I think we’re all aware that the lefty vs. righty matchup favors the batter.  But to what extent?  And what are the implications?  Prepare to be inundated with a bunch of charts and tables.

For the purposes of this article, I’ll be sticking to using wRC+, my favorite all-in-one, level-playing-field batting stat.  My sample consists of all batters from 2002-2012 who had at least 200 total PAs against lefties and at least 200 more against righties.

The charts in this article will break down the frequency distributions of wRC+ for left-, right-, and switch-hitting batters, grouped to the nearest multiple of 10.  For example, the chart below shows that 21.5% of right-handed batters (RHB) hit for over 85 but less than or equal to 95 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers (RHP).

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Giancarlo Stanton is struggling and Giancarlo Stanton’s teammates are terrible. These two things are true. These two might be related. It would make sense that these things are related, because the drop-off from Giancarlo Stanton to the guys hitting behind him is absurdly large.

Stanton has played in 16 games this season, and has hit third in all 16 of those games. The cleanup spot behind him has been a rotation of Greg Dobbs (8 games), Placido Polanco (5 games), and Joe Mahoney (3 games). If you go by the rest-of-season ZIPS projections, Mahoney is the best hitter of the bunch, forecast for a .677 OPS, with Dobbs and Polanco both coming in at .650. Weighted for the number of games played, then, you could say that Stanton has been “protected” by three players with an aggregate OPS projection of .665, a 269 point drop off from his own .934 rest-of-season ZIPS forecast.

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The Mets boast a quartet of Dominican arms who rank among the top-15 prospects in the organization. Jeurys Familia, Rafael Montero, Luis Mateo and Domingo Tapia are off to strong starts. And with Rainy Lara and Gabriel Ynoa pitching well in Savannah, the core of young, Dominican arms will only continue to grow.

Video(s) after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

Some weeks, there are major developments in the business of baseball — like a team signing a new local TV contract. Some weeks, there are little developments on the big developments. My posts tend to focus on the big developments, but that leaves you in the dark on the little developments, unless those little developments become big developments down the road.

This week has been full of little developments in stories I’ve written. Rather than wait until they blossom into big developments — if that ever happens — I’ll run them down here.

StubHub loses fight in California Legislature

On Tuesday,  I wrote about a bill pending in the California State Assembly that would prohibit ticket sellers from placing restrictions on ticket re-sales, like what the Los Angeles Angels have done this season. The Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media had a hearing on the bill Tuesday morning and were none too pleased with its provisions. The Committee gutted the bill, and left in only the provision to outlaw computerized ticket-buying software that brokers often use to scoop up tickets to high-demand events. The Committee is stacked with members from southern California, where the entertainment industry holds tremendous sway, so the bill’s demise isn’t surprising.

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Earlier Thursday, Dave Cameron made a simple observation regarding the Los Angeles Angels and their batch of position players:

Every Angel with 40+ PAs has been an above average hitter this year, except for Josh Hamilton. fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?p…

— David Cameron (@DCameronFG) April 25, 2013

All right, neat. Now keep that in mind as we go forward.

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Sometimes I just like to mess around with data to see if I find something. Today was one of those days. Two years ago, Perri Klass wrote in The New York Times, “The percentage of left-handers in the population seems to be relatively constant, at 10 percent. And this goes back to studies of cave paintings, looking at which hands hunters are using to hold their spears, and to archaeological analyses of ancient artifacts.”

So I wanted to figure out whether handedness had changed at all in baseball. Are there more southpaws or switch-hitters in baseball now than there used to be a decade ago, or half a century ago?
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The St. Louis Cardinals just finished off a sweep of the Washington Nationals, and currently stand at the top of the NL Central with a 13-8 record. At 4.9 runs per game, they’re fourth in the NL in offensive production, which is one of the primary reasons they have outscored their opponents by 27 runs so far. (The other main reason is Adam Wainwright.)

Now, though, here’s a fun fact you might not expect; the St. Louis Cardinals currently have a wRC+ of 88, tied — with the Mariners! — for 24th in MLB. Even if we remove pitcher hitting from the group and only look at offense from position players, their wRC+ is 97, still below the Major League average. From just looking at their batting lines, it’d be fair to describe the Cardinals offensive performance to date as sub-par, and yet, they’re scoring nearly five runs per game.

