Baseball can be slow to change. We’ve had this idea for decades that certain pitch types have platoon splits, and that you should avoid them in certain situations because of it. Righties, don’t throw sliders to lefties! It’s Baseball 101.

Think of the changeup, too. “Does he have a changeup?” or some variation on the theme is the first question uttered of any prospect on the way up. It’s shorthand for “can he be a starter?” because we think of changeups as weapons against the opposite hand. A righty will need one to get lefties out and turn the lineup over, back to the other righties, who will be dispatched using breaking balls.

As with all conventional wisdom, this notion of handedness and pitch types should be rife for manipulation. Say you could use your changeup effectively against same-handed hitters, for example. You could have a fastball/changeup starter that was equally effective against both hands, despite the history of platoon splits on the pitch.

To the innovators go the spoils. And we’re starting to see some innovators.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jake Lamb is off to a solid start in the production department. The left-handed-hitting third baseman homered in Arizona’s opener, and he doubled in game two. There’s more where that came from. Lamb slugged just .386 in 109 games with the Diamondbacks last year, but he did so as a young player with a foot injury. In three-plus seasons on the farm, he slashed .321/.408/.552.

Lamb isn’t without his supporters as he heads into his age-25 season. Eno Sarris has predicted he’ll hit 20 home runs, and just last week August Fagerstrom called him one of the Real Winners of Spring Training.

Lamb discussed his hitting approach, which includes a healthy dose of line drives to the left-center-field gap, prior to the D-Backs breaking camp to begin the 2016 campaign.

———

Lamb on his up-the-middle approach: “For the most part, my stock approach is to hit the ball hard to center field. I’m trying to line out to the center fielder. In saying that, what I really want is to hit a low line drive. If I’m a little late on a heater, hopefully I’ll hit it over the shortstop. If I’m a little early, it will be the right-center gap.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know this goes against the spirit of opening day, when anything can happen and everyone’s tied for first place. Opening day is a magical time precisely because no one’s yet been mathematically eliminated. The season hasn’t started to go down any path, which means the season could still go down any path conceivable. On opening day, everyone’s supposed to be happy; everyone’s supposed to be jazzed about baseball, because there’s not yet any reason not to be. Baseball’s back! It’s been a long time. The Royals just proved the numbers wrong the last time around. Maybe now it’s another team’s turn.

If you’re a fan in New York, you’re excited about baseball. If you’re a fan in Atlanta, you’re excited about baseball. If you’re a fan in Arizona, you’re excited about baseball. But: One of the dominant spring-training storylines was that the Dodgers were being undone by injury after injury. And it’s true; The Dodgers have already had their depth challenged, because they’ve got a busy disabled list. Yet, the Dodgers came equipped with reinforcements, so it seems like they should be able to handle this. Right at the end of spring training, the Diamondbacks lost A.J. Pollock. They might’ve lost him for the entire season. With one blow, Arizona has probably been hurt more than Los Angeles, and while anything is still able to happen, it’s a devastating turn of events. Their season hasn’t started yet, and the Diamondbacks might well be screwed.

Read the rest of this entry »

When we’ve written about the Diamondbacks this offseason, we’ve highlighted their seeming lack of depth, behind the stars. They appeared to be in position to give too much playing time to potential zeroes, potential zeroes like Yasmany Tomas. Tomas, of course, cost the Diamondbacks a fortune, and he remains plenty young and capable of turning things around, but he’s coming off a terrible season. You don’t want to guarantee anything to that kind of player. Turns out, the Diamondbacks don’t need to.

Some years ago, you easily could’ve argued Paul Goldschmidt was the most underrated player in baseball. Later on, A.J. Pollock became maybe the most underrated player in baseball, and then, David Peralta looked super underrated, and Ender Inciarte looked the same. Maybe there’s enough here to call it a pattern. And, now the team has a new candidate. He hasn’t proven anything yet, so he’s not underrated on the Peralta or Inciarte level, but it’s time to look out for Socrates Brito. All anyone cared about was the name. It’s become time to care about the player.

Read the rest of this entry »

I remember writing an article a few years ago about Michael Bourn. The article was built around something I’d seen on the ESPN Home Run Tracker. I didn’t think of Bourn as being a strong hitter. You don’t think of Bourn as being a strong hitter. I imagine Bourn doesn’t even think of himself as being a strong hitter. But he hit this one home run, off Jeff Suppan in April 2009. According to the website, the homer went 457 feet, which is 31 feet longer than any other Bourn homer in his big-league career. The way I interpreted that, it hinted at Bourn’s absolute power ceiling. He doesn’t spend a lot of time around his ceiling, of course, but you can’t really fake such a big dinger. It was interesting to me, at least — interesting enough that I haven’t forgotten about it.

I was reminded of that research and article by something Peter O’Brien just did.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shelby Miller’s pitch usage changed last year. Per PITCHf/x, his cutter percentage jumped from 5.8% to 20.7% while his curveball percentage fell from 19.5% to 9.7%. He also employed his fastball differently. His four-seam — a pitch known for its explosiveness — was thrown just 32.7% of the time, down from 61.6%. Conversely, his two-seam percentage climbed from 10.3% to 33.8% (and his ground-ball rate rose from 39.9% to 47.7%).

