Archive for Daily Graphings

Last night, Jered Weaver took the hill for his second start of the season. It didn’t go very well, as he gave up five runs in five innings and walked twice as many guys as he struck out. But, the game was in Texas and the wind was blowing out, so there were some environmental factors in play, and Weaver’s hardly the only ace who got lit up yesterday. It was a day when David Price, Stephen Strasburg, R.A. Dickey, Johnny Cueto, Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, Matt Cain, Cole Hamels, and Yu Darvish also pitched, and yet the league average ERA for the day was 5.11. A lot of good pitchers got torched yesterday.

But, Weaver’s story is different. Good pitchers are going to have bad starts, and it’s usually not a reason for concern. Weaver’s performance, though, should be cause for alarm in Anaheim, because… well, here’s a graph.

Last night, Jered Weaver’s fastball sat at 85 MPH, the slowest average velocity he’s had during the PITCHF/x era. In fact, since the start of 2008, Weaver has only had an average fastball velocity below 86.0 mph three times; his final start of 2012 and his first two starts of 2013.

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The voice is instantly recognizable. So is the easygoing style and depth of knowledge that makes him one of the best play-by-play announcers in baseball. No one calls a game quite like Jon Miller.

Miller is best known as having been the voice of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball from 1990 to 2010. Paired with the polarizing Joe Morgan, he developed a reputation as a great storyteller with a genuine love for the game and a deep appreciation for its history. He has also been a part of history. Miller has called numerous World Series and League Championship Series, as well as Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th home run. A member of the San Francisco Giants broadcast team since 1997, Miller was honored with the Ford C. Frick Award in 2010.

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Miller on Broadcasting the Numbers:“[Broadcast partner] Dave Flemming and I talk about advanced stats all the time. I recall UZR coming up for us in 2010 when we saw Andres Torres playing a great center field. I remember thinking, ‘Torres covers so much ground.’ Then I read this note saying he was number one, in all of Major League Baseball, in Ultimate Zone Rating. I figured that would be of interest to any Giants fan, so I used it on the air. I said it was a method of determining how much ground a guy covers.

“Back in the 1980s, when Bill James’ Baseball Abstracts first came out, I would pore through that stuff. It was fascinating to me. Runs Created were interesting.

“In 1984, Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken had great years on a team that didn’t hit at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi everybody and welcome to the second part of the first part of a new recurring Friday series. The series began with the week’s wildest pitches, and now we move on to the wildest swings because batters need to be ridiculed for their humiliating failures too. So often, we celebrate these players for being extraordinarily talented, for regularly doing things of which we’re not even capable. Consider this your weekly reminder that ballplayers are humans and sometimes, if only for fleeting instants, humans suck. Consider this also your weekly reminder that, the overwhelming majority of the time, ballplayers are terrific.

As with the wildest pitches, identifying the wildest swings is done using PITCHf/x and basic math. I confirm everything by going to the video, and I’m not going to include checked swings, because I’m looking for full, ill-advised commitments. I’m probably also not going to include swings during hit-and-run attempts, since the hitter generally feels like he has to swing at everything so the decision is practically out of his hands. I don’t want swings attempted because the hitter feels like he has to swing. I want swings attempted because the hitter thought the swing would be productive. Each week, there will be featured a top-five list. Each week, starting RIGHT NOW.

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When the Marlins announced their opening day rotation, there was one shocking last minute addition: 20-year-old Jose Fernandez. One of the top pitching prospects in baseball, there had been no talk about carrying him on the Opening Day roster, and he was one of the Marlins first cuts earlier in spring training. While he’s an intriguing talent, he also hasn’t yet pitched above A-ball, and the Marlins are rushing him to the big leagues in a season that is almost certainly not going to result in contention. So, why did they abruptly promote Fernandez to the big leagues?

One idea that has been kicked around is marketing. There is no franchise in professional sports with a bigger image problem than the Miami Marlins, and the second year of the team’s new stadium is expected to be filled with empty seats. The roster has been gutted and filled with replacement level journeyman grasping on to the last legs of their careers, so not only is the team not good, it’s not particularly interesting either. Giancarlo Stanton is about the only reason to go to the park and watch the team play.

