Archive for Daily Graphings

Just as we were all finally getting over our Kris Bryant Day hangovers, the Cubs gave us something else to celebrate. As you’ve likely heard by now, the Cubs summoned Addison Russell to the major leagues yesterday. He started at second base last night, and went 0-5 in his big league debut.

Russell’s promotion came as something of a surprise. Although he’s a very talented player, and is one of the most highly-regarded prospects in the game, he’s had very little exposure to high-minors pitching. He’s played all of 77 games above A-Ball, and only 14 of those games came in Triple-A. Due to this relative lack experience, most anticipated that Russell wouldn’t make it to the majors until late 2015, if not sometime 2016. Yet here we are. It’s April 22nd and Russell is playing major league baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night’s broadcast of the Cardinals and Nationals game debuted live, in-game Statcast enhanced graphics and replays. Statcast is the next-generation player tracking technology that combines both optical and radar measurements promising to create new ways to quantify previously unmeasurable aspects of baseball. The hype leading up to this game was billed as historic, and here at FanGraphs, we even had a special edition of the After Dark Live chat to cover this momentous occasion.

If you were expecting something earth-shattering from Statcast, once you began to watch the game you were probably disappointed at the slow start. If you were unable to watch the broadcast, no need to worry, because all the important replays from the broadcast were posted on Major League Baseball’s site, and I’m about to review and critique the different elements of the Statcast presentation.

First, before analyzing specific images and gifs from the game, MLB Network appeared to treat this as a normal broadcast using Statcast to augment their broadcast, not define it. 90% of the broadcast contained traditional camera angles, graphics, replays, and other broadcast elements. When Statcast was used, it was to produce enhanced replays and player positioning. There weren’t graphical overlays over live-game action aside from a few pre-pitch positioning graphics. ESPN currently has more detailed graphics for live-action pitch tracking with their K-Zone graphical overlay.

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More than one organization has banned the cutter at one time or another. But it’s barely one pitch, and you probably wouldn’t want to have banned Mariano Rivera from throwing that pitch. Turns out, looking at the grip on the baseball might help us differentiate between risky and less risky cutters.

Dan Duquette has banned the cutter from the Baltimore organization. Explore his reasons, and you start to uncover that not all cutters are made alike.

The first stated reason was about outcomes. “Why don’t you take a look at the chart with the average against cutters in the big leagues, batting average against and then come back and tell me that that’s a great pitch,” Duquette said back then. Unfortunately, when stacked against fastballs, the pitch is actually decent. BACON is batting average on contact, SLGCON is slugging percentage on contact:

Sliders and changeups do better, but — theoretically at least — you can throw the cutter more often than those pitches. If it’s a fastball. More on this later.

The second stated reason was about fastball velocity and arm health. Increased cutter usage led to lower radar gun readings and lower arm strength, Duquette and Director of Pitching Development Rick Peterson felt. “What happens is you start to get off to the side of the baseball (with your grip) and then you’re no longer consistently behind the baseball,” Peterson said of the way the cutter steals velocity from a fastball.

The thing is, there are two vastly different types of cutters, and grip factors in. When Duquette was asked about pitchers that had done well with the pitch, Mariano Rivera in particular, he pointed to the difference between a ‘cutter’ and a ‘cut fastball.’ “Name me all the pitchers in the big leagues that make a living with a cut fastball? Rivera’s is a fastball. It moves,” he said.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Out of all the reasons I enjoy baseball, I think mainly it’s about watching people do things few other people can do. Granted, that applies to the whole sport itself — every single player in the major leagues is absolutely fantastic. But I get particularly charged up by the freaks, and by the freak events. I love Felix Hernandez‘s changeup because there just isn’t another one like it. I love Aroldis Chapman’s fastball because there just isn’t another one like it. Mike Trout clobbers baseballs other guys don’t clobber. Andrelton Simmons gathers baseballs other guys don’t gather. Everybody we watch is several standard deviations above the mean. And then to see things several standard deviations above that? I watch to be amazed, and players remain amazing.

