Archive for Daily Graphings

Hey there everybody, and welcome to what you’re doing now. If you’re reading this, this is what you are doing. This is not what you were doing before — I don’t know what you were doing before. This is not what you will be doing soon — I don’t know what you will be doing soon. There is, literally, a world of options. But what you’re doing now? It’s this. Maybe you intended it this way. Maybe you just wound up here, somewhat unconsciously, because you’re distracting yourself from work or you’re distracting yourself from boredom. Do you know how many things you do a day you don’t think about? Of course you don’t. You don’t think about them. But there are a lot. Quite a lot, for some. Reading this today might be one of them. Or if you’re here on purpose, thanks! You are sweet.

It’s time to look at five wild swings, from between August 23 and September 5. As a reminder, I was away last Friday; as another reminder, I’ll be away next Friday, so the following edition of this will also cover two weeks. What did we get from the last two weeks? Some wild swings, and some regular swings that don’t get talked about here. And lots of pitches that weren’t swung at, even a little bit. Here, five awful swings at breaking balls out of the strike zone. A couple checked swings I excluded: Wilkin Ramirez vs. Danny Duffy, and Evan Longoria vs. Ivan Nova. I’m pleased with what we’re left with. I still wish I could write about someone swinging at a pitch at his eyes, but those don’t really come up under this methodology. And that seldom happens. I’ll probably have to dedicate a post specifically to that in November. For now, not that! For now, this! Also, here’s the series archive. Links are important on the Internet.

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Hey there, readers of the written word, and welcome to the first part of this edition of The Worst Of The Best, a FanGraphs Friday series that could be best described as “almost weekly”. It is most definitely weekly in intent, but it is most definitely not weekly in execution, as evidenced by last Friday, or next Friday, or many of July’s Fridays. It is weekly enough that, when a Friday is missed, I hear about it. It is aweekly enough that, when a Friday is missed, I don’t hear about it much. While I’m here — recently I was reading an article about Chris Archer, and about how he tries to use his relative fame to spread positive messages to people who need to hear them. I, too, have a platform, right here, so as long as I have your attention, let’s all stop giving other people flat tires. Let’s stop doing that thing where we step on the backs of other peoples’ shoes or sandals. You think you’re being funny, but flat tires are received even worse than tickling, and tickling is never a good idea. Let’s also all stop tickling. Stop being monsters.

In this post, we examine wild pitches, and instead of covering the most recent one week, we’re going to cover the most recent two weeks, the window being August 23 through September 5. Here’s a link to the whole series archive. This is a top five of pitches far away from the center of the strike zone, because that’s our best approximation of location intent, and it’s based on PITCHf/x so I’m going to miss anything where PITCHf/x glitched. Someday, PITCHf/x won’t glitch anymore. Someday, we’ll have an agreed-upon way to write out “PITCHf/x”. That day is not today. Three pitches that just missed: Scott Rice to Andy Dirks on August 25, Tyler Thornburg to Clint Barmes on September 2, and A.J. Burnett to Brandon Crawford on August 25. If you’d like write-ups for those pitches, might I suggest you write them yourself? I’m not some kind of writer-monkey. Now, here, let me write, for you.

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Unlike in 2011, the Red Sox have a pretty deep rotation. And if Clay Buchholz returns from his nearly yearly midseason injury siesta, the Olde Towne Team will have six pitchers for five rotation spots. That could make for some awkward moments in September, but if the Sox reach October with all six pitchers healthy and ready to go, it’s going to get really awkward. It’s likely that the Sox will only need four starters, and they might only need three.

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When it comes to baseball play-by-play, few are better than Dan Dickerson and Dave O’Brien. They aren’t broadcast partners — Dickerson is the voice of the Detroit Tigers; O’Brien calls games for the Boston Red Sox and for ESPN — but they did pair up for this interview.

The well-informed duo addressed questions prior to Wednesday night’s game at Fenway Park. The topics were: the Most Valuable Player award in the American and National leagues, pitcher stats and the Cy Young Award, the Joey Votto OBP/RBI debate, and the impact Jose Iglesias has had on his new team. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pirates have already locked up their first non-losing season since 1992. Any day now, they’re going to win one more game and guarantee an actual winning season. This would probably be a bigger deal if the Pirates were worse. If it came down to the season’s last weekend, there would be a lot of chatter about the Pirates officially snapping a humiliating two-decade streak. Instead there isn’t any suspense, and observers are dreaming bigger. 90 wins. Division. World Series. Long-term sustainable success. It feels beneath this year’s Pirates to celebrate an 81st or 82nd win, and indeed, these Pirates have little in common with a lot of editions of the Pirates from the recent past.

But, 20 years of losing. Of losing all the damned time. One shouldn’t lose sight of how incredible that is, and one shouldn’t deny that even a little winning’s a relief. How have the Pirates, at last, managed to turn things around? Don’t go pointing fingers at the run production — the Pirates rank tenth in the league in runs per game. The story, as should be familiar by now, is run prevention. In runs allowed per game, the Pirates are second, behind only the Braves. Just three years ago, they were dead last. It’s interesting that the Pirates haven’t been allowing many runs, and it’s interesting how they’ve managed to accomplish that.

