Part of growing up is realizing that some no-hitters aren’t necessarily great pitching performances. Try telling an eight-year-old that the six-walk no-hitter she’s watching is less impressive than a one-hit, no-walk shutout and she’ll look at you like you’re from another planet. If you explain that same thing to an adult, she probably won’t turn off the TV, but will probably concede you have a point. No-hitters have a magic that transcends the actual logic of the achievement. That’s perfectly fine, of course, as one’s enjoyment of an event doesn’t need to correlate precisely with it’s degree of difficulty.

But it’s worth considering why the no-hitter is magical. Most of it is probably the name and the history, but I’ll propose another reason: it’s a razor’s edge accomplishment. In other words, as soon as the pitcher allows a hit, the entire thing is over. When Barry Bonds was chasing Hank Aaron, if he failed to hit a home run, there would always be another chance. If a batter falls below .400, he can always bring his average back up. When you’re dealing with an accomplishment based on a zero, everything is exciting because it could be gone at any moment.

This is why I was so interested in Chase Utley‘s no-double play season. Every single plate appearance mattered. Well, in preparing last week’s post on Derek Dietrich’s elite ability to get hit with the baseball, I noticed another zero-based accomplishment that’s pretty extraordinary: Coco Crisp hasn’t been hit by a pitch in more than five years.

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For much of the postseason – with the exception of Buck Showalter’s decision to strand Zach Britton in the visiting bullpen at Rogers Centre in Toronto – it seemed the game might be on the cusp of a new revolution, a bullpen revolution.

For many, the major takeaway from October was how some managers were employing their top relief arms. Kenley Jansen recorded at least five outs in four of his seven postseason appearances, pitching three innings in Game Six of the NLCS. Aroldis Chapman entered seven playoff games before the ninth inning, and nowhere was the trend more dramatic or effective than in Cleveland.

Trying to piece together a pitching plan with an injury-depleted rotation, injuries in part allowing him to operate unconventionally, Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona turned Andrew Miller into perhaps the most valuable player of the postseason.

Miller made 10 appearances and each began before the ninth inning. He entered most often in the seventh inning (four occasions), but entered as early as the fifth three times. The lefty also entered in the sixth twice. He appeared as late as the eighth. Miller recorded at least four outs in every appearance and went at least two innings six times.

Everything was going so well for the revolution until Game Seven…

And later, this…

Miller pitched 19.1 postseason innings. He allowed 12 hits, three runs, walked three and struck out 30. But all three of the runs he allowed occurred in the World Series, including two costly ones in Game Seven, when he was pitching for the fourth time in the series.

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Ten plays. Ten plays can change a player’s career.

We talk all the time about how defensive numbers come in small samples. For an outfielder, the sample of plays that actually separate a good from a bad defender is even smaller.

In most cases, a batted ball to the outfield is either a can of corn or a clear hit. In between, there just aren’t many opportunities. For Rajai Davis as a center fielder, there are 19 plays that could have gone either way over the last two years. He missed 10 of them — which is bad — and then many of us stopped considering him as a center fielder. Ten plays!

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On December 8, the Cleveland Indians’ Web site published a brief, 135-word story announcing James Harris as the club’s new farm director.

While filling such vacancies is typically not headline news, it was a modest announcement for one of the more inspired front-office additions of the offseason.

Why is it interesting?

Harris never played baseball professionally, in college, or high school.

In fact, Harris has never coached the sport at any level.

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On Tuesday, we looked at the best pitches in baseball last year when judged by whiffs and grounders. One thing we learned in that exercise: they were all thrown by relievers. Makes sense. They get a lot of advantages when it comes to short stints and leveraged situations. Let’s not hold it against them because the rest of the reliever’s life is very difficult. On the other hand, let’s also celebrate the starting pitchers separately, because many of them have pitches that are excellent despite the fact that they have to throw more often, to batters of both hands.

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Cleveland came so, so, so close to the World Series crown just a couple months ago. It probably doesn’t hurt the way it hurt Red Sox fans in 1986, since they didn’t lose in the worst way imaginable, but it probably stings pretty hard, even now. Cleveland fans have likely buoyed themselves with the thought that with Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar back at full strength, and with a whole season of Andrew Miller, 2017 could bring a return trip. Bring the boys back and win it the second time around, the same way their American League Central brethren, the Kansas City Royals, did before them.
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There were a few rookie hitters who ruined it for everyone. Gary Sanchez was completely absurd for a couple of months. Corey Seager immediately performed as one of the best players in baseball. Because of Seager, Trea Turner got overlooked in the National League — out of all the rookies who batted at least 250 times, Turner finished first in wRC+. He had a comfortable 10-point lead.

