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The last time the Red Sox met the Cardinals in the World Series, the hero of Game One was a Three True Outcomes infielder who was often criticized for being too patient at the plate. In 2004, Mark Bellhorn lined an eighth-inning home run off the Pesky Pole to give Boston an 11-9 win. They went on to sweep the Series.

The shaggy-haired Bellhorn would have fit in well with this year’s team As most FanGraphs readers know, the Red Sox epitomize patience and exude power. They saw more pitches than any team in baseball and were seventh among the 30 teams in Three True Outcome results [32.4 percent].

Tonight went according to script. St. Louis starter Adam Wainwright had both a walk and a strikeout in a three-run Boston first inning. He threw 31 pitches.

Call it “The Red Sox Way.”

Coming into the Series, much was made of “The Cardinal Way.” Read the rest of this entry »

The good news for the Red Sox: they’re in the World Series! That’s amazing! And they have home-field advantage, too, thanks to the heroes and zeroes included in this box score. At this point, while both the Red Sox and Cardinals are quite good, you have to think of the Red Sox as being the favorites. Yet, there’s bad news for them as well: as an American League team with a quality designated hitter, they’ll have a decision to make before the games in the National League ballpark. David Ortiz and Mike Napoli can both hit the crap out of the ball, but when Boston’s in St. Louis, one of them is going to have to sit, at least for the first several innings.

John Farrell has already gone on record as saying that Ortiz will start at first base at least once, maybe twice. And, who knows, he’s free to change his mind at any point, since he’s the one who draws up the lineups. It’s only natural to want to investigate the same question. Who should start at first in St. Louis, between Ortiz and Napoli? Which starter would most increase Boston’s win probability, and thus Boston’s World Series win probability? Getting to the answer is almost impossibly complex. Because of that, in a way, it’s also unthinkably simple.

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During the postseason is when we talk about postseason statistics, and one of the first points always brought up is that the level of competition in the postseason is more difficult. As such, it isn’t fair to just run a straight comparison between numbers in the playoffs and numbers not in the playoffs. The postseason is selective for the best teams, which will have many of the best players. Many of the worst players on the best teams won’t play, or won’t play much. There is a counterpoint, though, at least as far as pitchers are concerned: the playoffs take place in October, by which point a lot of arms might be worn down. The season is long, and it’s taxing, and who’s to say what’s really left in the tank come Columbus Day or whenever?

What we know, anecdotally, is that good pitchers tend to still be good. We seldom ever see a player’s velocity crater, and if a guy were truly worn down he probably wouldn’t be used. One of the interesting things we’ve seen with Michael Wacha, though, is that his velocity hasn’t just stayed the same — lately he’s been throwing harder. It stands to reason that’s why he’s been so effective, at least in part. And it turns out Wacha isn’t the only Cardinal with strength saved for a final push.

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Last night, Jeff sent me a text that said simply “Lincecum re-signed, 2/35”. My immediate reaction was that this was a hilarious overpay. I had just published a piece earlier in the day explaining why I didn’t see why the crowd thought Lincecum would get 3/40 when Dan Haren was projected for 2/19 and wouldn’t come with the qualifying offer tag. 3/40 for Lincecum, coming off two mediocre years, just seemed like an overpay. He was the kind of guy you should buy low on, and that’s not buying low.

And 2/35, with a full no-trade clause, is even more player friendly than 3/40 would have been. And this is what the Giants paid to keep him from even testing the free agent market; the presumption is that they think his price would have been even higher had they let other teams start bidding. When you factor in the value of the draft pick that would have been tied to signing Lincecum, and the value of the no-trade clause, this contract essentially bets that Lincecum’s market value is somewhere around $20 million per year.

That seems crazy. Last year, he had an ERA- of 124, ranking 74th out of the 81 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title. He ranks right between Jerome Williams and Kyle Kendrick on that leaderboard. And that was an improvement over his 2012 season, in which he ran an ERA- of 139, the very worst mark put up of the 88 pitchers who qualified that year. Over the last two seasons, the only qualified pitcher with a worse ERA- than Lincecum is Edinson Volquez, who the Padres released during the season. By runs allowed, Tim Lincecum has been basically replacement level for the last 400 innings. And he just got valued at around $20 million per year. Crazy, right? Well, maybe not.

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The league’s getting faster. Not the time of game — fastball velocity. And throwing some of the fastest fastballs in a league of fast have been the Cardinals, whose 92.6 mph average as a staff was good for third overall this year. The Red Sox did fine against a Tigers team that was only .3 mph short of that average, but going into this World Series, it’s still fair to say they will see some fastballs that are over 94 mph. And it’s fair to wonder how they’ll do against that added oomph.

