Archive for Featured

“It’s a perfect beginning to the end of the day.”
— Vin Scully, remarking on the weather prior to last Wednesday’s Dodger game

When I was about eight years old I hid under my blankets past my bedtime. I did this because it was the only way I could listen to Jon Miller call baseball games. I had a little Walkman radio that picked up WTOP out of Washington DC, and if I turned its only knob just barely past the “off” position, I could put it to my ear and be at Memorial Stadium in North Baltimore and my parents wouldn’t be the wiser. Until now, I guess. Sorry, Mom and Dad! I spent many nights with Jon Miller and, in that way, I learned about baseball and fell in love with the game, the team, and the voice in equal measure. Years later, Peter Angelos bought the team and soon after fired Miller and, in doing so, ended my time as an Orioles fan. The point is, announcers matter. They are the adhesive that binds fandom to a team. And there is no better illustration of this fact than Vin Scully.

Scully began calling Dodger games in 1950 while the franchise was still in Brooklyn. That Dodger team contained a pitcher named Rex Barney. Barney would go on to become the PA announcer for the Orioles games that eight-year-old me listened to on the radio under his bedsheets. Ain’t life something? Sadly, Barney died almost two decades ago, his voice the last to grace the loud speakers at old Memorial Stadium and the first at Camden Yards. Through it all, Scully has called Dodger games. I’ve heard Vin Scully referred to as an institution, but Scully is more than an institution. Brookings is an institution, but nobody cares whether it’ll be around next baseball season or not. Scully is beloved in a way an institution is not. He makes baseball better, which, when you think about it, is no easy feat.

Scully was in the booth last Wednesday as Clayton Kershaw threw a complete game against the Giants in Los Angeles. He gave up six hits, one run, one walk, and struck out 15. It wasn’t even Kershaw’s best outing which is what makes it so amazing because for many pitchers it would easily be their best outing. If there’s anything that can enhance a Clayton Kershaw start, it’s Vin Scully. Here are his calls of each of Kershaw’s strikeouts.

Let’s listen together!*

*Note: to hear audio, place mouse on lower left-hand corner of each video and click speaker icon.

*****

Strikeout One: Angel Pagan, 1st Inning, Slider

“Clayton ready and the strike one [sic] pitch on the way… check swing… they look… and swing. And Pagan tries to hold up and strikes out.”

Perhaps one of the most wonderful things about listening is the certain sounds a person makes around a specific word. Scully has a way of saying the word “two” that is just wonderful. He draws out the “oo” part in a way so delicious to the ear that we don’t want the word to end.

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Owen just wrote about the fact that Joey Votto is having a fantastic season on a team that isn’t fantastic. That’s not exactly what Votto would prefer — on some level, every player has to be selfish, but Votto, like everyone, wants to be on a winner. One benefit of playing for a winner: winning is fun. Another benefit of playing for a winner: winners get attention. Votto is having an MVP-caliber year, but because of the team built around him, he’s putting his season together in almost total silence, which is greatly unfortunate. His overall numbers are outstanding. And his more recent numbers are almost inconceivable.

Maybe you’ve seen some of these; maybe you haven’t. If you saw some of these a few weeks ago, it’s not like Votto has slowed down. I’ll concede that splitting at the All-Star break is mostly arbitrary, but if we do that, then what’s revealed is nuts. It’s not just the categories that Votto’s leading. It’s the extent by which he’s in front. Over the last several weeks, Votto’s posted the highest walk rate in baseball, by eight percentage points. He’s posted the highest wOBA in baseball, by 69 points. He’s posted the highest OBP in baseball, by 101 points. Since about the time the All-Star Game rolled around, we’ve seen a player go the full Votto. The output is bewildering. We can see what’s happened. What’s driven what’s been happening?

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With September here, it’s easy to forget about what’s going on with teams toward the bottom of the standings. The rosters have expanded, prospects are getting looks for the teams who are out of contention, and most articles are about playoff races and potential postseason happenings. There’s one issue with overlooking the cellar-dwellers, however: Joey Votto — who is on one of those dwellers — is having a historically great year, and that merits attention.

