Over in the American League, there’s a clear two-horse race between Chris Sale and Corey Kluber for the Cy Young Award. Both are head and shoulders above the rest of the league and both have very strong cases for the honor, depending on what metrics you prefer.

Over in the National League, that isn’t quite the case. Max Scherzer is the clear front-runner at this point, with a host of other pitchers behind him all trying to make an argument why they might have had better seasons. Clayton Kershaw has a lower ERA. Zack Greinke pitches in a much tougher park. Teammate Stephen Strasburg has a lower FIP.

Those are just the stats that measure outcomes, though. Let’s see what Statcast has to say about the sort of contact the other candidates are allowing to see if anybody has a real case against Scherzer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, perhaps without even knowing it, Andrew Miller became the father of a bullpen revolution. It was a year ago when Miller, entering multiple games in the fifth and sixth innings, helped propel a Cleveland team down its No. 2 and No. 3 starting pitchers to the brink of a World Series title.

The Indians were lauded for their creative use of Miller, freeing him from the shackles of the save to impact games in high-leverage situations and for multiple innings. He avoided the fate of Zach Britton, another dominant left-hander, who looked on longingly from the Rogers Centre bullpen as his Orioles fell to the Blue Jays in an extra-inning Wild Card game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although it’s not yet completely certain, it looks like the Rockies are going to earn a trip to the playoffs. Should they get there, they’re going to need someone who looks like an ace. And, you know what, even if the Rockies somehow miss the playoffs, there’s still going to be more baseball, in 2018 and beyond. In those years, the Rockies are going to need someone who looks like an ace. Even in this era where starting pitchers have slightly diminished importance, there’s no substitute for a No. 1. Every team could use one; every team badly wants one.

The Rockies might thank their lucky stars for Jon Gray. Not that it’s all been luck, of course — the Rockies drafted Gray in the first round, and the Rockies developed him. But, with pitching prospects, anything can happen, for almost any reason. There would’ve been countless opportunities for Gray’s career to veer off the tracks. Still could, I suppose. Nothing’s for sure. But where Gray is, now, a few weeks shy of his 26th birthday — he seems to be becoming the best starting pitcher the Rockies have ever had.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the course of the last year, I’ve published projections for a boatload of prospects at this site. Now that the 2017 season is winding down, I thought it might make sense to review how KATOH has performed with specific players. For this particular post, I’d like to look at some instances where KATOH’s forecasts have looked prescient.

Allow me to point out immediately that none of this is conclusive: we’re only a year (or less) into the big-league careers of the players included here. Labeling a six-year projection as definitively “right” or “wrong” following a single season is obviously premature. That said, we undoubtedly have a much clearer picture of these players’ futures than we did six months ago.

This analysis compares each player’s industry-wide consensus to his stats-only KATOH projection — which does not consider a player’s ranking on prospect lists. Stats-only is KATOH’s purest form and also the version that disagrees most fervently with the establishment.

Writing this article was a lot of fun. Like everyone else, I enjoy saying “I told you so” when I’m right. But I also acknowledge that I’m often wrong. So as much as I’d like to tout these cherry-picked success stories and move on to current projections, I feel I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t write another article pointing out KATOH’s misses. Stay tuned.

Prospects KATOH Liked
Here are the players on whom KATOH has typically been more bullish than other outlets. Players are listed in general order of “success” in 2017.

Rhys Hoskins, 1B/OF, Philadelphia

As you’re probably aware, Hoskins had a pretty good summer. But before he was hitting homers at a ridiculous clip, Hoskins was an unheralded first-base prospect who had never cracked a major publication’s top-100 list. KATOH was all over him, though, due to his impressive minor-league numbers. My system ranked him No. 54 in the preseason and No. 14 when he was called up. He also cracked the All-KATOH Team in the preseason. The best minor-league hitters often succeed in the majors as well. As obvious as that sounds, the case of Rhys Hoskins shows that we sometimes overthink these things.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday night, Andrelton Simmons orchestrated what has to be one of the top assists of the year, certainly the most creative. On one play, within one sequence, he created two separate rundowns. If it’s not one of the most watchable chain of events all season, I have to see the full list of contenders. It featured all the athleticism, artistry, and anticipation that we’ve come to associate with Simmons.