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Hello friends, and welcome to the first Friday of the 2013 MLB regular season. On this Friday we will debut a new series, to run on every Friday hereafter. The name of the series is “The Worst of the Best”, and each Friday it’s going to involve two separate but related posts, chronicling the wildest pitches of the week that was, and the wildest swings of the week that was, where for our purposes the week that was spans from the previous Friday to Thursday. Or, in this case, from Sunday to Thursday. Each post will consist of a top five, complete with a bunch of images, so prepare your computers if you have really terrible old slow computers.

I’ve done something somewhat similar to this before. I came up with this name in a hurry and I’m not wedded to it, but the idea is that we’re observing the worst performances from some of the best players in the world. These are the moments at which the world’s greatest baseball players are the most like us. Maybe even worse than us! It’s all going to be PITCHf/x-derived, so this isn’t a subjective list, but we are left with the reality that every so often, PITCHf/x misses a pitch. Also PITCHf/x doesn’t keep track of intended pitch location, which could matter a little here. But we’re all just going to deal with that, because I said so and because none of us really has a choice. Now let’s just go ahead and get to the start of our first list. This is going to at least not be the opposite of fun.

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Lucas Duda has made some changes. Though you’ll recognize the syntax from our look at Domonic Brown and his swing changes, Duda’s changes are more subtle. You might not even see them the first time around. But look a little closer — or, earlier — and you might notice a difference in approach. Maybe it’ll allow the big guy to tap into his power better this year.

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Stryker Trahan, Matt Davidson and Chris Owings each flashed plus power for their respective positions at Salt River Fields in Arizona. For Owings, it was a line drive home run to right-center field in his first at bat of the Triple-A game. Davidson just missed barreling an outside fastball, but was still able to drive it to base of the right field wall. Trahan belted multiple shots to left-center field. One resulted in a double while the other ended in a long out.

These in game displays of power were preceded by powerful batting practice sessions full of laser line drives and towering home runs.

If the game of baseball revolved around the power tool, the Diamondbacks would have three of the best prospects in baseball. Of course, hitting ability, speed, defense and arm strength are also factored into the equation. This is where each loses his luster. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball’s season-ticket holders will be able to take in a game this year for about the same cost as last season. They’ll also enjoy a hot dog, a beer, a soda, a program and a cap for 2012 prices — more or less. But long-time fans of the Nationals, Tigers, Giants, Angels and Rangers have had to dig deeper into their pockets. With those teams, season-ticket holders saw ticket price increases of more than 10%. The Mariners, Diamondbacks and Pirates also raised their prices for season-ticket holders by at least 7%. On the flip side, the White Sox, Royals and Mets lowered non-premium seats by 7% or more.

The ticket price information comes courtesy of Fan Cost Experience, which released its annual ticket price survey this week. The site reports on the “average ticket price” for each team — which it defines as “a weighted average of season-ticket prices for general seating categories, determined by factoring the tickets in each price range as a percentage of the total number of seats in each venue.”  Across the league, the average ticket price in 2013 is $27.48, a mere 1% increase over last season.

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It has never happened, but it might this year – the Cleveland Indians could face the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. Other match-ups are more likely — Nationals vs. Tigers, for instance — but Ohio’s teams may be on a collision course. It is less of a long shot than you might think.

On paper, the Reds are one of the best teams in baseball. They won 97 games last year and if they stay relatively healthy — the loss of Ryan Ludwick is an early blow — they should once again be favored to capture the National League Central title. Few will be surprised if Great American Ballpark is hosting games in late October.

Then there is the team 270 miles to their northeast. The Indians won just 68 games last year. They‘ve made major upgrades, but that‘s mostly on the position-player front. Their starting rotation is a question mark the size of Lake Erie. Justin Masterson, the de facto ace of the staff, again struggled with left-handers and posted a 4.93 ERA. The 4.16 FIP/4.15 xFIP suggest better things are in store in 2013, however.

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