2015 could easily be the year that forgot about Votto. The Cincinnati Reds are in last place, the NL MVP conversation has been dominated by Bryce Harper since the first month of the season (for good reason), and a number of chronically unsuccessful franchises are looking like they’re headed to the playoffs. This late stage of the season provides a great opportunity to gauge the strength of the storylines during the past few months of baseball, and 2015 has been anything but a disappointment; quite the opposite, in fact.

That makes Votto’s 2015 strangely interesting. In a season that includes the Cubs and Mets succeeding, possibly the best rookie class ever, and a Bryce Harper mega-breakout, Votto is quietly having one of the best offensive seasons for a last place team since 1969, when the divisional era began.

Let’s investigate. First, it’s important to put Votto’s season in context. I’ve pulled the 25-best offensive seasons by wRC+ (a metric that captures a player’s overall offensive output compared to league average) since the year 2000; Votto’s 2015 season currently ranks 19th overall. Take a look:

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Two seasons ago, I ranked the job security of each general manager and listed GM prospects. I think I did a pretty good job with both lists given what we knew at the time, and may do it again as Opening Day 2016 closes in. We’ve had less executive movement in the last few off-seasons than usual and it looks like the regression is happening this year, with four GM jobs currently open and a likely fifth coming soon. This seemed like a good time to cover each of the situations in flux and target some possible changes in the near future, along with some names to keep in mind as candidates to fill these openings.

The Open GM Spots
We have two teams without a top baseball decision-making executive, in Seattle and Milwaukee:

Mariners
The Mariners moved on from (now former) GM Jack Zduriencik recently, a long-rumored move that club president Kevin Mather admitted he waited too long to execute. Mather has said they’re looking for a replacement sooner than later (likely eliminating execs from playoff teams), with GM experience (eliminating most of the GM prospects you’ll see below), and that the team doesn’t require a rebuild (meaning a shorter leash and higher expectations from day one). This should prove to narrow the pool of candidates a good bit, but this is still seen as the best of the currently open jobs.

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The Rangers sure are exciting these days. They’re only two games behind Houston for the AL West lead and one game up on Minnesota for the last Wild Card while still holding the title of The Best Team With a Negative Run Differential. That is, if nothing else, an unwieldy banner. It’s the banner equivalent of Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s name on a t-shirt in that it would start on one side and end on the other. Negative run differential or not, the Rangers are winning games and doing it in exciting fashion. Tuesday the Rangers beat the Padres while Elvis Andrus stole home. I’m happy that happened because that this is an article about Elvis Andrus stealing home and if he hadn’t stolen home this would be a pretty weird article.

The Rangers have had some good luck in addition to playing well. For example, the San Diego Padres just wanted to play a baseball game Tuesday. I’m not even sure they wanted to win it. I mean, they’d probably have been fine with winning, but they’d have been fine with not winning, too. Let’s just play a game, they probably thought, then get some sleep. Instead they got Tuesday’s game which was much, much worse.

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There’s a hitting prospect called straight up from Double-A currently blowing away offensive expectations while providing a boost for a surprising potential playoff team. Michael Conforto’s just 22, and the New York Mets didn’t even really want to have him up so soon, but desperation forced their hand, and now Conforto’s sitting on a 166 wRC+. He homered on Wednesday. No matter what happens from here, Conforto’s already justified the hasty promotion. But then, there’s Miguel Sano. Sano, who’s also just 22. Conforto has been amazing. Sano, somehow, has been even better.

Say what you will about the Twins, but they’re clearly a contender, doing their best to hang with the Rangers in the wild-card race. And while earlier-season versions of the Twins were supported by a lot of really good timing, there’s no question that Sano has been a shot in the arm since he was brought up. Sano helps the current Twins to make a little more sense, and his numbers are absolutely absurd, despite the strikeouts. He doesn’t hit the ball quite as hard as Giancarlo Stanton, but the potential seems there, and the consistency makes up some of the difference. He’s a true slugger, a man with 80-grade power. Anyone with any 80 grade is a remarkable specimen.

What Sano is is a player who’s having a successful rookie season. Whenever a rookie gets off to a hot start, you have to start looking for the league adjustment. When the league learns certain rookies, those rookies have a heck of a time trying to recover. But Sano? For Sano, there are many tests yet to pass. But he’s already making some adjustments.

