On Saturday night, baseball lost one of its all-time greats. Stan “The Man” Musial, a Hall-of-Fame inductee who played 22 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, passed away at the age of 92.
I’ll leave the descriptions of Musial’s unique swing and the stories of contributions to the community to writers more eloquent and knowledgeable than I. FanGraphs is all about statistics, so let’s look at Musial’s career though his numbers.
This is a post that necessarily begins with an embarrassing story. Friday afternoon, I was doing some research into strike zones called against individual hitters, and full teams. I was comparing actual strikes against expected strikes, just as I’ve done with pitchers in the past. I didn’t know if I would find anything, but that was the whole purpose — it was statistical exploration. After some time, I gathered all my results in a spreadsheet, and then I remembered I already did this in October. Like the exact same thing, for this very website.
Memory jogged, I read the old post, and I read the old comments underneath the old post. Everything looked fine; I didn’t know what I was checking. All the results agreed, with the only difference being that this time I used a denominator of 1,000 called pitches instead of 1,000 general pitches. Hardly worth an updated post. But part of one comment did stand out to me, both because it was interesting, and because it meant I might not have to throw away all my data:
There are a bunch of things we know to be true about Aaron Cook, or at least things we have no reason to question. Aaron Cook played for the Rockies, and he recently played for the Red Sox. More recently he was signed by the Phillies. He is a man, and he is a man of more than 30 years, and he is a man who grows reddish facial hair when he wants to, and even when he doesn’t. Aaron Cook knows many things about the game of baseball. Last season, Cook posted one of the lowest strikeout rates ever.
Strikeouts, of course, have never been a big part of Aaron Cook’s game — when he’s right, he gets a bunch of grounders. When he’s wrong, he also gets a bunch of grounders, but the overall results of everything are worse. Cook, in 2012, didn’t post the lowest strikeout rate in baseball history. He did post the lowest strikeout rate since the strike, at 4.9% of all batters. There were 411 batters, and 20 of those batters struck out. When Cook was in triple-A in 2012, there were 153 batters, and 16 of those batters struck out, so this was predictable to some extent.
The World Baseball Classic is a cool idea. It is a bit hypocritical for me to write that, as I have not been terribly engaged by the WBC in the past, but I’m jumping on the bandwagon, such as it is. I am not here to convince you that you should love it, and I understand why many MLB fans would be almost impossible to win over. The WBC has its issues, one of which is the perceived lack of star power on the U.S. team. I do not want to enter that debate here. Writers like Craig Calcaterra and Drew Fairservice have done a good job of responding to that sort of hand-wringing. Fairservice makes another excellent point: it is up to the fans to turn the WBC into a thing that stars won’t miss.
I want to take a different tack on this by trying to look at things from the players’ perspective. In particular, I want to think about a certain subset of players — younger players still in their initial years of team control and without guaranteed contracts beyond this season — for whom the stakes are a bit higher.
The Seattle Mariners offense has been awful the last few years. Historically awful, in fact. Over the last decade, the two lowest scoring teams have been the 2010 Mariners (513 runs) and the 2011 Mariners (556 runs). At 619 runs, the 2012 Mariners moved all the way up to just 17th worst in the last 10 years. After three seasons of offensive ineptitude, it’s not a big surprise that the organization has dramatically shifted their focus, and has spent the winter collecting defensively challenged hitters with power, including Michael Morse, Kendrys Morales, Raul Ibanez, and taking a flier on the remains of Jason Bay.
None of these guys are great players, but they provide the team with something they haven’t had much of lately, and combined with adjusting the dimensions of Safeco Field, it’s a pretty good bet that the 2013 Mariners are going to score more runs than the line-ups that they’ve put on the field the last three seasons. But, the question remains, will those additional runs scored lead to more wins?
Mike LaValliere was never the sexiest catcher in baseball. He didn’t make any All-Star teams and in parts of 12 big-league seasons [1984-1995] hit just 18 home runs. Nicknamed “Spanky” he ran like he was carrying a piano on his back.
But he was a damn fine backstop. The Pirates went to the playoffs in 1990, 1991 and 1992, and LaValliere was their primary catcher all three years. In 1987, his first year in Pittsburgh, he won a Gold Glove.
