Archive for Teams

Last winter, coming off the best season of his career, Yoenis Cespedes hit the free-agent market, and promptly heard crickets. He watched David Price and Zack Greinke break $200 million in early December, and then saw Jason Heyward set the market for outfielders with a $184 million deal a week later. And then he sat and watched a bunch more pitchers get paid, while he, Chris Davis and Justin Upton sat around waiting for offers that never came. Finally, in January, all three eventually found homes, but Cespedes was unable to land the big deal he was looking for, instead taking a three-year deal from the Mets that gave him the chance to hit the market again this winter, if he so chose.

A quarter of the way through the 2016 season, Cespedes opting out of the last two years of the deal is now a foregone conclusion; the only way he wouldn’t hit the market this winter is if the Mets re-do his deal before he gets there, or if he blows out his knee between now and October. Cespedes has not only carried over last year’s second half surge, but he’s even somehow building on it.

Read the rest of this entry »

For one month early in the 2015 season, Rick Porcello, traditionally a sinkerballer whose fastball sits at 91, led with the four-seam. It was only the second month in Porcello’s career in which the sinker’s position as his primary pitch was usurped by the four-seam, and unlike the other instance of this happening, the magnitude of the shift was noticeable.

It was the beginning of Porcello’s tenure in Boston, his new home after spending the first six years of his career in Detroit, and so at the time, it seemed like focusing on incorporating the four-seam fastball might’ve been part of the early organizational roadmap for Porcello. But the experiment didn’t go well. In eight four-seam-reliant starts, Porcello allowed 31 earned runs in 48 innings, good for a 5.81 ERA and a 4.76 FIP. All of his patented ground balls went missing, his home-run rate ballooned, he walked more batters than usual, and just like that, the four-seam trial run was over. Back to the sinkers he went.

If it really was an organizational thing — that the Red Sox encouraged Porcello to use his four-seam fastball more early in the season, if not just to see what it was like — it doesn’t seem like a bad idea, results notwithstanding. Even though Porcello’s “heater” only sits at 91, he has the ability to ramp it up to 96, and even more important than that, he’s able to naturally generate more spin on his four-seamer than almost any pitcher in baseball. We know that high-spin fastballs can be effective when located up in the zone, even without velocity, and so Porcello seems to possess a real weapon with his high-spin heater.

For whatever reason, though, the plan didn’t work, and so it didn’t stick. Maybe it was command, maybe it was comfort, maybe it was the way relying on the four-seamer affected the rest of his sequences, or maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever the case, Porcello went back to the sinker being his primary pitch, and he hasn’t looked back since. But the four-seamer is still there. And the way he’s using it now is making it more effective than ever. The idea to employ a four-seam approach may not have gone as smoothly as originally planned, but it looks like it’s working itself out anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Clevinger was nervous when he made his major-league debut with the Cleveland Indians last Wednesday. As a matter of fact, he was so nervous that he vomited prior to taking the mound. That didn’t prevent him from pitching well. The 25-year-old right-hander allowed just one run through five innings before faltering in the sixth. He wasn’t involved in the decision, but his club did come out on top in a 12-inning affair played in Cincinnati.

A fourth-round pick by the Angels in 2011, Clevinger came to Cleveland in the 2014 deal that sent Vinnie Pestano west. Prior to being called up, the impressively coifed native of Jacksonville, Florida, was 5-0 with a 3.03 ERA at Triple-A Columbus.

Clevinger talked about his debut outing — primarily his emotion-filled first inning of work — when Cleveland visited Boston over the weekend.

———

Clevinger on his mindset when he took the mound: “I remember trying not to look up. I was trying to just zone in on the catcher. Ever since I got to pro ball, what I’ve heard is, ‘Whenever that time comes, don’t look up. If you do, the moment will get you out of yourself. So all I thought was, ‘Stay within yourself, stay within yourself; don’t overthrow, don’t overthrow.’

