Archive for Daily Graphings

Jair Jurrjens is on the comeback trail. The 28-year-old righthander signed a minor league deal with Cincinnati in late May and is currently pitching for Triple-A Louisville. If he can approach his old form, the former Atlanta Braves stalwart could give the Reds rotation a shot in the arm.

Knee problems caused Jurrjens to spiral from solid starter to waiver-wire fodder. In 2009, he pitched 215 innings and went 14-10 with a 2.60 ERA. Two years later – despite discomfort in a surgically-repaired meniscus – he went 13-6, with a 2.96 ERA, in 152 innings. Then came the real pain. His 2012 and 2013 seasons were a velocity-challenged train wreck spent primarily in the minor leagues.

“The last couple of years have been stressful and frustrating,” Jurrjens admitted. “My arm was never a problem, I just didn’t have the strength to push off after the surgery to my right knee. I wasn’t using my lower body – I was throwing more with my arm – and wasn’t getting full extension. Read the rest of this entry »

After another late-game meltdown, Grant Balfour is officially out as closer for the Tampa Bay Rays, at least for now, and the Rays will go closer-by-committee for a little while. While no one player can doom an entire team, Balfour’s problems are one of the primary reasons the Rays have the worst record in baseball, especially given that Balfour’s $6 million salary is a larger share of Tampa’s budget than it would be for many of their competitors. But interestingly, Balfour isn’t really an outlier here. This year, nearly every team who spent resources to acquire a “proven closer” would have been better off lighting their money on fire instead.

While the definition of a “proven closer” is up for interpretation, I would suggest that seven relief pitchers changed teams last winter and were paid something of a premium due to their ninth inning experience. They are effective relievers and would have been valuable even without ninth inning experience, but their end-of-game history likely earned them a little more money than they would have had they been career setup men. Those seven, and their contracts, are listed below.

Joe Nathan: 2 years, $20 million
Brian Wilson: 2 years, $18.5 million
Joaquin Benoit: 2 years, $15.5 million
Fernando Rodney: 2 years, $14 million
Grant Balfour: 2 years, $12 million
Jim Johnson: 1 year, $10 million
Edward Mujica: 2 years, $9.5 million

Six of them changed teams as free agents, while Johnson was traded in a salary dump by the Orioles, and was effectively available to any team who wanted to pay the amount he would get in his final trip through arbitration. Here’s how those seven pitchers have done this year, with their 2013 performance listed below for reference.

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The Mets are seven games under .500 three-plus years into the tenure of the current front office, so maybe it was inevitable that someone got fired. And with 252 runs scored, the offense is middle of the pack (ninth in the National League by runs per game). Hitting coach Dave Hudgens made an easy target for someone in the Mets’ organization. But was it the right move?

That’s a hard question to answer. But by focusing on the peripherals of the team, and perhaps even the career of Lucas Duda, who played all but a hundred or so of his plate appearances under the tutelage of Hudgens, maybe we can try to evaluate the move.

In some ways, focusing on results understates the problem. Yes, the Mets are middle of the pack in runs, but their underlying numbers are worse. Their weighted runs created — calculated by weighting each offensive event according to its impact on the game in the past — is 11% worse than league average and near the bottom of the National League. They walk more than any team in the big leagues, but with that walk rate has come a high strikeout rate (sixth-worst)… and none of the power that usually comes with taking pitches. The Mets have the second-worst slugging numbers in the National League.

Of course, the hitting coach can only work on the process, he can’t hit the ball. Research suggests that the major axis between hitting coaches is between those that preach patience and those that preach aggressiveness.

Read the rest on FoxSports.com.

The surprising part wasn’t that Kendrys Morales signed immediately after he was no longer tied to compensation. The surprising part was that Kendrys Morales signed with the Minnesota Twins, instead of any of the more obvious possibilities. When Morales signed, the Twins were 29-31, and they fancy themselves a surprising potential contender, which tells you something about where the expectations were set a few months ago. The Twins got Morales for about $7.6 million and four months, and the organizational quotes you hear are full of optimism and positivity.

A rundown, courtesy of Rhett Bollinger:

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Over the winter, Max Scherzer turned down an offer from the Tigers that would have paid him $144 million over six years, and instead, decided to play out his final season in Detroit and then see kind of offers he will get as a free agent. Given pitcher attrition rates, Scherzer was certainly taking on a significant risk to pass up that kind of contract. Jeff Zimmerman’s research pegged Scherzer as having a 31% chance of landing on the disabled list at some point in 2014, and a significant injury likely would have forced Scherzer to forego pursuing any kind of long-term deal this winter. By turning down the offer, Scherzer appeared to have made a big bet on himself and his future health.

