Archive for Teams

When looking at postseason matchups, the quickest and most natural thing on which to focus is the relative strength of each club’s starting rotation. About a month ago, I wrote about this tendency to get caught up in starting-pitching matchups during postseason overanalysis — in part because it’s something that I myself tend to overanalyze. Which is why I looked at Cleveland at the start of the postseason and gave them little chance to advance to the Division Series or, certainly, the World Series. Lesson learned.

That piece focused on the string of starting pitcher-injuries at the end of the season and their impact on playoff rotations — including, of course, Cleveland. The loss of the No. 2 and No. 3 in their rotation — Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar — represented a devastating blow, and it was natural to wonder how it would impact their October chances. However, it was (and is) undeniable that the team had a tremendous bullpen, which is why this was my conclusion at the time:

“If the rotation can keep them competitive through five or six innings and the offense plays its part, there’s absolutely still a path to October success for Cleveland. Cling to that while all of the pregame overanalyses look unfavorably upon the majority of Cleveland’s starting-pitcher matchups this October.”

As expected, Cleveland’s bullpen has been simply tremendous. With just six earned runs allowed in 32.1 innings pitched, they’re sporting a 1.67 ERA. The significantly less expected development, though, is that the rotation has done a heckuva lot more than just keep the team competitive. The rotation as a whole has allowed a similarly impressive eight earned runs through 38.2 IP, giving that unit a tremendous 1.86 ERA. Obviously Corey Kluber has been a significant part of that success, but so too has Josh Tomlin’s three earned runs in 10.2 IP and Ryan Merritt’s delightfully shocking 4.1 shutout innings. The only starting pitcher for whom the bullpen has really been compelled to clean up is Trevor Bauer and his drone-afflicted pinky.

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We overanalyze the playoffs. And, yeah — in part it’s because we overanalyze everything. It’s the whole reason this place exists. But we always dig deep into October, because we all understand that playoff baseball is a different animal, a different twist on a familiar sport, and we want to wrap our minds around it. We’ve tested theories inspired by the Royals. We’ve tested theories inspired by the Giants. We’ve tested theories inspired by winners, because we want to know if we can better identify winners, before they win. Every October, we search for the key to the tournament. We search, as if there’s anything to find.

There’s not. Oh, sure, there are subtle things, but a playoff series is a coin flip, determined by a sequence of coin flips. The key is for one team to be a better baseball team than the other. Then the coin won’t flip so perfectly even. But so much of this is random. So much of this is random, that it can be hard to believe it’s not *completely* random. We’ve become so conditioned to saying the best teams aren’t always rewarded. When you have one great team, the overall odds are against it.

The overall odds were against the Cubs. If you were trying to figure out the NL pennant, it would’ve been smarter to bet on the field. That’s the reality of having to win two series in a row. But, bless these playoffs. Bless these playoffs, because at least in one of the leagues, there’s restored faith that October can be just. The Chicago Cubs were very obviously the best team. They get to keep playing another handful of ballgames.

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Eric Longenhagen is publishing brief, informal notes from his looks at the prospects of the Arizona Fall League and, for the moment, the Fall Instructional League. Find all editions here.

Braves 2B Travis Demeritte has looked tremendous at second base this fall. Not only has he made several acrobatic plays but he’s handled some bad hops and sucked up errant throws on steal attempts as well. While his hands remain somewhat rough, Demeritte’s range and athleticism have forced me to reckon with the idea of plus-plus defense at second base — as well as to remember if I’ve ever put a 7 on a second baseman’s glove before. I don’t think I have, and I suppose it’s worth asking if such a thing even exists, as one might wonder why a 70 or 80 glove at second base couldn’t play shortstop in some capacity. I think the right concoction of skills (chiefly, great range and actions but a poor arm) can churn out a plus-plus defender there. I’d cite Ian Kinsler, Brandon Phillips and Dustin Pedroia, and Chase Utley as examples from the last eight or 10 years. It’d be aggressive to put a future 7 on Demeritte’s glove right now because his hands and arm accuracy are too inconsistent, but those are things that could be polished up with time.

Tigers RHP Spencer Turnbull was up to 94 and mixed in five different pitches last night. Nothing was plus and Turnbull doesn’t have especially good command but I liked how he and Brewers C Jake Nottingham sequenced hitters and how to and that Turnbull was willing to pitch backwards and give hitters different looks each at-bat. He and Rays RHP Brent Honeywell have the deepest repertoires I’ve seen so far in Fall League.

Giants righty Chris Stratton sat 89-92 last night with an average mid-80s slider that is good enough to miss bats if he locates it, and last night he did. I think the changeup is average, as well, while Stratton’s curveball is a tick below but a useful change of pace early in counts. He looks like a back-end starter.