Read the rest of this entry »

Marcell Ozuna is the third-best outfielder on his team. He can’t match the power and discipline of Giancarlo Stanton, and he can’t match the patient, contact-oriented approach of rising star Christian Yelich. Partially related to those two statements, Yelich and Stanton have signed contracts worth nearly $400 million total while Ozuna, despite possessing more service time than Yelich and having played 50 more games than Stanton since the start of 2014, will be paid near the league minimum this year. Ozuna is off to a great start this season, and we might want to look for changes to his game after a rough 2015 season, but Ozuna is very much a similar player to the one that slugged 23 homers back in 2014.

Ozuna has a fairly unique game. He has good power, but in more than 1500 plate appearances, it has only shown up as average with a .157 ISO. He walks at a below average rate (6% for his career), strikes out at a below-average rate (23% for his career), and has maintained a high .331 BABIP. Together, it has made him a roughly average offensive player, and a difficult home park elevates his wRC+ to 104. Not too bad. On defense, Ozuna has recorded nearly 3,000 innings in center field and both UZR and DRS place him right at average. Average offense and average defense in center field combine for an above-average player. Average to above-average might sound a bit boring, but Ozuna’s streaky performance and perceived inconsistency means he gets to his stats in rather exciting fashion.

Ozuna has had one really good year, in 2014, followed by a disappointing season in 2015 that saw him receive a demotion in the middle of the season, although that demotion might have been tied more closely to Ozuna’s super-two status and his agent Scott Boras rather than any strict performance-related deficiencies. This season, Ozuna is back, picking up where he left off at the end of 2015 and playing like the player who exhibited so much promise two seasons ago. How long will this last? It’s hard to say.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes. What is wrong with Matt Harvey? Because if you watch him pitch, it seems like everything is wrong, and yet nothing at all. At least, it’s hard to put your finger on it. You run down the list of things that could explain why he has an ERA near five and the worst ERA estimators of his career, and you find little things here or there. But do you find a smoking gun?

Read the rest of this entry »

Usually, we expect players to follow a more or less expected curve of decline when they hit their 30s. Obviously everyone is different, but baseball is a young man’s game, and father time comes for us all. Research by Jeff Zimmerman in 2013 showed that hitters don’t even tend to peak nowadays: on average, they perform at a plateau upon reaching the majors, then they decline. Take the wRC+ aging curve for a few different time periods, for instance:

We often talk about a player being “in his prime,” but primes are probably younger than many (or most) people think. In this era, 26 is really the beginning of the average hitter’s offensive decline. Which brings us to Ian Kinsler, who will turn 34 in June: he’s currently posting what would be the highest wRC+ of his career, and Isolated Power marks in line with his best home run-hitting seasons of 2009/2011. That isn’t particularly huge news: plenty of veteran hitters have ~40 game stretches in which they match close to their prime production.

The real news is that Kinsler is currently going beyond that, showing a few underlying indicators that amount to him turning back the clock. He’s also altered his approach, and the combined forces are helping to drive what is currently shaping up to be his best offensive season since he posted a 123 wRC+ with 32 homers in 2011. Kinsler is probably never going to steal 30 bases again (or maybe even 20), but he’s picking up that slack in his production at the plate, especially power-wise.

Read the rest of this entry »

You don’t need numbers to gain a sense of how Adam Wainwright’s season has started. You just need Adam Wainwright postgame quotes. After his Opening Day start, he wasn’t “anywhere close to being excited,” and called himself “the definition of average.” The next start tied his “career-high-of frustration level” because he was “so upset about the way the ball [was] coming out.” After start number three, he postulated that he’d “made more mistakes these first three games than [he had in] entire seasons.” Start four: “still not great” and “getting tired of losing.” Following his penultimate outing: “The only way I can move on from that is I have to start over. It’s a new season for me from now on.”

That’s a brief rundown of the first eight starts of Adam Wainwright’s 2016 season, in words. I said you didn’t need the numbers, but now you’re going to get them anyway. Through those eight outings, Wainwright ran a 6.80 ERA. The FIP was better, but still a below-average 4.32, and the expected FIP even worse than that. The strikeouts were way down from what we’ve come to expect, the walks were up, and too many balls were being put in the air and leaving the yard. It was the worst stretch of eight games that Wainwright had had in nearly a decade.