Kris Bryant was just called up, as you know. He’s without question an elite-level prospect and he might be, with some question, an elite-level player. One thing we know is he possesses an elite-level skill, in his ability to hit for consistent power. Not every player in the league is capable of doing truly extraordinary things. Bryant, though, shot up prospect lists because he is capable. And Tuesday night, we got our first major-league glimpse. In the first inning of a game against the Pirates, Kris Bryant did something amazing. Let’s watch and discuss.

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The highest career triple rates in baseball history, minimum 1000 plate appearances, with one exception:

• Paulo Orlando, 17.2%
• Tom Long, 3.0%
• Joe Jackson, 3.0%
• Sam Crawford, 2.9%
• Buck Freeman, 2.7%

Orlando, obviously, doesn’t qualify, being well short of 1000 career trips to the plate. But let’s just pretend he got all the way up to 1000, and over that span he never hit another triple. He’d still have a higher rate than Darin Erstad, and Jeff Francoeur, and whichever one of the Alex Gonzalezes this is, and Rickey Henderson. Across baseball, triples have been in decline. Orlando is trying to reverse the trend by himself.

Until a short while ago, you’d probably never heard of him. He’s a 29-year-old rookie who joined affiliated baseball in 2006. That tells you plenty about his career path, and upon Orlando’s initial promotion, by far the neatest fun fact was that he became the third-ever Brazilian major-leaguer. Now there’s a neater fun fact, a fact all Orlando’s own: he’s the first player anyone can find whose first three big-league hits were triples. And since then, he’s hit two more triples.

He isn’t just the current major-league leader, among players. He’s also tied for the major-league lead, among teams. Orlando has all five of the Royals’ triples. Four other teams have five triples, but none have more than that, and most have fewer. Two teams have yet to hit a single triple. Orlando hasn’t hit a ball out of the park. From a post by Jeffrey Flanagan:

“The first time the guy who scouted me for the White Sox saw me [in Brazil] he said to me, ‘All you do is hit triples. You never hit home runs,'” Orlando said, smiling.

See? Scouting is easy! Orlando was scouted as a triples machine. He’s blossomed into something of a triples machine. No matter how much longer this goes on, Orlando’s already made history. Few 29-year-old rookies can say that, but now that we know Orlando’s already cemented his place, how much more might’ve been possible to do? It’s time for this article to get stupid.

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For better or worse, the Kansas City Royals have garnered a fair amount of attention to start the season. On the better side of the ledger, the team now sits at 10-3, with the second best record in the American League behind only the 11-2 Detroit Tigers. Even finishing a game over .500 the rest of the way would give the team a solid 85-win season, and the Playoff Odds here at Fangraphs give the Royals a better than one in three chance at making the playoffs. While those might not seem like great chances, they are sixth in a league where five teams make the playoffs and they are already ahead of preseason darling Cleveland Indians.

The ugliness that consumed the weekend for Kansas City certainly is not drawing the type of attention a team should hope to receive, but perhaps lost amid the beanings and the yelling and the pointing, there was a significant and rare day for the Royals as Salvador Perez did not start on Sunday. Erik Kratz took his place, although Perez did not receive the day off as he entered the game in the seventh inning and caught the final two innings behind the plate.

This early in the season, a catcher making most if not all a team’s starts is not overly unusual. Perez started the first 11 games, but off days early on meant that he received two days of rest during that time. While his games and plate appearances are near the top of the catcher Leaderboard and his 107 innings behind the plate are second in baseball to Derek Norris’ 111 thus far, it is too early to get alarmed about his workload thus far. It is the upcoming workload that should be concerning.
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Over the past couple weeks, you might have noticed some of our advanced fielding data filtering into the system, as the scouts grading and categorizing each play go through their expert machinations. With two weeks of play in the books, and enough time for much of the data to come in (there is normally a slight delay), we can now look back on some of the highlights of the defensive portion of the game. Though the stats run a few days behind, we still have a lot to look at.

