see, throw a lot of fastballs. Correction: the Mets pitchers don’t throw an unusually high number of fastballs; the fastballs they do throw, though, you notice. Think Jacob deGrom, and you think fastball. Think Noah Syndergaard, think fastball. Matt Harvey pops into your head, you probably think “pitch count” or some similarly annoying storyline, but after that, you think fastball. That’s not to say the Mets’ fantastic young rotation doesn’t have other good pitches, too, but, if you’re like me, it’s the fastballs that stand out.

They all throw them hard, and they all throw them well. Theoretically, a team that stands the best chance against the trio of deGrom, Syndergaard and Harvey is one that can hit the hard fastball. Harvey and deGrom throw 95. Syndergaard throws 97. The Cubs, this year, had the second-best slugging percentage in the league against fastballs 96+. An arbitrary cutoff, sure, but the point is: high heat hasn’t crippled the Cubs. Guys like Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Kyle Schwarber — can’t just blow it by them. There’s got to be other ways to get them out.

Let’s now turn our attention to Schwarber in particular. Until Daniel Murphy started happening, maybe no other player did more in the postseason to make a name for himself than Schwarber. When he’s hit the ball, mostly, it’s gone a long way. He hit one into a river, and rivers don’t happen inside baseball stadiums. He hit one onto a roof, and that roof now has a shrine on it. Anyone who didn’t know about Kyle Schwarber before, knows about him now.

Same goes for pitchers. You hear about the league adjusting to young players who come up and experience immediate success. The book getting out. Weaknesses in a hitter can reveal themselves by the way the league begins pitching to them.

And now, Kyle Schwarber’s rate of pitch types seen, by month, since entering the league:

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The postseason always provides some surprising storylines, but this year, nothing has been more unexpected than Daniel Murphy turning into Babe Ruth. The Mets second baseman is mostly known for his extremely high rate of contact — he posted the lowest strikeout rate of any hitter in Major League Baseball this year — but has turned into a super slugger in the playoffs, hitting five home runs in the Mets first seven postseason games. While the team’s pitching staff is their greatest strength, Murphy’s success against the best pitchers in baseball is a big reason why the team is two wins away from reaching the World Series.

But even given his recent power surge, his home run off Jake Arrieta in the first inning of game two remains something to marvel at. Not just because hitting a home run off Jaker Arrieta is impressive, but because the home run was one of the least likely we’ve seen all year.

First, watch the home run for yourself.

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Justin Grimm wasn’t credited with a save when the Cubs vanquished the Cardinals on Tuesday. That doesn’t make his contribution any less important. Fourth-inning runs count just as much as late-inning runs, and St. Louis was poised to erase an early 4-2 deficit.

Grimm entered the game after starter Jason Hammel – shaky through three frames – issued a lead-off walk. He promptly induced a chopper, but third baseman Kris Bryant, in his effort to turn two, bobbled the ball. All hands were safe. Through no fault of his own, and with apprehension gripping Wrigley Field, Grimm was in a pickle.

The righty was more than ready. Grimm initially warmed in the second, and he got hot again in the third. When he finally strolled to the mound in the fourth inning, Joe Maddon handed him the ball and said, “Hey, man. Be you. Do your thing.” Read the rest of this entry »

The mission for the Royals is actually complicated. They need to be able to score, of course, which means they’ll need to score against pitchers like David Price and Marcus Stroman. They’ll need to contain every member of the Blue Jays lineup, because it’s not like you can ever afford to take a hitter off in the playoffs. But let’s be real — as far as the focus is concerned, many eyes are going to be on how Royals pitchers deal with Toronto’s offensive core. While it won’t be everything about the series, the Jays have grown accustomed to watching the same sluggers blast through all their opponents. The Royals are going to want to stop that.

Toronto had the best offense in baseball, in largest part because they had three of the best hitters in baseball. According to the FanGraphs leaderboards, among qualified hitters, Josh Donaldson ranked seventh-best in the majors. Edwin Encarnacion ranked eighth, and Jose Bautista ranked ninth. Bautista was tied with someone named Chris Davis, just ahead of one Andrew McCutchen. It’s an embarrassment of riches, and just to maximize the terror, the Blue Jays bat the three back-to-back-to-back. It’s on the Royals to figure out how to get them out. And I can offer a little bit of advice, although it’s less helpful than it might appear.

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