A couple players in the American League were even more overlooked. Ryon Healy finished fourth in that same group in wRC+. Hardly anyone noticed. And Tyler Naquin finished third, with a wRC+ of 135. Seager came in at 137. Mookie Betts finished at 135. The other Seager finished at 133. Naquin had a breakthrough season, and he was one of the guys who helped push the Indians into the playoffs.

Yet, eyeball the stat line, and you wonder. Naquin struck out three times out of every 10 opportunities. His BABIP was literally north of .400. And he also slugged .514, as a guy who didn’t establish a power-hitting track record in the minors. At 25, Naquin has plenty of time to improve. But in one way, his 2016 looks a lot like Bryce Harper’s 2015.

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Two days ago, I examined what exactly is going on in the San Diego rotation. The notion of a Padres pitcher is almost a philosophical one. Technically there are starting pitchers on the roster, yes, but any resemblance to any quality pitchers, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This is somewhat the case with the group of outfielders currently employed by the Cleveland Indians. I would hesitate to insinuate that these outfielders, who play for a team that reached Game Seven of the World Series, are of a similar quality to the starting pitchers of the Padres. Tyler Naquin, after all, just finished third in the American League Rookie of the Year voting. Brandon Guyer could be sitting on his couch at home and stand a good chance of being hit by an errant pitch and being awarded first place. Lonnie Chisenhall is a solid if unspectacular player. And we must remember that for all his injury tribulations this past year and change, Michael Brantley is still one of the more talented players in all of baseball.

Yet when taken altogether, this does not look like the outfield of a team that just won a pennant, nor one that’s expected to contend for a division title. Cleveland’s strength will always be its pitching. The team is built around Francisco Lindor, yes, but it’s also built around Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and Danny Salazar. These are the men who decide if the team soars or crashes. If the pitching is good, the team will have a chance. They still need good position players, though, and the outfield gives them three opportunities to do that.

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With regard to the ZiPS projections for Cleveland that appeared at this site earlier in the day, a few commenters have observed the statistical curiosities for which outfielder Brandon Guyer is responsible. One reader notes, for example, that Guyer is forecast for a .358 on-base percentage despite just a .272 batting average and 5.6% walk rate. The difference, of course, is a product of the copious hit-by-pitches for which he’s projected. Another reader correctly notes that, in 2016, Guyer was more often hit (20 times) by left-handed pitchers than struck out (17) by them.

Because all of us are beautiful and unique like a snowflake, it’s not surprising to learn that Brandon Guyer is also beautiful and unique like a snowflake. The purpose of this post is to celebrate Guyer’s particular set of skills, while also allowing the author to experiment with the splits leaderboard introduced earlier this week by unassuming hit man Sean Dolinar.

What I’ve done to fashion the definitive Brandon Guyer Leaderboard is to identify both hit-by-pitch and strikeout rate against left-handed pitchers for every batter season (minimum 60 plate appearances) since 2000. The full results of that search can be found here.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cleveland Indians. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Chicago NL / Detroit / Houston / San Diego / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Despite having just completed only his age-22 season, shortstop Francisco Lindor (681 PA, 5.9 zWAR) has become pretty decisively not only the strongest of Cleveland’s field players, but among the strongest in the league. A brief examination of the nine clubs for whom a ZiPS projection has been published here reveals that only three batters — Kris Bryant (672, 6.9), Carlos Correa (682, 6.5), and Josh Donaldson (657, 7.0) — have received a more promising forecast for 2017.

If one takes for granted that every WAR projection possesses an implied error bar, then it stands to reason that Michael Brantley’s projection (339, 1.6) features a larger error bar than most. ZiPS, the product of an algorithm on Dan Szymborski’s computer, does not account for the precise nature of Brantley’s injuries over the past couple years. What it does account for, however, is that Brantley recorded only 43 plate appearances in 2016. That both (a) suppresses his playing-time projection for 2017 and (b) creates uncertainty in general.

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