Archive for Featured

If you could build a prototypical pitcher, what would he be? The scout in you might emphasize size, physical projection, raw stuff, athleticism, endurance, and what the heck, let’s make him lefthanded. The analyst in you might focus on bat-missing ability, batted-ball mix and ability to manage contact. If you were lucky enough, and this pitching prototype turned out be everything you wanted, he might be as good as Clayton Kershaw. Every era has its greats, its true pitching giants, and this one is no exception. With apologies to Felix Hernandez, his closest competition, the current big man on campus is Mr. Kershaw. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey there everybody, and welcome to the first part of the year’s third edition of The Worst Of The Best. Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that so much of what we do is baseball analysis, and so much of baseball analysis is trying to see into the future. Future-seeing is a noble goal, to be sure, and we’d all like to know which players have truly turned the corner and which teams are truly dropping out of the race, but analysis is educated guesswork, and so often the analysis is left looking wrong. So often baseball doesn’t go as it’s expected to, and on top of that, looking forward leaves less time for looking back — for just acknowledging and appreciating what’s already most definitely happened. History is the only thing we’re certain of. You can consider this series an expression of appreciation for recent baseball history. Here is a link to all of said appreciation.

So in this post we’re going to look at the wildest pitches thrown in June, following the same methodology as always. As always, it’s based on PITCHf/x. As always, wild pitches are determined by distance from the center of the strike zone. As always, it’s possible I’m missing something because of the limitations of the research process. As always, I’ll indicate to you that I don’t care, even though secretly I really do care, and it pains me to see evidence of a wild pitch I’ve somehow missed. All I ever want is to be absolutely perfect and my mom says I can do anything I desire. I’m sure I’ll get there at some point. Featured in detail: a top-five list. Also featured in detail — but in less detail: a next-five list.

Read the rest of this entry »

Before a game against the Padres, I sat down with Reds outfielder Jay Bruce to talk about his frustrating season so far, divorcing process from results, the value of routine, and his hitting approach in general. The player was so eloquent that it seemed best to leave his words alone.

Eno Sarris: I read a great piece you did with Trent Rosecrans recently. I thought it was very heartfelt and honest. When you said that in the past you felt what it feels like to be lost, and that you don’t really feel that this year, and about divorcing results from process. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the lost feeling — how did you feel that was so different then?

Jay Bruce: My whole life, I had not really had a fall back on routine. I just kinda played baseball and was really good at it, but everyone here is really good at baseball. Up until I got to the major leagues in 2009, I had never struggled anywhere. I mean I hit .270 in the GCL…

And you still hit for power. [.230 ISO]

Yeah. There was never really any reason to question what I was doing or why I was doing it or why I wasn’t doing it. I just always played. Just played baseball and the results came to what I thought they should have been and what the standard I had set for myself based on performances in the past. 2009 was the first time I wasn’t performing to the level I had expected and I didn’t have something to fall back on. What now? What do I do now?

Read the rest of this entry »

Is that an inflammatory headline? It feels like it might be. It’s not like Jose Altuve was bad before, of course. But this is the Internet, where it’s important to entice people to click on stories, and if you’re reading this, then I’ve already won. Success! Anyway, maybe this is more of a “me” thing than anything else, but had you asked me prior to the season who the most overrated player in baseball was, Altuve’s name likely would have been mentioned. Not that Altuve was a poor player; far from it. It’s just that when you think about the reasons he was notable, the list would go something like this:

• Because he is a big league player despite his remarkably small stature
• Because he was one of the few decent players on atrocious Houston teams
• Because he made an All-Star team in his first full season
• Because he could steal bases (33 and 35 in his two full seasons) and hit around .290, which are shiny stats

Read the rest of this entry »

About a week ago, Jake Arrieta tried to throw a perfect game against the Cincinnati Reds. I mean, every pitcher is always trying to throw a perfect game, but Arrieta actually made a lot of progress before ultimately falling short. Then, Monday, Arrieta tried to no-hit the Red Sox. A no-hitter is a little less perfect than a perfect game, but Arrieta got deeper before ultimately falling short — again. He departed to a standing ovation in Fenway Park. For Arrieta, in the small picture, it was a pair of frustrating missed shots at history. For Arrieta, in the bigger picture, it was a twin demonstration of the pitcher Arrieta is becoming. You might not realize this, but the Cubs rotation has the highest WAR in the National League, and it’s not all because of the two trade targets.

Once again, in his latest start, Arrieta was masterful. Once again, Arrieta kept hitters off balance by mixing everything and featuring a lot of his new, improved slider. Or maybe it’s a cutter — people haven’t agreed. Arrieta was constantly down and constantly on the edges, and as the Red Sox waited for him to make mistakes, he picked up out after out. Arrieta turned in a start worthy of a tribute, so, as a tribute, I’ve taken care to identify the eight worst pitches Arrieta threw to the Red Sox during his 7.2 innings. It wasn’t an easy project.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, the Red Sox summoned Mookie Betts from Triple-A; he made his big league debut last night, going 1-3 with a walk. While no single game will ever reveal much about a player’s skillset, the process by which he approached the game seems to fit with his minor league profile:

He didn’t chase pitches; he swung at only two of 11 out-of-zone-pitches.

