Yesterday, we tackled the American League. Today, we do the NL. If you read the intro to yesterday’s post, you can just skip on down to the picks, as the next few paragraphs are the same as they were in the AL post. If you didn’t read that post, keep reading.

The All-Star Game isn’t for another 35 days, but with the voting in full swing and enough of the season under our belts, I figure it’s time to weigh in on how I’d fill out the roster if I were Grand Poobah and had the final say on all 34 players. I will note up front that I believe the All-Star Game is an annual affair, and we shouldn’t simply have the same collection of players every year just because those are the “true stars”. The All-Star Game is best when it serves as both a platform for the game’s greatest players and recognition for those who have earned their way in. I will not be putting players on the roster who have not performed well in 2013, even if they are bonafide stars.

As a reminder, the rosters now comprise 34 players, which I’ll be splitting as 21 position players and 13 pitchers, as that has been the final tally for the game most of the last few years. And, yes, we’re honoring the rule requiring every team to be represented. I’ll list each player by the tier of how they got selected, then put the final roster down below. On to the picks.

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The nation will remember Stephen Strasburg’s major-league debut. Strasburg started his first game on June 8, 2010. That’s not the part people will remember. People will remember the overwhelming dominance, the standing ovations, the 14 strikeouts in seven innings with not one single walk. Gerrit Cole, as Strasburg was, is a top flame-throwing pitching prospect, and Cole just made his own major-league debut in the month of June. Cole’s not as hyped, and his outing didn’t match up to Strasburg’s, in terms of baseball-y sex appeal. But Cole needed just 81 pitches to pitch to 27 batters, and the Giants had only one run on the board when Cole walked off the mound to an ovation of his own. With the lofty expectations placed on top prospects, it’s easy for them to disappoint, but one start in, Gerrit Cole hasn’t disappointed.

I thought we might take a quick look at Cole’s Tuesday night command. Or, at his command over a selection of pitches, like I’ve done with Mariano Rivera and with Carlos Marmol in the past. This isn’t for any diagnostic purposes; this is just for fun, and so we can look at Cole in a way that maybe you didn’t, yesterday, if you were watching. As a prospect, Cole had a few question marks, those being his command and his secondary stuff behind the impressive heater. In Triple-A he threw 63% strikes, pretty much right on the league average. Tuesday, he threw 59 strikes out of 81 pitches, with 19 first-pitch strikes to 27 batters. In that regard it was a surprising outing. In that Cole was effective, it was not.

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Wil Myers was the prize in the James Shields–Wade Davis trade. Ranked 10^th overall in 2011, 28^th in 2012, and 4^th in 2013 by Baseball America, Myers has been a top prospect for a long time, and a huge 2012 with 37 home runs between Double-A and Triple-A solidified Myers’ place among the very best prospects. When this season began, Myers, however, found himself back in Triple-A a few months removed from having hit .304/.378/.554 in the Pacific Coast League the past season.

Talent probably wasn’t the reason. Myers has shown the statistical production one would expect from a top prospect, and I headed to the park this past weekend to see if the scouting report matched the spreadsheet. The first thing you notice about Myers is his frame – six-feet-three-inches of lean muscle. He looks good in a uniform, and he stands out among his peers.

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I’m going to come right out and say this is another FanGraphs article about batter pace. That is, the average amount of seconds between each pitch thrown to the batter, as determined by PITCHf/x time stamps. I haven’t gone to this well in a while, and I know it doesn’t appeal to everyone, since pace doesn’t mean much when it comes to determining future or present performance. Pace is a peripheral detail, and while I personally occasionally find it fascinating, you’re free to leave now. I’m not misleading you about what’s to follow.

Go to the batter leaderboards and sort them by pace, in descending order. Or don’t, and let me tell you what you’ll find anyway. You’ll find Carlos Pena at No. 1, which isn’t unusual, because Pena has always taken forever. Then you’ll find Troy Tulowitzki, then Kelly Shoppach, then Robinson Cano, then Travis Hafner. These are some pretty different players, and it’s hard to know on the surface what to make of this. But one of these things is unusual. Historically, these have been four slower-than-average hitters. Also, there’s Tulowitzki.

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“Riddle me this,” wrote editor Dave Cameron to me some time ago, “what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”  OK, that’s not exactly how it went down.  What he actually did was to present me with the challenge of research, with the goal being to develop a model that would forecast the expected odds of an outcome of each match-up between a specific batter and a specific pitcher. Rather than talking about how players have done in small samples, can we use our understanding of player skillsets to develop an expected outcome matrix for each at-bat?

