Archive for Featured

Since Clubhouse Confidential is an off-season only show, the MLB Network has created a new show called MLB Now, where Brian Kenny and Harold Reynolds frequently disagree on differing topics. On yesterday’s show, the two briefly discussed the value of pitcher wins, as you can see in this clip below.

In that segment, Harold Reynolds cites CC Sabathia as an example of a pitcher who pitches to the score, noting that he performs differently when the game is on the line than when he’s just trying to get outs and has some runs to give up. While one will never be able to definitively prove or disprove the intent of a pitcher, given that we are left to only measure what they do rather than what they are thinking, Reynolds’ claim is testable. If Sabathia pitched dramatically better in close games than with a big lead, it would show up in the data.

It does not. Read the rest of this entry »

In a deal announced on Tuesday, the Seattle Mariners will become the majority stakeholder in ROOT Sports Northwest, the regional sports network (RSN) owned by DirecTV. ROOT Sports NW currently broadcasts Mariners games under a 1o-year rights fee contract that pays the Mariners $45 million per year. That agreement gave the Mariners an opt-out clause after the 2015 season, which led many to speculate that the team would look to match the mega deals recently struck by their American League West rivals.

In 2011, the Angels inked a new local TV deal with regional sports network Fox Sports West, valued at $2.5 billion over 17 years, plus a 25% equity stake in the RSN. The Texas Rangers kicked off this new frenzy in late 2010 with its 20-year/$1.7 billion deal with Fox Sports Southwest. After the Angels’ new deal, the Houston Astros cashed in, joining with the Houston Rockets to create a new RSN with Comcast, called Comcast SportsNet Houston. The Astros will receive $80 million a year for the next 20 years, plus income generated from its 45% equity stake.

Instead, the Mariners are headed in a different and somewhat surprising direction. The new deal — estimated by Forbes at $2 billion over 17 years — will give the Mariners broader control over the RSN’s programming. But that control may come with some financial uncertainty.

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A while back, Jeff Zimmerman and I introduced the concept of Edge% — a metric that attempted to quantify the extent to which a pitcher worked the edges of the strike zone. Jeff initially looked at how this applied to Tim Lincecum and how his performance depended to some extent on his ability to pitch to the edges of the plate. I followed up with a high-level piece that compared the performance of pitchers at an aggregate level depending on how extreme their Edge% was in a given season.

While the findings were interesting, they were also a little inconsistent. That’s because Jeff and I independently created two distinct metrics. We decided to combine our efforts (as we have been known to do) and settle on a single, consistent formula.

And that’s the focus of this article.

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Javier Baez, SS, Chicago (NL)

Baez, 20, hit .333 at the low-A ball level in 2012 but he did it while walking just nine times in 57 games. He then finished his injury-shortened season with another 23 games in high-A ball but struggled. His plate issues have continued into 2013 with 18 strikeouts and two walks in 58 at-bats. While his aggressive nature has not helped his batting average, the Puerto Rico native is hitting with authority and eight of his 12 hits have gone for extra bases.

After opening eyes and earning a lot of hype in 17 spring training games (four homers, .298 average), Baez may be dealing with the letdown of shifting from big league camp to A-ball. The immense talent is there for him to be a star and there is no rush for Baez to reach the majors, thanks to the presence of the Cubs’ incumbent shortstop, Starlin Castro.

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Last night, the Tigers and Mariners squared off in a mid-week contest in front of 14,981 fans in Seattle, in a game that didn’t begin until 10:00 pm on the east coast. The Tigers are a good baseball team, and are expected to win the AL Central by a significant margin. The Mariners are a less good baseball team, and aren’t expected to be in the playoff race when the year ends. At the end of the year, there’s a pretty good chance that the outcome of this game isn’t going to have determined anything. It will get lost in the shuffle of history as just another regular season game. But, oh man, this game was not just another game. This game was amazing. Let us count the ways.

(Be warned, for there are some GIFs after the jump).

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The ranking might change day-by-day, Jarrod Parker said, but he agreed: “Overall I would say the fastball and changeup are my two better pitches.” And that changeup is special — he threw it more than any secondary pitch last year, it was his best-rated pitch, and a big part of why he had the 21st-best swinging strike rate among qualified starters. It wasn’t always that way, though. Coming out of high school, Parker was a fastball/curve guy. So what happened?

“I got hurt and didn’t want to throw as many breaking pitches, so I started working on a changeup.”

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Daily updated Steamer Projections are now available in the player pages and the projections pages. These come in both the Rest of Season (RoS) and Updated variety. RoS is the projection for only the remainder of the season, while Updated is the forecast for the player’s final season line, including his performance to date.

One thing to note about the daily updated Steamer projections is that a full new projection for each player is calculated each day of the season, the same way the pre-season calculations are calculated, just including this year’s data.

Much thanks goes out to Jared Cross, Dash Davidson, and Peter Rosenbloom for putting these together.

Austin Jackson has a fairly well-documented history of frequent strikeouts. But every day, Jackson seems to be creating a new history. That’s because he’s decided to stop striking out.

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In Tampa Bay, Carl Crawford was a star. He was one of the most exciting players in the sport and one of the main driving forces behind the team’s rise from ineptitude to World Series contender. He was a homegrown talent who excelled in all of the things the Rays valued. He was an example of what small market teams could do to overcome the financial gap and take down the big boys.

Then, he signed a $142 million contract with the Red Sox. A lot of people were against that contract, especially for that skillset in that ballpark. A speed-and-defense guy getting power hitter money for years when his speed-and-defense would almost certainly be in decline? A guy who specialized in covering a lot of ground playing the smallest left field in baseball? Crawford’s struggles in Boston made him a new kind of example; a warning to those who had strayed from the simple concepts of on base percentage and slugging percentage. Crawford became the poster child for those who felt like places like FanGraphs had gone too far with our affection for guys who accumulate value through singles and UZR.

Through it all, Carl Crawford has been held up as more than just another player; he’s been the bully pulpit for both sides. Now healthy and away from the spotlight on the west coast — yes, he’s in LA, but he’s playing fifth fiddle to Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Adrian Gonzalez, and Zack Greinke — Crawford has been given a chance to get his career back on track. And he is taking full advantage.

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Probably the biggest baseball story of last week was Carlos Quentin charging the mound after a hit-by-pitch and in the process badly injuring Zack Greinke. At first it looked like Quentin had done something completely stupid, then after some additional consideration, it looked like Quentin had done something completely stupid and Greinke also hadn’t helped himself. (Nuance.) The pitch that hit Quentin wasn’t that bad of a pitch. Quentin is no stranger to wearing it, and generally when you have a guy who gets hit a lot, that selection will include both wild pitches and surprisingly close pitches.

Dave put up a post about Carlos Quentin’s hit-by-pitch zone, which you can see here. As can be observed from the image, over the years Quentin has been hit by a few pitches that might’ve otherwise been borderline strikes. That gave Dave the idea to ask me about other hit-by-pitches that were at least borderline strikes. With the invaluable help of friend and colleague Matthew Carruth, I present to you an overall, league-wide hit-by-pitch zone map.

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