Archive for Daily Graphings

During the two weeks leading up to Opening Day, we’ve been taking a look at some of the most interesting teams in baseball – one contender and one rebuilder from each league. What makes a team “interesting”? Taking advantage of the extreme nature of its ballpark, for a couple of clubs. Bucking some of the game’s most prevalent current trends and having success, for another. Or almost completely breaking from every pattern displayed in a club’s fairly successful recent past. In this installment, let’s look at our NL contender, the reigning NL champs, the St. Louis Cardinals, who have built a sustainable winner by having a somewhat contrarian plan, and sticking to it. Read the rest of this entry »

You remember what Scott Baker used to be. He used to be the model of what the Twins were going for. Lots of strikes, easy outs, strikeouts not so much as a result of stuff but as a result of throwing in the zone enough and throwing fastballs high enough. Baker was a dependable guy right up until his elbow surgery. He came back and took a while to get right with the Cubs. In three starts to close last year, he struck out six of 57 batters before becoming a low-profile free agent. He wound up with the Mariners, seemingly with an inside track for a rotation job. All he needed to be was Scott Baker.

According to Chris Cotillo, Baker is leaving the Mariners and becoming a free agent again. Didn’t like his chances, despite rotation injuries. About that: let’s go back to March 1. In the second inning of a start against the Angels, Baker struck out Chad Tracy. The strikeout was called. The pitch was in, and out of the zone. That’s been Baker’s only strikeout in the Cactus League, even though he’s faced 64 batters. He’s walked seven, and he’s hit three, and all three in a row, incidentally. The point is this: we’re conditioned to dismiss spring-training statistics. Sometimes, though, it sure feels like they’re telling us something. In this case, it sure feels like they’re telling us that Scott Baker isn’t right, and he’s always had a pretty slim margin of error.

Not that this is a post about Scott Baker! I promise.

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They say the Marlins are loaded with quality young pitching. Our own numbers disagree, at least as far as this coming season is concerned, but that’s what they say, and there are clearly some promising hard throwers slated to wear the uniform. Based on the pitching staff, you’d think the Marlins might have some kind of shot at the playoffs. The problem is almost literally everything else. You might’ve noticed a theme while scrolling through the positional power rankings so far. A lot of the Marlins’ positions look terrible. Marlins position players are projected for the lowest combined WAR in baseball, a hair behind the Twins and a wig factory behind the Dodgers. As such, the Marlins are also projected for one of the worst records in baseball, and though there’s talent in place for the future, the future ain’t 2014.

The Marlins project last at first base, third base, and shortstop. They’re tied for last at catcher, and they’re third-to-last at second base. They’re tied for first in right field — look at that! — but they’re average in left and below-average in center. With every individual projection, you can quibble. There’s less quibbling to be done when a unit looks this bad as a group.

But remember: projections are averages. Or medians. I don’t really know. So projections come with downsides, and projections come with upsides. What if we talked about the Marlins’ upside? What if we stretched the definition of “possible” to examine perhaps the greatest realistic Marlins possibility?

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Last week, Ken Rosenthal reported — and others have since confirmed — that the Astros offered top prospect George Springer a seven year, $23 million contract. He turned them down, and has since been optioned to Triple-A, where he will begin the season. Presumably, had he accepted the contract offer, he may very well have been named the Astros Opening Day right fielder, as the contract would have nullified the benefits of keeping him from accruing a full year of service time in 2014, and it’s not like the Astros have a better right fielder blocking his path at the moment. However, since Springer did not accept the contract, he’ll have to wait at least a few weeks to join the Astros, and potentially a few months if they decide to try and get him past the Super Two cutoff as well.

On the one hand, it’s easy to paint this as a picture of an organization acting in bad faith, using the carrot of a big league roster spot to try and coerce a young player into signing away his future earnings potential. The MLBPA is even considering filing a grievance on Springer’s behalf — even though he isn’t a member yet, since he is not on the Astros 40 man roster — over the issue, though it would be nearly impossible for them to prove intent given that Springer only has 266 plate appearances in Triple-A; optioning out a young player with Springer’s contact rate would be pretty easily defensible on merit alone. But the perception of impropriety still exists, due to the appearance that his demotion was directly tied to his decision to reject the Astros contract offer, whether that is actually true or not.

The Springer news has brought about another round of calls for reformation of the rules in order to remove the incentives for teams to keep their best young players in the minor leagues to begin the season, and I’m with the crowd who thinks that MLB is best served by allowing teams to make roster decisions based on talent and performance rather than worrying about accrued service time. I’d rather see George Springer play in April than whoever the Astros end up rolling out there on Opening Day. But for MLB and the MLBPA to come to any sort of consensus on this in the next CBA negotiations, everyone will first have to admit that the concept of six years of team control is basically a myth.

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Over each of the past three Mondays, the present author — who has written the majority of what follows while seated alongside his shockingly loquacious grandfather — has published a largely irresponsible leaderboard of regressed pitching leaders from spring training so far. This particular Monday, the author has produced another of those same kind of leaderboards — in this case, such as are current through Sunday, March 24th.

As noted last week, the existence of these leaderboards is predicated on three conditions, as follow:

(a) Spring-training stats don’t appear to be very predictive of regular-season stats; but

(b) The return of baseball is exciting, and invites consideration of some sort; and

(c) Research suggests that, of all spring-training stats, pitcher strikeouts and (to a lesser degree) walks are probably the closest thing to predictive.

