Archive for Daily Graphings

If you were to ask yourself, “Who are the two most dominant bullpen weapons – that aren’t closers – in the MLB?” the next logical step would be to ask yourself, “Well, how could I find out?”

One way you could find out is to head over to the FanGraphs leaderboards and export a custom leaderboard to Excel with the saves, FIP-WAR and RA9-WAR totals of all the qualified relievers in baseball this season. Then, you could remove all the players with more than 10 saves and sort the ones that are left by a 50/50 split of the two WAR totals.

Guess what? You don’t have to think or do any of that because that’s exactly what I already did. Here’s the top 10:
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Last week, we checked into which hitters might get a qualifying offer, and one of those questions has already been answered: J.J. Hardy, who I figured would receive an offer, has agreed to an extension with Baltimore. Now, it’s time to check out the pitchers, and this should be a little easier, simply because there won’t be as many.

In 2012, only two pitchers received an offer, Kyle Lohse and Rafael Soriano, and they both ended up beating what they would have made had they accepted, though it took Lohse a while to get there. Last year, Ubaldo Jimenez, Hiroki Kuroda and Ervin Santana were the pitchers to get hit with it. Kuroda ended up staying with the Yankees for $16 million, a small raise from what he’d made in 2013. Jimenez and Santana both had to wait until deep into the spring, and while Jimenez eventually got the big, multi-year deal he was looking for, Santana had to settle for one year and $14.1 million from Atlanta, or exactly what he’d have received had he accepted Kansas City’s qualifying offer. A.J. Burnett, to some mild surprise, did not get one from the Pirates.

So what about this year? Six pitchers seem worth discussing, and again, don’t expect to see Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, Brandon McCarthy, etc., here, because players traded during the season are not eligible to receive a qualifying offer. Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Gordon, as we know him now, is a top-five outfielder on a team surging in the playoffs. We can’t forget the Alex Gordons who came before, though. Because it was those struggles that minted the current version. In terms of mindset and mechanics, we wouldn’t have today’s Gordon without yesterday’s. And we might be seeing some of the lessons Gordon learned in play with his younger teammates, too.

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There were 46,912 fans at Oriole Park at Camden Yards today/tonight. Between print, radio and TV, there were just over 800 credentialed media. As for the 31 players who performed on the field, they put on another good show. This game wasn’t as wild and wacky as the one that ended just before one o’clock this morning, but it was still a doozy – a doozy that last 4 hours and 17 minutes. The Royals scored twice in the ninth inning on a double by Alcides Escobar and a single by Lorenzo Cain to win 6-4.

As usual, I won’t write much here about what you just saw on TV. What I will do is supply some color in the form of post-game quotes and fold this over into my weekly Sunday Notes column.

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Mike Moustakas on homering for the third consecutive game and executing a sacrifice bunt in the ninth inning: “That’s how we’re playing the game right now. Any way we’re going to score runs, we’re going to score. If that means sac bunting or hit-and-running – anything to generate runs – we’re fine with it. But I’m seeing the ball good right now. I’m getting good pitches to hit and I’m not missing them.”

Lorenzo Cain on making a spectacular diving catch in right-center field: “Zone in and make the play. I don’t think about messing up. I’m not a guy who is scared or fearful about making a mistake. I’m willing to lay out and do whatever it takes to make a play. I’m going to continue to play that way. I’ve played that way my entire life.”

Ned Yost on the Royals benefiting from some soft hits: “That’s good hitting, yeah. I’ll take bloop hits all day long. They get bloop hits, too. They’re a little bit aggravating.”

Buck Showalter on decision-making and being down two games to none: “I could go over about a hundred decisions Ned and I have to make, and the players, more importantly, have to make. It can be kind of maddening if you let it, but you trust your instincts and know your guys. You’ve got to win four games. You’ve got to keep from losing more than three. That’s obviously oversimplifying it.”

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A lot has been written about Buck Showalter in recent weeks, and deservedly so. The quotable manager has achieved cult status in Baltimore, and if he leads the Orioles to the promised land – a more daunting task than it was 24 hours ago – Earl Weaver might eventually have company in Camden Yards statue land.

