Archive for Teams

Even if you’re not a Boston Red Sox fan, you’re probably familiar with the Xander Bogaerts story. Big-time top prospect. Shortstop who has power. Pretty good plate discipline. Did some nice things right after his debut. Got off to a strong start in his first full season. Then: the collapse. I don’t need to give you the numbers — just imagine really terrible numbers. You’re there! So went Bogaerts, prior to his 2015.

This, though, has been a year of far more consistency. And far more promise.

It’s also been a year of change. Of significant change. Of major super massive change. We talk about players making adjustments all the time, but seldom do players make adjustments as big as Bogaerts has. If you’ve been paying attention, this isn’t exactly anything new. Owen hit on some of this in June. A player like Bogaerts, on a team like the Red Sox, doesn’t make a big change without a bunch of people noticing. But it’s one thing to notice what’s happened. It’s another to understand how dramatic this is.

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In a very short while, the Rangers and the Astros will kick off a crucial four-game series, with the AL West up for grabs. There will be three more meetings between the teams after this series is complete, so any mistakes can be made up for, but this race is coming down to the wire. It’s currently the closest race of the divisions, and while the Rangers are already close at 1.5 games back, they were literally inches away from an even smaller deficit before the Astros rallied past the Angels on Sunday. The Astros know they can lose their position. The Rangers know it’s theirs for the taking.

In a lot of ways, this isn’t what people expected. Even just several weeks ago, by which point we’d come to believe in the Astros, the Rangers didn’t look like a threat. After the games on July 31, the Astros were up two games on the Angels, and seven games on the Rangers. The Rangers’ odds of winning the division were a hair below 2%. Now they’re a little above 22%, gaining about a game on the Astros a week. Since the beginning of August, the Rangers have gone 25-15, second-best in the AL. Since the same point, the Astros have gone 19-20, sandwiched between the Yankees and the Rays. What’s happened to cause the Astros to lose much of their advantage?

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The Nationals aren’t mathematically dead, and there are several reasons for why they’re so far behind the Mets, but if you want to say the Nationals’ season died one day, you could point to the game they lost to the Mets after leading 7-1. Here’s that win expectancy graph, and you can see that, for Washington, it topped out at 99.2%. That game was absolutely devastating. That game all but sealed the dueling narratives. It can also get worse.

Source: FanGraphs

Sunday, Astros, Angels. The lead was three, not six. It was a game between first and third place, not first and second. But the Angels’ win expectancy topped out at 99.7%. They had the Astros down to their last strike. The Angels find themselves now behind 4.5 games, not 2.5. And the rally itself was almost inconceivable, even independent of the context. This would’ve been a dramatic conclusion in a game between the Braves and an area college. Let’s watch the meat of the top of the ninth inning. Some of you already know everything that happened, but those who don’t really need to.

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At the end of May, David Ortiz was posting a .309 OBP with just six home runs. The idea of Big Papi joining the 500 home run club this season was a pipe dream. Around that time, we heard an idea that had circulated many times in seasons past: Ortiz was done, kaput, finished. He was too old, his bat was too slow, and this time — really — he’d fallen off the cliff. There were articles about what was wrong with him, and for good reason.

Then Ortiz fixed those problems. From June 1st until today, he has put up a .389 OBP with 28 homers, good for a wRC+ of 172 (meaning he’s been 72% better than the average offensive player in the league). He’s put up an uncannily similar batting line to the one he posted last year. Take a look:

2015 Ortiz is 2014 Ortiz in terms of performance (he’s pretty much 2013 Ortiz too, for that matter). The walk and strikeout rates are especially remarkable in their consistency. So how did he get here? We’ve heard about Big Papi having issues in the early stages of the season before; what did he fix this time around to be able to reach the 500 home run milestone during 2015?

First, let’s go over what was wrong. Matthew Kory explained the issues with Ortiz’ approach in an early-June article: Ortiz was hitting too many ground balls, and both his average grounder and fly ball was more weakly-hit than his career-norm. That’s an issue when you’re a slow power hitter who is shifted by defenses at one of the highest rates in the major leagues, because those weak grounders almost always turn into outs.

Ortiz also faced a disproportionate share of left-handed pitchers in the first two months of the season. His career splits for lefties vs. righties are pretty stark (he owns a career 110 wRC+ vs. lefties and a 159 career wRC+ vs. righties), so it’s understandable that he couldn’t find his usual level of production out of the gate. Hitting a lot of weak grounders and facing a ton of lefties when you’re a left-handed hitter is a recipe for a slump.

