Archive for Teams

Last week, in this space, I wrote about Dave Dombrowski’s Achilles Heel in the wake of the Tigers letting go of their long-tenured General Manager. Yesterday, another long-term General Manager was relieved of his duties, as the Brewers have moved Doug Melvin “into an advisory role”, opening up their GM position for the first time since 2002.

Like Dombrowski’s start in Detroit, Melvin’s first few years in Milwaukee were pretty rough. The team lost 94 games in both 2003 and 2004, then hung around .500 for the next three years, so it was five years of laying the groundwork for a competitive team. But in 2008, things started to come together around a strong young core that included 24-year-old sluggers Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun and 25-year-old middle infielders J.J. Hardy and Rickie Weeks. To supplement the team’s homegrown core of All-Star hitters, Melvin made a big mid-season trade for CC Sabathia, whose dominant performance helped carry them to the team’s first postseason berth since 1982.

While Sabathia was just a half-season rental — and predictably signed for big money in New York that winter — the Brewers retained the young core that looked like it should form the foundation of a perennial contender. However, since the start of the 2009 season until Melvin’s resignation, the team went just 540-545 and only made the postseason in one out of those seven years. While Dombrowski is leaving Detroit on the back of a long run of success that may just now be coming to an end, Melvin’s track record is more of a long string of unfulfilled potential.

So why weren’t the Brewers able to turn one of the best young groups of home-grown hitters into a consistent winner? Unlike with Dombrowski, Melvin didn’t have one glaring flaw that came back to haunt him on an annual basis. Instead, the Brewers lack of success can be chalked up to three significant organizational failures over the last seven years.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

Advanced stats have had a huge influence on baseball over the last generation. Every front office makes use of statistics, metrics, and methods that would fall under the umbrella of sabermetrics. Websites and blogs like this one, meanwhile, have created a niche for interested fans to absorb the game through a sabermetric prism. While the clubs have embraced sabermetrics in the name of remaining competitive, and online media have formed around a collection of die-hards, getting modern statistics onto broadcasts has been a more challenging endeavor.

We’ve seen many broadcasts make an effort to adapt to the changing climate, but there remains a delicate balance between providing sabermetric information and appealing to the widest possible audience. Given that there is only a single radio and television broadcast experience for each club, networks have been cautious about radical changes to the way they present games given that a large portion of their audience does not a regularly visit sites like FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, and Beyond the Box Score.

On Wednesday afternoon (3:30pm Eastern), MLB Network will roll out a new format for calling live games that diverges from standard broadcast paradigm. Brian Kenny will be joined by Kevin Millar, Jim Duquette, and Rob Neyer to provide play-by-play and analysis for the Astros-Giants game based around the network’s sabermetric-friendly talk show, MLB Now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pardon me; I don’t mean to interrupt your afternoon. If you’re here, though, you might well be a bit curious about Adam Eaton. Which is good, because I am, too! To get started, you know those player caps we have on most pages? The profiles and quick opinions, I mean, written by various FanGraphs authors. They’re written during the winter, providing brief player analysis, and here’s a link to Adam Eaton’s page. I’m going to pull a little excerpt. This isn’t intended to pick on Chris Cwik. Anyone would’ve written the following.

Since Eaton isn’t going to add any pop, his performance will likely be based on the guys behind him.

Made total sense at the time. Eaton is a little dude, with an extended track record of hitting groundballs. Last year, as an everyday player, Eaton was literally out-homered by Ben Revere. He went deep just the once, and so he was seemingly easy to project. Speed and contact. Decent number of walks. We all knew what Adam Eaton was, up until we didn’t. This season, Eaton’s already knocked nine dingers. Put another way, he’s tied with Adrian Beltre. Chase Headley and Jason Heyward, too. Adam Eaton wasn’t going to add any pop. Adam Eaton added a lot of pop.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not uncommon for a narrative to develop around a great team — nor, specifically, for it to develop around the particular player on that great team who best represents the collective identity. For a club that exhibits a lot of power, the most powerful player is the focus. When a team is full of idiots, the most idiotic player garners a lot of attention. For a young team, the youngest, a gritty team, the grittiest, etc. These portrayals might not be entirely accurate, but they help tell stories and mold perspectives about a club’s identity as they march closer to the end of the season and, subsequently, the playoffs. Repeating the exercise for a disappointing, mediocre team can be an interesting process. So it is with this season’s Detroit Tigers and the one player who most embodies their season: Anibal Sanchez.

