Do you want to see footage of Miguel Cabrera hitting a home run? Of course you do. You’re not a monster. Now let me find the last time he — oh, right, he hit a homer yesterday. Went yard off John Danks. Sixth time he’s homered in eight games, with two of those coming off Mariano Rivera. Neat little stretch. Here’s the Danks pitch Cabrera got rid of:
I know it’s kind of blurry, and I included a vertical red line for reference. Let’s watch this loop:
I’d like to talk to you today about pitcher evaluation.
I don’t mean evaluation in the sense of determining a pitcher’s talent level, or evaluation in the sense of determining a pitcher’s future value — or even evaluation in the sense of determining a pitcher’s market value. I mean a pitcher’s past value. Or, perhaps, because value is so often misunderstood and misinterpreted, we’d be better off speaking in terms of contribution. That’s how do we determine the extent to which a player contributed to his team’s success (or failure)?
Ostensibly, Kyle Lohse and I talked about the evolution of his approach last week before a game against the Giants. He showed me some grips and talked about how his arsenal has changed since he was in Minnesota. But — as it happens when you start talking about baseball’s intricacies — our conversation ended up straying into the economics of baseball, the psychology of the pitcher/hitter matchup, and even performance-enhancing drugs.
I’m a big fan of games that summarize entire skillsets. To pick one example, on May 25, 2012, Adam Dunn DH’d and went 1-for-4 with a homer, a walk, and three strikeouts. To pick another example, on July 16, 2004, Wily Mo Pena went 1-for-4 with a homer, no walks, and three strikeouts. I like a game in which a player puts everything about himself on display, and Jose Iglesias had just such a game Monday night. Against the White Sox, Iglesias made two easy outs. In his third at-bat, he picked up an infield single. And though the White Sox emerged victorious by four, the game was of little consequence to either team; what most people are talking about is what Iglesias did to Josh Phegley in the bottom of the sixth.
It wasn’t anything mean, except that it kind of was. The Gameday play-by-play offers, understatedly:
Josh Phegley grounds out softly, shortstop Jose Iglesias to first baseman Prince Fielder. Jordan Danks to 2nd.
That doesn’t exactly do the play justice. Iglesias drew oohs and ahhs from the other team’s audience, and Phegley didn’t think to stage a protest. The out recorded, Iglesias got back on his feet and returned to his position. Ever the professional, at no point did Iglesias crack a smile. Most of the observers were simply too stunned. At the plate Monday night, Jose Iglesias was quiet. In the field Monday night, Jose Iglesias was an afterburner.
In a game Sunday against the White Sox, Kevin Correia made a valiant attempt at something no Twins starter had yet accomplished in 2013: a start with eight strikeouts. Correia would last seven innings, and he recorded his seventh strikeout to lead off the bottom of the fifth, when he fanned Tyler Flowers. The Twins’ TV broadcast started talking about Correia’s season and career strikeout highs. Correia would work through 10 more plate appearances before yielding to Jared Burton. None of the 10 wound up a strikeout. Correia remained stuck at seven; Twins starters remained stuck at zero.
Except for Minnesota, every team has at least one starter with at least eight strikeouts in a game. In fact, every other team has at least four starts with eight Ks. The Tigers have 31. The Rangers have 27. The Red Sox have 25. Chad Gaudin has three. Nick Tepesch has two. Charles Leesman has one. The Twins, of course, have zero. But the Twins do have five starts with seven strikeouts. The Twins have long had a reputation for putting together pitch-to-contact starting rotations, so in that way what they’ve done in 2013 is hardly surprising. But this year, the Twins have kicked it up a notch. Or down a notch. However you want to put it, the Twins no longer are at the same notch as before. Read the rest of this entry »
Mariano Rivera is in the process of completing a farewell tour, getting recognition even within rival ballparks. Just on its own, this tells you a few things. One, Rivera is on the verge of retirement, preparing to officially hang up his spikes, figuratively if not literally. Two, Rivera has been great. Great and beloved and unanimously respected, but mostly, great. Players who weren’t great don’t get the Rivera treatment. Few players, really, get the Rivera treatment. Fans in other cities are saying goodbye to one of the greatest pitchers the game’s ever seen. Three, Rivera’s seen a whole lot. He’s had a long enough career to establish himself as a hall-of-famer — and to make an impression on every place he’s been to — so there aren’t many things Rivera hasn’t seen, that he hasn’t experienced. He’s given everything he’s had to baseball, and he’s squeezed baseball for everything it’s worth.