Less has been written about Ned Yost – at least in regard to positive print – so let’s spill some cyberspace ink on the much-maligned Royals skipper. After all, his holy-crap-they-might-win-it-all team is currently in the driver’s seat against Showalter’s squad in the ALCS.

Let’s start with some words from outfielder Lorenzo Cain, who has been setting the world on fire since I spoke with him at the outset of the series.

“I would say he was kind of conservative to start the season,” Cain told me. “Toward the end here he’s been a lot more aggressive, changing pitchers and making moves. He changed the lineup – one, two, three – and that’s definitely an aggressive move. You have to take risks in this game to be successful and that’s what he’s doing.

“Buck Showalter is a really good manager, but we have a really good manager as well. Managing and making moves is definitely going to come into play in this series, but as players we understand we have to get it done on the field. A manager can make moves, but at the end of the day, we have to go out there and perform.”

So far, Cain has held up his end of the bargain. He’s 6 for 8 with a pair of walks, and his defense in center field has been immaculate. Read the rest of this entry »

The story lines have been the same all week. The Orioles hit home runs and the Royals steal bases. Both teams have deep, lock-down bullpens. One manager is sly as a fox and the other is a tactical error waiting to happen. That pretty much covers it.

Actually, one other notable theme crept in: According to FanGraphs odds, the Royals came in with a 63 percent chance of winning the ALCS. Meanwhile, the betting line in Las Vegas favored the Orioles. Baltimore reliever Darren O’Day had a great take on the contradiction.

“My wife told me something about our odds to win the World Series,” O’Day said prior to the game. “But the four teams who had the best odds [coming into the playoffs] are now at home, so I don’t know that the odds mean much.”

Odds were that tonight’s game wouldn’t go as scripted – it seems they rarely do in the postseason – and to say it didn’t would be stating the obvious. Any script it may have followed was implausible. This was an unpredictable baseball game, which lends credence to O’Day’s words.

Another thing the Baltimore sidewinder said about the series stands out, and it ended up being irony in its highest form.

“Juxtaposed are the speed and the power,” said O’Day. “It will be exciting to see how we control the running game and how they keep our guys in the park. Two different styles.”

The Royals adapted their opponent’s style and won – the final was 8-6 in 10 innings – not because of their running game, but because the Orioles couldn’t keep them in the park. That didn’t fit the supposed story line, but it was less surprising than one might think. The Kansas City lineup is by no means power-packed, but Camden Yards isn’t Kauffman Stadium. It’s a veritable launching pad.

“People say they’re not a home-run-hitting team, but that’s because they play in a huge ballpark,” said Orioles first baseman Steve Pearce. “We probably wouldn’t be a huge home-run-hitting team if we played there either. They’re fast, but they can also play a little bit. They can hit.”

Hit they did. In the top of the third, Alcides Escobar homered. Later in the inning, Alex Gordon cleared the bases with a double. In the 10th, Gordon took O’Day out of the yard to give the Royals the lead. Three batters later, Mike Moustakas went deep as well.

“This is a park that’s a lot more conducive to hitting home runs than our ballpark is,” Kansas City manager Ned Yost said after the game. “If you put our club in this ballpark, we’d hit a lot more home runs than we ended up hitting. It showed tonight.”

Buck Showalter was also asked about Kansas City’s power surge, and likewise offered little sign of surprise. He did show some matter-of-fact disappointment regarding the outcome, as well as appreciation for great theater.

“They’ve been hitting home runs lately,” said the Orioles skipper. “It is what it is. It was a good ballgame, except the Orioles didn’t win. It was entertaining.”

Over 162 games, which is the full season, the Royals were the best base-stealing team in baseball, and it was all worth to them about a dozen runs. That is not very many runs, unless they were to all happen in one or two games, and there’s a reason we don’t talk about stolen bases much during the year. They’re just such a minor factor, of far less significance than, say, playing good defense, or hitting for power. So maybe now you think the Royals’ running game is getting too much attention. They went nuts in one game, but that’s it. I’ve personally never before devoted this much attention to a running game, but here I am, putting together another post. I’m deeply interested in the way the Orioles’ ALCS roster matches up against how the Royals intend to score runs.

