Archive for Teams

It’s possible, if not probable, that the BBWAA will fail to elect Mike Trout next month as the American League’s Most Valuable Player for the fourth time in five years, a near half-decade-long stretch of what’s difficult to be viewed as anything other than illogical thinking or misguided debate mongering that, if continued, will likely be looked upon decades from now by the baseball community with a sense of regret and confusion.

This marks the third consecutive year (2014, 2015) in which I’ve updated the historical context of Trout’s current run, and each season, the already obvious becomes even more apparent: Mike Trout isn’t just the best player in baseball; he’s one of the greatest ever to walk the earth. He is Mickey Mantle. He is Willie Mays. He is Barry Bonds, before the steroids. Steroid-era Bonds aside, Trout’s probably the best baseball player most people reading this post have ever seen.

Every position player in MLB history with more bWAR than Mike Trout (47.7) over any 5-year stretch, ever:

 

— August Fagerstrom (@AugustFG_) October 4, 2016

The back and forth over the finer points of the subjectivity of the word “valuable” has grown tired, as has the common refrain of those who suggest “It isn’t the Most Outstanding Player Award.” And, it’s true — that’s not the name of the award. But, at a certain point, doesn’t “outstanding” win out? When the “outstanding” stands for “as or more outstanding than Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Carl Yastrzemski and Joe DiMaggio ever were,” can’t that make up for whatever arbitrary standard one has set in order to create a universe in which all-time great season after all-time great season can be met with a second-place finish and a pat on the back at the end of the year?

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Following Torontos’ Wild Card-clinching win over the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday, I asked Blue Jays reliever Joe Biagini if he’d just thrown the biggest inning of his life. Before answering, he paused to watch a champagne-soaked teammate traipse across the clubhouse, adorned in only a jockstrap, amid a cacophony of exultations.

“Probably,” mused Biagini. “Yesterday’s, today’s. They just kind of keep getting bigger.”

This one was huge. The 26-year-old rookie right-hander had entered in the eighth inning with the tying run on second base, and Dustin Pedroia — .318/.376/.449 on the season — due up. Two outs were needed to preserve a precious lead. That’s exactly what he got.

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Remember the kid in high school who always got straight “A”s? While everybody else was going about their business doing their best to stay afloat, that kid would seek out his or her own challenges just to try to make school interesting. Whether you loved, hated, or were that kid, you’ll never forget the way he or she seemingly operated at another level. In major-league baseball this year, there were a few players worthy of a comparison to that kid, but right now we’re going to talk about the one team who warrants the comparison: the Cubs. Specifically, we’re going to look at one way they challenged themselves and how it might pay off in the playoffs.

How do you improve when you’re already the best? That’s a somewhat obnoxious oversimplification of the situation the Cubs faced prior to the July trade deadline, but it’s not without merit. The Cubs have had ups and downs throughout the season, but it would be disingenuous to attempt to contend that a team ranking atop the majors in wins, team RA9, position-player wRC+, and defense is anything less than the best. They enter the playoffs the easy favorites on paper and, remarkably, that probably would have been true even if the team had failed to make a single upgrade at the trade deadline.

Of course, they didn’t stay quiet in July. As you know, their big splash was the acquisition of Aroldis Chapman – a move which helped shore up their bullpen as well as address their lack of left-handed relief options. Chapman has been predictably great for the Cubs and figures to be an important part of their postseason run, but that’s not the move we need to talk about. The Chapman acquisition is important, but its impact is boringly straightforward. The more intriguing move was the acquisition of another left-handed pitcher: Mike Montgomery.

