Earwigs are weird little bugs. They’re long, they have pincers on their butts and they have these weird little membranous wings they rarely use. Some species of earwigs have been traced back to the Jurassic Era, and they live on pretty much every continent. You know where they don’t live? Anyone’s ears. The term earwig is a bit of a misnomer as, at least according to the infallible Wikipedia, one would rarely find them in a human ear.

The term has also migrated to mean something that is found in the human ear, at least sort of. Songs, tunes and melodies can also be termed earwigs — referring to a tune that gets stuck in one’s head. I’d list some popular choices, but I don’t consider myself to be that mean of a person and I shudder at the comments if I were responsible for the quickening of some readers’ descents into madness. I do have to mention one, though, or this won’t have anything to do with baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Being a good young baseball player right now is a little bit like going on that famous episode of Oprah: “You get a long-term deal, and you get a long-term deal, and you get a long-term deal!” On Monday, Jedd Gyorko became the latest youngster to land a big contract, signing a six-year contract with the San Diego Padres; the deal guarantees him at least $35 million and includes a team option that could push it closer to $50 million over seven seasons. The league is enjoying record profitability, and instead of chasing aging pricey free agents, teams like the Padres have chosen to take their newfound wealth and use it to keep their best young players around for six or seven prime years.

These deals have historically been big winners for MLB teams, as they’ve traded on young players’ desire for financial security to hold down salaries for future superstars like Evan Longoria, Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, Chris Sale, and many others. The return on investment has been so consistently positive that teams are now racing to get similar deals done with every player who shows that they might have the ability to be a core building block for the future.

From 2008 through the end of the 2013 season, there were 47 contract extensions that covered at least four seasons, and most of them were in the six- or seven-year range, especially if you account for the team options that the players gave up in order to get their first big paycheck. As I noted in that analysis of those contracts, only a half dozen or so of those contracts have ended up not working out for the organization. The success rate on these deals has been extraordinarily high, especially when compared to the minefield that is free agency.

However, if there’s one team that hasn’t reaped the benefits of the recent extension craze, it’s probably these very same San Diego Padres. Two of the half dozen or so deals that haven’t worked out in the team’s favor have been signed by the Padres: Cameron Maybin‘s five-year, $25 million deal and Cory Luebke’s four-year, $12 million contract, both signed in March of 2012.

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I’m sitting here, reading complaints on Twitter. Not long ago, a starting lineup was revealed for a Tuesday baseball game, and almost immediately some people took issue. They don’t like that a certain bench player is getting a start, and they don’t like that a certain regular starter is sitting out. Why, they wonder, would you ever make your lineup worse, especially when you’re playing against a team in the same division?

To be perfectly honest, yeah, this is inspired by the Seattle Mariners. But this isn’t just a post about the Mariners, because this can apply to every team and to every team’s fan base. There’s not a single fan base immune to lineup complaints, and as much as more people are beginning to understand that lineup order doesn’t make much of a difference, a bench player filling in for a starter always generates a negative response. After all, the bench player, presumably, is worse than the starter, which is why the starter is the starter. So what does it mean to take out a starter?

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For those who subscribe to FanGraphs+, you have access to informative blurbs on nearly every major league player’s page. When writing about Brandon McCarthy for FG+, Jason Collette credited him with 80-grade social media presence. McCarthy is one of the good guys; he’s likable and easy to root for on many levels.

McCarthy’s had a weird start to the season. His first outing of the season was a mixed bag. In past seasons, his sinker topped out around 91 mph, but this year he has averaged 93 mph with the pitch. He allowed six hits and one walk in that inaugural outing and stranded only 35.7% of his base runners. OK, that’s some unlucky sequencing. Surely the increased velocity will return positive results in the next few outings. Right?

During his April 5 start, he allowed five fly balls. Three of them left the yard. His most recent turn was more impressive. He allowed one fly ball, which left the park. Add it up and McCarthy looks to have some bad luck dragons on his side. He now leads the league with a 41.7% HR/FB ratio, compared with his career rate of just 9.8%.

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Matt Moore’s injury afforded an opportunity for his naysayers to point back to their predictions for him in 2014. Bradley Woodrum did a great job in pointing out Moore’s flaws in his Fangraphs+ player profile:

But Moore needs to improve his control and his swinging strike rate if he wants to develop into anything more than an innings eater who doesn’t eat innings. Add to the warning flags: He missed a month in elbow inflammation and his fastball slowed almost two miles per hour from 2012. On the merit of his tools alone, Moore is still worth keeping on a roster, but he has too many shortcomings at his point to expect much more than 175 innings and a league-average FIP. Whether he’ll beat his FIP or not depends on how you see his career-best .259 batting average on balls in play.

There were those issues, and there was no overlooking the fact that Moore’s velocity was in decline. However, that was not the only indicator in decline for Moore and it did not take this most recent injury to find a problem with him.