Injuries to players like Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander have played a role in Detroit’s disappointing 54-57 season, but Cabrera hit incredibly well for half a season and has already produced an above-average line. Verlander, a focal point for the club in the past, has barely pitched at all this season, lacking the requisite presence to represent the 2015 Detroit Tigers. Ian Kinsler has had an odd, but effective season. J.D. Martinez has had another great year, and Yoenis Cespedes had played very well before his trade to the New York Mets. The offense has not been the Tigers’s problem this season with one of the better run-scoring teams in the majors and a 109 wRC+ to back it up. The defense has been average overall so the onus shifts to the pitching.

The bullpen has been bad, ahead of only Boston’s and Texas’s while sitting at essentially replacement-level. If you are looking for someone to blame for the season, the bullpen is an easy target, having recorded just 27 saves against 14 blown saves — and their ranks for both Shutdowns and Meltdowns are near the bottom third of all bullpens. Simply being the weak link on the Tigers does not make the bullpen representative of the team at large, however. Despite the mess of a bullpen, the team is still close to .500 — and Detroit has succeeded in previous years despite similarly weak collection of relievers. So we move to the rotation. David Price was phenomenal, Alfredo Simon exceeded his projections, Justin Verlander has been bullpen-level bad, and none of the other starters had any expectations on them heading into the season, leaving Anibal Sanchez as both a player with decent expectations and a failure to reach them.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a counter to the idea that baseball is complicated and unpredictable: sometimes, baseball can seem ever so easy to understand. Not long ago, the Blue Jays traded for Troy Tulowitzki, perhaps or probably the very best shortstop. Shortly thereafter, the Jays also traded for David Price, easily one of the very best starting pitchers. Since Tulowitzki joined the lineup, the Jays have gone 11-1, and the one loss was a Tulowitzki day off. Over the weekend, the Jays pulled closer to the Yankees by sweeping them in their own stadium. Why wouldn’t that happen? Two superstars were added to what was already a pretty good club. Pretty good + superstars = even better! We’ve figured this game out.

The Jays have eaten up ground faster than anyone could’ve reasonably imagined. Sometimes there are concerns that adding pieces at the deadline can disrupt a clubhouse atmosphere, but all the lights are green in Toronto, and the probabilities that encouraged Alex Anthopoulos to act aggressively have only gotten significantly more positive, validating the moves that were made. The Jays are built to bludgeon, but they’ve also meaningfully improved the pitching staff, with everything clicking about perfectly at the moment. The question now needs to be asked: how good is this team? When a team’s on a winning streak, it’s almost impossible to imagine it losing. The Jays will lose, and they’ll do it several times. But is any other team positioned to lose less?

Read the rest of this entry »

All it takes is a game like the one Noah Syndergaard had over the weekend — five runs in four innings despite six strikeouts against two walks — to be reminded that even a Norse God has to maintain his game by refining it. Though Syndergaard’s curve is already a top-ten hammer by whiffs, he’s been working on it. And he might be adding a new baby weapon to go along with it.

–

Last week, I wrote a post asking whether Carlos Correa might already be the best shortstop in baseball. There is no consensus opinion on that one — a big group of people think he just might be, and another big group of people don’t think he’s proven enough. That’s all totally fine; it wouldn’t be an interesting question if we absolutely knew the answer. The main point is there’s a chance; Correa has been that outstanding. Since the All-Star break, for example, he’s tied for sixth among all position players in WAR. The guy he’s tied with is sometimes-shortstop Jung-ho Kang.

