Archive for Daily Graphings

Okay, so Tuesday night, instead of Bryce Harper, Jayson Werth, and Denard Span, the Nationals played Eury Perez, Tyler Moore, and Steve Lombardozzi. Theirs was not a particularly good lineup opposite Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Kershaw was dominant for an out shy of nine innings. It should probably never be surprising when Kershaw is dominant, because he’s a dominant pitcher with dominant stuff, and by the way, he’s younger than A.J. Griffin. His final line on Tuesday included a walk and 11 strikeouts, with 96 strikes. The last pitcher to throw that many strikes in a game was Justin Verlander in 2012. In 2010, Brandon Morrow threw 97 strikes in a near-no-hitter. After that you’re going back to 2002. Tuesday night, Kershaw was on top of Sandy Koufax’s game.

As is the case with all players who have established themselves as terrific, it’s easy to take Clayton Kershaw for granted, to not appreciate him as much as he ought to be appreciated. One can’t really help it, because that’s just how the brain works, but one can pause to step back and consider of how much a given player is capable. Here I feel like pausing over Kershaw, and I also feel like committing a lot of attention to his curveball, because the pitch was aces for him Tuesday and because a Clayton Kershaw curveball is one of baseball’s signature experiences. Kershaw’s about a lot more than his curve, but allow me this freedom.

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In last night’s Athletics-Rangers extra-inning affair, Oakland third baseman Josh Donaldson went 4-for-5 with two doubles. Oakland lost, but it was not Donaldson’s fault that no one was on base when he came up to the plate, or that the As only drove him in once of the four times he was on base himself. Donaldson’s 2013 performance so far has been excellent. Donaldson has been the team’s primary third baseman and has hit .315/.387/.523 (152 wRC+). Voros’ (McCracken’s) Law states that “any major league hitter can hit just about anything in 60 at bats.” Donaldson is beyond that threshold: 168 plate appearances so far this season. A sample of 168 is not exactly huge (to put it mildly), but there might be something to glean from it.

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Dennis Martinez is among the least-appreciated pitchers in recent generations. Fans in Montreal certainly remember “El Presidente,” but the Nicaraguan-born right-hander is far from a household name in most baseball circles. He should be.

Martinez won 245 games from 1976 to 1998, despite never winning more than 16 in any one season. He pitched 3,999.2 innings and logged a 3.70 ERA. In 1991, at the age of 37, he threw a perfect game. That same season he led the National League in ERA, complete games and shutouts.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly exercise (introduced last month) wherein the author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own heart to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to this exercise, of course, is a working definition of fringe. Currently, for the purposes of this column, it’s any prospect who was absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists. (A more robust meditation on the idea of fringe can be found here.)

Since last week’s edition, there have been four total changes to The Fringe Five. Following his second promotion to the major leagues — during the course of which he’s received actual at-bats — Yankees infield prospect Corban Joseph is once again ineligible for this edition of the Five. Likewise, San Diego right-hander Burch Smith, who appeared here last week, remains on the Padres’ 25-man roster following his not-entirely-inspirational major-league debut this past Saturday (box).

Replacing the pair are Miami left-hander Brian Flynn and Chicago Cubs second baseman Ronald Torreyes — about which dynamic pair the reader can learn more below.

All those points having been made, here are this week’s Fringe Five.

Wilmer Flores, 2B/3B, New York NL (Profile)
Flores continues to do things at Triple-A — or, at least, continues to do things offensively at Triple-A — that are rarely done by 21-year-olds. Like, for example, here’s Flores’ line since he appeared among The Five last week: 30 PA, 2 HR, 3 BB, 3 K. And here’s his line overall this season, at least in terms of the truest possible outcomes: 159 PA, 3 HR, 12 BB, 16 K. And, by comparison, here’s other talented 21-year-old Oscar Taveras’s season line in the same Pacific Coast League: 127 PA, 4 HR, 6 BB, 17 K. He continues to produce evidence that he’s an entirely promising future hitter, is the point one derives from all this information.

