Archive for Teams

Coming into the season, you might have had a three-part checklist for Mariners’ lefty James Paxton. Can he throw more high fastballs, can he improve his changeup, and can he hold his velocity and command? We know his curve is good, and most years, he has the big velocity that has turned our attention to him. But these three items sum up the healthy skepticism that still remains, and the pitcher knows all about them.

Jeff Sullivan recommended high fastballs for Paxton because his fastball has rise but he throws it low. Currently the Seattle lefty is showing almost exactly the same whiff and strikeout rates as he showed last year, so maybe he wasn’t listening.

Except that he was! “I do utilize the high fastball, to work off of it, and have the curveball drop off it,” Paxton said of the fact that high fastball release points can help mask a high curveball release point.

But the pitcher also admitted that the high fastball was “probably something I could work into my game a little more effectively.” He’s been trying, as you can see from the fastball heat maps below from Baseball Savant (2014 on the left, 2015 on the right). If you prefer numbers, Paxton has thrown 29% of his fastballs in the top third of the zone this year, up from 25% last year. And his rank with respect to his peers has changed, as he used to be in the 41st percentile for high fastballs, and so far this year, he’s in the 31st percentile.

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I’ll start this one like I think I’ve started another, probably also about Shane Greene. Who remembers? Last summer, while working on an article for The Hardball Times Annual, I talked to Brandon McCarthy about the significance and implementation of contemporary data. It was a long interview and a lot went into the article, so I’m not going to sit here and spoil everything, but McCarthy noted something he learned immediately upon joining the Yankees. Right away, they told him about the value of an elevated fastball. Even though McCarthy was more traditionally a sinker-baller, he found that he could get easy outs sometimes going hard and up, with hitters geared for pitches down. Adding one new level made hitting exponentially more difficult.

As the conversation went on, it turned to then-Yankees sensation Shane Greene. Maybe “sensation” is over-selling him, but he came out of nowhere, and he was throwing gas. Greene was whiffing a batter an inning, powered by a mid-90s sinker that he kept down by the knees, and as we neared the end, McCarthy made one more point. The Yankees had given Greene very simple offseason instructions: he was to improve his ability to throw a fastball up.

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Avert your eyes, Milwaukee Brewers fans. I apologize in advance for how painful this may be.

When the Brewers woke up on Monday morning, they were merely a bad baseball team, off to a 2-10 start, the worst in 47 years of Pilots/Brewers baseball. When they went to bed on Monday night, they were still a bad baseball team, off to a 2-11 start, one of just two teams with fewer than four wins. In between, second baseman Scooter Gennett joined the “stupidly weird injury” club, slicing his hand open in the shower. In between, star catcher Jonathan Lucroy left Monday’s 6-1 loss to Cincinnati early with what was revealed to be a fractured toe, one that manager Ron Roenicke could apparently hear happening.

So there’s terrible baseball, and then there’s this, in which a team that had just about no margin for error has gotten off to what’s basically the worst possible start imaginable. You can’t make the playoffs in April, but you sure can miss them. That’s a saying that exists or it’s one I’m either making up or poorly paraphrasing, but now it’s on the Internet, and therefore it’s true. Welcome to the 2015 Milwaukee Brewers, a team that just saw its season implode before it really began. Read the rest of this entry »

Just as I was beginning to work this up, I got an email saying Nelson Cruz had been named the American League Player of the Week, which provides for a very convenient introductory sentence. Over the past seven days, Cruz has posted the highest wRC+ in baseball, by 85 points. Over the past seven days, Cruz has driven in 10 runs, while the Indians have driven in 11. Eight days ago, Cruz slugged a home run. Nine days ago, Cruz slugged a home run, and a couple of singles. All he’s hit have been singles and dingers, and he has almost as many dingers as singles. It’s been a good start for Nelson Cruz.

Which means analysis is obligatory. What’s gotten into Nelson Cruz? The answer is pretty much always “nothing sustainable,” but that’s never stopped us before. Nor does that mean there’s nothing to analyze. Cruz has been almost the entirety of the Mariners’ offense, and lately he’s been hotter than everyone else. Yet, how true is that? And is there anything else going on?

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Making wholesale role changes two weeks into the season is not likely a sound strategy, as the decisions leading up to Opening Day take in much more reliable information with considerably more history than a few appearances in April. Likewise, taking promising starters who have yet to prove they cannot start and sending them to the bullpen where they will pitch considerably fewer innings is not ideal either. Yet that is where the Toronto Blue Jays sit heading into the third week of the season. The Blue Jays were dealt a blow in Spring Training when Marcus Stroman was lost for the year after a knee injury that required surgery, and they are still reeling from that loss.

A battle for the fifth spot in the rotation between Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez, and Marco Estrada shifted as the Blue Jays anointed two of their top three prospects as starters to begin the season. With Aaron Sanchez struggling, Daniel Norris beginning the season with a dead arm, and a young bullpen that has already switched closers, the Blue Jays pitching staff has provided more questions than answers.

In five starts this season, Norris and Sanchez have combined for 22 innings and 15 strikeouts while giving up 12 walks and five home runs. The poor performance and low innings totals thus far have put a strain on an inexperienced bullpen. The Blue Jays 47 2/3 innings pitched out of the bullpen are tied for fourth Major League Baseball, but they’re not getting worked so much because they’re dominating when called upon; those innings have come with a 4.16 FIP, ranking 26th in MLB. The Blue Jays bullpen is both performing poorly and getting overworked, never a good combination for mid-April.
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Let’s follow a tried-and-true format, unimaginative as it is. I’ll throw in a twist. There’s the imaginative part.