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Yesterday, the names of the World Series umpires were released, with John Hirshbeck serving as the crew chief. Like I have done for the first two rounds in the playoffs, I will examine each umpire’s strike and ball calling tendencies. Overall, the group is pretty solid, with the exception of Bill Miller, who calls one of the league’s largest strike zones.

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Hey there, deliberate or accidental viewers of FanGraphs, and welcome to the second part of probably the year’s last edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s Monday’s post, on the season’s wildest pitches. Here’s a full series archive. Some people have asked whether I’ll do an edition of this for the playoffs, and to be honest I haven’t decided yet. I mean, it’s baseball, important and trackable baseball, but reviewing the season also brings a certain finality and playoff stuff isn’t going to measure up. “We’ll see,” is the point. For now, if this is the last edition, I want to thank you guys for following along. I know these posts are long, and I know they can take a long time to load. I know they don’t quite feel FanGraphs-front-page appropriate, once you get past the PITCHf/x bits. I know these are a lot more silly and a lot less analytical. Thank you for accepting them, thank you for not complaining about them, and thank you for allowing me this occasional slide into the ridiculous. Baseball is pretty serious business, and we treat it as such, but even funeral homes have casual Fridays. I mean, probably, but I’m not going to call one.

What we’re going to do in this post is review the five wildest swings of the 2013 regular season, by which I mean the swings at pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone as determined by PITCHf/x and squaring and adding numbers. Excluded are checked swings, because at least those demonstrate an awareness, if sadly delayed. I only wanted to capture guys who went all-in. Also excluded, in theory, are swings during hit-and-runs, but I didn’t encounter one of those. I did encounter Andrew Romine throwing an attempted bunt at a wild pitch-out with a runner sprinting home from third. The bunt missed, the catcher missed, and the runner scored standing up. You won’t see that below, but you also don’t need to — how you imagine it is at least as satisfying as seeing it for yourself. Maybe more, and who am I to stomp on your imagination? Joe Saunders was pitching, incidentally. Remember Joe Saunders?

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This is the final article detailing my mechanical study of the best 50 Major League hitters from last season.  After this I will begin to apply this information to the vast library of amateur hitter video that I have acquired in the last few years.  Feels good to close the book on this monster.  For this portion I will focus on the moves of the lower half, again analyzing these athletes to create a baseline for examining less experienced hitters.  To get a full explanation of my methods and previous analyses, feel free to check out Part I and Part II of this study.

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Three at bats by Miguel Cabrera against Junichi Tazawa went a long way in determining the outcome of the ALCS. Had the Red Sox set-up man not gotten the better of baseball’s best hitter, there is a good chance the Tigers would be facing the Cardinals in the World Series.

Cabrera is known for hitting fastballs a long way. Tazawa got him out by working away with fastballs.

In Game 3, with runners on the corners and one out in the eighth inning of 1-0 game, Tazawa struck out Cabrera on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-2 count. The Red Sox held on for a 1-0 win.

In Game 5, with runners on the corners with none out in the seventh inning of a 4-2 game, Tazawa got Cabrera to ground into a 4-6-3 double play on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-0 count. The Red Sox hung on to win 4-3.

In Game 6, with runners on first and second with two out in the seventh inning of a 2-1 game, Tazawa got Cabrera to ground out to shortstop on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-0 count. The Red Sox rallied from the one-run deficit to win 5-2.

Tazawa features a splitter, which he utilized 28 percent of the time in the regular season, but all seven pitches he threw to Cabrera were fastballs. That was the game plan, and not just for the 27-year-old reliever. The Red Sox attacked the hobbled slugger with hard stuff the entire series. Read the rest of this entry »

An hour ago, we released the results of our free agent crowdsourcing project, in the form of a list sorted by the highest projected contract values. On that list, Tim Lincecum was projected to sign the 10th largest free agent contract of any player this winter, coming in at $40 million over three years, even though it is pretty clear that the Giants are going to make Lincecum a qualifying offer, which will require any team signing him to give up a draft pick and the draft dollars that go along with that spot.

The crowd was not so optimistic about Dan Haren, however. He’s projected to earn $19 million over two years, and the two years is rounded up from an actual estimate of 1.76 seasons, so it might be fair to categorize that as one guaranteed year and the expectation of some kind of vesting or team option. There is basically no chance that the Nationals will make Haren a qualifying offer, so he will come free of draft pick compensation to any signing team.

That’s a pretty huge gap in expected cost, especially once you factor in the draft pick. We’re talking double the guaranteed money, plus whatever value a team places on the draft dollars it is giving up, which will almost certainly translate into a few million of extra lost value. Once you factor in the value of the draft pick, the projected cost difference between the two hurlers is around $25 million. And yet, no matter how you slice their recent performance data, they look pretty darn similar.

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