I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that Kang might be the best shortstop in baseball. He hasn’t performed at the level for long enough, nor does he quite have the defensive profile. Increasingly, however, it’s becoming clear that Kang was a hell of a find. His second-half offense has been about on par with Josh Donaldson and Chris Davis. Kang, in his rookie season, has shown several signs of promising development. The easiest possible explanation for each? It’s noise. Total randomness, devoid of any meaning. But I’m going to offer an easy alternate explanation. Kang seemingly keeps getting better. Maybe it’s obvious why.

Read the rest of this entry »

When the Padres decided to sell nothing at all at the trade deadline, one of the public explanations was that the team didn’t want to give up on the playoffs. And one of the explanations for that line of thinking was that the schedule looked pretty soft, so the Padres would have a chance to rack up some much-needed wins against lesser competition. At the time, it seemed more like a fantasy. And now the Padres’ odds are somehow even longer. Their season, for all intents and purposes, is finished. For, this past weekend, they were swept at home by the Phillies.

The Phillies, who are having trouble losing. I don’t know how to gauge public awareness, but just in case you haven’t noticed, the Phillies are playing some really good baseball. I imagine a lot of people tuned out entirely once Cole Hamels went away, and the season started so poorly it wasn’t even worth acknowledging the Phillies’ record, but, as hot as the Blue Jays are at the moment, the Phillies might be no cooler. It’s the Phillies who have baseball’s best record since the All-Star break, at 16-5. You’ll recall it was the Phillies who had baseball’s worst record at the All-Star break, at 29-62. A 52-win pace became a 123-win pace, and while we can still say with a high degree of certainty that the Phillies as presently built are not good, this is the sort of run that has to be talked about. Three or so weeks of the Phillies winning more than anyone else. For those three weeks, I can offer three thoughts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just before the trade deadline, the Braves, Marlins, and Dodgers struck a big deal, at least in terms of quantity of players and money being moved around; 13 players changed uniforms, and when the dust settled, the Dodgers came away with a trio of pitchers to upgrade their staff: starters Alex Wood and Mat Latos, along with reliever Jim Johnson. While they had been a heavily-rumored destination for frontline pitchers like David Price, Johnny Cueto, and Cole Hamels, the Dodgers ultimately decided to with depth over star power, adding multiple good arms rather than one great one.

Of course, a large driver of that decision was the relative cost, as they could acquire these kinds of pitchers without surrendering any of their best young talents, and they’ll also control Wood’s rights through the 2019 season; he won’t even be eligible for arbitration until after next year, so he’s going to make something close to the league minimum next year. So, while no one thinks Wood is on David Price’s level as a pitcher, he offered a better value when future years of control and financial obligations are factored in.

But choosing Wood and Latos over one better pitcher wasn’t just about getting a cheaper pitcher, or even just about getting a guy they could control for multiple years. In Alex Wood, the Dodgers were attempting to buy low on an asset with significant upside, which is exactly the kind of move that they’ve been making ever since Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi took over the baseball operations department last winter.

If you want to know why the Braves were willing to trade a 24 year old pitcher with four years of control remaining after this season, you can essentially sum up their reasoning in one easy table.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals have not played very well in the second half. This isn’t news. Since the break, they have an 8-12 record and have been outscored by 11 runs. This isn’t a soul-crushing stretch by any means, but when your competition is red hot, a stretch where you’re only scoring 3.65 runs per game can certainly seem soul crushing. The interesting question to me is what the Nationals can do about it? Are they content to just wait this out and take the patient approach that eventually their hitters will snap out of it, or is it time for action? Actually, let’s rephrase that — what actions can the Nationals even take?

We know that the Nationals have a great pitching staff. Their bullpen unit is solid. The core unit they’ve relied on the most the past 30 days — Aaron Barrett, Casey Janssen, Felipe Rivero, Tanner Roark and Drew Storen — has done pretty well. The worst xFIP- among those pitchers for the past 30 days is Rivero’s 114. For the season, the highest belongs to Janssen at 108. Perhaps there isn’t enough reliability in that group, especially given Storen’s playoff experience. So to that mix they have added Jonathan Papelbon. Potential problem addressed.
Read the rest of this entry »