Archive for Featured

Everyone has bad days at work. You’ve had them. If you read my work, you sure as heck know I’ve had them. Even Mike Trout’s theoretically had one or two. Not everyone can be on top of his or her game at every second of every minute on the clock. It’s just a simple fact of life.

CB Bucknor seems to have these nights more often than most. Any cursory poll asking for the names of the worst umpires in the big leagues will yield Bucknor’s name as one of the most popular answers. Less cursory polls have produced a similar result. He has long been at the center of some of baseball’s more frustrating officiating experiences, whether it be with his work behind the plate or on the bases. It was the former that drew the ire of just about everyone in Cobb County last night, especially that of Jayson Werth.

Werth, at this stage of his career, has fully bought into the Danny Glover-in-Lethal–Weapon method of thinking. He’s too old for your crap, and he’s been here long enough to tell you why you’re wrong. It’s a pretty fun thing to behold, especially when he’s had it up to here with whatever injustice has been perpetrated that day. The crap, in Werth’s estimation, began with his fourth-inning plate appearance. Here’s a graph of the pitches from same. (Note: from catcher’s perspective.)

He struck out. BrooksBaseball and PitchInfo think the third pitch was a strike, and video from last night shows that it was borderline, but not an egregious call.

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The Houston rotation is more than one man, but no one man is more important for the rotation than Dallas Keuchel. Peripherals aside, Keuchel didn’t have the year he wanted to have in 2016, having to fight most of the way through shoulder discomfort. Related to that, Keuchel saw his ERA jump from 2.48 to 4.55. There were downs, and there were ups, but Keuchel and the Astros came in this season looking for a far greater performance. Give the Astros a 2015 version of Keuchel and the rotation would feel plenty more stable.

Three starts in, Keuchel’s allowed a total of two runs. He’s gotten some of his grounders back, and he’s seeing positive results again off of his sinker. It’s fair to wonder, then, whether Keuchel has re-discovered his old form. The reality of it? Not exactly. There’s a similar-looking pitcher here, sure, but Keuchel hasn’t succeeded through the 2015 approach. Rather, he’s gone the full Brad Ziegler.

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Things were looking up for the Pirates. They’d emerged from the weekend with a sweep of the Cubs in Chicago. Jameson Taillon had pitched like a burgeoning ace. Ivan Nova had recorded more complete games than walks since joining the Pirates. The Cardinals and Cubs were scuffling. There was perhaps a sense that the Pirates’ final standing in the NL Central wasn’t predetermined.

And then they lost another star player for reasons unrelated to injury.

First it was Jung Ho Kang unable to gain entry to the country, denied a work visa due to his legal issues. And on Tuesday, MLB announced that Starling Marte has been suspended for 80 games due to a positive test for Nandrolone.

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CLEVELAND — We’re still early in the 2017 season. We should be careful not to make too much of the goings-on of April, of course. I’m aware of all the small-sample-size disclaimers that should be attached to nearly every bit of analysis and assessment at this point. Yet, I still must write and search for things that are interesting. The baseball media industry cannot wait silently at keyboards until sample sizes accumulate and become more meaningful in mid-summer.

Since so much was written about fly-ball philosophy and trends at FanGraphs this offseason and spring — like here and here and here — I thought it would be irresponsible not to check in early (and often) and examine whether we’re were seeing any hints of the revolutionaries growing in number.

Jeff Sullivan identified a slight increase in hitters adopting lift last season. Through two weeks of this season, hitters are producing fewer ground balls and more fly balls.

Through two weeks — that is, through Sunday’s games — major-league hitters combined to produce a 43.5% ground-ball rate collectively, which would mark the lowest ground-ball rate since 2009 (43.3%). The MLB ground-ball rate has stood at 44.4% or greater since 2011, rates perhaps influenced by a greater value placed upon two-seam pitchers, ground balls, and the proliferation of infield defensive shifts.

Fly balls are also up (36.2%) early this season, the highest rate since 2011. It’s an increase of nearly two percentage points from last season (34.6%) and the decade-low rate of 33.8% in 2015. It’s early, but we should also see evidence early if more hitters are trying to lift and drive.

And it’s not just fly balls that should be examined. We should also study Statcast “barrels” and hard-contact rates, as getting on plane with a pitch should result in more quality contact. And the percentage of contact catalogued as “hard” stands at 31.4% early this season, which is tied with last season’s mark and represents the highest mark since 2007 (32%), nearly a 2.5% jump from 2015 and 2014. Uppercut swing advocate J.D. Martinez, for instance, has not dramatically lifted more balls into the air by changing his swing plane, but he has significantly boosted his hard-hit percentage since making his alterations.

These are incremental gains, but string enough incremental gains together and a tipping point is reached. Consider this graph created by my colleague Sean Dolinar:

So perhaps there is a story to be told here — or, at least another chapter of a story to be written.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Note from Eric: we were recently alerted that another baseball website, the reputable Sox Prospects, runs a daily post entitled “Cup of Coffee” (the former name of this series of daily posts). The present column didn’t run yesterday as Carson Cistulli and I attempted to produce a new title that was clever, appropriate, and algorithmically effective. We did not succeed. Please continue to enjoy these as if they were perfectly titled. End of note.