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Monday night saw a hot competition in warm conditions in southern California, as Joe Blanton and the Angels played host to Luis Mendoza and the Royals. The Angels, predicted by many before the year to advance to the World Series, were looking to turn their fourth-place season around before a partisan audience. The Royals, predicted by many before the year to play the role of American League dark horse, were looking to keep the pressure up on the Central-favorite Tigers. The game was tight for all nine innings, as the 32,203 fans in attendance were treated to a duel, and in the end the Angels emerged victorious by a score of 0.79 to 0.12.

This was a game marked by excellent pitching, as neither the Angels nor the Royals allowed a single home run, or even one single walk. For the Angels, Blanton started before yielding to Michael Roth and Robert Coello. For the Royals, Mendoza would yield to former starter Luke Hochevar. While the game was therefore light on star power, at least on the mound, those who pitched pitched like aces, with the Angels ultimately only squeaking by.

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With all due respect to the Dillon Gee–John Gast match-up in St. Louis tonight, there’s one marquee pitching match-up on the schedule for tonight’s games: Felix Hernandez vs CC Sabathia in New York. Neither pitcher throws as hard as they used to, but they’ve both managed to adapt to life without their fastest fastball, and both remain among the best starting pitchers on earth.

Sabathia, in particular, is lethal against left-handed hitters. Witness his strikeout rate by batter handedness, in graph form.

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Drafting 15th in 2012, the Indians selected Texas A&M right fielder Tyler Naquin. A collegiate standout, Naquin earned the Big 12 Player of the Year Award before Cleveland selected him and shifted him from right field — where he started 115 games as a freshman and sophomore — to center field. As Marc Hulet noted last month, Naquin’s ability to play his new position will determine his success.

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The first round of the Major League draft is just a little over three weeks away, and the Houston Astros will select first for the second consecutive year. Right now, the consensus belief is that there are two college pitchers — Mark Appel of Stanford and Jonathan Gray of Oklahoma — who are a step ahead of the rest, though University of San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant is putting on quite the power display and could be an option if the Astros preferred to build around bats rather than arms. However, the decision for the Astros may not be made simply on talent alone.

Last year was the first draft under the new bonus structure, which assigns a fixed amount of dollars to each team based on where they pick in the draft, with some pretty severe penalties for exceeding those limits. Now, if a team is interested in paying over the slot value for a pick, they’ll have to borrow the money for that overpayment from another pick, making the draft as much a game of cost management as it is talent acquisition.

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Senator John McCain introduced a bill in the Senate last week which aims to ban local TV blackouts for sporting events played in publicly-financed stadiums. But don’t get too excited baseball fans. The bill is aimed NFL blackout rules, for the most part. MLB blackouts due to the crazy MLB blackout map won’t change under this proposed legislation. The Fox Game of the Week blackouts on Saturdays may be covered, but those will disappear in 2014 anyway under the new Fox/MLB national TV contract.

Dubbed the Television Consumer Fairness Act of 2013, McCain’s bill proposed legislation has three goals:
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So, Yu Darvish is off to a pretty good start to 2013. Through eight starts this season, the Ranger’s right-hander currently sports the following statistics:

Darvish currently ranks first (or tied for first) among qualified starters in K% and SwgStr%, and he has posted the 6th best adjusted FIP in the league (56 FIP-). After a blazing start, his ERA- has dropped to 20th and his HR/FB now ranks 84th, but overall it’s clear Darvish has been a beast in 2013.

After watching this wonderful footage from Darvish’s dismantling of the Angels last night I was struck by how slow is curveball actually is.

Our own Carson Cistulli isolated his four slow curves from that night — check out the final bender to Mike Trout, resulting in a strikeout in the 6th inning. And, yes, that was 61 mph.

I wondered whether the differential between Darvish’s fastball and curveball was the largest in the league. And, so, to the data I went.

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