I scouted Kyle Schwarber on Saturday and wrote my thoughts here. I encourage those who have not yet read that and have instead found themselves here to go back and skim over it for context. This afternoon in Mesa I was able to get a second look at Schwarber and see if any progress was evident. I believe there was and, while I can’t deny the way Schwarber is running the bases is slightly disconcerting, I think there’s enough juice in the bat right now to justify rostering him over either Chris Coghlan or Jorge Soler. Read the rest of this entry »

It is terribly unsexy to put together any kind of article about park factors. I know that; I’ve done it. But, here I am, for two reasons:

1. at least two World Series games are about to be played at Progressive Field
2. what in the hell?

The meat of this is the following horrible-looking plot. I’m sorry that it looks so horrible but, what are you going to do about it? This post is already published. I slapped some numbers together using the Baseball Reference Play Index. For each year since 1994, I gathered numbers for Indians games in Cleveland, and I gathered numbers for Indians games not in Cleveland. Then I calculated some single-year “park factors” by just calculating ratios. Here are some of those ratios:

Arguably the most important one is the one tracking runs per game. I’m not the first person to see this. Tony wrote a couple relevant park-factor articles in September. But look at how that dotted line moves, after the stadium first opened. For a few years, the ballpark was somewhat hitter-friendly. Then it took a turn. Between 2003 – 2014, Cleveland reduced run-scoring by about 6%, with one odd offensive spike in 2007. That spike is important — there’s danger in trying to make too much out of single-year park factors. But look at the last two years. The park last year boosted offense by 26%. This year, 21%. Now we’ve got an extreme two-year park factor, that seemingly came out of nowhere. For a long time, the park was kind to pitchers. Somehow, lately, it’s played like a nightmare.

Batting average? Way up, relative to numbers in games outside of Cleveland. OBP? Way up. Slugging percentage? Way up. Batting average on balls in play? Way up. Slugging percentage on balls in play? Way up. Interestingly, also, the walk-rate factor is up, and the strikeout-rate factor has dipped. This year, the home-run factor took off, although last year homers in Cleveland were actually slightly down. That was made up for by a bunch of doubles.

Frequently, on FanGraphs, you come across posts that try to get at the answer to something. I don’t have answers here. Instead, I’m just raising a question. What’s been happening at Progressive Field, to drive so much offense over the past two years? Is this really just a random, yet randomly-sustained spike of statistical noise? Does this somehow have to do with the installation of the newer scoreboard? Has there been a bunch of high-rise construction in the surrounding area? Have wind patterns changed? Why has Progressive been so hitter-friendly? Because, based on the last two years, Progressive has been very hitter-friendly. I don’t know how that could impact the World Series coming up, but you could see some baseballs absolutely take off.

I just wrote about Andrew Miller. Everyone’s written about Andrew Miller. Miller has been the story of the Cleveland bullpen, and the bullpen has been the story of Cleveland’s success. By this point, it’s all well-trod ground — the Indians have gotten this far because Terry Francona has been so aggressive to get to his relievers, and in particular to get to his best ones. It’s easy enough to take this and run with it, figuring that the bullpen must be the Indians’ relative World Series strength.

I have to be honest with you, though. I’m not entirely clear on just how much of an advantage the Indians really have there. Yes, Miller is one of the best. Maybe the very best! But let me just show you a table. This table is what causes me to hesitate.

World Series rosters haven’t been announced yet, but I went ahead and made some guesses about the upcoming bullpens. I gave Cleveland and Chicago seven relievers each, and then I plugged in their actual ERAs and FIPs, and their projected ERAs and FIPs. The last step was weighting the numbers, since the seventh reliever won’t pitch nearly as often as the first or second guy. Weighting requires its own guesses, but I assigned a number between 1 and 7 to each reliever. Zach McAllister, for example, got the 1, for Cleveland. Andrew Miller got the 7. I weighted the numbers by these designations.

Stats!

“Adj.” just means “Adjusted,” which is a different way of saying “Weighted.” The first two stat columns reflect what the relievers did in 2016. The last two stat columns reflect the projections for the relievers. The Indians look better in the very first column, but that’s also arguably the least-important column of the four. If you put everything together, the Cubs bullpen looks like it’s basically as good as the Indians’ unit. That isn’t something you’d necessarily expect, given that conversations we’ve all been having, but it might just be because relieving has been *the* strength of the Indians. The Cubs have had plenty go right, so the bullpen gets less attention.

The Indians’ big flashy advantage is Miller. Obviously. He can come in in any inning, and he can go multiple innings, and we don’t yet know how hard is too hard to push him. Miller has already handled so much of the workload, but based on precedent, that’s unlikely to keep up to such a degree, unless the Indians somehow manage to sweep. Aroldis Chapman is the Cubs’ equivalent, and he’s barely worse than Miller is. He’s just less flexible, and seemingly less durable. But the Cubs have been prepared to use him in multi-inning stints.