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The Astros have a very young team; the Yankees do not. I’m not exactly breaking news here, but I am going to provide you some data to back up the claims. Thanks to the depth charts that we maintain here on the site, we are able to calculate team age not just by the average age of the players on the roster, but weighted by the amount of expected playing time that each player is projected to get this year. After all, having a 25 year old starter and a 35 year old reserve is not the same thing as having a pair of 30 year olds splitting the duty. Young teams often populate their bench and bullpen with veteran leaders, and there’s no reason to dramatically inflate their average team age based on the presence of those backups.

The depth charts also include expected future playing time for guys in the high minors who haven’t yet gotten the call to the big leagues, but should be expected to see some big league time this summer. The Astros weighted team age includes the playing time we’re expecting top prospects George Springer, Jonathan Singleton, and Mark Appel to get in Houston later this year, so this process evaluates a team’s age not just by what they currently have on the team but also the talent that should arrive in the near future.

Without further ado, the data.

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The big righthander reared back and fired one last time, and Dodger catcher John Roseboro popped it up to shortstop Luis Aparicio to cap a 6-0, four-hit complete-game shutout, giving the Orioles a 2-0 lead in the 1966 World Series that they would go on to sweep. It was an eclectic Series game to be sure – it marked Sandy Koufax‘ last major league appearance, and was marked – you might say defaced – by an amazing six Dodger errors, including an incredible three by center fielder Willie Davis. Perhaps most notable, however, was the identity of the pitcher who tossed the shutout.

At age 20, Jim Palmer had now truly arrived, following up a 15-win regular season with this heroic effort. The future could not appear brighter for a kid who, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, would pitch all of 49 major league innings over the next two seasons due to a serious shoulder injury. Why is any of this relevant? Because this is as close as anything in baseball history to a successful precedent for the comeback currently being attempted by the Yankees’ Michael Pineda. Read the rest of this entry »

On April 9th at Minnesota, Oakland right-hander Jesse Chavez recorded a 9:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 26 batters over 7.0 innings, en route to a single-game 1.79 xFIP (box). Yesterday (Monday), Oakland right-hander Jesse Chavez — in this case, away at Anaheim — recorded a 9:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 26 batters over 7.0 innings, en route to a single-game 1.79 xFIP (box). Now, including an April 4th start against Seattle that was also rather successful, Chavez has produced a 22:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 20.0 innings and the seventh-best park-adjusted xFIP among 100 qualified starters.

What’s notable about the pitchers who appear towards the top of the leaderboard to which I’ve linked just above is that all of them either (a) entered the season having recorded more career major-league starts than Jesse Chavez or (b) signed a seven-year, $155 million contract with the Yankees this offseason after a celebrated career in Japanese baseball.

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Just like any reasonable person would’ve expected, the Los Angeles Dodgers currently have sole possession of first place in the National League West. And just like any reasonable person would’ve expected, right now the Dodgers’ team leader in wRC+ among regulars and semi-regulars is Dee Gordon, at 174. As a neat bit of ephemeral trivia, Gordon’s wRC+ is 43 points higher than his 2012 wRC+ and his 2013 wRC+ combined. And by combined, I don’t mean averaged out. I mean added together. Through two weeks, the Dodgers’ biggest weakness has been one of their biggest strengths, and this is an example of why the playoffs don’t crown the best team in baseball. Sometimes, over little samples, Dee Gordon out-hits Hanley Ramirez.

Some more neat ephemeral trivia: Before the season started, Steamer projected Gordon for 0.3 WAR. Meanwhile, ZiPS projected Gordon for 0.7 WAR. Already, Gordon’s been worth 0.6 WAR, so he can be replacement-level from this point forward and the Dodgers won’t be worse off than they were expected to be. Following about a season’s worth of games of being terrible, Gordon’s gone from busted prospect to contributor, and he even went so far as to hit a legitimate home run off Max Scherzer. Sunday, he did something more his own speed.

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Maybe the most annoying thing you could say is that the Brewers are going to regress. They’re not going to keep winning 83% of their baseball games. They’re not going to end the season with a +378 run differential. They’re not as good as a 1.80 team ERA, and they’re not going to keep running a .250 BABIP against. They’re on a nine-game winning streak, but they’re going to lose, and they’re going to lose, inarguably, dozens of times. The Brewers, in truth, aren’t close to this good. No kidding. This year’s Brewers aren’t literally the best team in the history of baseball.

But every hot streak is unsustainable, just as every cold streak is unsustainable. Any team that wins nine in a row and any team that wins 10 of 12 will have contributing factors you can’t expect to keep up in the long run. What’s important isn’t determining whether or not the Brewers will keep winning at this clip. They won’t. What’s important is determining where the Brewers stand now, relative to where they stood a couple weeks ago before the season was underway.

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