With two outs in the bottom of the third, the count full, and Jose Altuve on first base, Carlos Correa ripped a single to right. With Altuve off and running, Simmons moved into position to cut off the throw from Kole Calhoun. Instead of holding his glove up near his chest, however, to intercept the ball, Simmons allowed his hands to hang freely at his sides. His intent, it seemed, was to let the ball carry through to third base with a view to catching Altuve.

Simultaneously, Correa proceeded to make a wide turn around first base. Perhaps anticipating this — indeed, perhaps having caused it — Simmons reached up at the last moment to cut off Calhoun’s throw. Immediately, he turned to first, throwing it behind Correa and creating the opportunity for a rundown.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I looked at how one of the last seasons of the steroid era (2002) compares to the present one in terms of home runs, total offense, and overall value by position. To summarize the findings of that post briefly: while corner outfielders account for less production now than they did in 2002, infielders and catchers are now responsible for more of it. Moreover, players at the top of the home-run leaderboards now are accounting for a lower percentage of total league-wide homers than in the steroid era. There’s a more even distribution of homers, in other words.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday afternoon, Dave told me he was going to write about the National League MVP. Specifically, he said he was going to write about how there’s just no real good way to pick a winner, because all the best players are almost equally good. Here is the post. It went live in the morning. It’s all sensible, and it does a good job of laying out the landscape.

I said to Dave it would be possible to compare this year’s crop of the best players to how the crops have looked throughout baseball history. I added that I could look into it if he won’t. His response, and I quote: “I won’t.” So now here I am! I’m running through some quick analyses, going back to the start of the integration era in 1947. I’ve prepared plots to examine all of Major League Baseball, and I’ve prepared plots specific to the American and National Leagues. Off we go.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in August, I wrote about the remarkably crowded NL MVP race. I went through 10 guys with pretty strong cases for the award, and noted there wasn’t much separation between those 10 guys. I ended the piece by noting that “this list will undoubtedly narrow itself”, figuring that down the stretch, a few guys would rise above the rest of the crop and become the clear top candidates.

Well, that didn’t happen. With just a few days left before NL MVP voters are required to turn in their ballots, the reality is that this is the most muddled class of MVP candidates I can ever remember.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees could do something really interesting in the Wild Card game — and perhaps even really smart.

If ever there were a team ideally suited to bullpen a Wild Card play-in game, it’s this Yankees team. Yankees relievers have combined to post the highest collective strikeout rate of all time among bullpens. The club has five individual relievers who have struck out better than 30% of batters faced: Chad Green (41.9%), Dellin Betances (38.7%), David Robertson (38.4%), Aroldis Chapman (32.3%) and Tommy Kahnle (31.9%). All five also have K-BB% marks of 21 points or better and FIPs of 3.20 or lower. Chasen Shreve represents another high-strikeout arm and a second left-handed option.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brent Suter succeeds in atypical fashion. The Milwaukee Brewers rookie throws his four-seam fastball roughly 70% of the time, and not because he lights up radar guns with it. He doesn’t. Suter’s (ahem) heater averages 86.3 mph, which is comfortably near the bottom of our velocity chart.

Nonetheless, batters have a hard time hitting it. As Jeff Zimmerman pointed out in a recent RotoGraphs piece, Suter gets a lot of swings and misses with his signature pitch despite its unhurried path to the plate. More importantly, he gets a lot of outs. In 76.2 innings this season, the deceptive southpaw has a 3.29 ERA.

Along with being sneaky fast, he is also smart. The Brewers drafted Suter out of Harvard, where he earned a degree in environmental science and public policy.

———

Suter on how he gets hitters out: “I pitch a lot with my fastball. I trust it. It has a little bit of late-cut movement to it, plus I have kind of a hunched-over delivery, so I hide the ball a little longer and get some good extension on it. I feel like my fastball kind of plays. It gets on guys a little earlier than they expect.

Read the rest of this entry »