One of my favorite tools we have here is our Playoff Odds page. I used to make frequent use of Cool Standings, and I keep track of hockey playoff odds at Sports Club Stats. I like looking at the playoff odds because they give the clearest sense of where things stand, and in theory, the whole point is getting to October, so why not monitor how likely that is in real time? Of course, we’re not just in it to see the playoffs — if that were the case, most baseball fans would be pissed off all the time, if they’d be fans at all — but getting to the postseason is at the core of most of what we talk about. Why do we care about player analysis? Good players make teams better. Better teams are more likely to go to the playoffs and win the World Series. And so forth.

Eventually, on our Playoff Odds page, you’ll be able to click through and see how the odds have changed over time. That hasn’t rolled out yet, though, nor are people probably even thinking about it in the first week of April. The season is so new we’re all still trying to find our baseball-fan footing, and it feels like the whole thing is in front of us. Most of it is, to be sure, but what’s already happened counts. And it turns out, what’s already happened for a few teams is pretty significant.

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Just yesterday, I was writing about pitches down the middle called balls, and I identified one from the other day thrown by Gio Gonzalez to Josh Satin. The umpire who called the ball was Clint Fagan, and I haven’t heard that name much before, but I didn’t think much of it, until a commenter pointed out that the strike zone was off all game. That one call, of course, was the worst, but Fagan called a zone that wasn’t the ordinary, familiar zone, and we can only speculate on the impact it had. There’s nothing to be done about it now.

Then last night, I started getting tweets to the effect of, “there’s another ball on a pitch down the middle.” That pitch was thrown by Roenis Elias (Seattle Mariners baseball player) to Nick Punto, and the umpire was Sean Barber, which is another name I’m unfamiliar with. Barber, like Fagan, had a weird zone all game, outside of the one call. Barber aggravated some players and his zone became a story, even in a tight game that went 12 innings. Barber and Fagan called strange zones on consecutive days, and it turns out the two of them are linked, besides just being included in the introduction of this post.

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One of the unsung heroes of the 2012 San Francisco Giants team was Angel Pagan, who had come to San Francisco in trade in December, 2011. In fact, Pagan was so unsung that towards the end of the 2012 regular season, our very own Dave Cameron touted him for the tag of “most underrated player in baseball.” After the World Series trophy came back to the Bay, Pagan got a nice little contract, but unfortunately 2013 didn’t really go as planned. As such, he has gone back to being underrated. At least, for now.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to tear a hamstring muscle. I bet it hurts. It sure sounds like it hurts. Like, a lot. Unfortunately for him, Angel Pagan knows this feeling intimately, as he tore his right hamstring last season. Reading back through the Rotoworld injury news briefs, it may have been on this play:

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A few weeks ago, the Cardinals signed Matt Carpenter to a six year, $52 million contract. Today, the Indians have signed Jason Kipnis to a six year, $52.5 million contract. Both players were four years from free agency, and in essence, they both signed the same basic contract. Which makes sense, because they’re pretty similar players. Here are their career performances, side by side:

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FanGraphs is proud to be the keynote sponsor of this year’s Saberseminar: Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball. The weekend event takes place in Boston on August 16th and 17th, and the line-up is already looking pretty fantastic. Confirmed speakers include Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, Red Sox GM Ben Cherington and analyst Tom Tippett, physicist Alan Nathan, SABR President Vince Gennaro, noted analysts Mitchel Lichtman, Dan Brooks, Harry Pavlidis, and others, including Matt Swartz and myself representing FanGraphs.

The event is always a great time, with lots of really interesting presentations and a lot of fantastic people. Even better, however, is that the event is put on entirely as a fundraiser, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Jimmy Fund. Every speaker donates their time and travel costs, and the entire event is put on with the goal of raising as much money for cancer research as possible. So, not only do you get to spend a few days hanging out with other baseball nerds, you get to do so while also helping save lives. It’s a win-win.