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Some time ago, in another InstaGraphs post, I mentioned something that could potentially become true about the 2016 Reds. We spend a lot of time writing about things that could potentially become true, and inevitably, a lot of those paces fall off. There are reasons for that, and that would be a subject for another post. But the 2016 numbers are official now, dammit. There’s no more “on pace for;” there only is. Here is something that is:

That’s bad! Boy, it gets worse. Here are the worst team pitching staffs since 1900, by our version of WAR:

To be absolutely clear about what we have here: By our numbers, the Reds just became the first pitching staff in modern history to finish with a negative WAR. It’s only slight, sure, and the difference between them and those 1915 Athletics is less than one win, but that negative symbol is conspicuous. It pushes the digits over to the right, so they can stand out. The Reds, as a collective, featured a major-league pitching staff that was a worse-than-replacement-level pitching staff. That’s almost unfathomable, is what that is.

Did the Reds really have the worst pitching staff ever? I mean, hell, I don’t know. Their pitching staff had one of the biggest home-run problems ever. By actual runs allowed, they were a little bit better than replacement-level, but you know where we stand on all that. There’s no way to actually compare across seasons or eras, not with the desired level of precision. We just don’t understand pitching that well yet, and we understand it even less the further back we go into history. We can say this: If you wanted to talk about the worst staffs of all time, you might use FanGraphs WAR as a starting point. It couldn’t make the Reds look any worse.

Reds pitchers, month by month:

• April: -1.3 WAR, 30th place
• May: -1.1, 30th
• June: -0.6, 30th
• July: +1.9, 20th
• August: +1.0, 26th
• Sep/Oct: +0.2, 30th

The first half is what did the Reds in. In the second half, they accumulated 3.2 WAR, good enough to edge out the Twins, Braves, and Diamondbacks. In each of the last three months, the Reds’ staff finished in the black. Yet it’s appropriate that, in the final stretch, they were dead last again. All they needed were one or two more good games, to avoid finishing in the…red. But a league-worst September and October locked the Reds into place. They had a chance to run away from history, but instead they suffer its embrace.

A negative WAR. It’s not that there weren’t some success stories. Anthony DeSclafani was pretty good. Dan Straily was all right. Raisel Iglesias adjusted well to the bullpen. Brandon Finnegan got stronger in the second half. But let me tell you: 32 Reds pitchers pitched. Twenty of them finished below 0.0 WAR. Alfredo Simon allowed more runs in 58.2 innings than Jon Lester allowed in over 200. J.J. Hoover allowed more runs in 18.2 innings than Zach Britton’s allowed the last two years combined. For the Reds, 2016 was never going to be about winning. Yet it also definitely wasn’t supposed to be about this.

Depending on your perspective, you might think that Eric Hosmer had a career season. After all, he wasn’t just an All-Star, he was the All-Star Game MVP! He hit 20 homers for the first time — his 25 dingers were six more than his previous season best. And he drove in 104 runs — 11 more than his previous best. And yet, for the third time in his career, he was a replacement player or worse in terms of WAR. Did Eric Hosmer just have the worst 100-RBI season on record?

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Importantly, for the Cubs, this season isn’t over. Obviously, this season isn’t over — in a sense their real season hasn’t begun. We’ve known the Cubs would make the playoffs for something like five and a half months, and only now do they get to compete for the grand prize. Because there are games remaining, this might not seem like the best time to examine the 2016 Cubs through a historical lens.

I believe the opposite, though. At last, we have final, official regular-season statistics. Those are the stats that matter the most. And even though the Cubs are clearly Team No. 1 moving forward, the odds are still better that they don’t win the World Series. They’re probably going to lose, somewhere and somehow. And I don’t want to allow for playoff emotion to color the way people feel about this analysis. This season, the Cubs won eight more games than anyone else. The Cubs had a better run differential than anyone else, by a margin of 68. Clearly, they were really good. But how good, historically, when you’re talking about more than 100 years?

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I’ve got a vote for American League Manager of the Year this season and I’m terrified. My first vote as a member of the Baseball Writer’s Association, and it’s the impossible one.

Maybe impossible is too tough a word. I’m sure I’ll figure something out in time to submit a vote. But evaluating the productivity of a manager just seems so difficult. We’ve seen efforts that use the difference between projected and actual wins, or between “true talent” estimations for the team and their actual outcomes. But those attribute all sorts of random chance to the manager’s machinations.