He makes contact; he put the bat on the ball on all eight in-zone swings.

According to MinorLeagueCentral, Betts only swung at 34% of the pitches he was thrown in Pawtucket, and he made contact on 88% of his swings. Minor league data isn’t as reliable as major league data, but in general, swing and contact rates are pretty easy things to track and should at least be in the ballpark. While Betts will almost certainly see more in-zone pitches and be forced to swing more often in the big leagues, he has shown a pretty disciplined eye at the plate, and we shouldn’t expect him to expand the strike zone even against big league pitching.

And swing/contact rates do tend to carry over from the minors to a decent degree. For instance, if we look at the other prospects of note who have been promoted from the International League this year, we see that their swing and contact rates in the big leagues were in the same general range as their were in Triple-A.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jason McLeod’s official title with the Chicago Cubs is Senior Vice President, Player Development and Amateur Scouting. Prior to assuming his current position in November 2011, he worked in the same capacity for the San Diego Padres. Before that he was the scouting director for the Boston Red Sox.

McLeod’s track record – particularly on the amateur scouting side – is impressive. Players drafted under his watch include several big-league all-stars. More recent picks populate top-prospect lists.

The 42-year-old McLeod is slated to interview for the recently-vacated general manager position in San Diego. This interview was conducted prior to Josh Byrnes being fired and McLeod being reported as a possible replacement.

——

McLeod on scouting, player development and collaboration: “When you look at teams that have historically done well — the Cardinals are an easy example — from an outsider’s perspective you try to glean as much information as you can on how they’ve gone about things. Certainly, you want to model yourself after the organizations that have been most successful in scouting and player development.

“There’s been this adage of scouts versus player development guys, but in my experience I’ve never seen a clear case of we-do-what-we-do and you-do-what-you-do. At least not to any extreme. I’m not sure exactly how many organizations have one guy overseeing both departments, but I’d guess it’s 8-10. I’ve been in that role for a few years now, and I think it‘s obvious that communication is big. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the first couple of months of the season, I’ve done a couple of end-of-the-month posts on Expected Run Differentials. While pythagorean expected record — the number of wins and losses a team would be expected to have based on their runs scored and allowed — has become nearly a mainstream concept, I’ve never been a huge fan of using runs to determine how well a team has played thus far.

After all, the entire point of looking at run differential instead of actual wins and losses is because we’re acknowledging that wins and losses are affected by the timing of when runs are scored or allowed, and history has shown that run sequencing is mostly just randomness. So, developing an expected win-loss metric that removes the affects of sequencing is a good idea, but pythagorean record only goes halfway to that goal. It removes the timing aspects of converting runs into wins, but ignores the timing aspects of converting baserunners into runs. Evaluating a team by its run differential removes some of the sequencing effects of wins and losses, but leaves plenty of other parts, with no real reason why we should arbitrarily include some sequencing while taking other parts out.

That’s why I’ve always preferred to look at a team’s performance based on expected runs scored and allowed, rather than actual runs scored and allowed; this gives us the most context-neutral evaluation of team performance to date. In the two preceding posts, I walked through the creation of expected runs scored and allowed totals based on each team’s wOBA and wOBA allowed, adjusted for baserunning and fielding values. As a linear weights based metric, wOBA is a very good context-neutral evaluator of individual events.

However, as Jesse Wolfersberger eloquently illustrated at The Hardball Times last week, run scoring at the team level isn’t really linear.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite tools here at FanGraphs is our Custom Leaderboard section, as it allows anyone to create a page to keep track of the performance of any player or group of players, whether it’s just guys on your fantasy team, upcoming free agents, or some random collection of players that you happen to care about. It’s a super helpful resource, and I have a handful of saved reports that I reference all the time.

And for the next six weeks or so, I’ll be adding another one to the list, because now that we’re just a few days away from the start of July, MLB’s trade season is upon us, and I wanted an easy way to keep track of who might be available at each position. So, I made a 2014 Trade Chip custom leaderboard. That links goes directly to the list of position players, but you can just click pitching up at the top to see the available arms as well. And the positional tabs up top will let you view players at various spots around the field.

Read the rest of this entry »

Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill into law on Friday that gives local governments access to $13 million annually in funding for the construction or renovation of a professional sports facility. To be eligible, the sports facility must be owned and operated by a local government or owned by a private entity that’s located on land owned by a local government.

Under the general terms of the new law, the Tampa Bay Rays would be eligible as a beneficiary of the new funding stream, as Tropicana Field is owned by the City of St. Petersburg. Same for the Miami Marlins, which play in a ballpark built largely with Miami-Dade County bonds. Then there are the nine teams that play in spring training facilities in Florida (Phillies, Blue Jays, Astros, Rigers, Rays, Pirates, Orioles, Mets and Twins) and the 14 minor league teams in Florida that play in a ballpark owned by — or on land owned by — the local government.

But an amendment to the bill added as it made its way through the Florida legislature carves out facilities used by MLB and MiLB franchises unless and until MLB changes its rules to permit Cuban ballplayers to sign as free agents if they defect from Cuba directly to the United States. Under current rules, MLB requires players to defect and establish residency in a non-U.S. country before coming to the United States to sign as a free agent.

Read the rest of this entry »