Archive for Daily Graphings

For a while there we thought the Bryce Harper vs. Mike Trout thing was done with. Trout had dusted him. Trout had dusted everyone. Is there anyone Trout hasn’t dusted? Look at yourself! You are covered in dust!

Three straight MVP-quality seasons have made Trout more than a competitor with Harper, they’ve made him the face of baseball (sorry, Eric Sogard!). Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Harper has trudged along at a good, if not great, level. Sure, he’s only 22 and playing in the majors when most of his peers are at Double-A, but at this point comparing him to the best player in baseball is just silliness. That competition is over. Or was over, it seemed, until two weeks ago.

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The last couple of weeks, we’ve discussed many of the various aspects of the emerging granular batted-ball velocity/exit angle data that is all the rage today. Starting this week, we’re bringing it all together, reviewing the best and worst contact-makers (and allowers) in both leagues in 2014. Earlier this week, we covered the AL offensive contact-quality leaders and laggards. Today, it’s the NL hitters’ turn. You will notice that contact quality, while extremely important, is far from the singular defining characteristic of a hitter.

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As I look at things now, Brandon Crawford has been as good a hitter this year as Matt Holliday and Kris Bryant. But, I understand it’s just May. Small samples can turn opposites into comparisons. So, turning to the past calendar year, I see beside Crawford’s name those of Torii Hunter and Aramis Ramirez. By now, it seems evident that Crawford is at least an average hitter or so. He’s showing signs, this year, of being something greater than that.

And maybe that’s something you’ve grown used to. We adapt with remarkable speed. But, try to remember what Crawford was when he was younger. Or, failing that, let me just remind you. In the minors, in Double-A, Crawford managed a .682 OPS. In Triple-A, he was dozens of points worse than that. As a major-league rookie, Crawford didn’t exactly hit like a pitcher, but he hit like one of those people we call a good-hitting pitcher. This was the first paragraph of an article from March 2012:

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Even after a win Tuesday, the Padres stand at a flat 20-20, and there’s talk that manager Bud Black might be on the hot seat given ownership expectations. Curiously, the Padres aren’t letting minor-league coach Pat Murphy talk to the Brewers, and while there’s any number of potential explanations, one could be that the team sees Murphy as a Black replacement. Managers get fired by disappointing baseball teams. The Padres haven’t quite lived up to their preseason hype.

When you get to thinking about why, it’s only natural to consider the team defense. It always looked like it was going to be a potential issue, and the numbers indicate the defense has indeed been a weakness, mostly in the outfield. By Defensive Runs Saved, the Padres have been the fourth-worst defensive team in the league. By UZR, they’re second-worst. Right there, it seems like you can explain the team’s bottom-six ERA. But as it turns out, there’s something else going on. Something that’s hurt the Padres even more than their defense.

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After another loss on Tuesday night, the A’s stand 14-27, the worst mark of any team in baseball. That record comes in spite of the fact that they’re 5th in the majors in runs scored (184), and have “only” allowed 190 runs to their opponents; being outscored by six runs over 41 games generally does not lead to a disastrous win-loss record, but that’s where the A’s find themselves after the first quarter of the season. And as is often the case when a team’s record doesn’t match their run differential, the blame can be laid almost entirely at the feet of the A’s relievers.

At the most basic level, you could just look at their 4.99 bullpen ERA — 29th in the majors — and conclude that they’ve struggled, but ERA is not a great tool to evaluate pitcher performances, and it’s especially poor at evaluating relief pitcher performance, because often their job is to come in and squash a rally; if they fail, the starting pitcher’s ERA is the one that goes up, so ERA won’t reflect bullpen performances in those situations.

And, of course, not all runs are created equal, especially late in the game. If you’re up 10-3 in the eighth inning and your bullpen gives up a few runs, it’s not a particularly big deal, as you’re extremely likely to win the game anyway. So when discussing a bullpen’s impact on a team’s record, we care not just about the number of runs they allow — whether ERA blames them for it or not — but also the distribution of when they allow those runs, and whether more of them happen to be coming in situations where giving up even a single run can have a dramatic outcome on the game.

Evan Scribner is a fantastic example of how different a reliever’s performance can be from their traditional numbers. If you just look at his overall line, it appears that he’s having an excellent season; 23 innings, 17 hits, 2 walks, 27 strikeouts, and a 2.38 ERA. Even newer-fangled pitching numbers like FIP (2.30) and xFIP (2.20), that are designed to better isolate a pitcher’s performance, think very highly of Scribner. From a context-free standpoint, Scribner has been terrific, but once you look at the distribution of his performances, you find a somewhat different story.

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This spring, the Arizona rotation was a fascinating mix of imported and home-grown youth, and Josh Collmenter and Jeremy Hellickson. Each of the youngsters gave us a point of emphasis this spring, and now that they’ve each had a few chances to show their work, we could give out some first semester grades. And maybe figure out how who’s at the head of the class.

Chase Anderson might have the best argument for valedictorian. He’s had the best ERA and peripherals, and that’s not too surprising, since he was the guy that had the most experience. And if Rubby de la Rosa has a plus changeup, you could say that Anderson has two.

So Anderson spent the spring working on his two-seamer, he said. If you look at PITCHf/x and his homer and grounder rates, you’d think he has succeeded in that effort. By that measure, he’s upped his usage of the sinker from 18% to 27%. His ground-ball rate has gone up from 40% to 43%. It’s a tempting narrative, especially since it fits into what the pitcher himself said earlier this year.

