Several high-profile hitters have been slowed by back injuries this season. The Yankees’ Kevin Youkilis is on the disabled list with a sprained back for the third time in his career. Shane Victorino missed eight games from late April to early May because of a bad back. Jose Bautista missed about a week of play with back spasms. When back problems occur to hitters, fans should not be surprised to see a marked loss of future production from those players.
Greetings FanGraphs readers, I am Drew Sheppard, and if you recognize my name it is probably from the Yu Darvish pitch selection GIF that made the rounds last week. Over the coming months, it is my goal to use similar techniques to put a visual spin on some of the information FanGraphs has always provided, including but not limited to similar pitcher breakdowns.
With a month of the minor league season in the books, chat questions are already rolling in about who the top prospect will be in 2014. Each month, I’ll take a look at players who were close in 2013 (we’ll call them “Headliners”), plus fast risers who are staking an early claim to the top spot (we’ll call them “Opening Acts”).
To begin this exercise, it’s important to understand where the number one pick comes from. Since 1990, Baseball America has been releasing its top-100 prospects list. Below is a chart of the year, number-one prospect, and where he ranked the year previous. Read the rest of this entry »
The other day on our internal message board, the shockingly handsome David Laurila pointed out that the Reds had dropped down a sacrifice bunt in the first inning the other day, and that this had struck him as strange. In exploring the subject further, I found that the practice has not yet evaporated but this there is some hope that it is lessening this season. Or at least, there would be if not for the San Diego Padres, who piled up five sacrifice hits in the first inning during April.
Let’s break down the five plays, shall we?
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Jed Lowrie has played for three organizations already, despite having accrued little more than two full seasons worth of Major League plate appearances. That might be because the oft-injured 29-year-old has never had so much as 400 plate appearances in a given season since his major league debut in 2008. Through it all, he’s been trying to shake off those injuries and prove himself as a young veteran in the league. Maybe we’re just getting to know the real Jed Lowrie now.
There are few reversal of fortune so dramatic as the 0-2 home run. When pitchers corner a batsman into an 0-2 count, said batsman has hit .154/.160/.216 through the 2013 season. The following sample of at bats combine for an immaculate 1.000/1.000/4.000 slash.
Let’s take a look at them.
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I offered my explanation for Clay Buchholz’s success this season yesterday, citing improved fastball command and a recently harnessed but always nasty changeup. Jack Morris, now on the radio call for the Toronto Blue Jays, has other ideas:
I found out because the guys on the video camera showed it to me right after the game,” he said. “I didn’t see it during the game. They showed it to me and said, ‘What do you think of this?’ and I said, ‘Well, he’s throwing a spitter. Cause that’s what it is.
The scandal, if one can even call it such, involves video of rosin on Buchholz’s left forearm. The accusations are tenuous at best, and as Morris himself put it, “I can’t prove anything. I can’t prove anything.” Although Morris wasn’t the only one to accuse Buchholz of throwing a spitter — former pitcher Dirk Hayhurst, also with the Blue Jays radio team, joined in — it’s hard to imagine these accusations going anywhere.
However, Morris and Hayhurst give us an opportunity to revisit the spitball, in my opinion one of the most unique pieces of baseball history, from its time as a legal pitch in baseball’s early years to Gaylord Perry’s Hall of Fame spitball and everywhere in between.
Like most in his profession, Jim Summers goes largely unnoticed. That doesn’t mean he and his brethren aren’t invaluable to the teams that employ them. When it comes to day-to-day preparation, they are the rock stars of baseball’s video age.
Summers is the video coordinator for the Houston Astros. If a player or coach needs a frame-by-frame breakdown of a pitching delivery or a swing, he’s the go-to guy. Need to know how much a slider is breaking or which pitch an opposing slugger is hammering? He has the answer.
Summers is — in his own words — “a traveling video library.”
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Summers on the responsibilities of a video coordinator: “What I do is track every pitch thrown by us and against us. I track the pitch type, pitch speed, pitch location, where the ball was hit and how hard it was hit. Everything is categorized, marked and data-based. We track between 45,000 and 60,000 pitches each year. I then help the advance scouts by loading the games from the rest of the league. Basically, I’m a traveling video library.
“We get our video from TVTI. The data comes from Inside Edge, which sends us their comma-separated vector files, or CSV files. Those are integrated into a program called BATS, which is made by Sydex Sports and owned by Mike Phillips. I think 28 of the 30 teams use it.
“Here, with the Houston Astros, we have our own group of people doing statistics. I believe we will eventually do all of our own statistical inputs and outputs. We have one of the best decision science departments around. Sig Mejdal and the guys can really break things down, and because it’s a science it’s not subject to human prejudice.”
On how the data is used:
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Over at NBC, Joe Posnanski raises this provocative question: Would Major League Baseball be better off if it eliminated the postseason, and just crowned its champion based on regular-season record, the way that England’s Premier League does?
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This morning, Mike Petriello put out the following quiz on Twitter.
Here’s a list of every hitter in baseball w/ 40 PA, sorted by BB%. Dare you to guess who is #1 without clicking. fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?p…
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) May 2, 2013
Assuming you read the headline to this post, I’ve already spoiled the answer, but I’m not sure that knowing that Juan Uribe is the current leader in BB% makes it any less shocking. Juan Uribe! This Juan Uribe.
Uribe is 34-years-old. Uribe has been in the big leagues since 2001, and he’s been hacking his way through almost every at-bat since. Juan Uribe is Yuniesky Betancourt’s hero*. What is happening here?
*I don’t know if that’s true, but it would make sense if it were true.