Originally signed as a non-drafted free agent, he broke in with the Phillies and also played for the White Sox and Cardinals. He caught a lot of good pitchers, and in this interview he talks about which of them had the best stuff, and which — much like himself — did the most with the least.
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David Laurila: How good of a hitter were you?
Mike Lavalliere: Put it this way, with my speed they were all legit. I didn’t have many infield hits, so the ones I got were earned. I was a guy without much power, although I did have a little gap power. I like to think my hits helped the team.
DL: You hit .300 [twice] and had a pretty good OBP [.351 lifetime].
ML: I had a pretty good eye and didn’t strike out much. Again, if I could have run a little better, I probably could have flirted with .300 a few more seasons. But without running well, you’re kind of limited offensively.
DL: How much would you be valued in today‘s game?
ML: Catchers nowadays have maybe a little more bang, without quite as much emphasis on their defense. If I were joining a team that had a bunch of boppers and didn’t have to rely on my offense, I think I could be a real good fit.
DL: Did being a catcher help your plate discipline?
ML: They’re two different animals. Read the rest of this entry »
A lot of analytical baseball articles today will make some sort of reference to catcher pitch-framing. References to pitch-framing will often make references to Jose Molina, and they will less often but still somewhat often make references to Livan Hernandez. References to Livan Hernandez often lead to recollections of the 1997 NLCS, and Eric Gregg’s strike zone in Game 5. Consensus is that Gregg’s zone was extremely favorable to Hernandez, and it was a big reason why the Marlins were able to get past the Braves and advance to the World Series.
Of course, that which is unusual has a tendency to become exaggerated, made extraordinary over time. Gregg’s Game 5 strike zone is today remembered as one of the worst umpiring performances ever in the game. One hyperbolic example of many:
Umpire Eric Gregg’s strike zone in this 1997 NL playoff matchup had viewers outraged. Pitches that sailed high over the heads of players were called strikes.
Demonstrating a commitment to modernity, baseball’s rules committee has spoken: “The fake-to-third, throw-to-first pickoff move” is now a balk. As of now, implementation is uncertain as baseball waits for the Major League Baseball Players Association to consider the rule change. But as far as MLB is concerned, you can’t do that any more.
So here’s the current rule, which is on the cutting block:
A pitcher is to step directly toward a base before throwing to that base but does not require him to throw (except to first base only) because he steps. It is possible, with runners on first and third, for the pitcher to step toward third and not throw, merely to bluff the runner back to third; then seeing the runner on first start for second, turn and step toward and throw to first base. This is legal. However, if, with runners on first and third, the pitcher, while in contact with the rubber, steps toward third and then immediately and in practically the same motion “wheels” and throws to first base, it is obviously an attempt to deceive the runner at first base, and in such a move it is practically impossible to step directly toward first base before the throw to first base, and such a move shall be called a balk. Of course, if the pitcher steps off the rubber and then makes such a move, it is not a balk.
When the Nationals acquired Denard Span, it essentially meant they’d have to choose between Adam LaRoche and Michael Morse. When they re-signed LaRoche to a multi-year contract, it essentially meant Morse would have to be traded. One might have thought this would have reduced the Nationals’ negotiating leverage, but a three-team trade on Wednesday saw the Nationals still manage to turn Morse into legitimate value.
The overall summary, in case you haven’t seen it:
To Seattle, from Washington: Michael Morse
To Oakland, from Seattle: John Jaso
To Washington, from Oakland: A.J. Cole, Blake Treinen, PTBNL
John Jaso isn’t much of a household name. A year ago, he was traded for felon-turned-reliever Josh Lueke, as the Rays decided that Jaso’s deficiencies rendered expendable. The Mariners picked him up as a depth piece, and then Eric Wedge buried him on the bench to start the season, as he watched Miguel Olivo and Jesus Montero do most of the catching at the start of the season. An injury to Olivo opened the door to some actual playing time in May, however, and he was able to work his way into the catching platoon over the rest of the season.
But, because he played in Seattle, and wasn’t an everyday player, and because his skillset isn’t all that flashy, you might not have noticed how good John Jaso was last year. For reference, here’s a list of every hitter who had 300 or more plate appearances in the big leagues last year, and posted a wRC+ between 140 and 150.
