Archive for Daily Graphings

Before we get started, I find appropriate two words of warning. One, this post contains .gifs, like many of my posts on FanGraphs. If your browser locks up from too many .gifs, I think the bigger story is that you’re visiting the present-day Internet from 1997, but it’s at least right of me to give you a notice. Two, this is maybe the dumbest and most pointless thing I’ve ever put together. And it wasn’t that long ago that I wrote a post about bunt doubles. In terms of determining wins and losses, you aren’t about to learn anything the least bit meaningful. On the standards of significance, this post sucks.

All right. This is a post about intentional walks, and, more specifically, intentional balls. People don’t really notice intentional balls because they don’t matter. The outcome is pre-determined, and throwing and receiving intentional balls isn’t a skill. Nobody is thought to be “good” at it or “bad” at it because it’s just a simple game of catch that maybe shouldn’t even be necessary in order to advance a hitter to first base. Once every several years or so, a hitter will swing at an intentional ball, just to take the other side by surprise. Once every year or month or something, an intentional ball will be thrown too wildly, and bad things will happen. This is when intentional balls are noticed, but those events are infrequent.

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So the Legends had to play someone, right? Of course they did. While I was there, I caught two other teams, and the first I’ll talk about is the Asheville Tourists. On to the prospecty goodness.
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Kyle Farnsworth is intimidating. The Tampa Bay Rays right-hander throws hard and isn’t afraid to come inside. He is also a sculpted 6-foot-4, 240 pounds with a background in martial arts. Charging the mound against him has never been a good idea.

That tough-guy image has overshadowed a long and mostly successful career. Farnsworth has never been a star, but he has appeared in 814 regular season games and 15 post-season games. In 941 innings he has fanned 934 batters. He has backed down to none of them.

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David Laurila: How different a pitcher are you now compared to when you broke into the big leagues?

Kyle Farnsworth: Not too much different. I obviously don’t throw as hard as I did back then. That’s going to happen over the years and this is my 15th season. You just have to continue to make adjustments as hitters make adjustments to you.

DL: How hard did you throw in those early years?

KF: I think I topped out at 103, but I was mostly high-90s. You can get away with a lot more mistakes when you’re throwing that hard, as opposed to being 90 or something like that. It’s a good luxury to have.

DL: Did you reach a point in your career where velocity wasn’t as important?

KF: Not really, although I realized that maybe movement was a little more important than velocity. Eventually hitters are going to catch up to straight 98, as opposed to movement and 94. That’s a lot harder to hit and the type of thing you figure out the longer you are into your career. You’d like to figure them out a whole earlier, but you figure them out when you figure them out.

DL: Have you ever done anything to improve the movement on your fastball? Read the rest of this entry »

In Tampa Bay, Carl Crawford was a star. He was one of the most exciting players in the sport and one of the main driving forces behind the team’s rise from ineptitude to World Series contender. He was a homegrown talent who excelled in all of the things the Rays valued. He was an example of what small market teams could do to overcome the financial gap and take down the big boys.

Then, he signed a $142 million contract with the Red Sox. A lot of people were against that contract, especially for that skillset in that ballpark. A speed-and-defense guy getting power hitter money for years when his speed-and-defense would almost certainly be in decline? A guy who specialized in covering a lot of ground playing the smallest left field in baseball? Crawford’s struggles in Boston made him a new kind of example; a warning to those who had strayed from the simple concepts of on base percentage and slugging percentage. Crawford became the poster child for those who felt like places like FanGraphs had gone too far with our affection for guys who accumulate value through singles and UZR.

Through it all, Carl Crawford has been held up as more than just another player; he’s been the bully pulpit for both sides. Now healthy and away from the spotlight on the west coast — yes, he’s in LA, but he’s playing fifth fiddle to Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Adrian Gonzalez, and Zack Greinke — Crawford has been given a chance to get his career back on track. And he is taking full advantage.

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Probably the biggest baseball story of last week was Carlos Quentin charging the mound after a hit-by-pitch and in the process badly injuring Zack Greinke. At first it looked like Quentin had done something completely stupid, then after some additional consideration, it looked like Quentin had done something completely stupid and Greinke also hadn’t helped himself. (Nuance.) The pitch that hit Quentin wasn’t that bad of a pitch. Quentin is no stranger to wearing it, and generally when you have a guy who gets hit a lot, that selection will include both wild pitches and surprisingly close pitches.