I’d like to instead identify measurable moments where a manager exerts a direct influence on his team, assign those values or ranks, and see where each current manager sits. So what are those measurable moments?

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One can be forgiven for having forgotten about the Wyckoff v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball lawsuit. The class action case — filed back in July 2015 by Jordan Wyckoff, a former scout for the Kansas City Royals — accused Major League Baseball and its teams of violating both federal antitrust and employment law by colluding to deprive amateur and professional scouts both of the minimum wage and overtime compensation. Specifically, the case contended that MLB teams have unlawfully agreed not to compete with one another for the services of their scouts, with the result that wages for these employees have, in some cases, been depressed to as little as $5 per hour once all of their various job duties have been accounted for.

Late last year, MLB filed a motion asking the court to dismiss Wyckoff’s antitrust claims under its historic antitrust exemption. At the same time, MLB also argued that the suit’s minimum-wage claims should be dismissed against all but the Royals, since Wyckoff — the only plaintiff named in the suit who was asserting a violation of the minimum-wage and overtime rules — had never been employed by any of the other 29 MLB clubs.

Since then, the parties have waited… and waited… and then waited some more for the court to issue a ruling. That wait mercifully came to an end this past Thursday when Judge Paul Gardephe finally released his long-anticipated decision, more than nine months after MLB’s motion had first been filed.

In his opinion, Judge Gardephe granted MLB all of the relief it had requested, dismissing the overwhelming majority of Wyckoff’s case. As a result, while Wyckoff can continue to pursue his claim for back-pay from the Royals, any hopes he may have had that his suit would spur more systemic changes to the market for MLB scouts appear to have fallen short.

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David Ortiz was feted at Fenway Park yesterday. The 40-year-old slugger will retire following the postseason, and he’s deserving of any and all accolades that come his way. “Big Papi” finished the regular-season portion of his career with 541 home runs, 4,765 total bases, and a .931 OPS.

His October exploits are legendary. Ortiz has 17 home runs and 60 RBI in postseason action, many of which have come in key situations. The Red Sox have captured three World Series titles — their first since 1918 — since he joined the team in 2003. His slash line in those Fall Classics is .455/.576/.795.

The Dominican Republic born-and-raised slugger is a Boston icon for more than his on-field accomplishments. His charitable endeavors have been exemplary, his engaging personality omnipresent. His larger-than-life persona has captivated his adopted home. Ortiz will long be remembered for his words following the Boston Marathon bombing: ‘This is our f-ing city.”

Myriad people throughout the game have shared their thoughts on the soon-to-retire superstar in recent weeks. I collected quotes from 15, including players, managers, executives and broadcasters.

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Dusty Baker, Washington Nationals manager: “I’d have loved to have had David Ortiz on my teams. The postseasons he’s had… he’s carried them by himself, through sheer willpower. David Ortiz is one of the best that’s ever played this game. To me, he’s one of the best leaders that’s played this game. People gravitate toward him. That’s what being a leader is about. If David Ortiz wants it… what Big Papi wants, usually Big Papi gets.”

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Matt Carpenter did something special last night, on the final day of baseball’s 2016 regular season. I’ll get the anticlimactic part of this all out of the way right now: it didn’t matter. Of course, none of this actually matters, but through the lens of the St. Louis Cardinals’ year and postseason implications, what Carpenter did wound up not meaning a thing. It could’ve meant a thing; Carpenter and the Cardinals had everything to play for. Their only shot at a playoff berth came through a win, and what Carpenter did helped the Cardinals win one of their biggest game of the year, 10-4, over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

But the Cardinals needed some help alongside their win to potentially clinch that playoff berth, and with a loss to the San Francisco Giants, the Los Angeles Dodgers did not provide the necessary help. The win over the Pirates was for nought; the Cardinals were eliminated from postseason contention. Carpenter, though, did all he could — including pulling a trick out of his bag that he’d been waiting more than six years to use.

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