With the Marlins hanging around the periphery of the Wild Card race, there’s a strong chance that Giancarlo Stanton is going to win the NL MVP award. He’s the classic traditional candidate, leading the league in home runs and runs batted in, and the Marlins small gap from the Wild Card leaders will allow people to talk themselves into his performance having come in games that mattered. With all of the other top candidates requiring the rejection of some long held ideal, Stanton looks like a pretty easy choice for someone who likes the way that MVPs have traditionally been selected.

This may actually be bad news for the Marlins, however. An MVP trophy would be nice recognition for the franchise’s best player, but it would also increase his asking price in arbitration, and Stanton is already in a position where he has significant leverage. The Marlins have thus far eschewed trade requests for their right fielder, hopeful that they can convince him to sign a long-term deal to stay in Miami, but an MVP trophy might make a tough road even more difficult. Let’s look at the kinds of numbers Stanton may very well ask for to pass up the chance to hit free agency after the 2016 season.

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There are a number of reasons that the Seattle Mariners find themselves in a heated race for a playoff spot as the 2014 season winds down. Felix Hernandez for one, and Robinson Cano and Hisashi Iwakuma, for two and three. And Kyle Seager, for four. They upgraded both their outfield defense and the back of their rotation from awful to fairly solid, both massive upgrades. On top of it all, their bullpen has by far the best ERA in the major leagues at 2.41, effectively shortening games to six or seven innings. In 2013, the Mariner pen, with many of the same pitchers in place, was not very good. This leads one to a number of questions regarding reliever performance. How does bullpen performance correlate with winning? What have similar frontrunning pens of the past few years had in common? Do high-end pens stay on top for very long? Read the rest of this entry »

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Here’s the scouting data (not the text report) from what I wrote on the Rangers list, their top prospect, Joey Gallo.

Hit: 30/45, Game Power: 60/70, Raw Power: 80/80, Speed: 40/40, Field: 45/50, Throw: 70/70
Upside: .260/.350/.500 (30-35 HR), fringy 3B or solid RF
FV/Risk: 60, High (4 on a 1-5 scale)
Projected Path: 2014: AA, 2015: AAA/MLB, 2016: MLB

For this, we’ll focus on the hit grade and upside and risk sections. I’ve re-posted a table from the introduction to this series, showing the scale most clubs use to project the hit tool.
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One of the tricky parts of this job can be finding information people might not know about. Statistical insight these days can be a challenge. One of the easier parts can be building off of somebody else’s idea, putting together a deeper dive on another person’s insight. So full credit to Ken Rosenthal, who wrote up a little section about Drew Smyly a day or so after talking about him on a TV game broadcast. Smyly’s been shut down by the Rays because of his innings total, but prior to that he looked like a much-improved pitcher in Tampa Bay, and here’s some stuff passed along by Rosenthal:

The Rays told Smyly to elevate his fastball more — sort of a counter-intuitive move for a pitcher — and they also emphasized that while he was successful getting to two strikes against right-handed hitters, he needed to find better ways to finish those hitters off.

The Rays and Rosenthal have provided the insight. I’m just here to show you some actual numbers. That’s a very informative paragraph, telling you something about Smyly and telling you something about the Rays. And as we look forward to 2015, might Smyly be a better part of the David Price return than he’s been given credit for?

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So, the Brewers.

As collapses go, that looks nice and spread out. There’s a definite negative slope, but, you know, it could be steeper. You get the vibe from the graph that the Brewers’ decline has been steady and gradual. But there’s the thing about the x-axis, and about how this shows only two weeks. Lately the Brewers have shot themselves in the foot. In their haste to bandage the wound, they’ve accidentally shot themselves in the other foot. With their hands busy trying to stop the bleeding, they’ll just apply the iodine with their mouth-

Working a little to the Brewers’ benefit is that their slide has overlapped with Oakland’s slide, and Oakland has fallen from a loftier position, so the attention’s divided. But the Brewers don’t care about the attention they receive; they care about not being awful, and since this slide began they’re last in the NL in runs scored and first in the NL in runs allowed, where “first” is another word for “last”. They’ve lost 13 of 14 games, and Tuesday’s could’ve been the worst of the losses. Tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth, the Brewers had the bases loaded with nobody out. Eight pitches later, a scoreless frame was complete. Then in the top of the ninth, Francisco Rodriguez had two outs and two strikes on Giancarlo Stanton. Nine pitches later, a walk, a steal, and two homers had the Brewers all but defeated. You’d think that all the losses feel the same, but every loss is a snowflake.

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Victor Martinez has been the best hitter in baseball this season.

Granted, that’s just an opinion that I’ve presented as fact, but he has a strong case. The strongest part of his case is that, at the time of this writing, he leads the MLB in both wOBA (.412) and wRC+ (167). There aren’t any better hitting metrics than those two, but in case you want more evidence, he’s also second in batting average (.337), first in on-base percentage (.407), second in slugging percentage (.575), 10th in isolated slugging percentage (.238) and second in total batting value behind only Mike Trout, thanks to a disparity of plate appearances. Victor Martinez has the same total batting value as Giancarlo Stanton and he’s come up to the plate 56 fewer times. That’s how good he’s been. He’s been so good, some have tossed his name around in the MVP discussion, despite serving primarily as a designated hitter. A DH has never won the MVP award.

