The Arizona Diamondbacks generated a fair amount of excitement yesterday when they promoted Yasmany Tomas. After the experiment to play Tomas at third base had failed, or at least been tabled for awhile, during Spring Training, Tomas was sent to Triple-A Reno where he had been playing right field. With A.J. Pollock in center field, Mark Trumbo in right field, and Ender Inciarte off to a fast start in left field, there did not appear to be a spot for immediate playing time for Tomas, fueling speculation that perhaps another move was in the offing. Excitement and speculation soon yielded to confusion as Tomas was not in the starting lineup and news that Tomas had been brought up as a bench bat.

The Diamondbacks called up their $68 million investment to sit on the bench, the problem arising due to an unusual roster construction and injuries to two of the three catchers on their 40-man roster with significant experience at the position. When the season started, Arizona put 12 pitchers and 13 position players on the 25-man roster. After Gerald Laird hit the disabled list, the Diamondbacks chose to supplement the bullpen with an additional arm for a few games, calling up A.J. Schugel.

After a few games with the loaded bullpen and shorthanded bench, the Diamondbacks decided to move back to the more traditional setup of having 13 position players and 12 pitchers on their active roster. Due to injuries at catcher, the Diamondbacks were faced with a difficult decision on their roster. Prior to making a move the active roster looked like this (Players on the disabled list in italics):
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The author is telling zero tales out of school when he suggests that baseball analysis — and conversation about baseball, in general — that it’s all improved by the introduction of concepts from other fields into that analysis and into that conversation. It’s obvious that the work at this site, for example, borrows liberally from economics and statistics. A passing familiarity with physics, meanwhile — with which endeavor Dr. Alan Nathan can be of some assistance — allows one to better understand PITCHf/x data. One finds, moreover, that group from Columbia University submitted a paper to this year’s Sloan conference on the use of neuroscience in evaluating a batter’s pitch recognition. Sabermetrics — under the banner of which all this research and all these tools loosely fall — isn’t an isolated field, but rather an interdisciplinary one that is improved by greater cross-referencing of multiple fields.

We’ll return to this discussion briefly, but first let’s consider some technicolor video footage, whose relevance will become clear momentarily.

That’s Mookie Betts stealing second base on Monday against the Washington Nationals and then also stealing third base moments later. When I first saw this highlight on Tuesday morning, it confused me. What I thought was happening was that Mookie Betts, after stealing second and returning to his feet, mistakenly believed that the throw from catcher Jose Lobaton had sailed into center field — but that, owing to a combination of his footspeed and Washington’s poor defensive positioning, that he successfully made it to third base, anyway.

What actually happened was that, with David Ortiz batting, the Nationals infield had executed a shift. Betts, recognizing that third base was left uncovered following his steal, attempted (successfully) to beat the nearest defender (in this case, pitcher Jordan Zimmermann) to it.

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Before the start of the regular season, we took a look at a few American League hitters who, based on their recent batted ball profiles, looked to be headed for a decline this season. While the season is now a little more than a week old, it’s not too late to look at a couple of their National League peers. You’ll have to take my word for it that these players were chosen prior to Opening Day, and I didn’t wait for their early season slow starts to cherry-pick Matt Adams and Brandon Crawford as my two senior-circuit selections. Read the rest of this entry »

The Houston Astros are well known for swinging, missing, and striking out at an extremely high rate. It should come as no surprise the Astros are currently leading the American League in strikeout rate, even in the early going, striking out 26.2% of the time. However, the Astros are not first in Major League Baseball in strikeout rate. That honor goes to the Pittsburgh Pirates who have struck out 26.8% of the time so far this season. Excluding pitchers, the Astros still hold the lead (26.2% to 26.0%), but the Pirates have swung and missed a lot to start the year.

The Pirates have struggled a little out of the gate, getting swept by the Cincinnati Reds to begin the season on their way to winning three out of their first eight games. The pitching has been mostly solid, with a 3.55 ERA and 3.21 FIP, although the bullpen has been credited with the loss in three of the five Pirates losses. In the early-going the Pirates have hit just .221/.270/.366 with a wRC+ of 80. Those numbers are not all that concerning this early, but the Pirates lack of patience is surprising even as strikeout rates across MLB continue to move upwards.

A deviation in the Pirates strikeout numbers in April is not unusual for the team. While the Pirates have switched out Russell Martin for Francisco Cervelli and given Gregory Polanco a full-time role, most of the team is similar to last season. The Pirates struck out more last April than any other month in 2014. As the chart below shows, the same was true throughout MLB last year, although the effect was not as pronounced for MLB as a whole.
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There’s a lot going on with Kevin Gausman right now. He’s throwing a curveball, instead of a slider. I learned that from another baseball writer earlier today in my email. He’s working out of the bullpen, instead of the rotation. I learned that from general news, and from all the people who complain in our weekly chats. And, all of a sudden, he’s throwing high fastballs. I learned that accidentally through research of other stuff. This is of particular interest to me.