Then the end of May rolled around. Ortiz sat on the bench for two days, studying tape of himself and most likely hoping that a mental break might turn things around. It worked: the time off marked the turning point of his season. Quite simply, Ortiz started hitting more fly balls after his short break, and he started hitting everything harder.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

Fans of Major League Baseball have long held an emotional investment in favorite players and teams, spending time and money on the sport and receiving widely varying emotional returns depending on results. If Fantex and Los Angeles Angels starter Andrew Heaney get their way, fans and investors will soon be able to invest in the future earnings of the Angels left-hander. Heaney and Fantex, a company that has previously struck similar deals with multiple NFL players, have agreed to a contract that will pay Heaney $3.34 million in exchange for “10 percent of all future earnings related to his brand, including player contracts, corporate endorsements and appearance fees,” according to Ken Rosenthal. A deal like this will attempt to provide pre-arbitration players like Heaney a form of insurance against future injury or a downgrade in performance without signing a team-friendly contract that keeps players from free agency. While this concept has been around for quite some time, in practice, these deals are still in their infancy and come with some drawbacks.

Almost two years ago, Fantex made news by announcing an agreement with star running back Arian Foster of the Houston Texans. The deal, similar to the one for Heaney, would have paid Foster $10 million in exchange for 20% of Foster’s future earnings. Before the parties could follow through on the deal, Foster was injured and the IPO never got off the ground. The deals with Fantex are subject to getting enough investors to pay for the initial guarantee to the players. For Heaney to get paid, enough investors must first meet the IPO amount, in this case $3.34 million.

In some ways, this model may look like a long-term version of daily fantasy games, where fans can put forth a relatively small sum of money in the hopes that a player will play well and provide a return on the money they have deposited. I spoke with Fantex co-founder and CEO Buck French about the potential comparisons and he was quick to refute them, stating that they do not consider themselves in the same market. “[Daily fantasy sports] is totally different. It’s not investing. Either you win or you lose… A single game outcome will determine whether you win or lose.” French cited a Wall Street Journal article stating that 1.3% of daily fantasy players win 91% of the profits in the first half of the MLB season. French said that, in Fantex, people “invest in future cash flow stream and collect dividends. They aren’t trying to beat out a whole bunch of people.”

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Now that the minor league regular seasons have come to a close, and we’ve reached the ides of September, most of the noteworthy roster-expansion call-ups are behind us. Nearly all of the players who were expected to have substantial impacts on the pennant races came up on the first of the month or shortly thereafter. However, a few more prospects were promoted over the weekend, as minor league clubs were eliminated from their respective playoffs. The most notable of the rookies called up over the weekend was probably Gary Sanchez, a catcher in the Yankees organization.

Sanchez has been on the prospect radar for a few years now, ever since the Yankees gave him a big bonus to sign out of the Dominican as a 16-year-old back in 2009. Sanchez hit an excellent .286/.350/.496 (134 wRC+) over his first three seasons in the minors, but followed it up with a less impressive .261/.329/.405 (107 wRC+) between High-A and Double-A in 2013 and 2014. The primary culprit for the change was a drop-off in power, which manifested itself in substantially lower isolated power figures. However, Sanchez’s pop made a comeback in 2015, during which he split time between the Double-A and Triple-A.

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Thursday night, the Cardinals got thumped by the Reds, 11-0. Bad game. One of those games you just toss out and move on from. You might wonder what this has to do with clutch.

Conveniently, Thursday night, the Cardinals found themselves in basically zero clutch situations. For something a little more representative, consider Wednesday’s game, against the Cubs. Nine outs into the game, the Cardinals trailed 3-1. From there, they yielded no more runs; from there, they scored three more, all in the bottom of the eighth. In that way, the Cardinals won a game in which they were out-hit 11-5. They won a game in which they were out-OPSed .650-.526.

The Cardinals haven’t made a habit of that, exactly, but it gets at the idea. As I write this, the Cardinals have the best record in baseball, by a handful of games. Odds are pretty good they’ll reach or clear 100 wins. It makes sense that they also have the best run differential in the National League. Yet, interestingly, we can also consider OPS differential. By that measure, the Cardinals rank fifth in baseball, between the Pirates and the Yankees. That’s still good, obviously, but there’s something going on in between those numbers and the actual team record. Something that’s made the Cardinals look even stronger.