There’s one place where this might break down. One place that, I guess, involves two players. The numbers like Hector Rondon and Pedro Strop. They were good overall in 2016, and they project to be good, too. But Rondon had a late-season stint on the DL, and Strop did, too, and if they’re not close to what they usually are, then the Cubs are in worse shape. The pitchers insist they’re okay, but, it’s the playoffs. Every pitcher insists he’s okay. Joe Maddon hasn’t leaned very heavily on these guys and maybe the Cubs know they’re compromised. That’s a big variable.

From here, however, I only have numbers to go off. The numbers say there’s not really a bullpen gap at all. Count this among the reasons why the Cubs are being viewed as fairly heavy favorites.

Would you believe me if I told you Jason Heyward’s play hasn’t cost the Cubs anything this postseason? You might. After all, following their victory over the Dodgers on Saturday, the Cubs are now heading to the World Series. That said, you might be more inclined to believe that the Cubs advanced to the World Series in spite of Jason Heyward’s poor play. After all, in 30 postseason plate appearances, he’s reached base just four times — and one of those four was the product of an intentional walk. Heyward has followed up a very poor regular season at the plate with an even worse postseason, and after several benchings in the earlier rounds of the playoffs, there’s a question as to whether Heyward should start a game in the World Series. And there’s not an easy answer.

In the games during which he’s been benched, Heyward’s replacements, Jorge Soler and Albert Almora, have combined for an overall 0-for-17 mark with two walks, a sac bunt, and one double play (including all PA from Soler and Amora). Heyward hasn’t had too many big opportunities in the field, but his 90 mph throw to nab Adrian Gonzalez at the plate in Game One of the NLCS was an important moment in that contest. And for as poor as Heyward’s been offensively, he’s at least been timely: two of his four hits have been of the leadoff, extra-base variety in one-run ballgames, so his WPA in the playoffs is actually the same as Ben Zobrist‘s (at -0.32) and not too far off of Dexter Fowler’s -0.15 — to say nothing of the defensive plays not counted in WPA. Of course, looking at the past 10 games and counting a couple timely hits as worth more due to sequencing is a very poor way to make future decisions. If the Cubs knew in advance Heyward would hit that poorly in the first two rounds, they likely wouldn’t have played him.

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The media has presented a skewed perspective. The matchup we are going to see is the Chicago Cubs against the Cleveland Indians. The matchup we aren’t going to see is the Chicago Cubs against Andrew Miller. I mean, we’ll see that, but we won’t *only* see that, regardless of how the Indians are being discussed. And, look, I know we’re contributing to all this. We’ve been writing three Miller pieces a day. If we don’t stay above that threshold the whole website blows up.

The Cubs are going to have 25 players, and pretty much all of them are going to play. The Indians are going to have 25 of their own players, and pretty much all of them are going to play. It’s going to be fun! This is another Andrew Miller post.

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A year ago, Kyle Schwarber took over October with his bat, launching monstrous home runs and putting himself on the map as one of the better young hitters in baseball. This summer, Schwarber took over July with his unavailability, as many of the summer’s rumors revolved around teams — specifically the Yankees — trying to get the young slugger from the Cubs in various trades, but the team refusing to part with him, even though it meant they had to settle for a bullpen upgrade not named Andrew Miller. And now, Schwarber is taking over Octoer with his rehab; six months after tearing his ACL, Schwarber is now angling for a return to the team, offering to serve as the designated hitter in the four World Series games that take place in AL parks.

From an entertainment perspective, I hope the Cubs add Schwarber to the roster; it would make for a compelling story, especially when the Indians inevitably bring Miller in to face him, reminding the Cubs what they could have had in their bullpen if they weren’t so attached to him. From a baseball perspective, I’m less convinced that putting Schwarber on the roster would be a significant improvement for the Cubs roster.

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Even though run-scoring spiked to its highest total in seven years this season, these playoffs have been dominated by pitching like few others. With managers getting more out of their shutdown relievers than ever before and pitchers like Jon Lester, Corey Kluber, Andrew Miller, Marco Estrada, and Kenley Jansen turning in dominant appearances while shouldering heavy workloads, perhaps it’s no surprise that these playoffs include the lowest-scoring ALCS in history. And with a World Series matchup that features one of the best run-prevention units the sport has ever seen and a pitching staff that just held the Blue Jays and Red Sox to a combined 15 runs in eight games, the World Series seems likely to continue as a low-scoring, pitcher-dominated affair.

