Archive for Featured

Monday, I wrote about why, if I had a vote, I’d select Jacob deGrom for National League MVP. I do not have a vote, though, and I doubt that my argument is sufficiently convincing. The NL MVP is almost certainly going to end up being Christian Yelich. There was a somewhat crowded field for a little while, but Yelich pulled away from his fellow position players with an impossible final month. From the start of September, Yelich batted .370, with 16 strikeouts and 18 extra-base hits. Yelich was the best overall player from start to finish on a Brewers team that won the division literally yesterday. For what the MVP has turned into, Yelich is the obvious choice. Tremendous player on a team that wouldn’t have gotten to where it did without him.

Truth be told, it also wasn’t just the last month. Yelich was baseball’s best hitter in the second half, and it wasn’t even close. After the All-Star break, he registered a wRC+ of 220. Baseball Reference doesn’t keep track of wRC+, but it does keep track of OPS+ and its splits do go back further than ours, and according to the numbers at Baseball Reference, Yelich had one of the ten or so best second halves in the last 50 years. The only players with better second-half rate stats over enough of a sample: Barry Bonds, Mike Schmidt, Hank Aaron, and Jim Thome. Bonds actually has the four best second halves, and they all happened in a row between 2001-2004, but this isn’t a Barry Bonds fun-fact article. This is a Christian Yelich fun-fact article. He did his best to carry the Brewers into the NLDS.

Read the rest of this entry »

With nothing expected of the majority of the AL Central teams in 2018, the Twins were the main hope for making Cleveland’s season inconvenient. Like a Star Wars prequel, this new hope failed to materialize in a satisfying way.

The Setup

The Twins were one of the more successful regular-season teams in baseball during the aughts, making the playoffs in six of nine seasons, but also going 6-21 in the actual postseason. With the core of the team fading quickly after 2010, Minnesota spent several years wandering around as one of baseball’s few remaining (relatively) “pure” old-school franchises.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the seventh and final installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here. And if you’ve been following along with this series, here and on Twitter, many thanks!

Pop the champagne! Team Entropy has done it — or rather the Brewers, Cubs, Dodgers, and Rockies have done it — producing an unprecedented level of end-of-season chaos in the form of two Game 163 tiebreaker games that will be played on Monday afternoon. The 1pm ET game between the Cubs and Brewers (both 95-67) in Chicago will decide the winner of the NL Central, which will also become the top seed in the NL; the loser will host the Wild Card game on Tuesday night. The 4pm ET game between the Dodgers and Rockies (both 91-71) in Los Angeles will decide the No. 2 seed in the NL, which will face the Braves (90-72) in the Division Series, while the loser will be the road team for the Wild Card game.

Before all of that transpires, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate what just happened. The Cubs, who have held at least a share of first place in the NL Central since July 13 and had sole position from August 1 through September 28, had a 3.5-game lead on the Brewers as of September 18, but went just 6-5 thereafter, including Sunday’s win. The Brewers, who held a share of first place in the division for all but one day from May 13 to July 13, were six back as of August 28, before winning 22 of their final 29, including nine of their last 10 — and all of their final seven — to wind up tied.

Read the rest of this entry »

Josh James has been a Fringe Five favorite this season. He’s also been a shooting star. The 25-year-old hurler began the year in Double-A, and he’s finishing it with aplomb in Houston. Since debuting with the Astros on September 1, James has punched out 27 batters, and allowed just 14 hits and six runs, in 21 innings of work.

His ascent has come as a surprise. A 34th-round pick out of Western Oklahoma State University in 2014, James went unmentioned in our preseason Astros Top Prospects list (ergo his eligibility to take up residence in the aforementioned Carson Cistulli column).

Every bit as surprising was the righty’s response when I asked him how he goes about attacking hitters.

“To be honest, I’m still trying to figure that out,” James told me on the heels of his rock-solid MLB debut. “A couple of years ago I was a low-90s guy and mixed up pitches. I’d throw curveballs in 0-0 counts, work backwards. All that stuff. Now the velo is up a little higher, so I can throw more fastballs and attack the zone a little more.”

The velocity jump is real. James’ four-seam heater has averaged a tick over 97 MPH since his call up, and he’s been told that he touched 101 earlier this summer. Getting a good night’s sleep has helped breathe more life into his arsenal. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wainwright made his final appearance of spring training this year on March 15. Ten days later, he was scratched from a Grapefruit League start and, shortly after that, was added to the disabled list with a hamstring strain.

The injury appeared, at first glance, to scuttle plans the club had made to give Wainwright the start for the Cardinals’ home opener on April 5. As former manager Mike Matheny said at the time about that honor:

“It’s something we put thought into,” Matheny said. “I think our fans appreciate it, what he’s been able to do. ‘Waino’ obviously has a long history with our fan base and a lot of credibility built up in this game.”

Under normal circumstances, Wainwright would have probably returned in mid-April, following a rehab appearance to ready him for major-league competition. A nine-strikeout, one-run performance from Jack Flaherty, who’d taken Wainwright’s place on the roster, reduced any necessity to rush Wainwright back. In the end, though, the Cardinals activated him for the April 5 start anyway. The former ace walked more batters than he struck out, threw just 17 of his 42 fastballs above 90 mph — only eight fastballs hit 91 mph — and failed to make it out of the fourth inning.