This is the power of situational hitting. Behold, the Cardinals offense, by baserunner state:

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Used to be, earlier in his career, Alfonso Soriano was the very model of an undisciplined hitter. He got a lot of press, because he was a Yankee, and back in 2002, Soriano drew 22 unintentional walks while striking out 157 times. He also mashed 39 dingers, so it’s not like there was much reason for Soriano to change. But as time has gone by, it seems like Soriano has drawn less attention for his hacking, probably because it’s become entirely familiar. And probably because he’s managed to have a hell of a career, so it’s not like the hacking really dragged him down. Soriano with a different approach might not have been as good as the Soriano we’ve been able to observe.

But Soriano’s still very much a hacker. As a rule of thumb, if a young hitter is pretty undisciplined, he’s likely to remain pretty undisciplined as an older hitter. That is, if his career survives. Soriano, for his career, has four times as many strikeouts as unintentional walks. That makes for a similar ratio to those belonging to Reed Johnson and Jeff Francoeur. During the PITCHf/x era, 515 players have batted at least 500 times. Soriano’s rate of swings at pitches out of the strike zone is the tenth-highest in the group. That Soriano has a career .351 wOBA is a testament to his ability to punish a variety of pitches, but the hacking still gets him in trouble, and Thursday provided a wonderful example. Thursday, in a game between the Cubs and the Reds, Soriano went and had himself an unforgivable plate appearance in a critical spot. Or what would have been a critical spot, if the Cubs weren’t dreadful.

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Carson Cistulli’s infatuation with specific pitches and Jeff Sullivan’s desire to highlight the bizarre and hilarious have led to some great GIFs on FanGraphs over the last few years. But, today, I think we all have to acknowledge that the art form of the GIF has been perfected. Or, at least, has hit a new high. Because this is simply incredible.

A commenter on Lone Star Ball created this image, showing the difference in movement on Yu Darvish’s pitches, and I can’t stop watching this. Mesmerizing is probably the best word I can use.

Thanks to Drew Sheppard — the guy has a webcomic, by the way, which deserves a plug just because of how great this GIF is for making this — for originally posting it to Lone Star Ball. I hope this inspires Drew (or others) to make more of these, though it might be that the Darvish one will never be topped. This feels like the Mona Lisa of GIFs.

Also, good luck to opposing hitters trying to hit Yu Darvish.

When Jason Hammel takes the mound tonight against the A’s, he’ll be visualizing the shape of his pitches. He’ll also be throwing a lot of two-seamers and sliders. Last season the Baltimore Orioles right-hander threw his signature offerings 34.5% and 22.2% of the time. This year – according to PITCHf/x — those numbers have merged somewhat to 27.8% and 23.7%, respectively.

Originally with Tampa Bay, Hammel spent three years with Colorado before being traded to Baltimore — in exchange for Jeremy Guthrie — in 2012. Last year he went 8-6 with a 3.43 ERA, and 8.6 strikeouts-per-nine-innings, in 20 starts. Hammel talked about his development as a pitcher when the Orioles visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

——

David Laurila: How have you evolved as a pitcher?

Jason Hammel: First of all, I throw harder. I’ve basically grown into my body. I probably have a sounder delivery. There’s also the idea of just knowing how to pitch.

Out of high school, I was 89 [mph], then I went to college and got up around 91-92. As I started getting a little deeper into the minors, my velocity began to show up more. I got into the mid-90s.Velocity opens up more room for error. If you make a bad pitch you can maybe get away with it because you’re throwing harder. I’ve always been a max-effort guy.

DL: What is the history behind your two-seamer?

JH: I experimented with it in Denver, in my first year out there [2009], but it wasn’t successful for me. I wasn’t getting any movement, so… well, I was, but it was too inconsistent. I wasn’t about to keep working on it in the middle of the season. I got traded to the Rockies right after spring training, from the Rays, and started working with Bob Apodaca, their pitching coach. I worked on it for maybe the first two months of the season.

DL: When did it become a quality pitch for you? Read the rest of this entry »