For fans of Carlos Marmol, it’s been a confusing few days, even beyond the usual confusion baseline. On Tuesday, Marmol was shipped from the Cubs to the Dodgers. On Wednesday, there were initial reports the Dodgers were cutting ties, but now it’s clear they simply intend to send him to the minor leagues for a little while, in theory to get him “straightened out.” Marmol, at some point, should pitch for the Dodgers, and they have more interest in him than they had in the now-departed Matt Guerrier. Cynics will note that the solution to an inconsistent Brandon League isn’t adding another one, but if the odds are X% that League turns it around, the odds are greater that one of League and Marmol turns it around.

Of course, Marmol was just designated for assignment. There’s not a lot there, beyond the strikeouts, the frequency of which is plummeting. Since 2011, among pitchers with at least 150 innings, Marmol ranks 14th-worst in OBP allowed, at .355. He’s hanging around the likes of Dallas Keuchel and Derek Lowe and Edinson Volquez, and though Marmol generally limits batting and slugging, his career isn’t on the way up. Marmol, probably, can be useful, but since 2011 he has a 105 FIP-. Guerrier has a 109 FIP-. Lots of relievers can be useful and Marmol isn’t going to pitch the Dodgers into first place.

Read the rest of this entry »

And the trade season is officially here. We have our first significant trade of the year on July 2nd, and the timing of this move is not a coincidence.

First, the details, per Keith Law.

Orioles acquire Scott Feldman and Tony Clevenger from the Cubs for Jake Arrietta, Pedro Strop, and int'l bonus slots.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) July 2, 2013

For the record, he meant Steve Clevenger, but he’s a throw-in in this deal, and it’s not like Baltimore is acquiring him to unseat Matt Wieters or anything. This deal is basically Feldman for two pitchers and, in a first for MLB, pool allocation money that will allow the Cubs to be more aggressive in international free agency. We’ll get to that part of the trade in a second. First, let’s start with what the Orioles are getting in Scott Feldman.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past I’ve written on a handful of occasions about how sometimes I like to just get lost playing with Barry Bonds‘ statistics. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate Bonds’ performances at the time — it’s that I think it can take years to appreciate what he did fully. One could make it his life’s pursuit to arrive at a true understanding and appreciation of Bonds’ statistical record. There were good players, and there were great players, and then there was Barry Bonds, who occupied his own level. Sure, maybe he only got up there with the help of a biochemical jetpack, but lots of people were using the machinery and couldn’t get far off the ground. If you just want to look at numbers, Bonds’ are the best to look at, because they’re straight-up absurd.

Given what Bonds accomplished, then, one has to be careful not to be too casual about drawing comparisons. There is no more flattering offensive comp, so few will ever exceed the threshold of acceptability. But Chris Davis is, if nothing else, giving it his best try. What follows is a comparison between Davis and Bonds, and the frightening thing is I don’t think it’s a stretch. This isn’t a thing one notes lightly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Davis has had power for as long as he’s been a professional, and probably longer. His first year, in Low-A, he slugged .534. The next year he slugged .598. In Triple-A he slugged over .600. The power is what got Davis to the majors. But Davis now is taking things to new levels. It wouldn’t be right to say Davis has been hitting everything, because he’s missed quite a lot. But he’s hit more things than he used to, and that’s why he’s currently leading the majors in home runs, with 20. His isolated slugging percentage is more than double Adrian Beltre‘s career number. It’s more than double Robinson Cano‘s. It’s got 50 points on Babe Ruth’s. If baseballs had snot in them, there would be a lot of snot on Chris Davis’ uniform.

Davis possesses what you might call “easy power.” Several people have characterized it as “effortless.” According to FanGraphs commenter farrpar, “He has the most effortless power in baseball, no doubt about it.” According to this guy, “Wow! Chris Davis! Effortless Grand-slam!!! Go O’s.” According to David Miller, “The thing about Davis is that his swing looks so effortless on homerun balls like the one he hit on Sunday.” According to OsLuvrInKy, “Gotta love it. His swings just look so effortless.” Last season, in fact, Davis hit a home run on a broken bat. Because Davis is all the some of the rage right now, I’ve decided to prepare a top-five list of his most effortless home-run swings of the 2013 season so far. One way to measure effortlessness would be biomechanical examination. Another way would be guessing.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago, you the attentive reader, will surely have observed the introduction of our depth charts and standings pages. It was a long time coming, and we remain pretty freaking excited about it. As such, we thought that every two weeks that we’d take a look at some sort of change or happening or goings-on that occurred.

We’re not going to cover every team, because let’s face it, there really is only so many times that one can write a variation of “the Marlins aren’t even trying” without wanting to scrape out your eyebones with a rusty screwdriver. But we’ll still try to pry out an objective look in some way. This week, we’ll take a look at the three biggest movers — one positive and two negative — in terms of ranking of projected full season winning percentage. (One note — the looks here are from last Tuesday, the 14th, to this morning, but in future editions we’ll likely use Monday as the cut-off day for a number of reasons, nearly all of which involve my sanity.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Rick Peterson looked on from the Bowie Baysox’s dugout as Kevin Gausman stated his case. The Orioles’ prized right hander decimated the Trenton Thunder over six innings, striking out ten and allowing few well hit balls. With Baltimore four games behind the American League East division leaders and their rotation in shambles, expect Gausman to earn a promotion after the super-two deadline passes in mid-June. In eight starts with Double-A Bowie, Gausman has been nearly untouchable. He’s third in the Eastern League in FIP, and owns a 25.7% strikeout rate and a 2.6% walk rate.

The high-waisted 6’3″ right hander has a long, lean frame and he’s listed at just 190 lbs. There is plenty of room for growth throughout his body, if he should choose to cultivate mass. In the windup, Gausman has a high leg kick. He brings his left leg to his hands, which rest chest high at takeaway before he delivers the ball from a high three quarter arm slot.

Read the rest of this entry »

In Sports Illustrated’s 2013 baseball preview, Tom Verducci wrote a great profile of the Tampa Bay Rays and their approach to optimizing the performance of their pitching staff.

One topic that was especially interesting to me was the apparent importance the Rays place on the 1-1 count. Verducci recounts how pitching coach Jim Hickey described the organization’s focus on getting opposing batters into 1-2 counts:

The Rays believe no pitch changes the course of that at bat more than the 1-and-1 delivery. “It’s almost a 200-point swing in on-base percentage with one ball and two strikes as opposed to two balls and one strike,” Hickey told the pitchers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, in part to boost interest in the game after the 1994 season was cut short by the players’ strike. More than 15 years after the first interleague game between the Giants and the Rangers at The Ballpark at Arlington, MLB continues to boast about attendance at interleague games. Last season, the average attendance at interleague games was 34,693, the highest since 2008, when 35,587 fans, on average, attended interleague games.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles shocked the baseball world by making the American League playoffs last season, based largely on a 29-9 record in one-run games. This .763 winning percentage in one-run games was the best in baseball and had every analyst who knew how to calculate a Pythagorean record screaming, “Lucky!”  Was the Orioles record in one-run games lucky? Or, the better question is, how much of it was luck?

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper had two of the best seasons for age-19/age-20 players in baseball history. We might not ever see anything like Trout’s 2012 season from a 20-year-old again. Those two ruined our expectations for what underaged position players are supposed to do in the big leagues. Everyone else pales in comparison to what we just saw.

That shouldn’t cause us to overlook the fact that there’s another 20-year-old putting his mark on Major League Baseball right now. In Baltimore, Manny Machado is showing the early signs of being a superstar.

Read the rest of this entry »