With pitching potentially taking center stage for this year’s fall classic, so do the individual pitches themselves. And so, allow me to continue an exercise I’ve performed for each of the previous two World Series, in which I attempt to (somewhat) objectively identify the nastiest pitches we’ll see throughout this final seven-game series.

What makes a pitch nasty? Well, in part, the way it looks, which is informed by the combination of velocity and movement. So that’s half of our criteria right there. Dominant results also make a pitch nasty, and there’s no two better results for a pitcher than a swinging strike or a ground ball, so that makes up the other half of the process of these pitches being selected. Velocity, movement (horizontal + vertical), whiff/pitch, ground ball/ball in play, all relative to the individual pitch type and ranked based on the sum of four z-scores.

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Hours before hell froze over in Chicago in Saturday, Kyle Schwarber was added to the Mesa Solar Sox taxi squad and immediately cast into action as the team’s designated hitter that night at Sloan Park in Mesa.

His presence in the lineup was significant in a way that’s unusual for the Fall League. Most of the participants here are prospects benefiting from extra developmental time against reasonably advanced minor-league competition. Schwarber, on the other hand, is more or less auditioning for a a place on the Cubs’ World Series roster. When he stepped to the plate on Saturday, it represented his first place appearance in a professional game since suffering a knee injury on April 7. That injury was originally characterized as a “season-ending” one. But the Cubs’ season hasn’t ended yet, and Schwarber remains a candidate to contribute to it.

Below are my thoughts on his performance.

Schwarber went 0-for-3 with a walk, the 0 consisting of two weak ground outs to the right side and a well struck ball to the right-center-field gap that seemed destined for extra bases off the bat but was robbed by Rockies prospect Noel Cuevas. The least flattering aspect of Schwarber’s evening was his timing. He was out on his front foot against offspeed stuff a few times, which led to some of the evening’s weak contact and he missed a few other hittable pitches.

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When looking at postseason matchups, the quickest and most natural thing on which to focus is the relative strength of each club’s starting rotation. About a month ago, I wrote about this tendency to get caught up in starting-pitching matchups during postseason overanalysis — in part because it’s something that I myself tend to overanalyze. Which is why I looked at Cleveland at the start of the postseason and gave them little chance to advance to the Division Series or, certainly, the World Series. Lesson learned.

That piece focused on the string of starting pitcher-injuries at the end of the season and their impact on playoff rotations — including, of course, Cleveland. The loss of the No. 2 and No. 3 in their rotation — Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar — represented a devastating blow, and it was natural to wonder how it would impact their October chances. However, it was (and is) undeniable that the team had a tremendous bullpen, which is why this was my conclusion at the time:

“If the rotation can keep them competitive through five or six innings and the offense plays its part, there’s absolutely still a path to October success for Cleveland. Cling to that while all of the pregame overanalyses look unfavorably upon the majority of Cleveland’s starting-pitcher matchups this October.”

As expected, Cleveland’s bullpen has been simply tremendous. With just six earned runs allowed in 32.1 innings pitched, they’re sporting a 1.67 ERA. The significantly less expected development, though, is that the rotation has done a heckuva lot more than just keep the team competitive. The rotation as a whole has allowed a similarly impressive eight earned runs through 38.2 IP, giving that unit a tremendous 1.86 ERA. Obviously Corey Kluber has been a significant part of that success, but so too has Josh Tomlin’s three earned runs in 10.2 IP and Ryan Merritt’s delightfully shocking 4.1 shutout innings. The only starting pitcher for whom the bullpen has really been compelled to clean up is Trevor Bauer and his drone-afflicted pinky.

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We overanalyze the playoffs. And, yeah — in part it’s because we overanalyze everything. It’s the whole reason this place exists. But we always dig deep into October, because we all understand that playoff baseball is a different animal, a different twist on a familiar sport, and we want to wrap our minds around it. We’ve tested theories inspired by the Royals. We’ve tested theories inspired by the Giants. We’ve tested theories inspired by winners, because we want to know if we can better identify winners, before they win. Every October, we search for the key to the tournament. We search, as if there’s anything to find.

There’s not. Oh, sure, there are subtle things, but a playoff series is a coin flip, determined by a sequence of coin flips. The key is for one team to be a better baseball team than the other. Then the coin won’t flip so perfectly even. But so much of this is random. So much of this is random, that it can be hard to believe it’s not *completely* random. We’ve become so conditioned to saying the best teams aren’t always rewarded. When you have one great team, the overall odds are against it.

The overall odds were against the Cubs. If you were trying to figure out the NL pennant, it would’ve been smarter to bet on the field. That’s the reality of having to win two series in a row. But, bless these playoffs. Bless these playoffs, because at least in one of the leagues, there’s restored faith that October can be just. The Chicago Cubs were very obviously the best team. They get to keep playing another handful of ballgames.

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