The matchups are a little thing, but we’re so bad at predicting the big things in a short series I might as well try something else. The Orioles released their 25-man roster, and while nothing came as a shocker, there is one notable swap — Ubaldo Jimenez will not participate. Brian Matusz will particpate, or at least he’ll be available to do so. The simple explanation is that Matusz is left-handed, and the Royals’ lineup is fairly left-handed, so Matusz fills a greater need. That’s all true, but there’s also a little more. The Royals want to get on base and run. They could have some difficulty doing both.

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   -Kiley

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The Royals are an incredible story, and the Orioles are an incredible story, and when you break down a big incredible story into its component bits, you’re left with a whole bunch of tinier incredible stories. Among the possessors of those stories on the Orioles is closer Zach Britton, who, like a lot of good relievers, is a failed starter. Britton failed to build on a promising rookie season and was reduced this year to bullpen work, but in that role Britton has excelled. And not only is it remarkable that he’s excelled — it’s remarkable how he’s excelled.

If you’re familiar with Britton, you know the story. If you’re not, you will be. Britton, basically, has one pitch. He’ll mix in the occasional breaking ball, but nine times out of ten, Britton is attacking with his sinker. People liked his sinker when he was a starter and it flew in at 92 miles per hour. Now it’s coming in at 96, so it doubles as both a setup pitch and a putaway pitch. Kenley Jansen has his cutter, Jake McGee has his four-seamer, and Zach Britton has his sinker. It’s the pitch that’s allowed him to tie for the highest single-season groundball rate we have on record.

Britton’s sinker is the whole secret to his success, in that people can’t do anything with it even when they know that it’s coming. At FanGraphs we track pitch values, which measure the quality of a single pitch based on the results that it gets. This year, Johnny Cueto had the highest fastball pitch value. McGee came in second — he’s also a one-pitch pitcher. Then you’ve got Clayton Kershaw, then you’ve got Zach Britton, and of course, Cueto and Kershaw were starters. Britton had one of the most dominant individual pitches in baseball, allowing him to be a shutdown closer, and so far in the playoffs Britton hasn’t thrown anything but his bread and butter. He knows what’s been working for him.

A few people have remarked that when they see Britton’s sinker in action, they’re reminded of Jonny Venters. Unfortunately Venters hasn’t been able to pitch in the majors since 2012, so I found myself curious: does anybody else in baseball throw Zach Britton’s sinker? Does it have peers, or is it a standalone pitch? After thinking on it, I’ve come up with a method. And for simplicity, I’m ignoring handedness concerns. Left-handed and right-handed sinkers will be combined.

Read the rest on Just A Bit Outside.

Tomorrow night, Fox Sports 1 is going full nerd. While their mothership is showing the traditional broadcast of the game, FS1 is going to have a simulcast of the game action, but instead of the traditional play-by-play and color commentary audio, the crew from Just A Bit Outside — C.J. Nitkowski, Gabe Kapler, and Rob Neyer — will be offering their insights while the game occurs. They’ve also wrangled Bud Black into joining them, and the whole thing will be hosted by Kevin Burkhardt. You can read more about what they have planned here, or watch this video preview, or you can read below, where I talk to Rob about what it is they’re going to do tomorrow night.

Also, while those guys getting ogled on your TV screen, we’ll be making sure JABO.com is still loaded with content. Jeff Sullivan, Drew Fairservice, August Fagerstrom, and myself will be representing the FG crew, providing quick-hit analysis and commentary on the site, and expect a few other notable voices to chime in as well. If you want to be fully ensconced in analysis while you watch the game, tomorrow is the night for you.

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If there is one thing we have learned from the American League teams this postseason, it’s that defense and baserunning really are very important. No one person has better exemplified this than Royals outfielder Jarrod Dyson. You’ve already read Jeff’s article on how Dyson stole perhaps the biggest base since Dave Roberts in 2004. Eventually though, this postseason run for the Royals is going to end. Whether that is in four games or 14 games is not yet certain, but when it does end, the Royals will need to make a decision as to what they are going to do with Dyson next season. They should let him play.

Over the past two seasons, there have only been 29 outfielders in baseball more valuable than Dyson. Of those 29, only one of them had as few plate appearances as did Dyson. Most of them have double the plate appearances, and some have 2.5 times Dyson’s 529 PAs. Dyson is particularly adept afield. Over the past two seasons, only three outfielders have been worth more defensively per our Def statistic, and only 15 position players in general.

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