However, as Scherzer noted to Tom Verducci over the weekend, he actually hasn’t taken on nearly as much risk as we might have thought. Instead, he sold the risk to an insurance company for what was presumably a better rate than the one the Tigers offered. And I fully expect this to become a trend, with third-party insurance agencies stepping in to correct a market imbalance in Major League Baseball.

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We’ve made some slight changes to the player pages and have added each player’s complete draft information and age in years / months/ days.

The draft information at the top of the page is the player’s most recent draft, but if you click on the text it will take you to the bottom of the page where you can see a player’s entire draft history.

Friday night, the A’s were playing the Orioles in Baltimore, and it was tied up in the bottom of the tenth when Adam Jones singled with Nick Markakis on second. Markakis rounded third and tried to score, but Brandon Moss managed to throw him out, Derek Norris applying the tag a millisecond before Markakis swept the plate. The Orioles challenged the ruling, and one of the broadcasters noted that Markakis didn’t really respond negatively to the call, implying he didn’t think he was safe. The ruling was upheld, the inning ended with Nelson Cruz getting thrown out trying to straight-up steal home, and the A’s subsequently won in the 11th. As close as the Orioles came, they could only reflect on missed opportunities.

Intuitively, it makes sense that players would respond more emphatically if they felt like they were wronged by a call. It follows that player response might be a worthwhile indicator of eventual replay-review outcome. Sometimes, plays are challenged after a potentially wronged player reacts demonstratively. Sometimes, plays are challenged after a potentially wronged player doesn’t do that. Is there anything we can learn from what we’ve seen to date? Let’s find out, using the phenomenal Baseball Savant Instant Replay Database.

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David Hale went to college. Chris Archer signed out of high school. Why the big-league pitchers chose their respective paths could serve as a template for preps selected in the just-completed draft. Everyone’s situation is unique, but many will use similar reasoning in making their choices.

“A lot of the decision is financial,” said Archer, who was drafted by the Indians and now plays for the Tampa Bay Rays. “Where your family is financially can be a big factor. If a company – baseball or non-baseball –is willing to offer you a large advance, and is willing to pay the expenses of school if it doesn’t work out… that’s something you probably want to take advantage of, especially if your family can’t necessarily cover all of your school expenses.

“I also felt going the professional route would help me develop more as a baseball player. I didn’t start pitching until I was 16, so I wasn’t very refined. The minor leagues are more about development than winning games, so I knew I was going to pitch every fifth day regardless of whether I walked 10 or struck out 10. Had I gone to college and pitched as a freshman and sophomore like I did my first two years of pro ball, I wouldn’t have pitched at all.”

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A few weeks ago, it all looked so simple. The Tigers were steamrolling foes, and the rest of the division members languished. Detroit held a seven-game lead in the American League Central, and in fact had the best record in baseball. Fast forward three weeks and they have been the worst team in the AL since, with only the Colorado Rockies performing worse in the National League. It’s been an unexpected turn of events for sure, and it has flattened the AL Central standings. The Tigers still stand as the overwhelming favorite to win the division, but there is definitely more doubt now than there was in mid-May.

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The last factoid I can recall off the top of my head is that there were about three times as many infield shifts in 2013 as there were in 2011. And, in 2014, there have only been more shifts still. The shift, of course, has existed in some form for decades, but I don’t need to overwhelm you with a bunch of specific numbers — it’s common knowledge, at this point, that defensive shifts are in. More teams are doing it than ever, and more teams are doing it more than ever. It’s a part of the game, and it’s gotten to the point at which a shifted alignment isn’t even thought unusual. When the Astros got mad at Jed Lowrie for bunting that one time, part of my defense for Lowrie was that the Astros shifted him, so he should be permitted to use strategy back. Yet the more I thought about it, was shifting a strategic ploy for the Astros, or was it just the Astros playing 21st-century baseball?

But, to cut right to the point, I want to show you a couple graphs. The data comes from Baseball-Reference, and while they don’t split their fields in even thirds, the Play Index does allow one to select balls pulled, balls hit up the middle, and balls hit the other way. I’m showing data only from 2011 onward, because it appears that something changed between 2010 and 2011 that had more to do with the record-keepers than the game itself. Anyway let’s just get to the images.

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