Yesterday, we kicked off our look at each division by going through the NL West. Today, we’ll do the AL version from the land of pitcher’s parks.

The Projected Standings

There are two pretty strong contenders at the top, two somewhat interesting teams hanging around the middle, and a likely also-ran. The top of the AL West is unlikely to be as strong this year as it was a year ago, but the low-end of the division should be somewhat better, and the race is open enough to remain interesting all year long. Let’s take a look at the teams.

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Many people were disappointed with Matt Adams in 2014. Most were probably fantasy owners. In real life, Adams had a solid year, and hit a really important home run off of the best pitcher in baseball during a really important playoff game. You might remember the one:

Being the first lefty to homer off of Clayton Kershaw’s curveball and clinching a playoff series in the process is a job well done in most books. There are a lot of different ways to excel in baseball, and Adams was certainly above-average offensively in 2014 (116 wRC+) — he just wasn’t the type of good that most people wanted out of him, the type in which 30 baseballs leave the yard. He was something other than expected in 2014, but that doesn’t mean he should be considered a disappointment.

Still, the awesome power potential that he flashed in limited time during 2013 (.220 ISO in 108 games) specifically didn’t reach expectations last year, so that area of letdown is at least somewhat understandable. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype when a player hits eight home runs in one month (September of 2013), but the fact remains: Adams’ true offensive output is still a question, and perhaps more than ever following a 2014 that differed substantially from 2013.

Already documented in these fine digital pages were some of his adjustments to the shift during the early part of last year, but let’s aim to answer that true talent question in depth today. What batted ball trends and adjustments did we see from him in 2014, and what might they tell us about his potential 2015? Who is the real Matt Adams: might he return at some point to his 2013 form, bashing homers left and right, or might he be more like the 2014 version moving forward?

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Last week’s article on Danny Santana’s 2015 projected offensive decline generated some interesting feedback, so I decided to circle back and focus on a couple more players whose detailed batted-ball info suggests significant 2015 decline. I couldn’t pick two more dissimilar players if I tried; this week’s subjects are the Orioles’ 2014 everyman-savior, Steve Pearce, and the Royals’ postseason breakthrough star, Lorenzo Cain. The eyes and the numbers tell markedly different stories for a variety of reasons, but for both players, a preponderance of the arrows are pointing downward for the upcoming season. Read the rest of this entry »

At a lazy spring pre-game meeting with Bob Melvin a few weeks back, he mentioned off-hand that Marcus Semien wasn’t going to play every day. For half a second, it seemed we had a bit of a scoop on our hands, an emerging platoon at shortstop for the Athletics. But then, that was worth a confirmation — “You just mean he’s an Athletic, right?”

Yeah, Melvin said, “We don’t play anyone everyday. But when he’s playing, he’s playing short.” Less of a scoop, but still interesting, was this confirmation of what Billy Beane said during the winter meetings about Semien’s new-ish position.

Here’s a player that had played all over the diamond in Chicago, coming to a new team to take over one position as a starter. That hasn’t happened much before. In fact, only four players since 2002 have left one team as a utility man and arrived on their new team as a shortstop — Adeiny Hechavarria, Craig Counsell, Jed Lowrie, and Julio Lugo.

The manager and the player were upbeat about what the position switch would mean for his defense. As the latter three names show, it isn’t a move that’s usually done with defense standouts, but there might be something about focusing on one position that helps.

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Probably should have seen this one coming. Last week, FanGraphs overlord David Appelman announced some minor improvements to the way WAR is calculated on the site, one of them being the inclusion of a double play avoidance stat (wGDP). Shortly thereafter, managing editor Dave Cameron wrote a post regarding The Thing Adam Dunn Was Surprisingly Great At (hint: it was avoiding double plays) and mentioned, in passing, that Mike Trout happened to be the very best at that particular thing last season.

As a quick refresher course, I’ve created an entirely underwhelming flowchart which I believe accurately represents the state of Major League Baseball in the year 2015. My sincerest apologies go out to Sean Dolinar, for I assume this single-handedly ruins all the hard work he’s done over the past couple months in an effort to unify and improve the site’s graphics.

Behold:

So that’s how we got here. A new stat was born, and, like clockwork, Mike Trout just so happened to be the best at it. Well, he was last year at least. In 2014, Trout led the MLB by creating an additional three runs above average by avoiding the double play. If you want take it back a bit further, here’s what a top-15 leaderboard looks like over the last three years, or since Trout has been a full-time regular:

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In 2011, Brian Matusz had one of the worst seasons imaginable as a pitcher. At the end of Spring Training, he suffered an intercostal strain and missed the first three months of the season. In his first start back, he gave up one run in 5 2/3 innings pitched, struck out three and walked none. In his next eleven starts, broken up by a stint in the minor leagues, he pitched 44 innings, struck out 35, walked 24 and gave up 18 home runs. There have been roughly 7,000 pitcher seasons over 40 innings in the last 20 years. Brian Matusz’ 3.26 HR/9 is the highest of all of them. Matusz was given another shot to start the next season, but was sent to the minors in July and when he returned, it was as a reliever, the role he has had ever since.