Quite a few defenders got to air it out last night. Here are some grades I put on guys’ arms:

Dawel Lugo, 3B, ARI: 6

Miguel Andujar, 3B, NYY: 6

Pat Valaika, INF, COL: 5

Gavin Cecchini, INF, NYM: 45

Christin Stewart, OF, DET: 4

Angels CF Michael Hermosillo, who was committed to Illinois to play running back before signing with Anaheim after the 2013 draft, displayed tremendous range in center field last night. He looks erratic at the plate but he hit well at Burlington and Inland Empire this year and is an obvious late-bloomer follow as a two-sport prospect from a cold weather state.

Last night, Jon Lester took the mound for the Cubs, and for most of the game, the conversation was about he can’t do: hold runners on. The Dodgers danced and pranced off first base, taking leads they wouldn’t take against any pitcher, and daring him to throw over to first base. But you know what the Dodgers didn’t do against Jon Lester? Score runs.

Okay, fine, they got one, but for most of the night, Lester just shut the Dodgers offense down. Because that’s just what he does in October.

You know about Madison Bumgarner’s postseason dominance by now; that’s a well-told story at this point. So, just for fun, here’s a table of some numbers that might surprise you.

Lester has been basically identical to Bumgarner in the postseason, once you account for the league and run environment differences of their postseason opportunities. Even their underlying numbers are almost identical across the board. Lester, though, has now been this dominant in 17 extra playoff innings, so you could argue that his October resume is actually even more impressive.

For all the talk about the Giants ace as the dominant postseason hurler of his time, Lester is in that conversation ,too. And after another great outing last night, he’s one of the big reasons the Cubs are now one win away from the World Series.

Jeff Sullivan wrote a post this morning about Jon Lester and the running game. He mentioned that I’d also be writing a post about Jon Lester and the running game, but with a greater emphasis on the numbers side of it. This is that post.

Before we get to the actual numbers, a note about Jon Lester himself. In a way, for much of his career, Lester almost been consistent to a fault. To the point where his greatness borders on boring, or forgettable. In nine years since taking on a full workload, he’s made between 31 and 33 starts in each season, always 191 and 219 innings. He had a three-year run of his ERA- being 71, then 73, then 75, and four of his nine FIP- have been between 73-76. His fastball has sat between 91.8 and 93.5 miles per hour — right at or below average — in each of those nine years. Lester’s had his two best seasons by ERA in the last three years, but even then, his FIP- figures have read: 75, 75, 82. Just consistent ol’ Jon Lester. Nothing remarkable here.

And yet, somehow, the longer Lester remains consistent, the more we realize he’s one of the most fascinating and unique specimens in the game. We realize he simply refuses to attempt a pickoff throw to first base, and that’s because when he’s forced to field a ground ball and make an overhand throw to first, he just literally can’t do it. The pitcher just cannot throw. We realize that he’s maybe the worst hitter, ever, like in MLB history. And so we watch each one of his starts with amazement, as the gifted, elite athlete is unable to hide his inexplicable ineptitudes, and as the opposition just… fails to exploit them?

Give the Dodgers credit. They sure as hell tried. Kind of. At the very least, they sure as hell put put all of Lester’s bizarre quirks front and center stage in their 8-4 NLCS Game 5 loss on Thursday night. It’s just, none of it mattered.

The Dodgers wasted no time letting Lester know that they knew. This was the first pitch Lester threw:

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In Game 5, the Dodgers stole two bases against Jon Lester, out of two attempts. Stretch that over, say, a 33-start season, and you’ve got a pitcher who’s given up 66 steals in 66 chances. That pitcher, we’d say, was historically bad at controlling the running game. It would be a huge, distracting problem. The Dodgers did take a little advantage of Lester, which was a part of their plan, and though in the end it wasn’t enough, it was something worth trying.

Yet the Dodgers could’ve pushed it further. And this was a topic of much discussion. The Dodgers danced around, taking incredibly, unprecedentedly aggressive leads, but still they didn’t seize every chance to put the game in motion. Even though Lester clearly has the yips, and everyone knows it, Dodger baserunners still exercised some amount of caution. A seventh-inning screenshot I took will stick with me:

You — you might remember Enrique Hernandez.

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To be clear, there are three postings here.

Position: Detroit Tigers Manager, Baseball Analytics

Location: Detroit
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The playoffs roll on, with subplots galore, most of them involving pitching-staff usage patterns that are long overdue. Meanwhile, let’s conclude our two-part series examining macro team BIP data for the 10 playoff teams, broken down by exit speed and launch angles. (Read the Part 1 here.) We’ll examine what made these teams tick during the regular season and allowed them to play meaningful October baseball. It’s more or less a DNA analysis of the clubs that made it to the game’s second season.

First, some ground rules. For each club, all offensive and defensive batted balls were broken down (first) by type and (second) by exit speed. Not all batted balls generated exit speed and/or launch angle data; just over 14% were unread, most of them weakly hit balls at very high or low launch angles. How do we know this? Well, hitters batted .161 AVG-.213 SLG on them, a pretty strong clue.

