Archive for Teams

Author’s note: literally simultaneous to the publishing of this post, news emerged that Tanaka is getting an MRI on his arm. Welp! Nothing below is entirely invalidated, but it’s been a while since I’ve had such lousy timing. Let us all learn a valuable lesson.

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When we analyze new players, there’s always a multi-step process. Analysis is nothing but a series of questions, and the first question is always the simplest: is the new player good? Overall, is the new player mediocre, average, good, or great? From there, over time, we start to get a little more detailed. You begin with finding out whether a player is good. Then you can start to understand how a player is good. Within the majors, there are plenty of good players, but they all achieve that level in their own particular ways, and it’s that variety that helps to keep this analysis fresh.

It didn’t take long to answer the first question about Masahiro Tanaka. Yeah, he’s good. He’s real good, as a matter of fact, and he’s one of the players most responsible for keeping the Yankees somewhere within the race. How does Tanaka succeed? Well, we all saw the splitter coming, and, yep, he throws a dynamite splitter, and with his command and unhittability, it’s hard to imagine Tanaka not being successful. By this point we know a lot about the Yankees’ new ace, but we are still filling in details. And here’s another one: Tanaka bears down with runners in scoring position. When situations are at their most dangerous, Tanaka has responded, in an interesting fashion.

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We talk a fair bit about Joey Votto in these electronic pages. Some may say we do it too much, perhaps. But it’s for a reason. It’s not that he’s paying us to — he’s not paying me at least. He’s simply a somewhat-fascinating specimen as far as baseball players go. He’s smart, he’s a pretty good model of consistency, he never pops out.

He’s also been a small point of consternation between the statistically-inclined and fans that adhere to a more traditional understanding of the game. There’s been disagreements revolving around his penchant for walks, his attitude toward RBI, his preference to hit to all fields rather than try and pull everything for homeruns. But fans on both sides of the argument can agree that Joey Votto just hasn’t been very good this season.

Actually, allow me to check myself before I subsequently wreck myself. Joey Votto, at least on the whole, has actually been more than serviceable in 2014. As a hitter, he’s still been 28% better than league average according to wRC+. But the whole story doesn’t tell the most recent story, and the recent version of Joey Votto has been subpar by any standards. Read the rest of this entry »

An easy way to think about productivity is Efficiency x Frequency. If you’re really efficient at doing something, but you don’t do it very often, you won’t be very productive. Look at the career of Carlos Quentin. When he’s played, he’s always hit, but rarely is he healthy enough to play, so he hasn’t actually produced much. By the same measure, being frequently inefficient won’t get you very far, either. True production comes from maximizing your opportunities while remaining efficient.

A few weeks back, Jeff Sullivan wrote about Carlos Gomez and his unprecedented first-pitch swing rate. Gomez is swinging at the first pitch in over half of his plate appearances. That’s one of the highest rates in recent history. Not only that, but he’s doing some pretty serious damage on those pitches, to the tune of a 1.046 OPS.

Where there’s a leaderboard, there’s someone in second place. In this case, that guy’s first-pitch swing rate is still quite a bit lower than Gomez’s because, as we’ve covered, Gomez is in relatively uncharted territory. But still, there exists a guy who has the second-highest first-pitch swing rate in baseball. There has to. And that guy happens to be doing even more damage on those pitches than Gomez. That guy happens to be doing more damage on first pitches than just about anybody, really. That guy happens to be Mike Zunino.
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I’m going to be honest with you: I find it surprisingly easy to forget about Josh Hamilton. You think about the Angels team and you think about Mike Trout; you keep thinking about the Angels and you think about Albert Pujols. It doesn’t help that Hamilton was on the disabled list for so long earlier this year. But not actually that long ago, he was one of the most mysterious and volatile free agents in baseball history. This, to say the least, is something of an unexpected slide. It could be Trout is far too distracting, or, similarly, it could be Trout is kind of an attention black hole. Anyone who casts an eye to the Angels is pulled into Trout’s incredible player page. Hamilton, though, hasn’t ceased to be fascinating. This is maybe the quietest it’s ever been for him, but there’s something about Hamilton that keeps getting more extreme.

We’ve written plenty of times before about Hamilton’s plate discipline. Over the years, he’s hit, but he’s shown a lot of vulnerabilities — getting exposed for his over-aggressiveness. If you imagine a Hamilton swing, you might imagine a dinger he clobbers deep to straightaway center; or you might imagine him flailing at something slow in the dirt. He has something of a trademark flail, and in response, pitchers have thrown Hamilton fewer and fewer fastballs. This season, Hamilton’s seen the fewest fastballs yet. This season, Hamilton entered uncharted territory.

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Note: I made a huge screw-up, and for whatever reason, I didn’t catch it, but Dustin Pedroia didn’t win the MVP award in 2011. He won it in 2008. I’m an idiot. Please try to enjoy the praise of Ian Kinsler without regard for the fact that the primary point of the post is wrong.

Over the weekend, the All-Star rosters were announced, and Ian Kinsler’s name was not among the participants. This probably isn’t a huge shock, given that Robinson Cano is one of the game’s most visible stars and Jose Altuve leads the league in batting average. Kinsler’s value has always been less obvious than many bigger name stars.

