Jeff Sullivan has found that framing data is going insane. Jeff has also previously written about the rise of the framing floor. And perhaps none of this should comes as a surprise. As the value of pitch-framing has become more apparent, clubs seem to have valued the skill more, emphasizing catcher presentation both in development and in their assessment of players. The narrowing of the advantage for some clubs was probably inevitable.

Still, there remain some players with a consistent year-to-year individual advantage at the position. Players like Yasmani Grandal and Yadier Molina and Buster Posey. And in 2017, there remained a sizeable gap between framing Haves and Have Nots.

After signing Matt Wieters to be their primary catcher last offseason, the Nationals suffered a 30-run decrease in framing runs from 2016 to 2017. Last season, only the Rockies were worse than the Nationals by that measure among postseason teams.

Readers of this site are likely familiar with Wieters’ framing issues. This author alone has addressed them at least three times: prior to last offseason, prior to the trade deadline, and during the postseason. And even though Wieters exercised his $10.5 million option earlier this offseason, the Nationals could still stand to upgrade at the position.

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Going into the 2017 season, the Washington Nationals would have been right to view their outfield as a strength. With Bryce Harper already present in right, the front office traded a pair of highly prized pitching prospects to add Adam Eaton, as well. The acquisition had the benefit of sending Trea Turner to his natural shortstop position, filling another of the Nationals’ holes. Jayson Werth could still be counted on as the weak side of a platoon, and there were bench bats who could otherwise fill in.

Not many people were talking about Michael Taylor at that point — and rightfully so. He’d dealt with a demotion to Triple-A the year prior in order to iron out his swing, and he was increasingly looking like a prospect who’d failed to live up to expectations. Mark Zuckerman of MASN Sports speculated that he was “at best looking at a spot on the bench” alongside Chris Heisey and Adam Lind.

Things changed quickly on April 30th. General manager Mike Rizzo announced that Adam Eaton would be out for the year after stepping awkwardly on first base while legging out an infield single. Suddenly, the Nationals would be leaning much more heavily on Michael Taylor. He responded very well, putting up three-plus wins over the course of the season, with above-average offense and defense in center field. His emergence not only helped push the Nationals to a playoff spot, but now gives them valuable flexibility heading into 2018.

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When I talked to Mike Rizzo in Orlando earlier this week, he told me the Washington Nationals have an eight-person analytics department that includes “three or four employees” who have been added in the last two years. The veteran GM also told me they have their own “Scouting Solutions, which (they) call The Pentagon.” In Rizzo’s opinion, his team has gone from behind the times to having “some of the best and brightest analytics people in all of baseball.”

A pair of uniformed-personnel changes further suggest an increased emphasis on analytics. Dave Martinez has replaced Dusty Baker as manager, and Tim Bogar has come on board as the first base coach. According to Rizzo, their saber-savviness played a role in their hirings.

“It was part of the process,” related Rizzo. “Davey is a 16-year major league veteran who can appeal to a clubhouse of major league players — there’s a respect factor there — and he’s also coming from two of the most-analytical organizations in baseball, in Tampa Bay and Chicago. He’s bringing that love of analytics and the implementation of those statistics with his thought process. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Major League Baseball organization has players who fly below the radar. They add value — or are projected to do so in the future — yet are underappreciated, if not unnoticed, by the vast majority of fans. The same is true for coaches, and even some managers, particularly at the minor-league level. Other behind-the-scenes personnel, such as scouts, are largely invisible. Given their contributions, many of these people deserve more accolades than they get.

With that in mind, I asked a cross section of general managers and presidents of baseball operations if they could point to a person in their organization who stands out as being under the radar. With a nearly across-the-board caveat that it’s hard to name just one, all gave interesting answers.

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Chaim Bloom, Tampa Bay Rays: “I’ll go with two guys who we feel strongly about that are actually no longer on the radar, because we just put them on our big-league staff. That would be Kyle Snyder and Ozzie Timmons. They were with us in Durham for a while and have played a huge role in the development of a lot of our young players. One of the reasons we’re excited about what’s coming was on display with that club. They won a Triple-A championship with a very young team.

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We’re currently in the midst of a lull in the baseball calendar. The offseason has officially arrived and yet the Hot Stove hasn’t really been lit yet. I suppose I could get excited for Awards season, but the painfully slow roll out and the heated arguments wear me down fairly quickly.