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The San Francisco Giants’ offense should be better than we have seen thus far. On the other hand, the Giants’ offense should be a lot worse than we’ve seen thus far. But then again, maybe the Giants’ offense is about what we expected it to be. Below is an attempt to determine how much water is currently in the San Francisco Giants’ glass.

The Optimist’s View

The Giants have been unlucky and they are bound to turn things around. Since the beginning of the season, the Giants’ offense has been one of the best in the league, but has failed to score runs. The defending World Series champions carry a solid .268/.332/.398 line after 39 games. Their .319 wOBA ranks eighth in Major League Baseball and their wRC+ of 105 is sixth. Removing pitcher statistics makes their numbers even better, as the wRC+ of 113 is fourth in all of baseball and just one point away from second place (if also a mile behind the 134 wRC+ of the Dodgers). Despite their solid hitting numbers, the Giants have scored just 3.8 runs per game, ahead of only the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, and the woeful Philadelphia Phillies, who have scored just 3.2 runs per game this season.

There is a disconnect between the Giants’ hitting performance and their runs scored. Here’s a graph depicting MLB teams’ runs scored versus wOBA so far this season, with the Giants denoted as the orange dot.

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Yesterday, the Washington Nationals promoted infield prospect Wilmer Difo to the major leagues to fill the roster spot vacated by the injured Jayson Werth. As Dave Cameron pointed out yesterday, this move was something of a head-scratcher. Although Difo’s a fairly well-regarded prospect, he wasn’t exactly pushing for a call-up. He had all of 14 games above A-Ball to his name, and only 25 more above Low-A. Even stranger is that there isn’t a ton of playing time to be had in the Nationals infield. Ian Desmond, Danny Espinosa and Yunel Escobar seem to have shortstop, second base and third base covered until Anthony Rendon’s ready to return from injury.

Although he’s spent the entirety of his professional career in the low minors, Difo’s done nothing but hit the last couple of years. He spent all of 2014 in Low-A Hagerstown, where he hit a strong .315/.360/.470 with 49 steals. This year, he split time between High-A and Double-A, and hit an even better .315/.367/.520. Before you get too excited about those numbers, though, I’ll point out that Difo is already 23 years old. Most prospects worth their salt are at least a year or two removed from A-Ball by their 23rd birthdays. This isn’t to say that Difo is doomed as a prospect. Plenty of late-blooming prospects have gone on to have long and productive careers; but in the world of A-Ball prospects, you’d much rather a guy be 19 than 22 or 23.

Although he didn’t reach full-season ball until last year, Difo’s been around for a while. The Nationals signed him as an 18-year-old out of the Dominican back in 2010. However, despite strong offensive showings, they moved him very slowly through the system. The Nats kept him in the Dominican Summer League until July of his age-19 season, and didn’t move him out of American Rookie-ball until he was 21. This set him up to play his first full year in full-season ball last year at age-22.

Difo’s loudest tool is his speed, which grades out as a 70 according to Kiley McDaniel, and enabled him to steal 57 bases in 68 attempts between this year and last. There’s more to Difo than just his speed, however. He also showed an intriguing combination of power and contact in his minor-league stay. Difo racked up 52 extra-base hits last year, including 14 homers. This year, he logged 19 extra-base knocks in 33 minor-league games before his call up. Difo complemented this modest power by striking out a mere 12% of the time. Through this blend of contact and power, Difo put up a 139 wRC+ in spite of his 6% walk rate.

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The Miami Marlins have been in the news this week, because they did something that’s at worst kind of stupid, and at best pretty confusing. But the Marlins only did something newsworthy in the first place because the team, overall, has been an early disappointment, and disappointing baseball teams tend to leave a few people jobless. But there’s something else true about even the most disappointing teams: not everything is going wrong. It’s kind of the key to keeping yourself interested — even bad teams have bright spots, promising spots. With this in mind, let’s watch Dee Gordon make a throwing error.

This is from Tuesday’s game. It’s a weird play, but it’s ultimately a play that didn’t go in the Marlins’ favor.

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Perhaps it’s felt to you like it’s been a year of bullpen uncertainty. You wouldn’t be alone. Not only are certain bullpens wildly under- or over-achieving; there’s been a good number of jumbled roles. In some cases, there might not be any clear roles at all. I’m not just making that up. It’s essentially a direct quote:

Banister very clear: There are NO roles in the bullpen at the moment

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) May 17, 2015

There’s been some weirdness in, for example, Los Angeles. The same could be said of Oakland. Also, Toronto. Also, Tampa Bay. And so on and so forth. It feels like things have been unusually unconventional. It feels like perhaps we’re edging ever nearer to the end of the set closer role. That’s one of the oldest subjects in sabermetric commentary.

And there’s reason to think there’s something bigger going on. Consider what’s taken place within the Dodgers organization. The Dodgers have tried to spread around the saves, so that young pitchers grow accustomed to working out of different roles. This way, they teach their pitchers versatility, and everyone’s subjected to every situation. What that seems like is the future of bullpens. And, you wonder, is the future arriving today? Are we seeing different usage patterns at the major-league level?

Not so much. Not in a way that’s easily observable. The closer role is very much alive, and it’s hard to spot any statistical trends.

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