But just for fun, I’d like to offer a comparison between Kinsler’s 2014 season and a recent season from a second baseman that resulted in an MVP award resulted in a ninth place finish and this writer looking like a moron. For the sake of the comparison, Kinsler’s numbers have been extrapolated out to match the same number of plate appearances as Pedroia received that year.

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The last time Clayton Kershaw allowed a run, his team was trailing the Giants in the National League West by seven and a half games. The Dodgers have since caught up, in part because of the whole thing where Clayton Kershaw hasn’t allowed any runs, and for as much as this is a particularly pitcher-friendly era for the game, Kershaw these days has achieved a basically impossible level, standing out from the group of pitchers standing out from the rest of the pitchers. If the best pitchers get strikeouts while limiting walks and homers, 2014 Kershaw has been just about perfect, improving from a Cy Young campaign that was his second in three years.

It is absolute silliness that Clayton Kershaw owns a 1.85 ERA. I’ll note also, for good measure, he hasn’t allowed a single unearned run. It is additional absolute silliness that Kershaw is one start away from possessing a 1.16 ERA. Through 13 starts, he’s allowed 18 runs, but in 12 of those starts, he’s allowed a combined 11 runs. On May 17, Kershaw allowed 39% of his runs in 8% of his appearances, getting yanked in the second inning. Kershaw entered that game with a 1.74 ERA. Since that game, he’s posted a 0.97 ERA. That was a start that didn’t at all fit the greater pattern, so it makes you wonder: how did it happen? How did Clayton Kershaw get bombed by the Diamondbacks in the middle of May?

Let’s take a look. If nothing else, this post reveals what an actually mortal Clayton Kershaw can look like. It is an increasingly unfamiliar image.

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Today, I’m going to do something slightly different in this space than I have previously. Rather than discussing the pasts, presents, and futures of three prospects I’ve seen in a serialized fashion, I am going to tell you about a game I attended this past Saturday, July 5th.

Of course, I go to a lot of games, and not all of them are worth talking about. But the reason this particular one was interesting was that it involved two pitchers who entered the game with statlines that almost had to be seen to be believed.

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On Friday night, the A’s traded top prospect Addison Russell and some stuff for Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel. Mike Petriello did a great job of writing up the transaction, highlighting the pros and cons on both sides of things. Well, at least on the A’s side, because getting a prospect of Russell’s quality basically leaves this as a deal with no real cons for the Cubs. It might or might not work out — the nature of baseball makes this true of every decision ever made — but landing an elite young middle infielder in exchange for a player who has out-priced his own value and a rent-a-veteran is a huge win for the Cubs.

In fact, the inclusion of Russell in the deal led some pretty smart folks to compare this trade to one of the more controversial trades in recent history.

Is it me, or did Billy Beane just make basically the same trade that Dayton Moore got eviscerated for 15 months ago?

— Matt Meyers (@mtmeyers) July 5, 2014

So, the A’s just traded a consensus top 10 prospect for a 2 year shot at greatness. Therefore GMDM… uh I mean Billy Beane… is a genius.

— Russell A. Carleton (@pizzacutter4) July 5, 2014

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This is me writing a positive post about the San Diego Padres in 2014. That’s notable, because there haven’t been too many good things to say about the Padres this year. Sorry, Padres.

To be fair, it’s mostly because of their lineup, which had a wRC+ of 40 in the month of June. The offensive unit, as a whole, has produced exactly the same WAR for the entire season as Yangervis Solarte, who was just optioned to Triple-A. Some guy named Kevin Kiermaier has nearly twice the WAR of the entire Padres lineup. But that’s for a different post. The position players have been historically bad in San Diego, but the pitching hasn’t been much better.

The Padres pitching staff is 21st in WAR. After a breakout season last year, Eric Stults has a matching ERA and FIP of 5.00. Free agent addition Josh Johnson got hurt and never pitched a game. 16 starts have been given to a lousy combination of Donn Roach, Billy Buckner, Robbie Erlin, Tim Stauffer and Odrisamer Despaigne. Ian Kennedy has been good, but not great. Andrew Cashner has been good, but he’s also been hurt.

Then there’s Tyson Ross.
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You probably enjoyed your holiday weekend. I watched a good deal of Colorado Rockies baseball, so you tell me which of us had a more productive few days. It’s difficult to remember a time where I’ve seen more incompetent baseball in such a short span. It’s not that Colorado lost three of four, because the Dodgers are a more talented team on a hot streak and it’s not fair to have to face Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke back-to-back. Rather, it’s how the Rockies looked while losing.

Three days in a row, Colorado allowed the Dodgers innings in which they batted around. In the seventh inning on Saturday, the Rockies went through three relievers and seven Dodger hitters before finally getting an out — and turning an 8-2 lead into an 8-7 squeaker. On Sunday, Brooks Brown, who is apparently a real person, entered in relief of Yohan Flande, who is also apparently a real person. Brown faced Miguel Rojas — a .238/.305/.297 hitter in parts of nine minor league seasons and a .230/.288/.246 hitter in his first big league season — with the bases loaded. He hit Rojas to force in a run.

Or, if you prefer pictures, here’s Franklin Morales throwing a slider while Wilin Rosario was expecting a pitchout: Read the rest of this entry »