There have been some discussions about moving him back into a starting role. Baltimore does not currently have an opening for him, but there have been rumors that another team could trade for him and try to recapture the talent that once made him Baseball America’s number five prospect in all of baseball. In his recent Sunday Notes column, David Laurilia asked him if he enjoyed starting more and he answered, “Absolutely. No question.” The Orioles had been ramping up Matusz with starter innings, getting up to four innings on March 20th, but have since limited him to one inning performances, readying him for the role he has held the last two seasons for the Orioles.
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To say Javier Baez had a rocky start to his big league career would be an understatement. After tearing up the minor leagues to the tune of .274/.331/.541, the 21-year-old rookie hit a putrid .169/.227/.324 in 52 games with the Chicago Cubs last year. His on base percentage was the lowest of any hitter who recorded at least 200 plate appearances last year.

Baez’s contact problems were unprecedentedly chronic. Just 59% of his swings resulted in contact, which is the lowest mark we’ve seen in the PITCHf/x era. However, Baez’s Contact% only tells part of the story. It reveals that many of his swings didn’t lead to contact, but doesn’t tell us why. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re just a week from Opening Day, and while our Positional Power Rankings series is designed to give an overview of each team’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s still helpful to look at each team in the context of their division. So, today, I’m kicking off our divisional previews, and we’ll knock out each division — going west to east — over the rest of the week. Today, we’ll start with the NL West.

The Projected Standings

Our forecasts suggest that there’s a clear favorite at the top, two teams in a pretty close fight for second, and two also-rans who are unlikely to make a serious push for the postseason. Let’s take a closer look at each team.

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Thirty-three innings into his major league career, Anthony DeSclafani was traded to the Reds. The Reds braintrust must have seen a few things they liked about his arsenal, and now it looks like he’s got a rotation spot. He’s got a good fastball, a decent breaking ball, and good command, that much most people agree on, even as they doubt him. So much of his future, though, hangs on the quality of his changeup.

Ask the pitcher to sum himself up, and you get what you might see the first time you take a look at DeSclafani’s numbers. “I’m an aggressive pitcher, especially with my fastball,” he said before a spring game. “Attacking hitters, going after guys — I just like to attack the strike zone, really.”

DeSclafani walked just two batters per nine in the minors, and only five in his first 33 major league innings. Last year, the league’s starters threw 56% fastballs, and the 24-year-old Marlin threw 70% fastballs. He was in the zone 49% of the time last year, and the league average was 42%. He knows himself well. His short description of himself is decent.

But most agree that he has a good fastball and decent command. And also that his breaking ball is good. It got 19% whiffs last year, and the major league average is around 14%.

Still. Batters had an OPS of .850 against his slider last year. That might be because major league hitters can be ready for those fastballs and breaking balls when the pitcher is obvious in trying to even the count.

“You have to be able to throw any pitch in any count,” DeSclafani says he learned last year. The league threw breaking balls 20% of the time in counts with zero or one strike last year, and then upped that to 30% in two-strike counts. DeSclafani went from 20% to 40% slider usage once he got two strikes, and maybe that was too predictable.

But part of the issue here is the depth of repertoire. If he had more faith in the curve or the change, he’d have another weapon at his disposal in those moments.

The curve is almost a total unknown. “Just started throwing a curveball at the end of the year last year, in September,” the pitcher admitted. He had thrown it before, but it wasn’t any good. “It was a below-average pitch so I kinda canned it. Fixed the mechanics, and I spike it now.”

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

The almost certain, impending demotion of Kris Bryant to the minor leagues for the season’s first couple weeks has brought renewed focus on Major League Baseball’s service time rules. As most readers are by now well aware, by sending Bryant to the minors for the first two weeks of the season, the Cubs will ensure that he fails to earn a full year’s worth of major league service time in 2015, preventing Bryant from becoming a free agent until 2021, rather than after the 2020 season. While it thus makes sense from a business standpoint for the Cubs to send Bryant to the minors for a fortnight to preserve an extra year of his services down the road, the thought that baseball’s top prospect – and MLB’s spring training home run leader – could begin the season in Triple-A has nevertheless led to calls for the Major League Baseball Players Association to take a stand on the issue.

Last week, for instance, Ken Rosenthal wrote a column arguing that the MLBPA should file a grievance if Bryant is demoted. Although he recognized that the union would almost certainly lose such a grievance – since arbitrators generally defer to teams on decisions regarding a player’s major-league readiness – Rosenthal nevertheless believed it would show the owners that the MLBPA won’t be pushed around on the issue. Meanwhile, others have taken a somewhat more patient approach, urging the MLBPA to address service time manipulation in the next round of collective bargaining talks following the 2016 season.

However, while service time manipulation certainly needs to be dealt with, the MLBPA has a much more significant and pressing – but often overlooked – issue to address in the next round of CBA negotiations: the players’ plummeting share of overall MLB league revenues.

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