Tickets for the weekend start at $140 (and are only $65 if you’re a student, which is an incredible deal), and can be purchased now from their website. If you’re anywhere near the Boston area that weekend, you should absolutely buy a ticket. If you’re not near the Boston area, you should consider coming anyway. It’s a great event, and I couldn’t endorse it any stronger.

I hope to see you guys there.

This is an image, from Baseball Savant:

You’ll recognize that as the strike zone (1-9) and areas around the strike zone (11-14). What we have in Zone 5 is a zone that’s middle-middle — that is, that’s the heart. As a pitcher, that’s a good place to avoid. As a pitcher, you’re presumably incapable of avoiding it entirely. Now, in theory, there should never be a called ball on a pitch in Zone 5. You can kind of understand balls on pitches in the zone but near the edges. Umpires don’t have perfect vision. But, in theory, pitches taken in Zone 5 are unmistakable strikes. They’re pitches literally right down the middle. In practice, those pitches aren’t strikes 100% of the time, and I like to keep track of when things go awry in order to examine how it might have happened.

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The fastest pitch Mark Buehrle threw Wednesday was just shy of 84 miles per hour. For Buehrle, in early April, that’s not out of the ordinary, and he’s long been a guy who’s managed to make it work in the low- to mid-80s. What was a little more out of the ordinary was everything else. Armed with his usual stuff, Buehrle struck out 11 of 30 Tampa Bay batters. He was a fastball away from completing a shutout, and Buehrle himself was taken by surprise by what he was able to do.

Only one other time in his extraordinary career has Buehrle’s strikeout total reached double digits. He whiffed a dozen Mariners all the way back in April 2005, in a game that lasted all of 99 minutes. So, this was Buehrle’s second-highest strikeout total ever. Yet he generated just a dozen swings and misses. That’s a high number, but not as high as the strikeouts would suggest. In 28 career starts, Buehrle has missed more than 12 bats. In another 14, he’s missed exactly 12 bats. Buehrle was unusually unhittable without being unusually unhittable, and the reason for that is the very reason for Buehrle’s continued success in the bigs.

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The rise of the early career contract extension has, in some cases, made it clear just how much impact one contract extension can have on future contract negotiations. For instance, nine months after Justin Upton signed a six year, $51 million contract with the Diamondbacks, Jay Bruce signed a six year, $51 million deal with the Reds. A year after that, Andrew McCutchen signed a six year, $51 million deal with the Pirates. A couple of years ago, Madison Bumgarner, Jon Niese, Derek Holland, and Chris Sale all signed long term deals with very similar parameters at similar levels of service time. Even just a few weeks ago, Starling Marte signed a $31 million contract that is almost exactly a clone of the deal Paul Goldschmidt signed last spring.

This is basically how the extension market works. There are parameters in place that drive the fundamentals, but by and large, a lot of the negotiation boils down to making sure that the deal is in the same range of what the last few similar players signed for. And so it’s not surprising that the two most recent extensions for young, early career pitchers come with almost exactly the same terms.

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If Corey Kluber’s road to the big leagues was long and winding, the reason for his recent success might be short and simple. One day, some time in 2011, the pitcher finally gave up on his four-seam fastball and started throwing a two-seamer. And now you have the current Corey Kluber. A contrite pitcher talking about a simple change doesn’t make for a long interview, but the Corey Kluber Process might be applicable to some other young pitchers around the league.

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The week leading up to Opening Day 2014 turned out to be quite historic, with the clear two best players in the game locked into long-term contracts guaranteeing them nearly a cool half-billion. Obviously, the prognosis for the respective long-term efficacy of the two deals varies dramatically, with Cabrera’s extension locking up his age 33-40 seasons, compared to Trout’s doing the same to his age 23-28 campaigns. This week, let’s take a step back and put these two greats into some sort of historical perspective, then use that perspective to research their aging curves in order make some educated judgments regarding the Tigers’ and Angels’ investments. Today, let’s look at Mike Trout. Read the rest of this entry »