There has been no shortage of opinions regarding the Chicago White Sox’ signing of Jose Dariel Abreu.  We have seen how his statistics match up to other recent Cuban defectors before the jump, as well as heard differing scouts’ opinions regarding how those stats will translate stateside. I will not try to add to either of these discussions.  I think the stat comparisons to Puig and Cespedes are interesting enough without my additional input, and I have not actually seen Abreu in person to judge his athleticism or bat speed.  I do not know anything about his makeup besides what has already been repeated by scouts and former teammates.

What I have not heard anything about is how people view his swing.  I made a comment in Dave’s article the other day disputing the importance of bat speed in favor of efficiency, and so I felt motivated to continue that conversation here.  Yasiel Puig and Yoenis Cespedes happen to be two of the most explosive athletes in the game, so their exploits may not be very predictive.  On top of his fellow Cuban natives, Abreu has been compared to Miguel Cabrera due to his size and “lack” of athleticism (side note: too many people mistake foot speed for athleticism; rotational athletes are a completely different breed from track stars).  Pretty tall order, since even 1/4 of Cabrera’s production would result in a pretty solid value for the ChiSox.  Even with a very good swing, I think it would be ridiculous to expect the same generational types of seasons from the Cuban slugger.  The first hitter I thought of when I saw Abreu’s swing was Buster Posey.

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Baseball is about randomness as much as it about probability. That was provenon Saturday when the game ended on an obstruction call. Tonight had its own atypical ending — a pickoff with the tying run at the plate — but it was a more-common unexpected event that decided the outcome.

The Red Sox won 4-2, at Busch Stadium, to draw even with the Cardinals. The hero was Jonny “Replacement” Gomes

Through four games, the 2013 World Series has been all about lapses. Lapses in judgment, lapses in execution, lapses in decision-making. The Red Sox have had more than the Cardinals. Despite coming out on top, that was the case tonight. Read the rest of this entry »

We begin with some acknowledgements. First, a baseball game is never entirely won or lost based on a single event, a single match-up. Certain events can be of massive importance, but they’re massive because of the context, and the context is established by other events, that would’ve led to different outcomes given different outcomes. So many different things contribute to a game result. An impossible, uncountable number of things, some of them things you’d never consider. Perhaps you’ve recognized that baseball is complicated. This isn’t checkers. Checkers is also complicated.

Second, managerial decisions tend to have their significance exaggerated. As MGL is fond of reminding us, most managerial decisions lead to very minor swings in win expectancy, which of course is the only thing that matters. Certain decisions are worse than others, and some can be relatively major in a good way or a bad way, but at the end of the day it’s still up to the players on the field, and pitchers are always going to have the advantage over hitters, save for the most extreme of circumstances. When managers get ripped to shreds, there tends to be a lot of results-based analysis, and that’s by and large worthless.

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Much of the focus on last night’s game has centered around the obstruction call that gave the Cardinals a walk-off win. The poor defensive play that allowed the scenario to unfold played a major role, and it has also drawn a lot of attention. Ditto questionable decisions by both managers.

Almost completely overlooked are a defensive play and expertly-choreographed pitch sequences in potentially game-changing innings. Read the rest of this entry »

“Immediately once we got off the field, and into our locker room, we congratulated Jim. We said ‘great call.’”

Those were the words of crew chief John Hirschbeck, referring to third base umpire Jim Joyce’s obstruction call that gave the Cardinals a 5-4 win in Game Three of the World Series. The Red Sox weren’t so sure.

To say the call was controversial would be an understatement. It rivaled football’s infamous “tuck rule game,” but this time it didn’t benefit a team from New England, nor did it happen in a snowstorm. It happened in a sea of Busch Stadium red, white towels twirling, and ended one of the most-captivating baseball games you’ll ever see.

Boston manager John Farrell’s interpretation is telling. Read the rest of this entry »

The final play of Game 3 of the World Series has generated some very strong opinions. In the poll just below this (that includes a GIF of the play), most of you have sided with the umpires, believing that the obstruction call on Will Middlebrooks was correct. Rather than offer a strong opinion of my own, I’d like to simply offer some connected thoughts that have come from watching the play a few hundred times.

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No GIF yet, because the game just ended, but let’s assume that most of you that are viewing FanGraphs at this time of day probably watched the end of the World Series.

Posted by Twitter User @CJZero, here’s how game three ended.