Read the rest of this entry »

The existence of Mike Trout makes things difficult for everyone. He’s produced more wins through age 26 than any player in history, averaging 9.1 WAR per season. He’s made adjustment after adjustment after adjustment. He became an average Hall of Famer before his 27th birthday. It’s not easy to compete with that.

It’s possible that we’ve grown so accustomed to Trout’s level of production that, when another player rivals it, the effect is muted. But that’s precisely what Mookie Betts is doing this season. Betts has recorded a season on a level we’ve only seen from Trout, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez over the past 25 years. And if it weren’t for presence of Trout himself just behind Betts on the WAR leaderboard, it’s possible that Betts’ accomplishment would seems even more unusual.

In 2015, a 22-year-old Betts broke out with an impressive power-speed combo, resulting in a 120 wRC+ and a 4.8 WAR season. The following year, he improved nearly every aspect of his game and put together an MVP-caliber campaign, recording just over eight wins finishing second to Trout in the balloting. Last year, Betts fell off a bit despite another good year on the basepaths and in the outfield. He increased his walk rate without suffering a corresponding rise in strikeouts, but his power dropped and he ended up with “only” 5.4 WAR for the year, ranking 15th among MLB position players.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Cubs are just ever so barely hanging onto a division lead over the Brewers. For this, there could be any number of factors to blame. The Brewers, obviously, are half responsible, having played tremendously well after adding their best two players over the offseason. And on the Cubs’ side, what if Yu Darvish hadn’t gotten hurt? What if Brandon Morrow hadn’t gotten hurt? What if Kris Bryant hadn’t gotten hurt? What if Tyler Chatwood hadn’t underachieved? The division lead currently stands at half of one game. It wouldn’t have taken very much more to give the current Cubs a greater amount of breathing room.

Just glancing around, you wouldn’t think to fault Kyle Schwarber for anything. Schwarber’s been an above-average hitter and a three-win player, regularly playing an acceptable corner outfield. And before I proceed, I want to make one thing clear: Overall, the Cubs should be happy with where Schwarber is. They should be pleased with his overall health and development, and it seems as if his career is moving forward. But as you know, in a tight division race, almost anything could make a significant difference. And so we need to talk about Kyle Schwarber’s timing. I saw something in his splits I can’t in good conscience ignore. You know that I love a good fun fact.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night in St. Louis, left-hander Dan Jennings received the start for the Milwaukee Brewers. It was notable because, of his 381 prior MLB games, he’d entered every one as a reliever. Outside of a few rehab games, Jennings’ previous 193 appearances in the minors had come in a relief capacity, as well. With the exception of 13 starts at Low-A back in 2008, in fact, Jennings had worked in relief for a decade solid.

Jennings’ appearance as a starter on Monday isn’t notable for what it says about Jennings, though. It’s notable for what it might reveal about the Milwaukee Brewers. Jennings didn’t pitch deep into the game. He didn’t exhibit an expanded repertoire. Instead, as he has on multiple occasions this year, he faced a single batter, recorded a lone out, and then departed the game in favor of a right-hander. Even with the use of an Opener spreading rapidly throughout the game, though, this was rare.

Chase Anderson had originally been on turn to start that night. After a solid 2017 campaign, Anderson has prevented runs well this year, too, recording a 3.93 ERA in 158.0 innings. He’s striking out fewer batters, though, walking more of them, and allowing more home runs. He’s been particularly vulnerable at Miller Park, which is friendly to hitters. As of Monday, he hadn’t pitched more than five innings in his last six starts and compiled only 7.2 innings over his previous two starts combined, putting up a 5.81 FIP and 4.57 ERA since the beginning of August. With one week to go and playoff ramifications attached to every game, Craig Counsell and the Brewers faced the choice of going with Anderson or doing something else. They chose something else.

The team could have opted to pitch Gio Gonzalez on regular rest, but that would have meant using Jhoulys Chacin on short rest the next day or relying on the bullpen to take care of that game. The team opted to get the bullpen game out of the way. The Cardinals’ lineup presented the team with an interesting opportunity. Over the 10 previous games, with 80 starting lineup spots to give out, the club had used left-handed batters in only 15 of them — including eight for leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter, one for Matt Adams, and seven for Kolten Wong, who had been out of the lineup the previous two days with an injury. That meant that, no matter how the Cardinals’ lineup looked on Monday, it was likely to include just one left-hander and that lefty would likely bat leadoff in the form of Matt Carpenter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the feats of the Astros and AL Wild Card winners, we get to a legitimately non-horrible team fairly early in this series of elegies. That’s due in large part, of course, to the fact it’s almost impossible for a club to be very bad when Mike Trout occupies a spot on their roster — even if that team occasionally tries. But math is math and the Angels headed to the numerical woodshed at a fairly early date.

The Setup

It may Mike Trout be hard to Mike Trout get through Mike Trout an entire sentence Mike Trout about Mike Trout the Angels without Mike Trout Mike Trout talking about Mike Mike Trout Trout, because Mike Trout his existence Mike Trout is the defining Mike Trout feature of the Mike Trout franchise at this point.

Read the rest of this entry »