Two weeks ago, before the Royals squared off against the A’s in the Wild Card game, I offered a few pieces of advice for Ned Yost, focusing on limiting the amount of outs he asked James Shields to get, not bunting too too early in the game, and using their speed to steal a bunch of bases. Using something not too far off that blueprint, the Royals staged a miraculous comeback and won the Wild Card, and they haven’t lost since. So now, one game away from a trip to the World Series, I have one more suggestion for Ned Yost.

You have two starters available on full rest: use both of them.

Due to the Monday rainout, the Royals have both Jason Vargas and James Shields available to start today’s Game Four, though the Royals have already announced that they’re going to stick with Vargas, while Shields remains on deck to pitch a Game Five, if it proves necessary. The easiest way to make that game unnecessary, though, would be to use both of them on Wednesday.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

There’s a sort of check list you can go to when a pitcher’s performance changes. You run down the possible reasons, and if there’s no box checked, you shrug and figure a few bounces have gone differently and that was all that happened.

So what do you do when a pitcher has a breakout performance, then suffers a setback and then looks like he’s re-found what he’s lost? Especially when that pitcher doesn’t have any obvious checkmarks on the checklist? What do you say about Shelby Miller’s up-and-down year so far?

Read the rest of this entry »

So can we just go over this one more time? I know everyone knows about it, but it’s still freaking crazy. The Orioles are in the ALCS. That’s already pretty nuts. But Ubaldo Jimenez, who they gave a lot of money to, was bad. He’s not on the roster. Matt Wieters played 26 games before getting hurt. He’s not on the roster. Manny Machado managed half a season before getting hurt. He’s not on the roster. Chris Davis basically just sucked. He’s not on the roster. Even if, in March, you had a program of your own that predicted the Orioles would get this far, your program still would’ve been wrong about how it all happened. The Royals? Great story. The Orioles? Great story, too. There are so many reasons why so many people seem to find this year’s ALCS more compelling than its senior companion.

Clearly, the Orioles have gotten contributions from enough other people to make up for the missing or underperforming stars. Clearly, the Orioles assembled some depth. This all got me thinking about Dan Duquette, and a certain principle. One way to improve a roster is by adding more good players. Another way to improve a roster is by eliminating the bad players. Of course, you want to do both, but in theory you can either raise the ceiling or raise the floor. It seems to me the Orioles haven’t given much in the way of playing time to the truly bad. It seems to me that would be a credit to the organization. To what extent, though, is this actually true?

Read the rest of this entry »

Due in large part to Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, analytical baseball ideology has often sold as a necessity for low-revenue franchises to compete with teams who have vastly more resources. The A’s story was written as brains overcoming riches, and a number of teams in smaller markets decided to emulate their success. Over the past decade, the front offices most known for their analytical decision making processes inlucded teams like the A’s, Rays, Indians, Astros, and Cardinals, and because of this, Moneyball was the catch-all phrase for poor teams that used analytics to compete with teams that didn’t need it.

Except that story hasn’t been entirely true for quite a while now. It’s an easy story to tell, because low revenue teams have used these kinds of tools to allow themselves to make up for their revenue deficits, but the notion of analytics being only for small market teams is outdated and now just not correct. The Red Sox were probably the first big market team to really buy into the combination of efficient spending while maintaining a very high payroll, but the Yankees weren’t far behind, with a significant analytical department of their own. And of course, the Dodgers already hired one analytically-oriented GM, with Paul DePodesta running the team in 2004-2005, though that didn’t last.

When the Cubs new ownership wanted to build a sustainable winner, they poached Theo Epstein from Boston, and are now not too far away from being a very scary competitor for the rest of the NL Central. And now, the Dodgers have lured Rays GM Andrew Friedman out of Tampa Bay, making him the President of Baseball Operations for the team with the largest payroll in baseball. With Friedman heading west, arguably the four most historic franchises in MLB — and certainly four of the teams with the highest revenue potential — fit the mold of a Moneyball front office. This kind of structure is no longer the domain of poor somewhat less rich teams, and this transition serves to make the Dodgers an even more formidable opponent in the NL West.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, there’s a gaggle of young guns, ready to take the league by storm. Wether it’s Clayton Kershaw, Jose Fernandez, or Matt Harvey, there’s a new face that everyone can dream careers upon. Unwrinkled faces, unworn arm ligaments, and the bright unknown future might be the stuff Spring Training dreams are built upon.

And here we are, October 14, 2014, and we’ll be watching 39-year-old Tim Hudson go up against 35-year-old John Lackey in game three of the National League Championship series. If, at the beginning of this decade, you had these guys down as top-25 pitchers for the next 14 years, congratulations. This game is your reward.

But that won’t stop us from looking back and trying to figure out how we got to this moment.