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In the afternoon of Saturday, October 10th, 1931, the Cardinals took on the Philadelphia Athletics at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. This would be the seventh and final matchup of these teams in that year’s World Series. Philadelphia had gone 107-45 that season (beating their Pythagorean record by 10 games), behind the one-two-three punch of catcher Mickey Cochrane, a young Jimmie Foxx, and outfielder Al Simmons. They also boasted a pitching staff including the likes of Lefty Grove and Waite Hoyt. Though they had won six less games, the Cardinals were no slouches, either. Hall-of-Famers Jim Bottemley and Frankie Frisch manned the infield, with Pepper Martin in the outfield in his first full season. Paul Derringer and the fantastically-named (and HOF spitballer) Burleigh Grimes anchored the rotation for St. Louis. The Athletics were favored to win the series somewhat heavily, as Connie Mack’s club was coming of two consecutive world titles, and had beaten the (more-or-less) same Cardinals team the previous year. It was a fairly evenly-matched series all-in-all, save for Game 6 when the Athletics kicked around the Cardinals to the tune of 8 – 1. Al Simmons was hitting out of his mind that series, and would eventually end up with a 1.030 OPS for the fall classic, while Pepper Martin posted a 1.330 OPS with the Cardinals. Grimes was dealing, allowing only one run over 18 innings, while Grove and George Earnshaw were racking up the strikeouts for the Philly (well, as much as you could rack up strikeouts back then.) Read the rest of this entry »

I’d like to share something with you from last Saturday’s ALCS Game 6. We all know now how that game turned out, but in the top of the sixth the eventual result was still a mystery, and the Red Sox were clinging to a tenuous lead. Given that the score was so close, every pitch was important, and when Clay Buchholz got to two strikes against Miguel Cabrera, a fan in the stands tried to get everybody amped. What he wanted was a standing ovation. What he wanted was mounting two-strike applause. Sometimes it works. You know it when you hear it, and it’s a sure sign of a stadium that’s engaged and invested.

Instead of everyone else standing up, within seconds the highlighted fan sat himself down. The crowd couldn’t sustain proper electricity given the game’s deliberate tempo. After the fan, the camera cut next to Buchholz:

Buchholz took his sweet time. Sure, absolutely, you don’t want to make a mistake there to Cabrera, but you’d think it would be possible to realize how not to make a mistake in a shorter period of time. The crowd had a little life, but there wasn’t a lot of noise when Buchholz delivered his next pitch. Cabrera hit it for a single, knocking Buchholz out of the game. Shortly thereafter, the Tigers took the lead in what could’ve and should’ve been a more pivotal frame. Is there a connection between the lack of noise for Buchholz and the Cabrera at-bat result? Would Cabrera have done something else had the crowd been more lively, had Buchholz worked faster? Probably not, no, but by introducing the questions I can lend a little artificial significance to the rest of this article. We’re talking about pace!

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In his piece this morning about Carlos Martinez and Trevor Rosenthal, Jeff wrote about Mike Matheny’s decision to stay with Martinez against David Ortiz, rather than go to the left-handed Randy Choate, in the 8th inning: The relevant post-game quote, again:

It’s not an easy decision. Knowing that we have a left-hander up and ready to go. A lot of it has to do with what we see, how the ball is coming out of Carlos’s hands at that time. We have two guys on base, one by an error and another by a ball that made it’s way kinda through the infield. Looked like he had real good life. And if we get through Ortiz, then we have an opportunity to use Carlos’s good life right there against a Napoli, where we don’t have to bring Trevor in more than one. Not an easy call, but we liked the way Carlos was throwing the ball at that particular time.

It’s probably really hard to take Carlos Martinez out of the game, I imagine. When you have that kind of stuff, and he’s been dominating the way he was in the postseason, it has to be tempting to just say “hey, let’s stick with the kid who throws 100.” Martinez isn’t a righty specialist, and as Eno Sarris pointed out before the series began, Ortiz struggled against especially hard fastballs this year, hitting just .238/.284/.365 on at-bats that ended with a fastball of 94+ mph.

Perhaps Martinez’s premium velocity makes him a better match-up there than the platoon splits would indicate. And, as Matheny noted, keeping Martinez in to face Ortiz meant that he also got to stay in to face Napoli, and he put some value on not having to make two pitching changes, including one that would force Trevor Rosenthal to enter the game in the 8th inning, then sit around and wait for the 9th to begin before taking the mound again.

But, while acknowledging that Matheny noted this was a difficult decision, it is not hard to see that decision as part of a broader pattern, as Mike Matheny has consistently chosen the pitcher on the mound over a potentially more attractive match-up available out of the bullpen. In fact, Matheny made perhaps an even more questionable decision to let Ortiz face a right-hander two innings earlier.

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