But he has been much more than just a great hitter. He has been a downright fascinating hitter. One thing that really jumps out when looking at his numbers are his walks and strikeouts. He has the lowest strikeout rate in the MLB, at 6.5%. He also has a 10.7% walk rate. No other player in baseball has walked more than they’ve struck out this year. Victor has 22 more walks than strikeouts (not including his league-leading 25 intentional walks). His strikeouts and walks, as well as his still-elite bat speed, are things I touched upon when I wrote about Martinez for this site back in May. But that’s in the past. The contents of that post were remarkable because of the circumstances, e.g. his age, injuries and past as a catcher. The content that follows in this post is remarkable because of its place in history.
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Back at the end of July, there was one overarching narrative: the Tigers and A’s engaging in an arms race to try and get an advantage for their inevitable October match-up. On the day the Tigers acquired David Price and the A’s acquired Jon Lester, Oakland had the best record in baseball, while Detroit had a comfortable four game lead in the AL Central; since adding their respective aces, both have surrounded their divisional leads, with the A’s falling so far behind the Angels that their chances of winning the AL West now stand a fraction of one percent.

Toss in the quickly fading Milwaukee Brewers — 60-49 on July 31st, 14-22 since — and we have three strong first half contenders limping to the finish line. Like the A’s, the Brewers should basically punt any hopes they still hold about a division title, and are now hoping entirely for a surge that will put them back in the Wild Card race. But even if the A’s, Tigers, and Brewers manage to right their ships, should they really be optimistic about their chances in October? After all, they’ve spent the better part of the last few months playing lousy baseball, and at some point, doesn’t a second half slump become an indicator of underlying problems that would derail a playoff run even if the team managed to get to the postseason?

In a word: no.

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Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

In high school, stats mean nothing. In college, we can look at general indicators, and when taken in context (i.e. he’s the only good hitter on his team and he gets pitched around a lot, he told our scout this frustrates him, etc.) can have some predictive value. For high school showcases with wood bats against good pitching, we can take some away and from the couple good college summer leagues we can take the most (in the amateur context). But, in general, amateur hitting stats mean nothing unless you have some scouting context and hopefully two of 1) strong competition 2) a big sample and 3) a wood bat.

At the professional level, stats are much more insightful. I wouldn’t take much from short-season leagues (which are basically the same level of competition as the best amateur leagues, like the SEC or the Cape Cod League) but in full-season ball we can start to notice things.

I scouted a player a few years ago for a club and though he would be a 45 bat from BP and my recollections from the games, then noticed when I went over my game notes that I wrote a lot of positive comments, thinking I might go as high as a 55. Then I checked his stats: he went 12-for-15 in the games I saw, but hit.250 that season with poor peripherals (I saw him at the end of the season).

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Melky Cabrera’s season ended on Friday with a broken finger. Normally, “team headed for 22nd straight year out of the playoffs loses second-best outfielder for the final three weeks” isn’t much of a story, but this situation is a little different. Cabrera is about to be a free agent in what looks to be a terrible market for offense, is only entering his age-30 season in 2015, and has had three pretty good seasons in the last four years. He’s been essentially the same hitter as Anthony Rendon has this year. That’s a pretty good resume to take into free agency, and understandably, talk is already focusing on where he’ll be playing next season.

Also understandably, that discussion has mostly centered around the considerable baggage that Cabrera brings with him, notably his 2012 PED suspension and the associated “let’s build a fake website” weirdness that came with it. Buster Olney devoted a column to it earlier this week, interviewing at least one player who complained that the system is set up in such a way that a rule-breaker can still find himself collecting a huge free agent payday. That player suggested that two-time offenders be restricted to one-year contracts in the future, which seems to me to be a thing that will never, ever happen.

Whether the feelings of that unnamed player are correct or not — you can probably guess my feelings on the subject — is kind of beside the point, because the fact is that Cabrera will go into free agency without any official restrictions, just unofficial reservations. While there’s some real reasons to question about him going forward, he’s also about to enter a market that is almost totally devoid of outfield offensive talent. Cabrera’s going to get paid, and it’s going to make a lot of people unhappy.

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John Holdzkom made his major league debut a little over a week ago, in relief for the Pirates in a losing effort against the Cardinals. As he faced his first batter — a showdown he’ll either remember forever or forget in an instant — the St. Louis broadcast got to talking. Said Rick Horton:

I asked our friends in the broadcast team for the Pirates what they could tell me about Holdzkom, and their answer was, we’ve never heard of him. […] We understand he has a palmball.

That’s two things. That’s a quote that says a little about John Holdzkom. It’s also a quote that says everything about John Holdzkom. Holdzkom has followed an impossible path, and now he stands as the only known pitcher throwing a palmball in the bigs.

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