Dave put up a post about Carlos Quentin’s hit-by-pitch zone, which you can see here. As can be observed from the image, over the years Quentin has been hit by a few pitches that might’ve otherwise been borderline strikes. That gave Dave the idea to ask me about other hit-by-pitches that were at least borderline strikes. With the invaluable help of friend and colleague Matthew Carruth, I present to you an overall, league-wide hit-by-pitch zone map.

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Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts announced at a Monday morning press conference that an agreement had been reached on a framework to renovate Wrigley Field. The Ricketts family plans to spend $500 million in private funds to renovate and modernize the nearly 100-year-old ballpark, develop a new hotel across from Wrigley, and make myriad pedestrian, traffic, and other improvements to the Wrigleyville neighborhood.

The framework is the result of months of negotiations among the Cubs and the Ricketts family, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney, and Wrigleyville residents, and, according to Tom Ricketts, has the backing of Emmanuel and Tunney. Getting the support of the mayor and the local alderman was critical, as the plan must now proceed through Chicago’s Planned Development process, and be voted on by the Landmarks Commission and City Council.

The details are similar to those released by the Cubs in January, when the Ricketts family dropped their request for public funds and announced their intent to privately-finance the much-needed renovation. The hook for the Ricketts family’s half a billion dollar investment: changes to Chicago ordinances that restrict the quantity and type of advertising at Wrigley and the number of Cubs night games. In other words, if the City gives the Ricketts the leeway to operate Wrigley Field profitably, then the Ricketts will modernize the landmark ballpark and revitalize the neighborhood.

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Most of the time, pictures do more justice than talking. So when Jason Castro said a few words about catcher framing, I immediately wanted to run to a computer to look at what he was talking about. Maybe next time we’ll take a look at some video together and tease out what he meant a little further. But this time, just a few words were worth a lot of thinking, and the pictures filled in the blanks.

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As a rule, Mondays suck, but as Mondays go, this is always a good one, as the Red Sox play a frightfully early home baseball game. On 2013’s Patriots’ Day, the Red Sox hosted the Rays, and it was 2-1 Boston in the top of the sixth when Evan Longoria batted with two down and runners on the corners. In a full count against Ryan Dempster, Longoria returned a grounder up the middle, but Stephen Drew made a diving stop and threw to Mike Napoli for the out. The inning was over, the Rays didn’t score, and the Rays would end up losing by a run a few innings later.

Things were that simple, and things were also a hell of a lot more complicated. Longoria was upset with the call at first base, because the play was close, and had Longoria been ruled safe, the game would’ve been tied. This was one of the higher-leverage moments of the game. Below, you can see it all for yourself:

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Although I have not done a general survey of reactions to Joe Girardi’s decision to have Robinson Cano hit second in eight of the Yankees’ first 11 games, I can imagine many saber-friendly fans are excited to see the player who is mostly likely the Yankees’ best hitter in the second spot. Ever since the findings The Book’s chapter on lineup optimization became popular among baseball bloggers, complaints about managers “wasting” the second spot in the lineup (where the best hitter, or at least one of the best three, according to The Book) have increased.

I do not know whether Joe Girardi is putting Cano second because of sabermetric insights or simply because with Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira out, he is at a loss regarding how to split up the lefties in his lineup otherwise. The latter suggestion is what Wallace Matthews believes. Matthews is not a fan of Cano hitting second. After all, a hitter with Cano’s average and power simply can’t hit second, right? Matthews:

Robinson Cano is not a No. 2 hitter, not in any way, shape or form, and not on anyone’s lineup card in baseball. Except, of course, for Joe Girardi’s…. This adjustment, however, does not add up. In addition to all the home runs the Yankees lost to free agency, the injuries to Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira took two bats that accounted for 67 home runs last season out of the lineup. So instead of installing Cano, who hit 33 HRs last year, in the middle of the lineup where he belongs, Girardi moves him up.

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Adam Dunn arrived in the Major Leagues in 2001. Since then, he has led the major leagues in both walks (1,172) and strikeouts (2,046) and is third in home runs (408), and his career stands as something of the perfect example of the Three True Outcomes. Of the 7,256 times he’s walked up to the plate, 3,702 of those PAs (51%) have ended without defensive involvement. Dunn has perfected the slow pitch softball style of baseball and turned that skillset into a pretty effective big league career.

And now, at age 33, Dunn is participating in an experiment to become an entirely new kind of hitter. Two weeks in, and it’s hard to call the experiment anything other than a total failure.

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