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In a slump, the mental and physical combine to confuse, and the player ends up in a spiral. “You go up to the plate and you think about your weaknesses, and you start focusing on them, and you start chasing,” Brandon Moss said before a game against the Giants, adding “it all starts to spin around.” Since having offseason hip surgery, the Cardinals’ slugger has been spinning in both facets of the game.

A recent tear might be the result of getting right, though. An adjustment to his mechanics, a milestone in his workouts, and a slight tweak to his approach all recently came together. The result looks more like the Moss that averaged 33 home runs for every 600 plate appearances coming into this season.

To illustrate how he’s gotten his game back together, there might not be a better way than to have Moss take us through three plate appearances against Rubby de la Rosa last week. The pitcher got the better of him once, but when the batter did his damage, it was the result of a convergence of factors.

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So, I’m browsing around Twitter. I’m not looking for anything in particular, but then something catches my eye. It isn’t a tweet — it’s a trend, based on a series of tweets, happening somewhere outside of my circle. You know how trends work. The thing I saw Tuesday evening:

I’m not unaccustomed to seeing baseball topics pop up over there. They tend to mirror the ongoing action, and sometimes the trends are accompanied by featured links to stories. This one linked to an article from Jeff Blair. The teaser is something made just for me: It suggests a change in performance, following a change in approach. I’m a total sucker for that genre. I’m fascinated by stories of baseball players who work hard to make themselves better. What was throwing me in this case was the name. I consider myself prepared for most players to improve.

This is about Ryan Goins.

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The Angels ascended to first place in the AL West in the final game before the All-Star break. A week and a half later, they had a two-game lead, and since that point, they’ve lost the two-game lead, and then several more games beyond that, in a team-wide collapse that’s threatened to leave the Angels on the outside of the playoff picture. They’ve lost 26 of 37, losing 9.5 games in the standings to the Astros, and 12.5 to the Rangers. Over the span, they’re last in the AL in runs scored. Over the span, they’re second-to-last in the AL in runs allowed. The season can still be salvaged — clearly, things can change in a jiffy — but this has been a nightmare stretch, lasting nearly a quarter of the season. It’s hard to survive a lost quarter.

Obviously, in a slump like this, several parties are partly responsible. A team doesn’t sink based on one or two players. But, generally, when a team sinks, people don’t look to blame players like, say, Erick Aybar. They don’t blame players like Hector Santiago. They look to the stars who aren’t pulling their weight, and one can’t help but note that Mike Trout hasn’t quite produced like himself. Like many of his teammates, Trout’s been in a rut, and that’s done more than just open the MVP race to Josh Donaldson. As Trout’s concerned, there are questions, and I feel like it’s my obligation to try to answer them as best I can. I know my role, here.

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Madison Bumgarner has been having quite a month of August. He’s posted a 53:4 strikeout-to-walk ratio while allowing only six earned runs in 37.2 innings, and he’s looked almost as unhittable as he did last October, when he relentlessly took the ball for the Giants in high pressure situations during the playoffs. That’s not a coincidence, it turns out, as Bumgarner is currently exhibiting tendencies that are quite similar to the 2014 postseason version of himself.

Before we go down that particular road, let’s have a brief introduction to Bumgarner, 2015 starting pitcher. On these digital pages, we’ve featured an article on how well he hits — which is quite well indeed — but not much else in the way of analysis this season; I will remedy that fact in a brief, limited manner. We could spend an entire article about the minute changes Bumgarner has made in 2015. Instead, here’s a cliffs notes version:

• He’s throwing more fastballs than at any point since 2011.
• He’s basically ditched his changeup, as he’s relied almost strictly on a three-pitch combination of fastball, slider (referred to at times as a cutter), and curveball in 2015. Here is his pitch usage since 2010, his first semi-full season in the majors (courtesy of Brooks Baseball, which calls his slider a cutter):

• Finally, his command improvements from last season have stuck, as he’s posting a career-low walk rate (4.3%) and career-high strikeout rate (27.4%).

These are all good things. By the numbers, Bumgarner is perhaps the best version of himself that he’s ever been, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s posting the best xFIP of his career while challenging his best in ERA and FIP.

That’s why this month has been extra interesting; because, in the midst of one of his best seasons, Bumgarner seems to be up to something. And that something just happens to be intentionally throwing slower.

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