Eventually, you’re all going to get sick of me talking about how everything that’s going on now is for all intents and purposes unpredictable. Hopefully you aren’t sick of it yet, because Game 1 of the NLDS between the Reds and the Giants went to show why playoff predictions are a complete waste of time. Allow me to review the action:

(1)Ace Cincinnati starter Johnny Cueto had to be removed after eight pitches due to injury, but

(2) the Reds still beat the Giants 5-2 on Saturday, because

(3) they hit two home runs off Matt Cain in AT&T Park.

It would’ve made perfect sense for this to turn into a pitcher’s duel. Cueto is one of the better starting pitchers in the National League, Cain is one of the better starting pitchers in the National League, neither the Reds nor the Giants have amazing team offenses, and AT&T Park suppresses run scoring like it’s poisonous and AT&T Park doesn’t want people to get poisoned. Instead, Cain was passable for five innings, and Cueto barely pitched. There still weren’t a whole lot of runs, but this didn’t go the way it was supposed to go.

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Major League Baseball’s six divisions were won by one, two, three, four, eight, and nine games. The Giants finished eight games ahead of the Dodgers, and their lead reached double digits on September 20. The Reds finished nine games ahead of the Cardinals, and their lead reached double digits on September 11. Suffice to say, for both teams, it’s been a while since they played what felt like a legitimately important game. Saturday, the important games resume all of a sudden, as the Giants and Reds are squaring off in a National League Division Series.

Incidentally, one wonders about the effects. Some people argue that it’s better to have to play at full intensity all the way through to the end, while other people argue there are benefits to being able to relax. Both the Giants and the Reds have more or less been able to relax, their playoff spots long secure, and we’ll never know how much this mattered, if it ends up having mattered at all. If it does matter, maybe it’ll matter about the same for both, since they’ve both been in similar situations. Nothing’s getting settled in this paragraph so here comes the next one.

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At the end of all these no hitters, right after the 27th out, there’s the hug between the pitcher and the catcher. The whole team gets in eventually, but there’s always just a little more emotion in that pitcher-catcher connection.

Watching Homer Bailey no-hit the Pirates Friday night, I completely understand why.

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Things are setting up for an exciting final week in the American League Wild Card race. With the Orioles and Athletics unable to break away from the Angels and Rays — just two and three games behind Oakland respectively, and another half game behind Baltimore — it could be a wild seven days for Team Entropy. MLB will need to get its contingency plans in place, as there are a number of scenarios that lead to three or even four-team ties:

The cases in black preclude involvement in any tie. Every other result for each team leads to at least the possibility of involvement in a three or even four team tie after 162 games. Then, of course, the question becomes just how likely each possibility is.

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Episode 247
Marc Hulet, author of the site’s organizational top-15 prospect lists and assorted other minor-league coverage, discusses four players — Tony Cingrani (Reds), Corban Joseph (Yankees), Wilmer Flores (Mets), and Daniel Vogelbach (Cubs) — and the larger concerns each raises with regard to prospect analysis generally.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min. play time.)

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With a 1.73 ERA including a 172/58 strikeout-to-walk ratio across two levels, Cincinnati Reds prospect Tony Cingrani was arguably the best pitcher in minor league baseball from a statistical standpoint. That success earned the left-hander a call up to the show where Cingrani has struck out eight, while walking only a single batter in four-plus innings pitched. Drafted in 2011, the former third round pick has made a meteoric rise to the big leagues. To put it in perspective, the only 2011 first round pick to reach Major League Baseball faster was Arizona Diamondbacks Trevor Bauer.

Video after the jump

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[In case you need a soundtrack for this post.]

The Cincinnati Reds have had a number of surprising heroes as they have pulled away from the field in the 2012 National League Central despite losing one the best players in baseball, Joey Votto, for a substantial chunk of games (although Votto has still managed to be worth about five wins this year). In addition to the expected contributions of players like Brandon Phillips, Jay Bruce, and Mat Latos, the Reds have been the beneficiary of a number of performances that have, in varying degrees, been much better than one might have expected from players such as Johnny Cueto, Aroldis Chapman (still ridiculous to look at his numbers), and Todd Frazier.

Perhaps the most surprising Reds overperformer has been Ryan Ludwick. After bottoming out in San Diego and Pittsburgh last year, Ludwick has hit .275/.345/.534 (132 wRC) with 25 home runs for the Reds so far in 2012. Is Ludwick (and, by extension, the Reds) just getting “lucky,” and if so, what does that even mean?

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There are rate stats for just about every kind of opportunity a hitter faces in a game. Batting average tells you how often a player reaches base via a hit. On-base percentage tells you how often a player avoids making an out per plate appearance. But what about swings as opportunities?

Last year, I played around with the idea of production per swing. The idea was to examine what hitters gave the most value when they took a swing. The methodology was pretty simple: calculate the Weighted On-base Average (wOBA) each hitter generated using their swings — instead of plate appearances — as the denominator*.

Of course, there is a healthy correlation between actual wOBA and wOBA per swing (.83 in 2012), but less so Isolated Power (ISO). (wOBA/swing and ISO share only a .53 correlation.) Some of the results may not be all that surprising, but many certainly are.

Let’s first look at the top-25 so far this year:

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Aroldis Chapman is referred to as the Cuban Missile, because Chapman is from Cuba, and we used to associate Cuba with missiles, and missiles are fast, and Chapman throws really fast, and we are horrible. It would at least make a little more sense if we just referred to Chapman’s fastballs as Cuban missiles, but even there, fastballs don’t travel nearly as fast as missiles do. Regardless, Chapman has posted crazy numbers this season, in large part thanks to his missiles. Lately his missiles have been missing some speed, and ending up at the wrong coordinates. I think I’m done now with the missile thing.

A few days ago, Chapman blew a save against the Astros, which is a double whammy. His fastball averaged just over 96 miles per hour and his slider averaged just over 84, down from the usual 98 and 88. That’s troubling, but it’s not so bad so long as it’s just a blip instead of a pattern. Monday night, Chapman hinted at this becoming a pattern. Chapman faced five Pirates and walked three of them, with just seven strikes out of 22 pitches. His fastball averaged just over 95 miles per hour, and his slider just over 84. Aroldis Chapman raised some eyebrows, because he wasn’t pitching like himself.

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Last Thursday, I took a stab at predicting how batter’s swing influences their ground ball / fly ball splits. One of the most important retorts to the research (a retort made both in the comments and on The Book blog) was that pitch location was the determining factor of bat angles — what I was attributing to hitter tendencies (at least for hitters who have big GB/FB platoon splits).

Consider today’s offering a second puzzle piece — hopefully an edge piece — in what is a 1000-piece puzzle of understanding GB/FB splits. Today I offer the case study of two (essentially randomly picked) hitters with large GB/FB platoon — Adam Dunn and Jay Bruce.

The results surprised me, twice, and in the end, it appears these two hitters employ different swing patterns, suggesting there may be traction with my original theory, even though pitch location does have a considerable affect on swing angles.
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