So, instead, I try to make my own baseball entertainment. For me, one exercise is simply to look over the league and attempt to identify the players about whom I’m most excited for next season. Not superstars, necessarily: everyone is always excited to watch the game’s brightest lights. And not prospects who haven’t yet reached the Show, either. I’m not really qualified to talk about those players in a meaningful way, so I’ll leave those players to Eric (and Chris) and all the scouts out there.

Outside of those groups, though, there are still hundreds of players from which to choose. I’ll be excited to watch more than these 10, of course, but in surveying the league, these are ones who caught my eye. Note that this isn’t in any particular order. I’m equally excited about all 10. Perhaps you’ll agree with me, perhaps not. Feel free to conduct your own exercise and let me know who your 10 players are in the comments.

Rafael Devers

The new Red Sox third baseman enjoyed a meteoric debut month, swatting his way to a 224 wRC+ in his July call-up. That covered just 27 plate appearances, though, and as we moved into August and September, he cooled off significantly. He hit safely from his second game (July 26) through his eighth game (August 4). At that point, he was hitting .389/.463/.694, for a 205 wRC+. From August 5 through the end of the regular season, though, he hit .263/.312/.441, for a 92 wRC+. Doom and gloom, right? Not entirely, no, because in Boston’s abbreviated playoff run, he was one of the few bright spots, slashing .364/.429/.909. He slugged two homers — one off of Francisco Liriano and one off of Ken Giles. The latter was of the inside-the-park variety, but it was impressive nonetheless:

So, it’s hard to know what to expect from young Devers. Andrew Benintendi was similarly hyped coming into last campaign and was decidedly mediocre for large swaths of the season. Will that be Devers’ fate too? And what of his fielding? He made seven throwing errors and seven fielding errors in his short time in Boston. If the Red Sox acquire a legit first baseman this winter (or a legit DH and move Hanley Ramirez to first) and it turns out that Devers can’t hack at it at third, the Red Sox will have a conundrum to solve.

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The postseason game is changing around us. Starting pitchers are being asked to go harder for shorter periods of time, allowing teams to begin playing matchups with the bullpen as early as the third inning. And while strategically sound in most cases, this trend has emerged without a major change in how we think about rest and schedules in the postseason. As much as we might love the high-intensity matchups that “bullpenning” provides, is it possible that pitchers are having to endure greater stress than in the past?

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Baseball can be really weird, but the game has rarely facilitated action more unusual than the sort that occurred in the fifth inning of Game 5 on Thursday night between the Nationals and Cubs.

The inning in question produced a series of four events that had never happened consecutively in the game’s recorded history, covering some 2.3 million half-innings.

Craig Edwards dove into a potentially overlooked batter-interference call that would have stopped the Nationals’ hemorrhaging in the inning, held the deficit at one, and perhaps have allowed the team to keep playing this October.

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In a win-or-go-home game that finishes 9-8, there are going to be a lot of important moments. Big plays made or not made by players. Important decisions made or not made by managers. Huge calls made or not made by umpires. We never want to focus on the umpires if at all possible because it takes away from the more important and more entertaining aspects of the game. At some point, however, it’s impossible to omit them from the conversation.

In the top of the fifth inning of last night’s deciding Division Series game between the Cubs and Nationals, the visiting team had runners on first and second base. With two outs and an 0-2 count, Max Scherzer threw Javy Baez a pitch in the dirt. Baez swung and missed for strike three, but the ball got past Matt Wieters, allowing Baez to run to first base. During Baez’s backswing, his bat made contact with Wieters’ helmet.

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When I talked to Tanner Roark back in 2014, he was in the middle of his breakout season and made sure to explain all the adjustments that led to that excellent year. But, even then, he gave us clues about his second act and what he might do in the future. And though the overall results have been uneven at times, it’s that kind of forward-thinking that has kept him productive. If he stays on the mound long enough in tonight’s Game 5, we’ll see some of those secondary adjustments in action.

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Maybe it was the antibiotics, maybe it was the shame. Whatever the reason, Stephen Strasburg pitched Wednesday and offered an extraordinary performance, particularly given the context.

Strasburg gave us his Jordan-with-the flu, Reed-coming-out-of-tunnel, Gibson-homering-on-zero-healthy-legs, Schilling’s-bloody-sock moment on a dreary, blustery afternoon at Wrigley Field.

Largely because of Strasburg, there will be a Game 5 in this series. Against the Cubs last night, Strasburg surrendered just three hits over seven shutout innings, striking out 12 while conceding just two walks. Over two starts and 14 innings in the NLDS, Strasburg did not allow an earned run, striking out 22 and walking just three. He’s pitching as well anyone on the planet.

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