I don’t know how else to begin, so let’s begin like this: Over 126 games spent with the Astros, Carlos Gomez was worth 0.6 WAR. Over 25 games spent with the Rangers, Carlos Gomez has been worth 0.7 WAR. Now you know the story — there are characters, there’s a plot. When the Astros acquired Gomez in the first place, they figured he could be a real difference-maker. He’s making a difference now, just for a division rival instead.
We’ve all seen those swings so terrible that a batter can’t help but smile. Swings like this one from Brandon Phillips last year.
Were Phillips batting not for a last-place club but one contending for the postseason, we might gnash our teeth. Couldn’t he see that was a slider? What was he thinking? What was he looking at?
The answer to that last question, turns out, is way more complicated than it seems. Phillips clearly should have laid off a breaking ball that failed to reach the plate. He clearly has done that — otherwise, he wouldn’t have had a major-league career. So what happened? What did he see? Or not see? Ask hitters and experts that question, and the answers are vague, conflicting, and sometimes just strange.
According to our playoff odds, there are currently 13 teams which feature playoff odds below 2%. As that number grows throughout the month, an increasingly large percentage of baseball fans will be bidding farewell to the hopes that this is the year for their preferred teams and looking to adopt other rooting interests. There’s no full replacement for the satisfaction of your team winning in October, but playoff baseball is still worth enjoying as much as you can. So, for whom do you root this month?
In recent years, Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated has popularized Team Entropy — spending your September rooting for the chaos generated by ties testing the limits of baseball’s tie-breaker system. With a range of 5.5 games separating the seven teams atop the AL Wild Card standings, Team Entropy is as in play as ever. The theoretical implications of a three- or four- or five-way tie for a Wild Card spot are delightful to imagine. It would be a blast to watch and, as someone with no skin in the game this year, I’d enjoy the hell out of it. That said, my strongest loyalties lie with another team — I’m not Team Entropy, I’m Team Cinderella.
For me, there’s no more exciting storyline than a September longshot bucking the odds and finding its way into the postseason. Two years ago, the Pirates had roughly a 20% chance to make the postseason on September 3rd according to The Baseball Gauge and then proceeded to secure themselves a spot in the Wild Card game. But I’d argue an even more exciting September Cinderella storyline unfolded a year before that when the 2013 Indians finished off the season by winning 15 of 17 and beating out the Rangers for a Wild Card Spot despite possessing 15% playoff odds at the start of that final 17-game run. Now that’s my idea of brilliant September baseball.
It’s been a few years and, though it may be a virtue, patience is certainly no fun. It’s time for a new September Cinderella team, so let’s go searching for one. For this exercise, I’m considering the cases of the five teams with playoff odds currently in the 3%-20% range.
While trolls and naysayers on Twitter were crying bust after Houston Astros’ top prospect Alex Bregman began his major-league career by going 0-for his first 17 and 1-for his first 32, manager A.J. Hinch was moving him up to bat in the most important spot in his team’s lineup. At the time, Hinch cited his contact rate and exit velocity as indicators that Bregman’s at-bats were better than the results indicated.
Bregman’s now become a fixture in the second position of Houston’s batting order, starting there in each of the club’s last 33 games, and over the last month, he’s been among baseball’s most productive hitters. Seems like there must have been a grand adjustment, or a light bulb that went off. Astros hitting coach Dave Hudgens dispelled that notion before a recent game in Cleveland, reinforcing Hinch’s suggestions that Bregman was never actually struggling at all.
“The biggest thing is, he was having good at-bats and having tough luck, too,” Hudgens said. “He was getting good at-bats. He just needed a couple hits to fall. His at-bats were good even when he was struggling.”
Split Bregman’s short career into two near-halves, and it’s evident that Hinch and Hudgens aren’t just blowing smoke — the Bregman we saw the first three weeks really isn’t all that different than the Bregman that’s tore up the league over the last month.
| Time | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | K% | BB% | GB% | Contact% | O-Swing% | Hard% | BABIP |
| First 19 Games | 85 | .169 | .235 | .234 | 23.5% | 8.2% | 33.3% | 74.7% | 27.8% | 31.0% | .224 |
| Last 22 Games | 103 | .347 | .398 | .695 | 21.4% | 7.8% | 24.7% | 78.1% | 25.5% | 32.9% | .394 |
The Houston Astros have summoned David Paulino from the minor leagues to make his big-league debut against the Indians today. Paulino was utterly dominant in the minors this year. Splitting time between Double-A and Triple-A, the 6-foot-7 righty whiffed 29% of batters faced on his way to a 2.00 ERA and 2.24 FIP. Somewhat quietly, Paulino put together one of the best seasons in the minors in 2016.
Paulino had shown flashes of excellence in the past, but his triumphs in the low minors have been regularly interrupted by injury. He put up a 2.63 FIP across three levels of A-ball last year, and was missing bats in rookie ball as far back as 2011. But his 2016 campaign marks the first time he’s logged anything resembling a full season, and the first time he’s had the opportunity to prove himself against advanced hitters.
This week, we’re going to run a series of posts laying out the case for the most compelling candidates for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. These posts are designed to make an affirmative argument for their subject and are not intended to serve as comprehensive looks at every candidate on their own. The authors tasked with writing these posts may not even believe their subject actually deserves to win, but they were brave enough to make the case anyway. The goal of these posts is to lay out the potential reasons for voters to consider a variety of candidates and to allow the readers to decide which argument is most persuasive.
Other cases: Mike Trout for AL MVP.