Wainwright being 34, and his arm having had the number of surgeries it’s had, a start to a season like that raises some questions. It raises some questions that would be tough to ask to Wainwright’s face. He probably didn’t care about the questions, but he still wanted to give some answers to make the questions stop. Consider his most recent start like the beginning of an answer.

As far as professional athletes go, Wainwright is notably candid. If his stuff isn’t good, even in a win, he’s going to say his stuff wasn’t good. A couple of those negative quotes from the first paragraph came after victories. He doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to his opinion of how he pitched. The key quote following his most recent outing: “I’m dangerous. You can say I’m dangerous again.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Jackie Bradley Jr. has been doing amazing things. To be absolutely clear, they’ve all been doing amazing things. Every last one of them. That 91 mile-per-hour sinker outside? Amazing. That opposite-field roller past the shortstop? Amazing. The reason we bother to pay attention in the first place is because everything that happens out there is amazing, performed by amazing players. Yet Bradley has been particularly amazing. Here’s an amazing thing from yesterday:

Bradley is riding a long hitting streak, and while we don’t really care too much about hitting streaks, on their own, they’re tightly correlated to good offense. That’s what we do care about. This year, Bradley ranks eighth in baseball in wRC+, between Manny Machado and Nick Castellanos. Of course, some things still look a little weird — Aledmys Diaz, for example, ranks second. So looking over the past calendar year, Bradley ranks 15th. That covers 401 trips to the plate, and he’s sandwiched between Machado and Nelson Cruz. Regardless of whether this is for real, Bradley is now definitely a hitter. And in this season, he seems to have taken one more step.

Read the rest of this entry »

Harrison Bader is raking in his first full season of pro ball. The 21-year-old St. Louis Cardinals outfield prospect ranks second in the Double-A Texas League with a .351 batting average. Batting leadoff for Springfield, Bader boasts a .401 OBP and his slugging percentage is a sporty .554.

Last year, he hit the ground running after being drafted in the third round out of the University of Florida. Splitting his debut campaign between the New York-Penn and Midwest Leagues, the Bronxville, New York native put up an .891 OPS. This year he’s been even better, which he partly attributes to being a sponge.

Bader talked about his approach to the game, including his insatiable thirst for knowledge, earlier this week.

———

Bader on how he identifies as a hitter: “I don’t see myself as a power guy. Not by any means. I think that’s evident from where I’m batting in the lineup at this level. I’m a leadoff hitter, so I’m expected to get on base as often as possible. I’m expected to work a lot of counts, have a high level of plate discipline and a good understanding of the strike zone. I also need to know my hitting zone, where I can do damage.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s May 19th, and the Phillies are in first second place in the National League East. Yes, the Phillies. The team that generated a 1,000 “tanking is ruining the sport” articles this winter has, six weeks into the season, the third-best record in the National League. As Jeff Sullivan noted this morning, their remarkably excellent bullpen has been one of the primary drivers of the early success, with David Hernandez and Hector Neris surprisingly emerging as dominant forces in the middle innings, and Jeanmar Gomez driving another nail into the coffin of the necessity of a “proven closer”. And yet, despite being in second place at this point, if you look at our current playoff odds, you wouldn’t actually know that the Phillies are off to a great start.

See that flat line across the bottom? That’s the Phillies. Their 24-17 start hasn’t moved the needle, at all, on our forecasts expectations for their chances of reaching the postseason. Okay, that’s not exactly true; they’ve gone from a 0.1% chance of winning one of the two Wild Card spots in our preseason forecast all the way up to a 0.3% chance of getting to the play-in game now. But their odds of hanging on to the NL East? Still close enough zero to round down when displaying one decimal point.

This is, to some, puzzling. A question in my chat yesterday brought up the point that our system is far more bearish on the Phillies hot start leading to postseason success than others; Baseball Prospectus gives them a 2.3% chance of winning the division and a 7.6% chance of getting a Wild Card spot, for 10% overall odds of reaching the playoffs. FiveThirtyEight is even more bullish than that, putting them at 4% to win the NL East and 13% to reach the postseason. So why is our system so stubborn relative to others attempting to look into the same crystal ball in order to see what the final standings will look like in October?

Read the rest of this entry »