We’re somewhere between 25% and 33% into the 2014 season, which means we’re about 25% to 33% into the first season of the Instant Replay Era. Stylistically, I didn’t need to capitalize that, but it makes it feel like a bigger deal. In 2024, it won’t be a big deal, but instant replay is still a shiny new toy that we’re playing and tinkering with, so it seems like a more important thing at the moment. There are a bunch of new rules, new strategies, and new things for managers to think about. So, to paraphrase Ed Koch, how we doing?

Jeff Sullivan, in his handsome wisdom, already talked about replay’s affect on the time of the game. The gist — games are a little longer than last year, but games have been getting longer for some time, so it’s hard to say definitively how much replay has affected that. At the time of this writing, there have been 773 games played. According to Baseball Savant’s replay database (point of order — this is my informational source going the rest of the way), there have been 389 challenges, 60 of which have been issued by umpires. That comes out to just about a challenge per every two games. Is that a lot? We don’t know! May isn’t quite over, but there isn’t much difference in challenges between this month and April. So far, managers have found their stride when it comes to challenging calls.

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Over a quarter of the 2014 season is in the books and the sample sizes are creeping toward a representative level. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been taking somewhat deeper looks at some of this season’s more noteworthy players and performances to date. “Noteworthy” doesn’t always mean “best”, though it does in most cases. Today, we’ll take a look at the first quarter performance of Mark Buehrle, who notched his ninth win of the season on Tuesday night. Exactly what is going on here? Has Buehrle found another gear late in his career, ascending to a new level of performance? Or is he simply Mark Buehrle, guy who takes the ball every fifth day, walks no one, pitches to contact, fields his position, and keeps his club in the ballgame, with no bells and whistles? Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of people think Pablo Sandoval is back. I don’t know if I agree.

In a lot of minds, baseball players are constantly coming and going, and it seems like that shouldn’t be true. Results waver; ability doesn’t — at least not so much. I don’t think Pablo Sandoval was ever gone, but what we can say with certainty is that early 2014 Sandoval didn’t look right. Recent 2014 Sandoval has looked a lot better. He’s looked a lot more familiar. He seems to be back on track to be one of the Giants’ positional leaders.

And there’s an interesting thing about that. In April, Sandoval drew 10 unintentional walks. In May, he’s drawn zero. In April, Sandoval swung at an above-average rate of pitches. In May, he’s swung at more pitches. This is what writers call an “understatement.” It’s what non-writers also would call an understatement, because that’s a everyday word.

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Before the season started, we had the Astros projected for the worst starting rotation in baseball, by a good margin. It was simultaneously embarrassing and expected, as one Scott Feldman can do only so much. Yet, as I write this, the Astros’ rotation ranks ninth in baseball in WAR, having been more of a strength than a weakness. A lot of this has to do with the development of Dallas Keuchel, who Mike Petriello wrote about. Out of nowhere, Keuchel has blossomed into a possible no. 1, and recently there was a little controversy when Lloyd McClendon spoke in less-than-glowing terms after watching his team get shut down.

After the Astros [and Keuchel] beat the Mariners 4-1, McClendon said: “I saw average stuff. We didn’t swing the bats very good. At some point you’ve got to stop giving credit to average pitchers.”

Now I get to check this off the list of sentences I never thought I’d write: it’s not all about Keuchel, though, as his success has overshadowed the similarly surprising success of an unheralded teammate. ZiPS projected Dallas Keuchel for a 5.02 ERA. It projected Collin McHugh for a 5.25 ERA. Both have instead been absolutely phenomenal, and if you want to stretch the comparison further, let’s go back to the end of April:

After the Astros took their second in a row from the A’s on Sunday – the teams split a four-game series – A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson suggested that McHugh wasn’t flashing elite stuff.

“Stuff-wise, I thought he was OK,” said Donaldson, who went 0-for-3 with a walk. “I don’t think it was anything special. But he changed speeds well and pitched to his game plan.”

Keuchel doesn’t blow people away, but he’s blown people away. McHugh doesn’t blow people away, but he’s blown people away. In a world in which Dallas Keuchel is attracting positive attention, it’s time to divert some of that to another guy, who might be even more of a shock.