Some of the only things Rivera hasn’t experienced are different varieties of failure. He has, simply, been too good, too consistently and reliably good, to fail often. He has failed before, sometimes memorably, but there have been plenty of ways in which he hasn’t failed, and ways in which he never will. At the moment, though, Rivera’s experiencing something he’s never experienced before. For the first time in his big-league career, Rivera’s blown three consecutive saves. He hasn’t been through everything, but he’s been through one more thing than he had been.
Hey there, people who wish more days were like Friday, and welcome to this part of the Internet. There are many parts of the Internet, so many countless parts of the Internet, and the Internet is expanding every second of every day. Given the freedom, you can go to pretty much any part of the Internet that you want, which makes the idea of a dedicated audience laughable. Sure, people might like something, but the instant it disappoints, they might go to something else, something that hasn’t disappointed them yet. Because there are infinite options, so many of them with clickbait-y headlines, so why stand for disappointment? The Internet audience has high expectations and an unwillingness to lower them, and it’s a miracle anything ever succeeds over an extended period of time. So thanks a lot, Internet, for causing my sometimes unbearable, unmanageable anxiety. Here are all of the posts in the The Worst Of The Best series. I will do everything I can to keep you feeling reasonably satisfied.
We’re back to normal weekly intervals, now, with July decidedly behind us. What you’re going to see are the wildest pitches from between August 2 and August 8, as determined by distance from the center of the strike zone, as determined by mathematical calculation, as supported by PITCHf/x, as made possible by cameras, as made possible by magic. The process behind this post, the act of reading this post, the images within this post — magic. There are going to be a lot of images. Some wild pitches just missing this list: Samuel Deduno to Alcides Escobar on August 7, Francisco Rodriguez to Jesus Guzman on August 7, and Francisco Rodriguez to Rene Rivera on August 7. August 7 was a wild day, especially for Francisco Rodriguez. But I’ll tell you now for some reason, you’re still about to see the Rodriguez/Rivera delivery. Why? Felt like it. I’ll explain. Scroll down for baseball.
Maybe you’ve heard. Jonathan Lucroy is good at framing pitches. According to Jeff Sullivan’s most recent post on the subject, third-best in the league and the current first-best starting catcher. So he’s good at framing. But he doesn’t call it framing. And when he describes how and why he got good at it, it doesn’t sound like much of a mystery. It’s just the natural result of years of hard work.
The Philadelphia Phillies have given the sabermetric community a lot of ammunition over the last few years. The Ryan Howard contract! $52 million for Jonathan Papelbon! Delmon Young! Even off the field, the Phillies GM gives us comments like “I don’t care about walks, I care about production.” Picking on the Phillies recently has been pretty easy, and writers from this side of the baseball spectrum have been warning of the Phillies coming demise for several years.
Now that it’s here, the Phillies were even more roundly ridiculed for not acknowledging their place on baseball’s win curve, holding on to valuable trade chips at the deadline even as they get passed by the Marlins in run differential. Rather than turn Cliff Lee, Chase Utley, and Michael Young into younger, cheaper talent, the Phillies are soldiering on with an aging, expensive club that is nearly 20 games behind the Braves in the standings. And with last night’s news of an impending Chase Utley contract extension, they seem to be digging in their heels even more.
Chase Utley will be 35 next season. The last three years, he’s played 115, 103, and 83 games, and he’ll probably end up in the low 100s again this year, unless he gets hurt before the season ends and falls short of even that mark. The team with the 29th best run differential in the majors just signed up an injury prone second baseman for his age-35/36 seasons, but unlike most of the Phillies moves over the last few years, I actually like this move for Philadelphia, and commend Ruben Amaro for getting the deal done.
Last year, Miguel Cabrera won the American League Triple Crown and the American League Most Valuable Player Award. You might’ve heard about that. This year, Miguel Cabrera has been even better. His wRC+ is up dozens of points. His WAR is almost even despite it still being the beginning of August. Offensively, Cabrera’s been having one of the very greatest seasons ever, helping to make up for Prince Fielder’s extended slump. Cabrera’s been the kind of good we take for granted — we eventually take all kinds of good for granted — but in those fleeting moments of clarity and appreciation, Cabrera knocks us on our asses. It’s absurd, basically, what Miguel Cabrera has done, and can do.
The in-contention Indians were dealt a difficult blow when Corey Kluber landed on the disabled list with a finger injury. Kluber’s a good pitcher, see, and in-contention teams need good pitchers, and the Indians had to turn to prospect Danny Salazar on Wednesday night. Wednesday, Salazar made his second big-league appearance and start, facing the Tigers for the first time. Meaning he was facing Miguel Cabrera for the first time. Interesting things happened.
