As a matter of self-preservation, I don’t listen to what Curt Schilling says very often. The guy could pitch, however, so when he’s talking about throwing baseballs, not the other stuff, I tune in. When he happened to be on television last year (talking about throwing baseballs), he said something about “going to the well”. Schilling was referring to a starting pitcher getting into trouble — giving up a few hits, walking a batter — and then having to dip into a metaphorical “well” of grit and determination (and most likely velocity) to get out of the inning without further damage.

We know baseball games find themselves at fulcrum points: high leverage situations where the outcome of one at-bat can tip the balance of win expectancy one way or the other. Thinking about Schilling’s “well” comment further, I wondered – how does a starting pitcher’s velocity change in different leverage situations? Does it increase above the pitcher’s usual average when men are on base or when the game hangs in the balance, as we might expect it to?

Does the well really exist?

Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday’s news that Josh Hamilton could be facing an imminent suspension from Major League Baseball has set off a wave of speculation regarding not only the possible cause of the suspension, but also its potential length. Given Hamilton’s history, some have assumed he may have had a relapse of his earlier substance-abuse problems, triggering a possible suspension under MLB’s Joint Drug Agreement (JDA).

Although we presently have very little concrete information regarding Hamilton’s situation, here is what we do know: Mike DiGiovanna broke the news on Wednesday afternoon that Hamilton was in New York City meeting with MLB officials regarding a potential suspension. Ken Rosenthal reported later that, according to an unnamed baseball executive, Hamilton’s transgression was “worse” than a performance enhancing drug (PED) violation.

More alleged details emerged Wednesday evening, with Jon Heyman reporting Hamilton had confessed to a drug relapse involving “at least cocaine.” Heyman went on to report that Hamilton would be placed in MLB’s drug-treatment program as a first-time violator.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is clearly a toy I love playing around with. Please just don’t ask me what it means. I don’t know what it means to say that Henderson Alvarez almost has Felix Hernandez’s changeup. It’s just a statistical observation, like any other. This is all way too new for me to know if it has any substance. If nothing else, it adds some color, right? We are a people somewhat obsessed with player comps. We love comps for young players, because they allow us to pretend like we can see their futures. This is kind of along those lines, at least with regard to the unproven. Carlos Martinez is unproven. Let’s analyze Carlos Martinez.

The Cardinals intend for Martinez to be a starting pitcher, a role in which he’s only dabbled in the major leagues. At this point he’s the favorite to open the year as the No. 5 starter, and while the Cardinals have pursued other arms on the market, that has more to do with a potential lack of depth. Of course, there are Martinez skeptics. There are skeptics of every pitcher who has yet to start and succeed. Frequently, those skeptics come away looking smart! But we don’t know if Martinez is going to develop. All we know is his age, and the kind of arm he has.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Nick Punto informed the Diamondbacks that he’d be taking the year off, deciding not to report to camp even though he had signed a minor league contract with the club earlier this winter. Though he claimed he wasn’t retiring, Punto is 37 and just put up a 73 wRC+ for Oakland, so it’s easy to imagine that his career is over. Despite his small stature and non-existent power, Punto managed to turn a solid glove, positional versatility, and a good eye (career 10.4% walk rate) into a career that spanned parts of 14 seasons.

He found himself as the tongue-in-cheek face of one of the most shocking transactions in baseball history — 2012’s “Nick Punto trade,” which you might remember more for including Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, and a quarter-billion dollars worth of contracts — and carved himself a niche as baseball’s foremost jersey-shredding expert. As far as careers go, you could do a lot worse than all that, not to mention the approximately $23 million he made during his playing days.

Wait! Don’t go anywhere. This isn’t going to be a full Nick Punto career retrospective. I swear. What this is going to be is a hope, a prayer, that Punto’s probable departure from the game takes along with it one of baseball’s most frustrating blights, the thing that he might be known for above all else: the head-first slide, particularly into first base.

Read the rest of this entry »

The default introduction: Mike Trout is among the least-troubled players in baseball. By WAR, you could split him into four or five parts and have four or five decent everyday players, at least given good enough prosthetic limbs. Trout’s coming off an MVP award he deserved, after back-to-back seasons of not winning MVP awards he probably deserved. Regarding his very well-known weakness, I’ve written about this perhaps literally countless times, so maybe you’re tired of hearing about it. And I’m about to make a post out of one quote offered at the beginning of spring training. You know what you’re getting, here. Read on, and the blame lies with you.

Trout has checked into Angels camp. Because he’s a star, people want to know what he’s thinking, and as he stood before a horde of media types, Trout said he’d like to increase his stolen bases. Good news, fantasy players! Trout also said he’d like to cut down on his strikeouts. Probably to 0%. Maybe that’s unrealistic, but Trout opened up just a little bit about what was giving him issues, and it’s not often you can get Trout to say anything of substance.

Read the rest of this entry »

Been talkin’ about BABIP lately. Let’s talk about BABIP again. Let’s talk about Yasiel Puig, and his BABIP.

Last week, I wrote a post on Starling Marte, in which I examined his extraordinarily high batting average on balls in play. I had a hypothesis, and that hypothesis was confirmed. It was far from revolutionary. I knew that Marte was fast, and then I found out that he hits a bunch of line drives and never hits pop-ups. Then I also found out that those three things alone can explain more than 50% of the variance in a player’s BABIP. Again, that’s really nothing new.