Read the rest of this entry »

The postseason took a breath on Monday night, with the NLCS participants enjoying a scheduled travel day, and the Orioles and Royals soaking in – pun intended – a rainy night in Kansas City. The Royals have clearly been the lead story of the postseason to date – they’re flying high at 6-0 after barely qualifying in the first place. As recently as one month ago, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone who would have pegged them for a significant October run.

If they were fortunate enough to earn their way in, a short October stay was all that was expected of them. They were young, inexperienced, and most of all, offensively challenged. They were four runs down to Jon Lester in the 8th inning of the wild card game, but have been untouchable ever since. Is there a prototype, a contemporary, a forefather of this current Royals’ run? Read the rest of this entry »

When the Royals and Orioles resume their rain-interrupted ALCS tonight in Kansas City, the Royals are going to use their fifth-best starting pitcher, and on the surface this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not that Yordano Ventura was going to pitch on two days rest, or that James Shields was likely to go on three days rest, but with Jason Vargas and Danny Duffy around, Ned Yost has options. Instead, he’s going with Jeremy Guthrie, who hasn’t pitched since Sept. 26, a full 17 days of rest. Though he’s 35 years old, Guthrie has never thrown a pitch in a postseason game, so the often-seen “but playoff-tested” excuse doesn’t work here.

When we say “fifth starter,” that’s based entirely on performance. Of the five regular Kansas City starters, Guthrie’s ERA this year was the worst. His FIP was the worst. His WAR, despite throwing the second-most innings, was the worst. Over the last five years, his FIP is 215th of 228 qualified pitchers, basically making him Randy Wolf with fewer injuries. Just two seasons ago, he was getting traded straight-up for Jonathan Sanchez after a brutal half-season in Colorado. Now, he’s starting a playoff game, one of the most important games for his franchise in years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three and a half months ago, I wrote about Alex Gordon’s arm. Among regular outfielders, Gordon has one of the very best throwing arms in baseball, and that’s allowed him to pile up valuable runner-killing assists. Toward the end of June, I noticed that Gordon’s assists were down, but that his arm rating was still up high. The reason: deterrence. To that point, nobody had really been willing to challenge Gordon. While he was creating fewer outs, he was saving a ton of bases, and the value there is very much real.

Now, deterrence is a difficult thing to observe in real-time. Good speed, you can observe on a lot of plays. The same goes for good instincts and route-running, and on a decently frequent basis you can see a guy’s throwing arm at work. But deterrence requires certain circumstances, and you have to be looking for it. At the end of the season, I don’t think you have a “feel” for which outfielders deter runners the most, like you might have a feel for other things. But if you want to talk about Gordon, then we can just talk about Saturday. Because Alex Gordon stopped a runner from attempting to score, late in a 4-4 game.

Read the rest of this entry »

If everybody in baseball were better at execution, offense would go down. Though the hitters would be improved on talent, hitting is reactionary, and if pitchers could more consistently hit their spots, it stands to reason there would be far fewer dingers. Pitches aren’t usually called in dinger-friendly areas — home runs, commonly, come out of mistakes.

Sunday night, the Cardinals went deep four times against Giants pitching. Matt Carpenter clobbered a Jake Peavy fastball that drifted out over the plate. Oscar Taveras got out ahead of a Jean Machi splitter that never dropped. Matt Adams punished a high Hunter Strickland fastball that, if Strickland had his druthers, would’ve been higher. And then Kolten Wong was the hero in the bottom of the ninth, taking advantage of a Sergio Romo mistake. And for Romo, it was a mistake he hadn’t made.

Read the rest of this entry »

Good things happen when batters swing at the first pitch of at bat, as they boast a .336 average and .526 slugging percentage on the first pitch this year. Like I said, good things happen when you swing at — and more importantly, make contact with — the first pitch, though of course, this data doesn’t count all the first pitch swings that resulted in fouls or whiffs. Still, swinging early can lead to very good results.

Sometimes called “ambushing” the pitcher, first pitch swings can be even more valuable during the postseason, as hitters and pitchers become more familiar with the patterns and traits of the opposition. Recent history informs pitch decisions as starters face the same team twice or even three times during a seven game series, and for pitchers, familiarity really does breed contempt.

On the whole, batters are more and more willing to swing at the first pitch in October. During the regular season, batters offered at the first pitch 27.4% of the time. Early in the 2014 playoff season, that number is on the rise. Through the division rounds, batters came out hacking more than 32% of the time, using Pitchf/x data made available by Baseball Savant.

Matt Carpenter of the Cardinals stands out as one of the most unlikely hitters to approach his plate appearances this way, but also one of the most successful in these playoffs. As shown at Fangraphs last week, Carpenter hit two home runs and a double on the first pitch against the Dodgers, flummoxing Clayton Kershaw and subverting existing scouting reports on the patient All Star infielder.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.