BIP types do not strictly match up with FanGraphs classifications. For purposes of this exercise, any batted ball with a launch angle of over 50 degrees is considered a pop up, between 20 and 50 degrees is a fly ball, between 5 and 20 degrees is a line drive, and below 5 degrees is a ground ball. For background purposes, here are the outcomes by major-league hitters for each of those BIP types: .019 AVG-.027 SLG on pop ups (5.7% of measured BIP), .326 AVG-.887 SLG on fly balls (30.9%), .658 AVG-.870 SLG on liners (24.4%) and .238 AVG-.260 SLG on grounders (39.1%).

As you might expect, there are massive differences in production within BIP types based on relative exit speed. If you hit a fly ball over 100 mph, you’re golden, batting .766 AVG-2.739 SLG. If you drag that category’s lower boundary down just 5 mph, however, you get to the top of the donut hole, where fly balls go to die. Hitters batted just .114 AVG-.209 SLG on fly balls between 75-95 mph. All other fly balls — yes, even including those hit under 75 mph — fared much better, generating .387 AVG-.786 production.

Line drives tend to be base hits at almost all exit speeds. All the way down to 75 mph, hitters bat over .600 on batted balls in the line-drive launch-angle ranges; down to 65 mph, hitters still bat around .400 range in each velocity bucket. At 65 mph and higher, a liner generates an average .673 AVG-.889 SLG line. Under 65 mph, liners tend to land in infielders’ gloves; hitters batted just .170 AVG-.194 SLG on those. On the ground, hitters batted a strong .423 AVG-.456 SLG on grounders hit at 100 mph or higher. Under 85 mph, however, the hits dry up almost totally, with hitters producing a .107 AVG and .117 SLG. Between 85-100 mph, hitters bat closer to the overall grounder norm, at .267 AVG-.294 SLG.

With that as a backdrop, let’s conclude our look at each playoff club’s offensive and defensive BIP profiles. Last time, we profiled the Orioles, Red Sox, Cubs, Indians and Dodgers; today, we’ll look at the other five, in alphabetical order:

New York Mets
Two of the 10 playoff teams played well over their true talent this season, at least based on my BIP-centric method of team evaluation. Both will be covered today. First, the Mets hit significantly more pop ups than their opponents (+69), not including untracked ones in that 14% “null” group. On the positive side, the Mets hit 160 more fly balls than their opponents; they were a whopping +86 vis-à-vis their opponents in the 95-105 mph buckets. This explains why they hit 66 more homers than their opponents.

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The 2016 Blue Jays are finished, having been killed off by a playoff-specific mutation of a pitching staff. If it’s any consolation, 97% of all baseball team-seasons end with some sort of disappointment. But seasons end abruptly, even the good ones, and the focus has already shifted. The 2016 Blue Jays aren’t really to be discussed anymore. From this point forward, it’s all about the 2017 Blue Jays, and beyond.

There’s no possible way you’ve missed that this is going to be a challenging offseason. The resurgent Blue Jays in large part built their identity around Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, and Edwin Encarnacion. Two of those players are about to become free agents, and both of them are likely to leave. It’s hard to picture the Blue Jays without them, and it’s a hell of a lot less fun to picture the Blue Jays without them. The Jays were pure baseball entertainment, and Bautista and Encarnacion became area icons.

With them probably gone, it makes you wonder if the Jays should rebuild. The roster isn’t particularly young, and earlier today Dave laid out the argument for why the Blue Jays should take an intentional step back. I’m here to argue *not* for that. Dave and I didn’t set out to do this on purpose, but it just so happened that we have differing perspectives. You can choose to go along with whichever one you prefer.

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Earlier than they wanted to confront this reality, the Blue Jays are now in offseason mode. Their 2016 campaign was laid to rest yesterday by a rookie with Mark Buehrle’s fastball and a reliever with an unhittable slider, so today is day one of the remaking of the Blue Jays roster. And perhaps more than any other team this winter, they’ve got some big decisions to make.

You know about the two big ones; Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion are both eligible for free agency, and in a thin market, both are going to be looking for significant raises. The Blue Jays almost certainly won’t bring back both; they might not bring back either one. Toronto’s potent lineup is going to change, and the 2017 Blue Jays are going to have to take on a different identity than the teams that slugged their way to the ALCS in consecutive seasons.

But the decisions don’t stop at whether to re-sign one of their sluggers; the Jays probably have to decide how aggressively they want to push in on the short term, and whether they’re going to try to keep their current window open, or pivot more towards a long-term outlook that might make 2017 a lesser priority. Bautista and Encarnacion aren’t going to be the decisions; what the team does with those two will be the result of the organization’s larger decision. And in looking at their options, I think there’s a strong case to be made that the Blue Jays should not just tweak the roster this winter, but intentionally take a step back next year.

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