For example, such a tool might tell you that Adam Dunn has a 40% chance of striking out against Stephen Strasburg, a 10% chance of drawing a walk, a 5% chance of hitting a ground ball, etc… Forget I said those particular numbers — I completely made them up in my head just now.  You may be thinking “well, why should I care about that?  Rather than just being inundated with match-up data that is little more than randomness, such a tool might give you some idea of how much of a gain in expected strikeout rate a team would get by switching relief pitchers with a man on third base and less than two out. Or what the probability of getting a ground ball is in a double play situation, which might influence the decision of whether or not to bunt. Knowing the odds of potential outcomes could be quite beneficial in understanding the risks and rewards of various in-game decisions.

This project has been — and will continue to be — a major undertaking, as you can imagine.  This isn’t the kind of thing that can just be thrown together, but I really think the results could be great. Today, I’ll be sharing with you the findings of my research into perhaps the most important aspect of these matchups — K%, or strikeouts per plate appearance.  This will introduce the sort of process that will be involved in figuring out all of the other elements of the matchup tool. Read the rest of this entry »

If you interrogate some of the career-best numbers Adam Lind is putting up this year, you get a complicated answer full of maybes and what abouts: he’s swinging less, making more contact, and has a more even batted ball mix. If you interrogate Adam Lind about the numbers he is putting up this year, you get belly laughs and a more intuitive blend of changes in approach and mechanics. The two don’t necessarily blend perfectly, but they do combine to paint the picture of a slugger coming into his own.

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For Chris Davis and David Murphy, “in the zone” doesn’t extend to the mound. Each has a successful pitching performance on his resume, but in neither case was there a feeling of being in command. Their scoreless outings — in distinctly different situations — were more “lucked out” than “locked in.”

Murphy made his pitching debut last week, at Fenway Park. With his team trailing 17-5 in the eighth inning, the Rangers outfielder retired three of the four Red Sox batters he faced. After allowing a double to Daniel Nava — on a nine-pitch at bat — he struck out Mike Carp and got Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz to fly out.

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The All-Star Game isn’t for another 35 days, but with the voting in full swing and enough of the season under our belts, I figure it’s time to weigh in on how I’d fill out the roster if I were Grand Poobah and had the final say on all 34 players. I will note up front that I believe the All-Star Game is an annual affair, and we shouldn’t simply have the same collection of players every year just because those are the “true stars”. The All-Star Game is best when it serves as both a platform for the game’s greatest players and recognition for those who have earned their way in. I will not be putting players on the roster who have not performed well in 2013, even if they are bonafide stars.

We’ll start with the American League, with the NL to follow in its own post. As a reminder, the rosters now comprise 34 players, which I’ll be splitting as 21 position players and 13 pitchers, as that has been the final tally for the game most of the last few years. And, yes, we’re honoring the rule requiring every team to be represented. I’ll list each player by the tier of how they got selected, then put the final roster down below. On to the picks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Luis Valbuena struggles against fastballs, and is Michael-Jackson-bad against all other pitches. In an alternate world in which the Cubs actually cared about the difference between 61 and 65 wins, Luis Valbuena does not get 303 plate appearances last season. But in this world, where the Cubs are suppressing arbitration clocks and dropping bench players into starting roles, Luis Valbuena gets 303 PA. Barring something magical, do not put Luis Valbuena on your fantasy team in 2013.

That was me. I wrote that very review of Cubs third baseman Luis Valbuena for his 2013 FanGraphs+ fantasy profile. At the time, Luis Valbuena had a career .224/.292/.343 slash and a 73 wRC+. On the merit of some impressive defensive output in 2012, he had managed to increase his career WAR to a sterling -0.3 wins through 1109 PA.

Nothing outside of some solid PCL numbers suggested Valbuena could be a solid third baseman in 2013. So far, I’ve been quite wrong.
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Joey Votto didn’t pop up on Monday. Of course he didn’t. It’s not because he didn’t play — he did play, and he batted four times. The first time, he grounded out. He’s human. The second time, he singled on a liner. He’s a talented human. The third time, he flew out. He’s still human. The fourth time, he walked. He’s human, but less so than us. I remember, back in the old days, I was excited to get my hands on line-drive percentage. Batted-ball data! Could you imagine! Since then, I’ve taken a big step back, since LD% has seemed littered with flaws. One flaw is that Joey Votto’s career LD% isn’t 80%. There’s no way that’s correct.

Pick something there’s been one of this year. There have been more Astros sweeps of the Angels this year than there have been Joey Votto infield pop-ups. There have been more Travis Wood grand slams this year than there have been Joey Votto pop-ups. There have been more Jesus Montero triples this year than there have been Joey Votto pop-ups. There have been more home runs ruled non-home runs then reviewed on instant replay and still somehow ruled non-home runs this year than there have been Joey Votto pop-ups. That is, according to the data we have here on FanGraphs. Votto’s historically been unbelievable in his pop-up avoidance, and the pages will tell you his 2013 total is a big empty zero. We’re getting into the middle of June. Vernon Wells has hit 17 pop-ups, and Votto’s still sitting at none.

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