The metric I created, BIP Score, featured Marte prominently near the top. Also near the top were a whole bunch of guys with BABIP’s above .330. Yasiel Puig is another guy with a BABIP above .330. It’s way above .330. During his time in the MLB, only two qualified batters have a higher BABIP than Puig. But he’s nowhere to be found in the top half of the BIP Score leaderboard. From the post:

Not everyone with a high BABIP scores well in BIP Score. Yasiel Puig, for example, owns a career .366 BABIP — higher than Marte’s — but actually has a negative BIP Score, thanks to his low line drive and average pop-up rate.

I felt like that warranted an examination of its own. This post is that examination.

I guess, first, we’ll take a look at that BIP Score. That’s how this all started anyway. To get BIP Score, I simply summed the z-scores of every qualified batter’s line drive rate, infield fly rate and speed score and scaled it so 0 was league average. It’s admittedly a quick-and-dirty metric, but the higher the BIP Score, the more likely it is that a player should be able to sustain a high BABIP.

With this methodology, Puig clocked in with a BIP Score of -0.3. To get a sense of the context, let’s look at the other guys around Puig who also clocked in at -0.3.
Read the rest of this entry »

In 2014, relievers appeared in 14,459 games. In more than 90% of those games, the reliever faced multiple hitters, but in 1,266 appearances, the reliever pitched to just one batter. In just about ten percent of those appearances, the reliever made just one pitch. This post looks back at the 139 reliever appearances that lasted just one pitch, according to Baseball-Reference Play-Index Data.

The one-pitch pitchers skewed left with 81 appearances compared to 58 for right-handers. The pitchers were incredibly successful, allowing only 15 hits, and only four extra base hits. One of those hits was a home run. Josh Outman of the Cleveland Indians made just one pitch on May 31, 2014 against the Colorado Rockies. It did not go well.
Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the Red Sox won the bidding war for Cuban prospect Yoan Moncada, reportedly agreeing to pay $31.5 million as a signing bonus, plus another $31.5 million as a tax to the commissioner’s office for going over their allocation for international spending. That totals a $63 million acquisition cost for the organization, making Moncada one of the most expensive prospects in baseball history.

But if anything, the signing cost was perhaps a little bit on the low side of expectations, which had been rumored to be in the $30 to $40 million range for months. And while $63 million is a lot of money, the Red Sox actually guaranteed $72 million to fellow Cuban Rusney Castillo last year. Castillo broke the record for most money from a Cuban signee, set the prior year when the White Sox gave Jose Abreu $66 million. The Diamondbacks clearly used those two contracts as the inspiration for their $68 million deal with Yasmany Tomas, so Moncada became the fourth Cuban to sign for between $63 to $72 million in guaranteed money.

On the one hand, you could say that these four contracts represent a pretty clear price range that the market is willing to pay for talented Cuban hitters, but in reality, each contract has its own unique features that make the simple guaranteed dollar amounts a poor way of evaluating the true cost of the player to the team that signed them.

For instance, Moncada — unlike Abreu, Castillo, and Tomas — was prohibited from signing a major league contract, so the Red Sox do not get the benefit of spreading the cost out over the years during which he’s going to play in Boston, nor will any of the $63 million they’ve already committed to pay cover his future salaries when he does arrive in the big leagues. In other words, the $63 million payout for Moncada was simply to acquire his rights, making it more comparable to the posting fees paid to acquire players from Japan in the past.

Read the rest at Just a Bit Outside.

I don’t think the Dodgers deserve that much credit for signing Brandon Beachy. It’s not like it’s a particularly innovative idea, and a whole host of teams were interested in landing him. The Dodgers beat out almost everyone in available resources, and they beat out almost everyone in immediate outlook, and they had this other advantage, as well:

Beachy said deciding on the Dodgers was easy, mostly because the surgeon of his second Tommy John, Dr. Neal ElAttrache, is also the Dodgers’ team doctor.

“It’s the best place to be,” Beachy said. “I have a lot of faith in Dr. ElAttrache and the training room’s view for bringing me along meshes well with that.”

Beachy was drawn to the Dodgers, and the Dodgers were sufficiently drawn to Beachy to get him to sign. Given everything, the Beachy pickup hardly qualifies as any kind of genius, but for one thing, the upside is readily apparent — the upside of these things is always apparent — and for another, Beachy makes for an interesting depth play. That point isn’t Beachy-specific. Beachy and pitchers like him make for interesting depth plays.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, after what seems like an age, the appointed heroes amongst us mortal men and women have descended upon the ebullient corner of the nation, ball and glove in hand, to throw and to catch. Yes, it still snows 12 inches every week in the Northeast, but the dream is once again here — may we all rejoice in the date of winter’s true passing.

In honor of the fine March spectacle we’re about to witness, or rather to honor the sometimes low-level professional baseball that passes for spectacle because of the state of our desperation, I thought it might be a good exercise to relive some of the glories of past spring trainings. The reason for this is twofold: to remind everyone that spring training stats are next to worthless, and also to celebrate how weird baseball can be when constrained to a small sample size. Today we’re going to revel in the fact that we’re playing the game again by looking at freak occurrences that can only happen in Arizona in March.

Read the rest of this entry »