Yoenis Cespedes‘ defense currently ranks third in the MLB, according to UZR/150. Here’s how the third-most valuable fielder in baseball sometimes likes to play routine outfield grounders:
How in the world is this guy third-best defensively in anything? Because this is how he makes up for those gaffes:
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You’re a pitcher? You need a change-up.
That automatic response seems reasonable enough given the state of modern pitching analysis. You’ve probably heard it plenty of times about pitchers like Justin Masterson or Chris Archer. After all, the change breaks away from opposite-handed hitters and helps pitchers neutralize platoon threats.
But you know what? There’s another pitch that breaks away from opposite-handed hitters: the two-seamer or the sinker, whatever you want to call it. And yet lefties love sinkers from righties. So why do two pitches with similar movement have such different results?
Weird things about baseball fascinate me. One of those things is the concept of discarded players. Every once in awhile, you’ll see a player doing well and think to yourself, “Hey, wasn’t he on our team at one point?” David Carpenter is one such player. Watching him face the Red Sox this week, I couldn’t help but think that it would be sure nice if the Sox had him right now instead of Craig Breslow. Sure, the world will keep on spinning, and Carpenter wouldn’t make or break the 2014 Red Sox, but every little bit counts, and the Red Sox gave him away for free after just five weeks on the roster. In situations like these, we often jokingly say (or at least I do), “Hey, I wish we could get guys like that!”
I don’t mean to pick on the Red Sox, because every team does this. If you scan rosters, you’ll find one such player on just about every roster. And originally, my intention was to run down that list and look at them all individually. But then I got a look at this trade. On July 31, 2010, the Atlanta Braves traded Gregor Blanco, Jesse Chavez and Tim Collins to the Kansas City Royals for Rick Ankiel and Kyle Farnsworth. Take a look:
Something wacky happened in Tampa Bay on Wednesday night. When something wacky happens in baseball, @cantpredictball is usually on the case. I’ll let them (him? her?) begin the storytelling:
The A’s had one hit tonight. They won 3-2.
— YCPB (@cantpredictball) May 22, 2014
You don’t need me, or cantpredictball, to tell you that’s rare. According to the Baseball-Reference Play Index, teams that get one-hit have won just 62 baseball games in 100 years. That’s just the ninth time it’s happened in the last decade. Oakland had never done it in its 45-year tenure as a franchise.
What’s funny about the game, besides the Athletics being victorious with one hit, is that if you look at the win expectancy chart, you really can’t even tell when that hit came. Go ahead, see if you can tell:
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Quick answer: whenever you feel like it. Longer answer: to follow.
You’ve already had the entire weekend to forget about last week, and over the weekend, there was an incident involving Carlos Gomez and Gerrit Cole that cleared the benches and that will lead to suspensions. So you’re forgiven if you don’t remember much from Friday, but from Friday, I’d like to present to you a sequence of events. Prior to the Gomez sportsmanship incident, there was a sportsmanship incident in a game between the A’s and the Astros with Jed Lowrie and Bo Porter right in the middle.
Spring training is a time of becoming reacquainted with baseball. The pace, the play, the pitches, the plate, even the equipment — there’s a daily language that comes easier with practice. Catchers are no different, though perhaps there’s a multiplier. You have to get used to your own game, and you have to get to know your pitchers again. And one of the newest ways to measure catcher defense — framing — may have a lot to do with this familiarity.
Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Oakland A’s.
It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Oaklanders or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.
What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.
Other prospect projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Texas / Toronto.
After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Oakland Athletics. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Texas / Toronto / Washington.
Batters
What the depth-chart graphic below doesn’t represent very well, but what is still true of the Oakland A’s, is that they’ll probably be getting value from players who aren’t proper starters. Of particular note in this regard is outfielder Craig Gentry, for whom Oakland traded Michael Choice and a friend to Texas this offseason. Gentry’s defensive figures over the last three season have been, speaking in very technical sabermetric terms, entirely bananas. Accordingly, it’s not so unexpected to see him receive a very optimistic projection here (2.4 zWAR) in just 300 or so plate appearances.
Also of note: John Jaso is projected as a catcher here, but is likely to get a significant numbers of plate appearances — perhaps the bulk of them — at DH. Even a poor defensive catcher still receives a pretty substantial increase in value by way of positional adjustment — relative to a designated hitter, certainly. Expecting him to produce two wins in a DH capacity might be unrealistic. Billy Butler posted a 116 wRC+ last season, for example, while DH-ing almost exclusively and still produced just a 1.4 WAR.
Here are a couple things that we know:
I suppose we can’t really prove the second one, but to the extent that results can serve as indicators, it’s hard to argue with how successful the teams have been despite their considerable financial disadvantages. Both front offices are thought of as intelligent, forward-thinking, analytical, and efficient, and they’re efficient out of necessity, because neither team can afford to flush money down the toilet. They need to try to get the most out of every dollar they spend.
Here’s another thing that we know: over the offseason, the Rays and the A’s have poured some millions into building up their bullpens. Relievers are often thought of as being lousy investments, and it seems easy enough to cobble a bullpen together on the cheap, so when the Rays and the A’s invest in late-inning vets, it gets attention. The temptation is to believe they’re exploiting some kind of inefficiency. The temptation is to believe we’ve been wrong about relievers for a while. Basically, the temptation is to believe that they’re on to something. And, you know, maybe that’s true. Maybe they’ve figured something out. Or maybe people are just looking for patterns in the sand. Maybe there’s nothing weird going on at all.
Mike Piazza didn’t cross the 75% threshold required for election into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Still, at 62.2% in his second year on the ballot, he’s probably close enough that his election is eventually assured. And that’s good, because he was the greatest offensive catcher in baseball history.