Archive for Teams

On Wednesday, for the second time in a year, Tim Lincecum threw a no-hitter. For the second time in a year, it was against the San Diego Padres. As Rob Neyer wrote yesterday, one pitcher throwing two no-hitters against the same team in a year is a pretty unlikely outcome, especially considering the fact that Tim Lincecum stopped being TIM LINCECUM a few years ago. If you were going to list off pitchers who would throw multiple no-hitters, you probably wouldn’t go with the guy with the seventh-worst ERA among qualified starters since the start of the 2012 season.

But there’s something a little bit unique about the recent vintage of Tim Lincecum. Something that makes these no-hitters maybe a little bit more understandable.

Below, I’ve charted Lincecum’s seasonal batting average allowed based on whether or not the bases are empty or if there were runners on. The blue line represents the situations in which Linecum would be able to pitch from the wind-up, while the Red line represents — not perfectly, but well enough — situations where Lincecum would have to work from the stretch.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

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Reymin Guduan, LHP, Houston Astros (Profile)
Level: Rookie-Advanced   Age: 22  Top-15: N/A   Top-100: N/A
Line: 7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 6/4 K/BB, 1.29 ERA, 3.97 FIP

Summary
Can you feel the heat?

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Life is good for Robinson Cano. He likes his new city, and his new city likes him back. He’s secured the contract of a man’s wildest dreams, and he’s a leading vote-getter for the 2014 All-Star Game. He owns one of the top batting averages in all of baseball, and while Cano’s new team isn’t leading its division, it is in the race for the first time in years, with more total wins than Cano’s old team. There isn’t a lot of disappointment to be found anywhere. Ten-year contracts tend to lead to disappointment, but generally not in Year One, and this many months in, Cano is all smiles.

And Cano has been one of the better players in baseball. He has been the Mariners’ best position player, among a unit that needed a player like him. There’s just that one part of his statistical profile. Time and time again, people have been told that Cano is a line-drive hitter, not a power hitter. Well, it’s almost July, and Cano has four home runs. A year ago, he hit 27. Right now he has as many homers as Billy Hamilton, and we’re no longer dealing with insignificant sample sizes. Cano has never been considered a true power hitter, but he’s never been further from being a true power hitter as he is today.

Naturally, one gets to wondering. It’s not like Cano’s skills have eroded. His overall approach is the same, and he’s still drilling liners. You just wonder about the balls flying over the fence. Leaving New York doesn’t explain everything — a year ago, Cano actually hit five more dingers on the road. Seattle has long played lefty-friendly. There has to be more behind the power drought.

The easiest place to start is with Cano’s balls in play. Last year, 44 percent of them were grounders. He spent the prime of his career hovering in the mid-40s. This year, he’s up to 55 percent, and while it looked like Cano was coming out of it with a more air-friendly May, he’s gone back to hitting grounders in June. A change this sudden, to this degree, is notable, and obviously you can’t hit the ball out on a grounder or most liners. You turn your attention to Cano’s swing.

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Close your eyes for a second and try to visualize the best defensive first basemen in baseball. The guy with the most range, diving to snag grounders, falling over dugout walls to snare popups and chasing guys down to make tags.

What did you see?

OK, the title of this post may have tipped you off a bit, but if not for that, you probably would have visualized someone like Adrian Gonzalez. Maybe it would be more along the lines of Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt or Anthony Rizzo. If you didn’t put a specific name to the face, it would probably be a younger guy, pretty athletic, maybe 6-2/220, with more speed than the average first basemen who could swipe a few bags over the course of a season.

Probably wouldn’t have visualized this behemoth:

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Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill into law on Friday that gives local governments access to $13 million annually in funding for the construction or renovation of a professional sports facility. To be eligible, the sports facility must be owned and operated by a local government or owned by a private entity that’s located on land owned by a local government.

Under the general terms of the new law, the Tampa Bay Rays would be eligible as a beneficiary of the new funding stream, as Tropicana Field is owned by the City of St. Petersburg. Same for the Miami Marlins, which play in a ballpark built largely with Miami-Dade County bonds. Then there are the nine teams that play in spring training facilities in Florida (Phillies, Blue Jays, Astros, Rigers, Rays, Pirates, Orioles, Mets and Twins) and the 14 minor league teams in Florida that play in a ballpark owned by — or on land owned by — the local government.

