Archive for Featured

When the Royals and Orioles resume their rain-interrupted ALCS tonight in Kansas City, the Royals are going to use their fifth-best starting pitcher, and on the surface this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not that Yordano Ventura was going to pitch on two days rest, or that James Shields was likely to go on three days rest, but with Jason Vargas and Danny Duffy around, Ned Yost has options. Instead, he’s going with Jeremy Guthrie, who hasn’t pitched since Sept. 26, a full 17 days of rest. Though he’s 35 years old, Guthrie has never thrown a pitch in a postseason game, so the often-seen “but playoff-tested” excuse doesn’t work here.

When we say “fifth starter,” that’s based entirely on performance. Of the five regular Kansas City starters, Guthrie’s ERA this year was the worst. His FIP was the worst. His WAR, despite throwing the second-most innings, was the worst. Over the last five years, his FIP is 215th of 228 qualified pitchers, basically making him Randy Wolf with fewer injuries. Just two seasons ago, he was getting traded straight-up for Jonathan Sanchez after a brutal half-season in Colorado. Now, he’s starting a playoff game, one of the most important games for his franchise in years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Gordon, as we know him now, is a top-five outfielder on a team surging in the playoffs. We can’t forget the Alex Gordons who came before, though. Because it was those struggles that minted the current version. In terms of mindset and mechanics, we wouldn’t have today’s Gordon without yesterday’s. And we might be seeing some of the lessons Gordon learned in play with his younger teammates, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals & White Sox

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft Rankings, 2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

The Astros have an above average system as far as depth and high end talent, though that’s expected given their draft position and international bonus pools the last few years and where they are in their rebuild plan.  The system would obviously look better with LHP Brady Aiken included (I’d rank him 2nd or 3rd, for those wondering), but the top 11 prospects I’ve ranked should all be in Double-A or higher next year.  Help is on the way and there’s two more top-10 picks (here’s an early list of candidates) that will be on this list next year to replace some of the graduating talent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Tillman’s 2014 has a pretty great storyline. Approaching the end of July, Tillman had an average ERA and below-average peripherals, with 51 walks to go with 83 strikeouts. That’s not at all what the Orioles were looking for, and then all of a sudden Tillman turned his year around. Over the dozen starts he had remaining, he allowed 23 runs, with 15 walks and 67 strikeouts. Last week, Tillman was reasonably effective against the Tigers, with six whiffs in five innings. People who look at the Orioles’ rotation don’t see an ace, but Tillman’s the closest they’ve got, and he’s pitched at that level for a couple of months.

So, Tillman’s had a great second half of the year, just like the whole team around him has, and that’s one thing you could talk about. But in October, people love to focus on the matchups, and Tillman’s about to go up against the Royals, who made a name for themselves in the Wild Card game by running all over the place. The perception of the Royals, now, is that they’ll run you to death if you give them the chance. And yet, Chris Tillman doesn’t give runners chances. This’ll be a fascinating matchup for a number of reasons.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the postseason of the underdog. The Angels, Dodgers, Tigers, and Nationals were all bounced in the first round. Both wild card teams advanced, combining to lose one game in the process, despite having burned their best starting pitchers in the play-in game. One of the remaining division winners won just 90 games. These are not the League Championship Series many people expected, and with the little guys advancing in each division series, we should be in for some pretty even match-ups. At least, that’s what one would think.

But if you look over at our Playoff Odds page, our depth chart forecasts don’t exactly see it that way. This is how those projections look right now, before the start of either LCS.

Read the rest of this entry »

The divisional round of the playoffs is in the books, and the sport is taking a deep breath for a couple of days before the final four tournament gets underway. Both wild card survivors live on, the team with the best record in each league has been sent home, and all viable regular season MVP candidates suddenly have some unexpected free time on their hands. In fact, the two likely frontrunners, Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw, were among the primary culprits for their respective teams’ defeats.

Kershaw, most visibly, had a couple of really bad 7th innings, and Trout pulled the ol’ 1 for 15 as the Angels were swept by the Royals. It’s small sample size theater, obviously – these guys are generational greats, no matter what happened in the 2014 playoffs. In the details of Trout’s exceptional 2014 season, however, lie the imprint of some worrisome trends that might be signs of long-term trouble. Read the rest of this entry »

During the regular season, the Dodgers went 23-4 in games started by Clayton Kershaw, and 20-1 since the beginning of June. Kershaw and the Dodgers started to feel invincible, so, naturally, with Kershaw in the playoffs the Dodgers went 0-2, their year ending on a Tuesday in St. Louis. Plenty of things happened in Game 4 that played a role in determining the outcome, but this tells an awful lot of the story:

Kershaw’s final pitch of 2014 was a home run that turned a two-run lead into a one-run deficit. Under ordinary circumstances, that would just be a thing that happened. However, Kershaw had gone beyond 100 pitches, on short rest, in the playoffs. Despite consensus opinion, the Dodgers did have a bullpen, and a loss meant their season was over. So a tremendous number of people now believe Kershaw shouldn’t have pitched in the seventh, that Don Mattingly hung on a few minutes too long. And, certainly, we here have talked an awful lot about the need to be aggressive with bullpen usage in October. To talk this particular case through, from both sides, I’ve enlisted the help of my own brain. Usually it likes to sit my posts out, but this is a special circumstance.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Game 1 of the NLDS, Don Mattingly left in Clayton Kershaw to absorb a beating in part because he didn’t trust his bullpen. In Game 2, he lifted Zack Greinke, only to watch veteran J.P. Howell give a lead away. In Game 3, he rode Hyun-jin Ryu as far as he felt was realistic (given that Ryu had missed weeks with a shoulder injury), then saw Scott Elbert kick it away. In Game 4, a short-rest Kershaw was outstanding up until the moment he wasn’t, with Mattingly trying to push Kershaw through that seventh inning in order to turn it over to Kenley Jansen.

Each of these decisions were defensible in some way. And each one blew up in Mattingly’s face. The manager is getting pummeled for that, because that’s how sports work, and there’s a non-zero chance he doesn’t survive the winter, fairly or not. But the focus on Mattingly’s choices perhaps overlooks a more crucial problem: Man, how bad was that bullpen? How does this even happen? Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

With a 4-1 victory over the Giants last night, the Nationals breathed a little life into their hopes of advancing past the NDLS. Tonight, they look to win another game in San Francisco, and the pitching match-up certainly looks to be in their favor, as Gio Gonzalez takes on Ryan Vogelsong. Gonzalez, however, is not exactly known for pitching deep into ballgames, which brings up an interesting question for Matt Williams tonight: would he be willing to use Stephen Strasburg as his first option out of the bullpen?

Due to the scheduled off-days both on Sunday and tomorrow, the Nationals have the option of starting either Strasburg or Jordan Zimmermann on full rest in a potential Game Five. Zimmermann shut down the Giants on Saturday, finishing one out shy of a complete game, and was actually the team’s best starter this season, even though he doesn’t have Strasburg’s raw stuff. The availability of Zimmmermann to start Game Five creates an interesting option for the Nationals to use Strasburg out of the bullpen in order to give the team their best chance of getting to that game, and Matt Williams said yesterday that Strasburg was available in relief in an “extreme emergency” situation.

Interestingly, Kilgore also wrote this in a separate piece: Read the rest of this entry »