That something is clutch performance. The Cardinals have been clutch, far more clutch than any other team. It’s admittedly a difficult thing to quantify. And, admittedly, there are multiple definitions of “clutch.” The definition being used here is putting on a particularly good performance in pressure situations. You could think of the Cardinals as having had wonderful timing. It’s lifted their record above what you’d expect.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

In years past, I’ve looked at players who might win the Comeback Player of the Year Award. I don’t know why, but I just like this award. It sort of gets lost in the shuffle of awards season. It’s usually a feel-good story. I’ve felt like it is interesting to put some statistical context to the award. This year is no different. I never did last year’s post, but I did this in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The methodology remains the same as it did in previous iterations. From the 2013 post:

Just like last year, the criteria is a player who posted 2.5 WAR or less last year, and has posted at least 1.0 WAR this year. Then I cull the list. The general standard is for a player to have roughly 2.0 more WAR this year than last, but this year I’m making an exception for catchers (roughly 1.5 WAR) and relief pitchers (roughly 1.0 WAR), as WAR may not be as fair to them as it is to others.

From there, we have to decide who is really making a comeback. Sometimes, guys just make the leap, or were never really good to begin with. But first, some honorable mentions.

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Talking to Erasmo Ramirez is refreshing. He always has a smile on his face. Life is fun for him — especially now. He’s having the best season of his career in Tampa Bay. It turns out that changing the use of his slider has been a big part of that success. And certain aspects of his slider may provide a roadmap for other pitchers that should make the same move.

His best pitch is his changeup — “it’s the best one to take me out of troubles,” the pitcher admitted to me — but it’s not good enough to throw every single time. “I try to stay away from it, and show the hitters I’m going to throw every pitch I have in my arsenal,” Ramirez said of his pitching mix.

The grip for the change thrown by Erasmo Ramirez, which has the seventh-best swinging strike rate in baseball (min. 400).

The breaking balls haven’t been great. Even as Tony Blengino waxed positively on the pitcher recently, he admitted that “his breaking balls needed reps” coming up. Ramirez this year has been using his curve less (“I’ve been trying to stay away from it, unless I have it rolling.”) but a key change in his slider usage has been huge.

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It’s been a rocky, inconsistent year for the Seattle Mariners, for whom much was expected by many. They are likely to finish more than a couple games below .500, comfortably out of the very attainable second wild-card position. The stunted development of many of their young, homegrown players, including Mike Zunino and the since departed Dustin Ackley, was a major factor. Early on, it looked like Taijuan Walker, who just recently turned 23, was part of the problem. Around Memorial Day, he began to look like part of the solution. Which version of Walker is the one we can expect to see moving forward?

I was a member of the Mariner front office in 2010, and had extensive involvement in the amateur draft. We did not have a first-round selection that year, but did possess a sandwich-round pick, received as compensation for the loss of Adrian Beltre. As one might expect, our draft board was shot full of holes as our turn approached. We thought very highly of Walker; he was in the top 15 of our board. He was joined there by a couple of other righ-handed pitchers, Aaron Sanchez and Asher Wojciechowski, followed by a bunch of blank spaces where other draft magnets had once resided. The Blue Jays had a bunch of compensation picks that year, and selected both of those guys before our turn arrived.

We were thrilled to select Walker. Great athlete, multi-sport star, easy velocity with feel for his curve ball, very few miles on his arm. As an added bonus, he didn’t turn 18 until August of his draft year. When you’re dealing with a projectable high school athlete, in particular, those few months are actually a pretty big deal. The product of Yucaipa HS in Southern California wasn’t a sure thing, with little track record to speak of, even by high school standards, but the raw materials suggesting potential stardom were certainly in place.

He dominated from the get-go in the minors, breaking camp at full-season Low-A Clinton in his first full pro season. Each year, I compile my own ordered minor-league lists of top full-season-league position-player and starting-pitcher prospects based on performance and age relative to league and level. These basically serve as follow lists, with the orders then tweaked based on traditional scouting methods. Walker ranked in the top 20 in each of his four minor-league seasons, peaking at #7 following the 2013 season. This combination of upside and consistency marked him as a likely major-league star.

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