4/17

Jimmy Herget, RHP, Cincinnati (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: 23  Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 0 ER, 6 K

Notes
Herget has thrown six innings this year and allowed just two baserunners while striking out 13. He works in the low to mid-90s, is deceptive, and throws catroonish sliders like the one below. Pitchers with an arm slot like this elicit platoon-related concerns from scouts, and Herget did allow an OBP to lefties that was .050 higher than he did against righties last year, but most observers think Herget has enough command to mitigate the issues and think he could, one day, close.

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Last Thursday, baseball got weird and the Mets and Marlins played past midnight. After Travis d’Arnaud hit the go-ahead homer in the 16th, the catcher slowly trotted around the bases, admitting afterwards that he needed the invigorating effects of that moment just to complete the task. “The emotions of the home run helped lift my legs a little bit,” he said to James Wagner after the game regarding his tired knees. After the dust had settled and all the exhausted quotes were collected, though, the teams had to play another game later that day. What sort of effect would the marathon game have on that game?

Intuitively, you might expect the teams to have trouble scoring runs the next day. Tired legs, tired minds, tired bats, you’d think. Turns out that instinct is accurate… sort of.

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CLEVELAND — The Indians did many things well en route to their division title and pennant in 2016. And one of those was to quiet the bat, in relative terms, of Miguel Cabrera.

Until last year, Cabrera had been Babe Ruth-like against Cleveland pitching. Really. Ruth and Cabrera — who, in 167 career games against the Indians, has hit .352 with 43 home runs — are the only two opponents to have hit .350 or better with 30 or more home runs against Cleveland pitching over the course of their respective careers.

According to Elias, Cabrera ranks fourth all-time in OPS against the Indians (1.040), following only Ruth (1.091), Ted Williams (1.078), and Edgar Martinez (1.050). That’s solid company.

Last season, the Indians “limited” Cabrera to an .879 OPS — which, in context, is a great achievement. Cleveland also won 14 of 18 games against Detroit in the season series. The improvement as a staff against Cabrera didn’t just seem to be the result of variance, of luck. It seemed to be in part due to a change in strategy, improved tactics, when facing Cabrera.

Consider the Indians’ two- and four-seam fastball location versus Cabrera in 2015, via BaseballSavant…

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Raise your hand if you didn’t realize Matt Belisle ranks 12th among active pitchers with 603 career appearances. And don’t feel bad if you’re reading this and asking “Matt who”? That’s especially true if you’re a fan of an American League team. The 36-year-old righty has been a reliable reliever for a long time, but he’s spent the bulk of his career with small-market teams in the NL, and he has just five career saves. He’s anything but a marquee name.

You are familiar with him if you’re a Rockies fan. Belisle was a workhorse in Colorado from 2010-2014, appearing in 73 games annually. Before that he was a Cincinnati Red, and he’s since moved on to the St. Louis Cardinals, Washington Nationals, and now the Minnesota Twins.

When I talked to him late in spring training, Belisle told me he’s grateful for the career he’s had. He also doesn’t take anything for granted.

“What’s behind me is gone,” said Belisle. “I just look at today. I keep everything in front of me and do everything I can to win the way I need to win. I take care of the hours and the days, and let the months and the years take care of themselves.” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s very frustrating to do baseball analysis in the offseason — there’s no actual baseball to analyze! It’s very frustrating to do baseball analysis during spring training — the results don’t matter and we don’t get all the same stats! It’s very frustrating to do baseball analysis in the first few weeks — it’s all a small sample size! The lesson overall? It’s very frustrating to do baseball analysis.

But it’s also very rewarding, and so we make a go of it even when we’ve barely completed 10 games of a 162-game season. One thing to which we turn at this point of the season is pitch velocity and movement. My personal sense is that these things become meaningful quickly. Very quickly.

While there’s research that has pushed me in that direction, I hadn’t seen work that looked at precisely how quickly movement and velocity stats stabilize, or become meaningful. So I asked Brian Cartwright to run the numbers.

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Over the winter, the Cardinals talked a lot about upgrading their defense and getting more athletic in the outfield ,in particular. They let longtime Cardinal Matt Holliday go become a DH in the American League, preferring not to put his glove in left field any longer. After trying to trade for Adam Eaton, they eventually signed Dexter Fowler to play center field, allowing them to move last year’s center fielder (Randal Grichuk) back to left field.

Fowler’s not a great defender, but Grichuk is a better athlete than most left fielders, and Piscotty appears to be a decent right fielder, so this group looked like a solid-enough group of gloves. It’s not the Rays or the Red Sox, but the new Cardinals outfield looked capable of running down enough balls in the gap that outfield defense wouldn’t be a huge problem.

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