Archive for Teams

The Houston rotation is more than one man, but no one man is more important for the rotation than Dallas Keuchel. Peripherals aside, Keuchel didn’t have the year he wanted to have in 2016, having to fight most of the way through shoulder discomfort. Related to that, Keuchel saw his ERA jump from 2.48 to 4.55. There were downs, and there were ups, but Keuchel and the Astros came in this season looking for a far greater performance. Give the Astros a 2015 version of Keuchel and the rotation would feel plenty more stable.

Three starts in, Keuchel’s allowed a total of two runs. He’s gotten some of his grounders back, and he’s seeing positive results again off of his sinker. It’s fair to wonder, then, whether Keuchel has re-discovered his old form. The reality of it? Not exactly. There’s a similar-looking pitcher here, sure, but Keuchel hasn’t succeeded through the 2015 approach. Rather, he’s gone the full Brad Ziegler.

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Things were looking up for the Pirates. They’d emerged from the weekend with a sweep of the Cubs in Chicago. Jameson Taillon had pitched like a burgeoning ace. Ivan Nova had recorded more complete games than walks since joining the Pirates. The Cardinals and Cubs were scuffling. There was perhaps a sense that the Pirates’ final standing in the NL Central wasn’t predetermined.

And then they lost another star player for reasons unrelated to injury.

First it was Jung Ho Kang unable to gain entry to the country, denied a work visa due to his legal issues. And on Tuesday, MLB announced that Starling Marte has been suspended for 80 games due to a positive test for Nandrolone.

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Eric Thames is, at present, the major-league leader in wRC+. He’s also the major-league leader in home runs, and he’s the major-league leader in WAR. He’s gone deep in, what, five games in a row? That would be easy enough for me to fact-check, but I don’t want to waste my time checking those facts when Thames might extend his own streak at any moment. He’s homered in many games in a row. Let’s unpack what’s going on.

Literally yesterday, Nick wrote a post here entitled “Eric Thames Is Still Mashing.” That post spoke of Thames’ considerable power. Literally hours ago, Dave wrote a post here entitled “The Even Scarier Eric Thames Stat.” That post spoke of Thames’ seemingly improved ability to make contact. Power? Check! Contact? Check! What’s something that might drive both those things? Right — swinging at the correct pitches. At this writing, Eric Thames has baseball’s third-lowest swing rate at pitches out of the zone.

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Home runs. People love them! And people love them when they happen a bunch. Giancarlo Stanton has, during his career, hit four home runs in a row. Carlos Gonzalez has also hit four home runs in a row. It’s a crazy-good achievement, pulled off only a couple dozen times. There have been about as many such home-run streaks as there have been perfect games. Everyone loves a home-run streak or a perfect game.

Part of the appeal of something like that is the individual-accomplishment aspect. A pitcher can’t be better than perfect, and homering all the time would be the hitter equivalent. But don’t forget about the related matter of scarcity. We all also fall all over ourselves when we see something that never happens. Think about what it means for a baseball event to be rare. And I mean ultra-rare. There is so much baseball, all of the time. Every season involves an unnecessarily large number of baseball games, for even the most forgettable and pointless of rosters. Baseball is nothing but an endless series of repetitions. An endless number of opportunities for strange things to happen. As a consequence, many strange things have already happened, even several times. You’d never expect a perfect game. The overwhelming majority of us have probably watched perfect games, if maybe not all the way through.

Between Sunday and Monday, Josh Harrison batted seven times. The first two times, he grounded out. The seventh time, he grounded out. In between, he was hit, then he was hit, then he was hit, and then he was hit.

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Steven Souza, Jr. is showing signs he might be ready to break out. Fourteen games are far too few to make any determinations, but the numbers are promising. The Tampa Bay Rays slugger is slashing .320/.424/.520, and six of his 16 safeties have gone for extra bases. Every bit as notable is the fact that he’s drawn nine free passes, and fanned just 13 times, in 59 plate appearances.

Power has never been a problem for the 27-year-old Souza. Making consistent contact has. Coming into the season, he was a .234/.309/.404 hitter with a propensity for being punched out. All of a sudden, he’s the one doing the punching.

When I asked Souza why he’s gotten off to such a good start, he offered a fairly generic answer.

“I really don’t know,” Souza told me on Saturday. “Right now I’m just running into some balls, finding some holes, finding the barrel. I don’t get too caught up in the analytics stuff. I’m a guy who can’t overthink things, so I just try to keep it simple. Right now the ball is falling for me.”

For a baseball reporter, “I just try to keep it simple” is a commonly heard phrase. It’s an honest answer, but at the same time, a more concrete reason is often lurking behind the facade. Souza is hitting the ball harder than ever before — at least in terms of big-league success — and simplicity is rarely a new concept for a professional athlete.

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Last night, the Chicago Cubs lost their seventh game of the season, falling to 6-7 in the process. In 2016, the Cubs didn’t lose their seventh game of the year until May 11, so this start represents a departure from last season’s 103-win, World Series champion.

That doesn’t mean there’s cause for concern, though. The team isn’t hitting all that well, but Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras, and Addison Russell are all likely to improve upon their early-season lines. The offense, as a whole, ought to come around. The rotation is pitching well — Kyle Hendricks has had a rough start, but Brett Anderson has been a pleasant surprise — so nothing really to worry about there. The bullpen, though, might be worth a closer look.

The Cubs’ bullpen has put up a 4.10 ERA, which isn’t very good, and a 4.46 FIP, which is even worse. Through 41.2 innings, the team’s relievers have been slightly worse than replacement level as a group. They’ve blown four saves already, tied with the Marlins for the most in the National League — and for whatever shortcomings the save possesses as a metric, having a bullpen blow a lead four times in 13 games isn’t good.