But an amendment to the bill added as it made its way through the Florida legislature carves out facilities used by MLB and MiLB franchises unless and until MLB changes its rules to permit Cuban ballplayers to sign as free agents if they defect from Cuba directly to the United States. Under current rules, MLB requires players to defect and establish residency in a non-U.S. country before coming to the United States to sign as a free agent.

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You know the Sean Doolittle backstory by now, most certainly. The short version for those just joining us is that Doolittle was a first-round pick in the 2007 draft as a first baseman, made it all the way to Triple-A in 2009, then missed more than two years with knee and wrist injuries before converting to the mound full-time in 2012. He made it to the big leagues that year, was a successful setup man in 2013, and now he’s spent the last month as the closer for the best team in baseball.

Oh, and he’s also doing something you’ve never seen before. There’s that, too. Doolittle has struck out 50. He’s walked one. One. Vidal Nuno also has 50 strikeouts; he’s walked 22. We do a lot of complicated math here, but sometimes it’s easy. That’s a 50/1 K/BB. It is, unsurprisingly, the best seasonal K/BB of the more than 27,000 pitcher seasons of at least 30 innings we have in the database. (If you prefer K%-BB%, it’s only the fourth-best ever, but only second-best in 2014 alone. You go, Dellin Betances.) That it’s all but certainly unsustainable over a full season isn’t the point; the point is that this is a real thing that’s happened, and we need to understand why.

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Last week, I wrote that the best suitors for David Price were primarily lower revenue clubs who might not be able to afford his 2015 arbitration raise, leading to the possibility that Price could be traded both this summer and again this winter. Then, on Sunday, the Cardinals made that column obsolete. On the same day, they placed both Michael Wacha and Jaime Garcia on the disabled list, with Wacha’s injury having a pretty open-ended timeline and raising the question of whether or not St. Louis can count on him returning this year.

Suddenly, the team with the most buying power of any team in baseball now has a glaring and immediate need for an impact starting pitcher. And David Price ending up in St. Louis almost feels inevitable.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

In this installment of the Prospect Watch, I’m checking in on three players who impressed me last year and are off to big starts this year in the short-season New York-Penn League.

Summary
Wick has two plus tools and he’s laying waste to the NYPL early on.

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There aren’t many plays quite like the challenging of an outfielder’s arm. If you think about it, hitters don’t really have a choice, when they’re in the box. Runners don’t really have a choice, when a ball’s hit to an infielder. But when the ball goes to an outfielder, runners can opt in to an arm test, wherein they attempt to beat the ball to a bag. It’s a challenge of arm against legs, and when the arm emerges victorious, it can make for some memorable moments. Just this past weekend, Marcell Ozuna went crazy in consecutive innings. Less recently but more memorably, the Angels made the mistake of challenging Yoenis Cespedes. Outfielders with the best arms tend to be outfielders who rack up the most kills.

Alex Gordon‘s always had a great arm. Alex Gordon’s always piled up the kills. Between 2011 – 2013, Gordon led all outfielders in UZR’s arm rating. He led all outfielders in DRS’ arm rating. He led all outfielders in assists, with 54. The next-best was Jeff Francoeur’s 40. Gordon was drafted as a third baseman but he’s become an all-around star in left field. This season, Gordon has just five outfield assists, almost halfway through. The last three years, he’s finished with 20, 17, and 17. This season, Gordon’s also on pace for career-best arm ratings. Alex Gordon is showing the value of having a gun you seldom use.

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Way back at the beginning of May, the Diamondbacks were preparing to play the Brewers, and Kirk Gibson warned his pitchers about Carlos Gomez. He tipped them off about his aggressive tendencies, making clear that the pitchers would need to be careful. On Monday, May 5, Arizona got out to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first. In the bottom of the first, Mike Bolsinger started with a cutter, and Gomez swung, and the score was 1-1. One pitch, one swing, one dinger. It was exactly what Gibson warned against, and it’s just one of those things that Gomez does.

Said Gibson:

“We didn’t execute pitches from the first pitch of the game,” Gibson said. “I talked to you guys about Gomez. He’s a first-pitch fastball hitter and we threw one there and hit he it out of the park.”

Admitted Bolsinger:

“I knew he was a first-pitch guy, but I didn’t know he’d swing like that on the first pitch of the game,” he said. “I thought I could (sneak it by him), but I guess I didn’t.”

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