Mike Trout leads the American League in every major calculation of WAR: Baseball Prospectus’ version, Baseball-Reference’s version and our very own version right here at good ol’ FanGraphs. This unsurprising fact is true because the guy is so damn good at every aspect of baseball. He gets on base. He hits for power. He’s a shockingly productive base-runner. The only area in which he lags a bit is in defensive value, but his offense puts him so far above the competition that no one can surpass Mike Trout’s overall production on the field right now.
That said, let me tell you why Mike Trout isn’t the Most Valuable Player in the American League.
It’s not an easy argument to make. Sure, numbers can be manipulated but not to a degree that allows a straight-up objective argument for any American League player being better than Trout. Comparable? Perhaps. But better? That argument doesn’t exist. We’re here at FanGraphs because we like numbers and objective truths — and all of those indicators point to Mike Trout as the best player in the American League this season. But… I can’t believe I’m about to write these words in this cliché order… let’s talk about the meaning of the word valuable. I think there’s a remarkably valid interpretation of that word which makes this year’s most deserving AL Most Valuable Player candidate a diminutive second baseman from Houston.
We first encountered Joe Musgrove’s one-seam sinker around the All-Star break, when the Houston Astros right-hander was kind enough to show us the grip before his appearance in the Futures Game. I’d never seen a one-seam grip before, unless you count the one Zach Britton showed us. While we could spot glimpses of the sinker in the Futures Game and in his minor-league games, it wasn’t until Musgrove came up and started pitching in the big leagues that we could truly put his pitch in the context of other big-league sinkers. It’s weird.
Clutch hitting isn’t that real of a thing. We don’t need to dwell on this, right? We’ve been over this so many times and I think we all share a common understanding. Sure, there’s room for clutch hitting to be a legitimate skill. Even when it might be a legitimate skill, it doesn’t make or break a player or team. The majority of what we observe appears to be luck, at least when it comes to significant over- or underachieving. That’s it. That’s where the conversation is.
So, boy, do I have a graphic for you! We have a win-expectancy-based statistic, known as Clutch. There’s Clutch for relief pitching, Clutch for starting pitching, and Clutch for hitting. In this plot, I’m showing 2015 team offensive Clutch, and 2016 team offensive Clutch. You should immediately notice two things. One, the distribution is random. Two, the Astros.
In offensive Clutch, last year, the Astros ranked second-worst. In offensive Clutch, this year, the Astros rank third-worst. So they haven’t been in the basement in either individual season, but when you combine them, then the Astros show up in last, and they’re buried. They have a combined offensive Clutch score of -13.8. Next-worst are the Brewers, at -8.7. That’s a difference of five wins. This is how unclutch Astros hitters have been.
Now, I should note the league average isn’t zero — it’s actually about -3 or -4. These numbers suggest that hitters overall are slightly unclutch, maybe because of advancements in bullpen usage. Anyway, between the Astros and the average would be something like 10 wins. That’s 10 wins over less than two full seasons. That’s 10 wins the Astros might have if their hitting had simply not been unclutch. I know I’ve already said it’s mostly random. I continue to believe it’s mostly random. Maybe a very small factor here is how the Astros strike out. But their offensive timing has just plain sucked. I don’t know how to explain it, but I do know how to observe it, and I’m sure it’s frustrated the clubhouse and the whole organization.
Since the start of last season, the Astros rank first in baseball in team OPS in what Baseball-Reference considers low-leverage situations. Bump it up to medium leverage, and the Astros rank 19th. Go all the way to high leverage, and the Astros rank 25th. In a sense that would be the explanation, but that doesn’t really explain things as much as it just re-states them. What we know about is the bad timing. If not the strikeouts, it could conceivably have something to do with general player inexperience. But I’m here grasping at straws. If there’s anything to research, it’s beyond what I can do in a small amount of time. Let’s just agree to end here today.
Last season, the Astros finished second in the AL West, two games out of first. This season, they’re in the hunt, but off the pace for the wild card. Who knows how things could be? Who knows how things could’ve been? Timing isn’t everything, but it’s an awful lot of it.
Teoscar Hernandez has always possessed an enticing combination of power and speed. His primary flaw, however, has been his inability to make contact. In 2014, he belted 21 homers and stole 33 bags, but struck out 28% of the time. Last year, he posted 17 homers and 33 steals with a 24% strikeout rate. The end result was a .219/.275/.362 batting line. More often than not, hitters who strike out that frequently don’t carry their success over to the big leagues, and it wasn’t at all clear that Hernandez was ever going to make enough contact to make it work.
But a funny thing started happening this year: Hernandez has seemingly learned how to avoid the strikeout. He opened the year at the Double-A level, where he hit .305/.384/.437 with a 17% strikeout rate. Following a promotion to Triple-A, he slashed .313/.365/.500 with a 16% strikeout clip. Despite the added contact, he still managed 10 homers in just over 100 games — plus one more in Houston on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »
In the second half of the double-header between the Twins and Astros today, Chris Devenski will take the mound for the Astros. He owns an 80 mph changeup and a 92 mph fastball, give or take some ticks, and that differential is the fourth-biggest one among starting pitchers since 2014. That fact alone should make his changeup a great one when it comes to whiffs.
We’ve known for a while that movement and velocity differential are important to a changeup, but seeing as how the relatively ineffective John Lamb possesses the league’s second-best differential — and because the changeup works, in no small part, because of its relationship with the fastball — it seems fair to wonder, as someone in my chat did today, if a changeup which features too great a velocity differential might also suffer from ineffectiveness. In theory, an 80 mph changeup might look the nothing like a fastball. And if that’s the case, how could it fool the batter?