On the whole, the bullpen has been bad. Has it been team-wide issue, though, or the product of a few poor performers? Let’s see.

New closer Wade Davis has been good. Koji Uehara has been fine. Carl Edwards, Jr. looks like he’s ready to step into a more prominent role. Mike Montgomery hasn’t been great, really, but he’s covered a lot of innings adequately. Hector Rondon seems like he’s probably back after a rough 2016 season, and Brian Duensing has only pitched two innings. If there’s blame to had it is coming from two guys: Justin Grimm and Pedro Strop. While Grimm’s start hasn’t been great, he’s also not expected to be more than the sixth- or seventh-best reliever on the team. Looking even closer, Grimm’s poor pitching hasn’t really even cost the Cubs. Here are the same pitchers by win-probability statistics.

Of Grimm’s six appearances, three have come in very low-leverage situations, one has been roughly neutral, and two have occurred in high-leverage situations. On April 10, Grimm came on in the seventh with the bases loaded and no outs with the Cubs holding a one-run lead. A pop fly and a double play later, the Cubs’ chances of winning moved from 39% to 79%, making up for Grimm’s few poor performances in low-leverage outings, as well as another appearance (April 14) during which he allowed two inherited runners plus a run of his own en route to turning a 2-1 lead into a 4-2 deficit.

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As Nick noted yesterday, Eric Thames is destroying the baseball right now. Through his first 48 plate appearances, he’s hitting .405/.479/1.000, good for a ridiculous .604 wOBA and 287 wRC+, both the best in baseball. He’s homered in five consecutive games, and 11 of his 17 hits this year have gone for extra bases. Power was the one part of Thames’ game in which we were fairly confident, but he’s putting to rest any doubts about whether his thump would translate back to the big leagues.

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Last Thursday, baseball got weird and the Mets and Marlins played past midnight. After Travis d’Arnaud hit the go-ahead homer in the 16th, the catcher slowly trotted around the bases, admitting afterwards that he needed the invigorating effects of that moment just to complete the task. “The emotions of the home run helped lift my legs a little bit,” he said to James Wagner after the game regarding his tired knees. After the dust had settled and all the exhausted quotes were collected, though, the teams had to play another game later that day. What sort of effect would the marathon game have on that game?

Intuitively, you might expect the teams to have trouble scoring runs the next day. Tired legs, tired minds, tired bats, you’d think. Turns out that instinct is accurate… sort of.

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In yesterday’s ninth inning, Sam Dyson came in with a lead, and left with a loss. It’s the second time that’s happened. Another time, he came in with a tie, and left with a loss. Another time, he came in with a lead, and left with a tie. Dyson has so far pitched in six games, and he’s been charged with four of what we call Meltdowns. He has zero saves, three blown saves, three losses, and a 27.00 ERA. The Rangers are probably going to give Dyson a break from closing, not because they necessarily think he’s toast, but because at some point you just need to make a change so that Dyson doesn’t completely lose confidence.

Dyson has two scoreless appearances, both of which came in low-leverage spots. He’s been a nightmare in the four higher-leverage spots. Of Dyson’s seven worst career appearances, as ranked by Win Probability Added, four have come in the last two weeks, with Dyson owning a total -2.6 WPA. The next-worst mark in baseball right now is Steve Pearce‘s -1.2. The next-worst mark for a pitcher right now is Xavier Cedeno’s -1.1. Dyson, already, has been a win and a half worse than the next-most harmful player.

It’s natural to wonder about historical context. And I couldn’t find a real clean way to look this up, but I’ve done the best I could, using the Baseball-Reference Play Index. Looking at pitchers only, I searched for the worst starts to seasons, by WPA, through a team’s first 12 games. And assuming I did everything correctly, Dyson is the big winner, or the big loser. I couldn’t find a pitcher with a worse 12-team-game WPA than Dyson’s -2.6. The closest I found was -2.0, belonging to 2011 Matt Thornton. If this is correct, then Dyson has had the worst such start by more than half a win. It’s a weird and oddly specific stat query, but it might be helpful to know that Dyson’s troubles have indeed been historic in magnitude. Nobody else on record has struggled like this in circumstances like his.

As a certain amount of consolation: Matt Thornton that one year allowed 10 runs in his first 4.2 innings. Opponents managed a 1.061 OPS. From Thornton’s next outing onward, his ERA was 2.95, and opponents managed a paltry .594 OPS. Thornton got himself back on track, as if nothing had ever happened. The Rangers probably figure Dyson should be able to do the same. In the short-term, though, expect them to protect themselves, just in case. So much damage — so much damage — has already been done.

Logan Morrison is older and wiser, and he’s off to a strong start this season with the Tampa Bay Rays. Over 46 plate appearances (including this morning’s game), the 29-year-old first baseman is slashing a healthy .302/.348/.535, with three round trippers. Thanks in part to a grand salami and a .350 batting average with runners on base, he’s tied for the team lead in RBI, with 10.

He’s still colorful. Morrison has long been good with a quip, and while his hitting approach has matured, his personality remains engagingly offbeat. That’s good new for scribes and fans alike — everyone loves a snappy quote — and LoMo supplied several when I spoke to him over the weekend.

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Morrison on his career thus far: “I’d say I’ve had some ups and downs. There have been some speed bumps along the road, but I’m still here. They’re trying to get me out, but I’m still here.

“I was 22 years old when I got called up. I didn’t know [crap] about anything I was doing. I thought I did. I thought I had it all figured out, and I actually did pretty well that first half-season. I carried it over into the next year, too, but then I got hurt and got off the tracks a little bit. Then I got hurt again. I had to have another surgery on the same leg.

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