In January, I asked a simple question: should Kevin Gausman and James Paxton throw more high fastballs? The thinking was this: the Rays have been prioritizing high fastballs. An effective high fastball has a particular movement, with lots of rise as observed on PITCHf/x. Gausman and Paxton throw fastballs that qualify, but they also threw the bulk of those fastballs low. What if they didn’t do that? Could more strikeouts and success follow? I didn’t know, but I thought it at least worth wondering.

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During the FanGraphs trip to Arizona in February, Carson remarked that I was squeezing an awful lot of juice out of the pitch-comp fruit. It’s true, I was — it was an idea I found interesting, and, more importantly, I didn’t have much else to write about. But now we’ve got a baseball season, a whole brand-new one, which means I get to resume writing about the thing I find perhaps the very most interesting: pitching to Mike Trout. I’ve probably written about this 10 times. I’ll probably write about it another 100 times. Many of you are probably sick of it. I might never grow sick of it.

Scouting reports make the rounds. At first, information is private, exchanged only within the industry. At some point, something gets leaked, or identified by an analyst. Then a report will make the rounds within analytical circles. Analysts write, so reports will be exposed to analytically-minded fans. But things can keep going, if sufficiently remarkable. Sometimes you’ll have a scouting report that makes its way into general baseball knowledge, even among people who don’t think in such granular terms. The Mike Trout scouting report is out there. I don’t even need to tell you anything about it because you’ve been hearing about it for months. Everybody knows. A few days ago I was listening to Mariners radio announcer Rick Rizzs, and he was talking about the importance of pitching Trout hard and in and up. It might be the only thing he has in his brain from within the past 12 years.

So it’s 2015 now. How is Mike Trout being pitched, given, you know, everything?

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Adam Ottavino has been frustrated by platoon splits over his career. And admittedly, he’s had trouble with the lefties. So he’s looked around baseball for pitchers with similar skillsets that he can learn from.

First, he asked me about Steve Cishek, but he quickly understood that his arm slot made him a different pitcher than the Miami closer. Then, he spent some time thinking about Garrett Richards — “he has similar mechanics, that big curve ball, good velocity, and a slider he likes to use a lot,” said the new Rockies closer before his game against the Giants.

Ottavino noticed something about Richards’ fastball — “His four seamer tends to cut slightly when he goes to his glove side. It was the combination of that movement and his awesome sinking movement on his two seam that was interesting to me,” the Rockies pitcher said. But he also wanted to point out that it wasn’t all Richards. “I’ve played with a bunch of guys who had a good cutter and they all seemed to be more comfortable vs lefties than I was. Carlos Torres of the Mets is someone who immediately comes to mind. Adam Wainwright and Jake Arrieta are others that I watched.”

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The projections on Shane Greene have been pessimistic since he was in high school. The story goes like this, courtesy of our own Kiley McDaniel: leading up to the 2009 MLB draft, Greene was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, on the roster at Daytona State Junior College, and was virtually unknown.

Greene’s father talked a Yankees area scout in Florida into watching Shane pitch, and the scout was so impressed that Greene was added to pre-draft workouts, and subsequently taken in the 15th round. To say that his road to the majors is unique is an understatement; arms like Greene’s rarely go unnoticed nowadays.

After a five-year minor league stay and a trade from the Yankees to the Tigers, here we are. By now, you’ve probably heard of Greene’s first two starts of the season, the second happening just last night, in which he has pitched a combined 16 innings while giving up zilch. Yes, it’s immensely early, and Greene only has a short track record of any success at the major league level. However, he appears to have made some tweaks to his repertoire that merit our attention.

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Oakland A’s first baseman/left fielder Mark Canha is off to a fine start to the 2015 season. Through the year’s first week and a half, he’s hitting a solid .333/.353/.515, and leads all rookies with 11 hits. This is obviously a teeny tiny sample, and we all know better than to read too much into seven games. But even so, an excellent performance from a previously unknown player is a little hard to ignore, especially after his six homers and .297/.342/.635 batting line from spring training. The A’s have to be happy with the return they’ve gotten on their rule 5 choice so far.

Although this is his first taste of big league action, Canha’s no youngster. He turned 26 this past February, and has been playing professionally since 2010, when the Marlins drafted him in the seventh round out of the University of California. Although he started out as a 21-year-old in short-season ball, Canha moved through the Marlins system relatively slowly. He spent a full year at each minor league level, so he’s just now making it to the big leagues.

Canha’s slow climb up the minor league ladder wasn’t due to a lack of hitting. His wRC+s from 2010-2014 were 139, 144, 128, 141 and 131. He’s never hit worse than his league’s average, nor has he come particularly close. But, year after year, the Marlins chose to let Canha mash as an old-for-his-league slugger instead of challenging him with more polished pitching. Read the rest of this entry »

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