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Most statistical research is done by looking at large populations and immense data sets to find trends and patterns, but case studies can also be very useful when one wants to look at a particular context. That’s what I would like to do here. Instead of looking at minor league players in general, I would like to use certain scouting profiles to examine current major-league players and how they performed in the minors to see if there are patterns we can find that will help us highlight prospects. Today, I’ll take a look at slap hitters.

When we talk about slap hitters, we generally mean smaller (in height) and/or slighter (in build) players who prefer to use their speed to get on base. What this usually means is sacrificing power by using less torque and a line-drive swing to put the ball on the ground and spray line drives. The hope is that the player posts a higher BA and OBP while making an impact on the bases by stealing and taking the extra base to offset the presumed lack of power. Let’s look at some examples.
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A decent chunk of my chat yesterday involved questions about whether or not certain players should be expected to receive a qualifying offer from their teams this winter, thus ensuring draft pick compensation for their current teams if they end up changing teams via free agency. So, instead of talking about a few players here and there in various chats, I figure it’s worth investigating all the potential free agents who may or may not receive such an offer.

For some background, Jeff Sullivan wrote up an explanation of the Qualifying Offer process last year, but the nuts and bolts are pretty simple: for teams with free agents to be who have been on their roster all season, they can make them an offer for one year equal to the average salary of the Top 125 paid players in MLB, and then the player has one week to explore their market and decide whether to accept the offer from their current team or continue on in free agency with draft pick compensation attached.

Last year, the qualifying offer was equal to $13.3 million, and teams tendered it to nine players: David Ortiz, Josh Hamilton, B.J. Upton, Hiroki Kuroda, Rafael Soriano, Nick Swisher, Michael Bourn, Kyle Lohse, and Adam LaRoche. All nine players declined the offer, and in each case, they ended up with better deals than accepting $13.3 million for just one season.

This year, the average is expected to go up slightly, reaching the $14 million mark or something close to it. So, let’s take a look at this free agent class and see who is worth that kind of offer. We’ll start with the position players, then do the pitchers later this afternoon.

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For baseball professionals and amateurs across the globe, the dream is to reach the major leagues, and every single year, there are dreams fulfilled that belong to players I’ve never heard of before. Like most baseball writers, I know something about most players, but there are a lot of players, and I have only so many brains. Some months ago I didn’t know a thing about Scott Rice. Scott Rice is the major-league leader in appearances, for pitchers. Usually, the players I don’t know are relievers, but every so often they’re utility infielders or versatile outfielders. Generally, they tend to be relatively unremarkable. I’m supposed to know the guys with big talent. Generally, I don’t expect the players I don’t know to go on to rank among the league’s best at something.

It took me a little while to recognize the name “Juan Lagares.” I’d never heard of Lagares when he started getting playing time with the Mets, and I was left unimpressed by a glance at his statistical track record. But, at the plate, Lagares has gotten better, and at the plate isn’t where Lagares is at his most interesting. See, Lagares has been his most remarkable defensively. Just Wednesday, he robbed the Braves of at least one run with a diving catch at a sinking liner. And while Lagares has demonstrated his ability to move around the outfield, range hasn’t even been his strength. His range has been good, but his arm has been outstanding. Juan Lagares’ arm has put him on a leaderboard.

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Watch Gerrit Cole pitch and you might come away expecting different numbers on the back of his baseball card. He’s 96 mph with the fastball and his third-best pitch looks like this. You’d think he’d be racking up the strikeouts.

But Cole is striking out fewer batters than league-average. And that’s just as he wants it — to an extent. His team, in fact, is probably proud of that statistic. You might even call it the Pirate Way.

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“I didn’t send him out there to paint,” Dusty Baker would say. “It was no secret.”

One of the things about strategic maneuvers in baseball is that they’re usually evident ahead of time. There aren’t many equivalents to, say, a corner blitz. If a manager goes to the bullpen, the other team sees the new reliever first, and can get ready to hit him. If a defense shifts for a hitter, the hitter can observe the shifted positioning, and think about how he wants to adjust. If a manager inserts a pinch-runner, the other team can figure that runner might be running. There’s little sense in a pinch-runner otherwise. Much about baseball can be surprising. The same cannot be said for much of baseball strategy.

Billy Hamilton made his major-league debut Tuesday night, in a scoreless game between the Reds and the Cardinals. He made it not as a starter, but as a runner, having recently come up as a September promotion. Hamilton ran for Ryan Ludwick with none out in the bottom of the seventh, and it didn’t matter that the opposition had Yadier Molina behind the plate. I mean, it did — of course it mattered — but Molina’s presence wasn’t going to stop Hamilton from trying to do what he was going to try to do. Everybody understood why Hamilton was in the game. He wasn’t out there to paint.

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