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Mike Trout has a .386 wOBA and a 151 wRC+. He’s not exactly hitting poorly, but he is striking out a lot more than he has previously, and relative to his own previous performances, a .386 wOBA is perhaps a minor disappointment. Now that David Appelman has released our fancy new heatmaps, we can see exactly where Trout’s trouble areas have been.

First, here’s Trout’s contact rate map for 2013.

And now here’s that contact rate map for 2014.

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Trevor Plouffe had a good June 2012 — he hit .327/.391/.735 with 11 home runs — and announced himself to the baseball world in his third season. Unfortunately for him, though, those were good results after a process that didn’t fit him best. It was the slump that came after (.226/.279/.381 with eight home runs) that taught the Minnesota Twins third baseman the tools he needed to become a better player.

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Last year, the Toronto Blue Jays were supposed to be contenders.

They were crowned the winners of the off-season after acquiring Josh Johnson, Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey, and Melky Cabrera in the same winter, giving their roster a big boost on paper. On the field, though, it didn’t work.

Johnson was lousy and injured, while Buehrle and Dickey failed to improve the rotation much even though they avoided the DL. Reyes and Cabrera both struggled with injury issues of their own, with Cabrera performing as one of the worst players in baseball when he did play. Instead of joining the A’s, Indians and Pirates in the Postseason of the Upstarts, the 2013 Blue Jays instead became another reminder of the perils of trying to build a team around splashy, big-name acquisitions.

Coming off a miserable season, the Blue Jays backed off from aggressive off-season upgrades. They signed one free agent to a Major League contract: Dioner Navarro, a part-time catcher signed for part-time money. Despite being linked to big names like Jeff Samardzija, the team’s most notable trade involved reliever Brad Lincoln going to Philadelphia for backup catcher Erik Kratz. Basically, the Blue Jays stood pat, despite what looked to be glaring holes in the rotation and at second base, not to mention all the questions about the big-names who disappointed so dramatically a year ago.

So, put it all together, and you have a last-place team that made no substantial upgrades over the winter, built around a core group of players that are almost universally on the wrong side of 30. That’s not a classic recipe for success, but as we head towards June, the Blue Jays are alone atop the American League East, and they now look like the prohibitive favorites to win the division.

How did the Blue Jays fix themselves by doing nothing? There are two primary, obvious differences between this year’s model and last year’s version.

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Victor Martinez is in his age-35 season. He spent nearly a decade in the majors playing catcher, the most physically demanding position for a hitter to play. He missed the entire 2012 season after tearing his ACL. Things like these are not exactly a recipe for success with regards to potential comeback scenarios for your typical hitter. Victor Martinez is not your a typical hitter.

In terms of just hitting, Martinez has been the best player in the American League this season. His .417 wOBA and 166 wRC+ are seventh-best in the entire MLB. Both his Steamer and ZiPS updated full-season projections have him finishing with the highest wRC+ of his career. This is pretty interesting, given the circumstances laid out above.

What’s even more interesting is how he’s doing it.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. This particular Prospect Watch feature will focus on prospect notes from around the minors — focusing on both top prospects and sleepers.

Chicago Cubs

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The world hasn’t ended, or at least not the part I’ve been in. And while the world is indeed ending, technically, it isn’t ending any faster than it was a day ago or a week ago. Ben Revere hit a home run and it seems there haven’t been any greater, big-picture consequences. You ordinarily don’t expect there to be, but as far as Revere was concerned, we couldn’t be absolutely sure until now. Ben Revere homered and things kept on keeping on. It’s how it was with Joey Gathright. It’s how it was with Jason Tyner. It’s how it was with Tony Campana, if you choose to count his inside-the-parker. It looks just the same in the box score.

Revere’s homer wasn’t witnessed by that many. Paid attendance was barely 23,000, and the game had an extended rain delay. It made little significant difference, turning a 4-1 deficit into a 4-2 deficit on the way to a 6-2 loss. And Revere, otherwise, had an ordinary game. His first time up, he made an out to third. His second time up, he made an out to first. His third time up, he made an out to third. His fifth time up, he made an out to second. It was a regular Phillies game with Ben Revere in it, save for his fourth plate appearance. But that fourth plate appearance is something we’ve been waiting for for years, so we can’t just let this go by. We have to seize this occasion to dwell, and so, let’s go over some pertinent facts.

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