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Ryan Kalish has freed up his mind and added fluidity to his swing. As a result, the 25-year-old outfielder has a chance to earn a roster spot with the Chicago Cubs. That’s only part of the story.

The once-highly-regarded prospect reached the big leagues with the Red Sox in 2010. His future looked bright, but instead of breaking out, he began breaking down. Injuries have dominated Kalish’s career. He missed all of last season and faced the possibility of never playing again. More on that in a moment.

The adjustments to Kalish’s left-handed stroke began in the off-season. Following a long stint on the shelf, he had to rediscover who he was.

“I was a little mechanical with everything,” said Kalish. “Coming back [from injuries] you think you’re going to just snap back into place. but it’s not that easy. A lot of baseball — especially the swing — is about fluidity and whatever feels most natural.

“Early in the off-season, I was just kind of taking a stride and swinging,” continued Kalish. “With fluidity, you have some sway, or what we like to call ‘swag.’ You have movement and flow. With everything that happened to me, I was concerned with all these little things. The advice I got was, ‘Hey, this is baseball and you have to be natural, you have to let your body do what it wants to do.’ You also have to free your mind. When you’re in the box, thoughts of what you’ve worked on have to go out the window. A lot of what we did as children, I’m trying to get back to now. Back then, we weren’t thinking about anything.”

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Apparently what I’m really interested in these days is bunting. Which is a little odd, but which is also a welcome break from thinking about pitch-framing all the time. And though bunting is ordinarily associated with the dreaded and unproductive sacrifice, a well-placed bunt in fair territory can make for a hell of a weapon, in particular when it’s put down by a left-handed hitter against a defensive overshift. Everybody’s talking about shifting these days, and while it’s hard for a hitter to make dramatic changes to his swing, oftentimes there’s a single there for the taking, and it would require no swing at all. So bunting and the shift are worth analyzing in more detail.

Yesterday, I was excited to generate some bunting statistics I’d never seen anywhere before. Obviously, I’d seen bunt batting averages and whatnot, but I’d never seen attempts, including foul bunts and missed bunts. I was pleased to have that data, but the data also didn’t say enough. You can’t just characterize a fair bunt as a successful bunt. And within all bunt attempts are attempts at different sorts of bunts. A sacrifice bunt is different from a bunt for a hit, and a bunt for a hit against the shift is different from a bunt for a hit against a regular alignment. I made it a goal to dig a little deeper, because, what is it to bunt against the shift, really?

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Over the next couple of weeks, we’re taking a look at some of the most interesting teams in baseball – one contender and one rebuilder from each league. What makes a team “interesting”? Taking advantage of the extreme nature of its ballpark, for a couple of clubs. Bucking some of the game’s most prevalent current trends and having success, for another. Or almost completely breaking from every pattern displayed in a club’s fairly successful recent past. Today, it’s the Chicago White Sox, the most interesting rebuilding team in the American League. It’s interesting in part because it’s been quite awhile since the term “rebuilding” could truly be applied to the inhabitants of US Cellular Field. Read the rest of this entry »

Something you’ll notice in the positional power rankings is that the Marlins project to be terrible. That’s bad, because they’re supposed to be worthwhile fun, but it’s also okay, because no one’s entertaining playoff hopes in Miami. Things only really matter when you’re playing for something. The situation is a little more worrisome elsewhere. The Blue Jays still don’t have a real second baseman, and they’d sure like to play in October. (This October!) Meanwhile, the Tigers had a shortstop they liked, but then he fractured both his legs, and they’ll have to resume liking him in 2015. For the time being, the Tigers don’t have a real shortstop, and they’d sure like to play in October. They’re also a lot more likely to get there than Toronto is, but, anyway.

My expectation remains that the Jays will go and get themselves some help, instead of sticking with Ryan Goins. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Tigers made at least a minor move, to improve on whatever they think they’re going to do right now. Thinking about Toronto and Detroit, though, got me thinking about successful teams who’ve played a lot of particularly bad position players. Now, Goins projects to be replacement-level, and the same could be said of the Tigers’ shortstop stopgaps, so this isn’t directly pertinent, but then, the worst regulars are the most likely to be the terrible regulars. Have past teams succeeded with terrible regulars?

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Bill Geivett says Brett Anderson will be successful pitching at Coors Field. The Colorado Rockies acquired the 26-year-old left-hander from the Oakland A’s this past December as part of a three-player deal. Hampered by injuries, Anderson appeared in just 16 games last season, and in 35 games during the past three years. When he’s healthy, he’s been effective. The former second-round pick has a 3.81 ERA and a 7.1 K-rate in 450 big-league innings.

Geivett knows those numbers, and more. His title in Colorado is senior vice president of major league operations. According to the Rockies media guide, he provides “direction and input with the roster.” Formerly the head of scouting and player development, he is entering his 14th season with the Rockies.

Geivett appeared on a panel at last weekend’s SABR Analytics Conference, in Phoenix. Afterwards, I had an opportunity to ask him about the acquisition of Anderson, and the impact of Coors Field on the organization’s decision-making process. Here is Geivett’s breakdown: Read the rest of this entry »