Archive for Daily Graphings

All offseason long, the Detroit Tigers denied interest in re-signing free-agent closer Jose Valverde. Every other team in baseball also effectively denied interest in signing Valverde. The Tigers did next to nothing to address their closer situation, and on Wednesday, Phil Coke blew a save against the Twins. Thursday, the Tigers signed Valverde, albeit to a minor-league contract with an early-May opt out. There have been, I think, two primary responses:

(1) It’s a minor-league contract so it’s utterly risk-free — if Valverde doesn’t earn a big-league job, he won’t be given a big-league job. What’s the harm?

(2) The Tigers won’t be able to help themselves. Valverde isn’t what he was, but it won’t be long before he’s closing again for Detroit, and possibly costing them games. He’s “proven”, he’s familiar, he’s still thought of as a closer despite everything. This is how it starts.

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We know we’re going to strike out. That’s just a given with guys who have power. And we have a lot of guys who can hit the ball out of the park. And that kind of goes hand in hand. But you look at some of the studies — and our guys have looked at them — and there’s not a direct correlation with strikeouts and offense.

— Atlanta general manager Frank Wren, interviewed by Jayson Stark on 2/18/13

Through their first two games, Braves hitters have 24 Ks in 75 PAs. But they also hit six HRs, they scored 16 runs in two games, and they’re 2-0. They’re living up to expectations. Unfortunately, so are the Astros. They have 43 Ks in 97 PAs through their first three games, becoming just the fifth team in history to strike out at least 10 times in the first three games of the season. The team is 1-2 with just 8 total runs scored. So how relevant are strikeouts to a team’s success?
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There are, I imagine, several questions one could ask about Roy Halladay. Does he eat breakfast? does he eat granola for breakfast? Which is his favorite breakfast granola? But, regarding Halladay as a baseball pitcher, there is one particularly pressing question: will he ever get back to being what he was? It would’ve been nearly impossible for Halladay to conclusively answer that question on Wednesday in Atlanta, and indeed, in the aftermath of Halladay’s start, the question remains unanswered, conclusively.

The good news, if you missed it: Halladay finished with nine strikeouts. The bad news, if you missed it: the rest. Halladay allowed five runs in 3.1 innings, and he became the first pitcher in recorded baseball history to record nine strikeouts in so brief an outing. Of course, we know better than to look at innings thrown — more meaningful is the number of batters faced, and in that regard Halladay’s start was not unprecedented. Four times before, pitchers have struck out nine of 15 batters, while Halladay faced 19 Braves. Dan Osinski once struck out ten of 16 batters. Just last April, Marco Estrada struck out nine of 17 batters. But anyway, this isn’t about establishing an historical context — this is about Halladay, and what he is, and what just happened.

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The Texas Rangers have two good middle infielders, so the best prospect in baseball is starting the season in Triple-A. The St. Louis Cardinals have three good outfielders, so the second best prospect in baseball is starting the season in Triple-A. The Cardinals one glaring weakness is at shortstop. The Rangers spent all winter trying to trade for a young power hitting outfielder, only to fall short at the end.

So, naturally, there’s seemingly constant speculation about a possible trade between the two franchises. This speculation got pushed to the forefront on Tuesday, when Cardinals GM John Mozeliak was asked about the idea by Jim Bowden:

Mozeliak Cards GM just told us on Sirius 209/XM 89that if Jon Daniels calls him & offers him Profar for Tavares he would think about it

— JIM BOWDEN (@JimBowdenESPNxm) April 1, 2013

Mozeliak’s comment essentially boils down to “yes, I’d consider acquiring a 20-year-old potential superstar shortstop if I had the chance”, which, well, of course he would. There’s nothing there to suggest that the deal has been actually discussed by either organization, or that this hypothetical trade has any chance of happening. Even with Elvis Andrus signing his long term extension today, the Rangers still have plenty of options to keep Profar, and the Cardinals have other shortstop options that won’t require them to give up Taveras.

There’s a reason the #1 prospect in baseball — per Baseball America’s rankings, anyway — has never been traded in the season that he was considered be the best overall prospect in the game. A swap of the #1 and #2 prospects — technically, BA rated Taveras #3 this year, but given that Dylan Bundy is starting the season on the DL with elbow issues, we’ll just give them credit for flipping those two to better account for pitcher attrition — would be historically unique. It’s probably not going to happen. But, let’s just say it was on the table… does either side say no?

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Drafted 10th overall about nine months after some little-known guy named Peyton Manning unseated him as the starting quarterback at the University of Tennessee, Todd Helton has seen it all during his time in Colorado. He has not, however, aged very gracefully. At the age of 39 — and coming off a year in which he hit .238 in 69 games — he is once again tasked with proving there is still life in his aging bat. It will probably be his final season in a major league uniform.

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Know first that this began as a far more ambitious project. But the ambitious project didn’t pan out, and though ambition is noble, it isn’t something to be celebrated on its own. One cannot succeed without ambition, but at the same time, one cannot succeed without more than just ambition. What we’ve been left with, in the ruins of my attempt, is a little grab-bag of fun facts. I still find this stuff interesting, and it isn’t stuff you run across every day, but this could’ve been more. It probably never will be more.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t make a huge difference how quickly a player can run from home to first. It does make some difference, but most hits will be hits no matter what. Yet it’s better to have speed than to not have speed, and one can’t really improve how quickly he runs. Not by the time he’s a professional baseball player, not when he’s trying to go 90 feet. I’ve recently become somewhat interested in timing players from the moment of contact to the first-base bag. More specifically, I was interested in timing Jesus Montero, but it turns out this isn’t very complicated to do. And we shouldn’t need a big sample size, because a player should run somewhere around his “true talent”, so to speak. The key is to isolate close plays. There will always be some variation, depending on any stumbles and on where the pitch was located and on so many things, but, scouts time players to the base. Why don’t we share in the fun? (The fun of knowledge)

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Some time ago, Brandon McCarthy asked a question about first pitches of seasons. McCarthy is neat and fun and smart and good and he recently dropped a FanGraphs reference in an article, so we pay attention to McCarthy, and to his question we issued a response. McCarthy was asking about offspeed frequency with the first pitch of a season. Turns out offspeed pitches are almost never thrown to begin a year, or at least that’s been the case during the PITCHf/x era. Things might’ve been the opposite before and we’d have no way of knowing because all that information is inaccessible if not unavailable and/or non-existent. It stands to reason that the fastball has always been the popular pick to kick things off.

McCarthy’s question got me interested in McCarthy’s question, but it also got me personally interested in first pitches of seasons in general. What gets thrown, where does it get thrown, and what do hitters do? As of Tuesday, every team in baseball has now played at least one game of the 2013 regular season. So every season is underway, so we can assemble a complete record of 2013’s first pitches. Are you also curious about these things? Are you not at all curious, but can you not pull yourself away from this article? Below, please find a thorough table, followed by more stuff commenting directly or indirectly on the table.

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With the closest Padres affiliate nearly 10 hours away from the Atlanta area, spring training is my only opportunity to scout Padres prospects. Last week, Dave Laurila and I tag teamed a piece on top catching prospect Austin Hedges. And while he was the most impressive position prospect in the organization, a pair of right handers ruled the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack did a good job this morning dissecting the adjustments Yu Darvish has made and how those have paid off in a big way, but there was one thing he didn’t mention that Darvish is also doing now – throwing harder.

Here are the average velocities for Darvish’s pitches from 2012 and then last night, per PitchF/x:

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