I’ve gone through each defensive position and pulled one or two of the best “remote” plays for each, giving us a veritable super cut of defensive gems from the early going. These are only the plays categorized as being converted into outs between 1-10% of the time. Though there could be some disagreement with elements of the classification for each play, there’s no doubt that these plays are among the best made since the start of the season. Let’s get to it!

Pitcher

A preface: obviously the pitcher position doesn’t have to make a lot of incredible defensive plays. Routine and sometimes awkward, yes, but not spectacular. That being said, there was one that made the cut:

Anthony DeSclafani, April 14th

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In the summer of 2005, the author of this post contracted at a Chicago area restaurant some manner of foodborne illness. The symptoms produced by same needn’t be explored in any depth here; to say, however, that I experienced roughly all the forms of “gastric distress” is sufficient. Nor is it the deepest throes of my illness that are relevant here, but rather the recovery process. Indeed, after about a week or so of turmoil, I returned to something like normal health. The only qualification: that I’d be compelled, for the better part of the next month, to survive on diet consisting strictly of starches, mashed and non-fibrous fruits, and (were I feeling particularly strong) baked, skinless chicken. These were foods which represented the least possible challenge to my sensitive digestive system.

What follows is the analytical equivalent of the aforementioned diet. It is designed not to examine in any depth — but rather to provide deserving coverage of — certain players who’ve made their major-league debuts this season. To say that it is both incomplete and haphazard is probably correct. To say, however, that it might be of some use to those readers who have exhausted themselves mentally by means of their other daily pursuits — this is also reasonable.

Below are five players whose debuts have been notable for one reason or another — where notable has been entirely at the discretion of the author. Accompanying each player are his season stats to date (denoted by Season), his Steamer rest-of-season projection (Steamer ROS), and his ZiPS rest-of-season projection (ZiPS ROS).

Archie Bradley, RHP, Arizona (Profile)

Who he is: Right-hander in D-backs rotation.

Notable because: He was the seventh pick in the 2011 draft. Has exhibited excellent fastball and curveball as amateur and minor leaguer.

Earliest returns: Positive. In an unexpected way, though.

Bradley has never demonstrated particularly strong command, nor would his walk rate after two starts (12.8%) suggest that he’s changed in any substantial way so far as that’s concerned. Still, he’s produced better-than-average fielding-independent and run-prevention numbers — largely, those, on the strength of unexpected strong ground-ball tendencies. Jeff Sullivan examined those tendencies yesterday. One takeaway: he’s been throwing a riding fastball low in the zone. More than most every pitcher.

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Coming into the season, you might have had a three-part checklist for Mariners’ lefty James Paxton. Can he throw more high fastballs, can he improve his changeup, and can he hold his velocity and command? We know his curve is good, and most years, he has the big velocity that has turned our attention to him. But these three items sum up the healthy skepticism that still remains, and the pitcher knows all about them.

Jeff Sullivan recommended high fastballs for Paxton because his fastball has rise but he throws it low. Currently the Seattle lefty is showing almost exactly the same whiff and strikeout rates as he showed last year, so maybe he wasn’t listening.

Except that he was! “I do utilize the high fastball, to work off of it, and have the curveball drop off it,” Paxton said of the fact that high fastball release points can help mask a high curveball release point.

But the pitcher also admitted that the high fastball was “probably something I could work into my game a little more effectively.” He’s been trying, as you can see from the fastball heat maps below from Baseball Savant (2014 on the left, 2015 on the right). If you prefer numbers, Paxton has thrown 29% of his fastballs in the top third of the zone this year, up from 25% last year. And his rank with respect to his peers has changed, as he used to be in the 41st percentile for high fastballs, and so far this year, he’s in the 31st percentile.

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