The hard-throwing right-hander’s changeup usage remained relatively static, inching down from 2.4% to 2.2%.

Miller had success with his new approach. In his first-and-only season with the Braves, the former Cardinal established a new career high in innings pitched, and his 3.02 ERA, 3.45 FIP and 0.57 HR/9 were career lows.

Earlier this week, I asked the 25-year-old Arizona Diamondback about the thought-process behind his changes, and whether we might see anything different this season.

———

Miller on throwing more two-seamers: “I knew it could help me get deeper into games and be a more efficient pitcher. In 2013 and 2014, in St. Louis, I relied on my four-seamer a lot. I’d go five innings, five-plus, six once in awhile. I wasn’t getting deep; I wasn’t getting into to the seventh and eighth like I wanted to.

“I throw a lot of fastballs. When you throw four-seams the whole time, guys foul them off. And it’s flat, so they see it better. I know that mine [has good carry], so I do use it a lot up in the zone. It’s still one of my favorite pitches. It’s what I control the best and I rely on it a lot.

“When you’re only throwing a four-seamer, guys see it and see it and see it. I think you have to mix it up. A sinker is a great pitch. It looks like a four-seam fastball and at the last second it moves. It has a couple inches of sink, which can be the difference between a fly ball and a ground ball.

“The sinker allows me to give a hitter a different look. Everybody is different. Some hitters are better than others, and some people hit sinkers better than others. It’s really more about going in with a game plan. You’re not trying to overpower guys with sinkers. It’s more a pitch for double-play situations and early in the count when you’re trying to get ground balls. You have longer at bats and you have shorter at-bats, and my motto is, ‘Try to get guys out with three pitches or less.’”

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s start with the video. And then the words. Because you might not spot everything in the video the first time through. It sorta looks like an everyday foul ball, maybe with some sort of inside joke at the end. Trust me, though, this moment is fairly epic.

Paul Konerko‘s reaction provides our first clue that something was a bit different about this swing. He’s animated, talking to the third base coach about something. Zack Greinke’s doing a bit of stomping around after he watches it go.

“There are guys that take so quickly that it almost forces you to throw strikes,” Greinke told me at Spring Training earlier this month. “Paul Konerko, he would change his stances all the time, but there was this one time where he had this new stance where it looked like he wasn’t even getting ready and then all of a sudden you go and he’d swing.”

I laughed out loud. He was quick-pitching you! “Yeah,” Greinke agreed. “Before release, I think, oh, he’s taking, and you’d get overconfident. He only did that for a month or so.”

Go back and look at the video. It’s not quite a bat on the shoulder, but there is something about Konerko’s setup that seems lackadaisical. Given the 1-0 count, it looks like he’s waiting for Greinke to get himself in a deeper hole. “A guy like that, you think most pitchers would be coming with the fastball, but he’s liable to give you another slider out of the zone,” agreed Konerko when contacted by phone about the at-bat. “And then sometimes, he’d even take something off when he was supposed to come at you.”

So maybe Konerko was just taking, and that’s why it took him so long to get ready? Not quite. It did take him a long time to get ready back then. On purpose. “I used to be too tense too early before the pitch came,” Konerko remembered, “so sometimes I would wait to see how long I could wait. I was so ready to hit that it didn’t help me.” So, in the footage here, Konerko actually is attempting to chill out as long as possible, but not so much to mislead Greinke as to prepare himself optimally.

Read the rest of this entry »

Adam LaRoche may or may not be retiring. It certainly seems as though he is, and it seems as though his decision was made abruptly. While that may not be 100 percent certain, now seems like a good time to look back on his career. On one hand, LaRoche was sort of a letdown, in that he never really took off the way it seemed like he might. On the other hand, LaRoche was a huge success, and should be celebrated as such.
Read the rest of this entry »

Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Miami / Minnesota / Milwaukee / New York (NL)

Way back in November, before I had finished tweaking my KATOH model, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Arizona Diamondbacks. In this companion piece, I finally get around to looking at that same Arizona farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Diamondbacks have the 21st best farm system according to KATOH.

There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors. Read the rest of this entry »

Retirement announcements are seldom surprising, because even from the outside it’s pretty simple to tell when a player has outlived his utility. Willie Bloomquist is 38, now, and after spending the offseason making up his mind, he tweeted the following last Friday:

Make your last swing your BEST swing. Farewell @MLB. Thank you for 14 amazing seasons. It’s been an incredible ride. pic.twitter.com/VuImzqOrSl

— Willie Bloomquist (@williebloom) March 11, 2016

Bloomquist is hanging them up, which means Bloomquist articles on analytical websites must also hang them up. In a way it’s amazing Bloomquist achieved such Internet fame in the first place, being a career reserve, but his name meant a little something over the years, and here, for one last time, I want to talk about what Willie Bloomquist was.

Read the rest of this entry »