The good! Archie Bradley, so far, has made two starts in the major leagues. He’s faced maybe the best team in baseball, and last year’s World Series champion. He’s allowed a total of five hits and two runs, leaving his first start with his team ahead of Clayton Kershaw, and leaving his second start with his team ahead of Madison Bumgarner. His team also isn’t very good, so there are some bonus points.

The bad! Bradley’s come up just a hair shy of 60% strikes. He’s paired 10 strikeouts with six walks, so the command issues that’ve always been there haven’t disappeared. To this point, he’s lived almost exclusively fastball-curveball.

The ugly interesting! Bradley’s basically tied for the league lead in groundball rate. Of the 31 pitches batters have hit somewhere fair, they’ve put 23 of them on the ground. He hasn’t faced extreme groundball-hitting opponents, and he doesn’t have a ground-balling track record, and this is one of those things that’s supposed to sort itself out in a hurry. Groundball pitchers generally get grounders every time out. Fly ball pitchers generally put the ball in the air every time out. There are exceptions, odd reversals, but the probability gets lower when you consider back-to-back starts. Already, we might start to think of Archie Bradley as a groundball pitcher. With the weird thing being, he hasn’t been one, and he probably shouldn’t be one.

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As it stands this morning, there are five teams in the National League that have at least a 50% chance of reaching the postseason, according to our Playoff Odds forecasts. The three top teams are the same three that everyone had winning their divisions before the year began; the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Nationals. The fourth team — or first Wild Card, if you want to make it sound a little better — is the Padres, whose winter moves made the largest splash the world has seen since Noah decided to build an ark. And finally, as you’ve likely surmised from reading the headline, there’s the New York Mets, currently given exactly a 50/50 chance of reaching the postseason this year.

Yep, that puts the Mets ahead of the Pirates and Cubs, the two young darlings of the Central, each with rosters more stacked with young talent. It also puts the Mets well ahead of the Marlins, a trendy pre-season pick to make a run this year, but instead are a team that is reportedly considering firing their manager after getting their clocks cleaned in Queens over the weekend. After that four game sweep, the Marlins now find themselves seven games behind the Mets; it’s the largest gap between any two division rivals in baseball.

Of course, it’s still really early. It’s April 19th, and because the season started a week later this year, that date is even more deceiving than usual. We’re two weeks into a 26 week race. After 13 games last year, the Brewers were 10-3, standing with the best record in baseball; they went 72-77 after that point and finished six games behind the two Wild Card teams. While the games that have been played still count and can’t be taken away, a 10-3 start doesn’t mean the Mets are really a great team.

But that’s the thing about baseball in 2015; they don’t really need to be. They don’t even need to be particularly good, because in this day and age, a hot start and a roster that doesn’t suck makes you a contender.

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We rarely talk about Aaron Harang. When we do, it’s usually to describe him as a “safer” player rather than a good one, or perhaps to poke a little fun at his appearance. He never ranks very highly when it comes time to make lists, and we’re generally at a loss to describe his success. And yet, he keeps churning out solid seasons of baseball.
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As Kris Bryant heads to North Side of Chicago to make his debut, the lack of movement on the South Side has merited much less attention. Carlos Rodon remains a starting pitcher in Charlotte as the White Sox use two currently inferior pitchers in the rotation. Much of the same arguments for keeping Kris Bryant down apply to Rodon. By keeping him in the minor leagues, the team can gain an extra year of service time. A couple starts during the course of the season is not likely to make a huge difference for the White Sox’s season.

Whether those arguments are valid as they apply to Rodon are moot now. The time needed to keep Rodon down is over, and the White Sox still haven’t named a starter for Sunday afternoon, but they have eliminated one name:
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Imagine, if you can, the least-fair thing in baseball. Do you have it? Maybe you’re picturing having to face Giancarlo Stanton with the bases loaded. Maybe you’re picturing one of those Clayton Kershaw curveballs, or Juan Lagares running down a would-be winning double in the gap. Maybe you’re just thinking about Billy Hamilton on the bases. OK! You’re wrong.

The least-fair thing in baseball is Aroldis Chapman throwing a changeup. It’s the least-fair thing for exactly the reasons you’d expect. His fastball is unfair enough on its own; add a changeup and you’ll have helpless hitters twisting their spines. The good news was this: for years, Chapman’s changeup was only theoretical. It was something he’d throw a few times in spring training before realizing he didn’t need to mess around. Chapman was never quite lacking for weapons.

Then in 2014, Chapman got experimental. For the first time, he carried that changeup into the season. And the results? You could probably guess the results, even without me telling you, but just for the sake of being complete: Chapman threw 63 changeups, according to Brooks Baseball. Opposing hitters made contact exactly once (it was an out). Allow me to repeat that, for effect: batters made contact with one Aroldis Chapman changeup in 2014, out of 63 opportunities. They didn’t always swing, but you get the point.

It was beautiful. It was perfect, from an objective-observer viewpoint. It was decidedly not perfect from an unobjective-opposing-hitter viewpoint. Through the first half of the season, Chapman threw 11% changeups. In a June series against the Pirates, Chapman threw six changeups in consecutive games. All of a sudden, it looked like the change was going to be a regular part of the repertoire, and Chapman was soaring to new levels. Chapman, at that point, was playing with his food.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.