Archive for Teams

Trevor Bauer has had a few big things going in his favor. For one, most conspicuously, he’s long been in possession of what they call an electric arm. He’s been able to run his fastball up there in the mid-90s, and while an electric arm doesn’t automatically bring one success, it does guarantee one several opportunities. So, Bauer’s arm has been a blessing. Bauer, also, is intellectual and curious about his work, to an extreme extent. Bauer’s always willing to try new things in the name of self-improvement, and while that’s sometimes gotten him in trouble, it reflects a strong inner desire to be the best pitcher he can become.

The only problem was that Bauer didn’t throw strikes. The thing about strikes is that they can have a snowballing effect. If a guy can throw strikes, hitters will be more willing to go after balls, generating only more strikes. If a guy can’t throw strikes, hitters won’t take him so seriously, and they’ll sit on pitches down the middle. Bauer, for a while, had everything but the most important thing, and some people began to think of him as an overrated prospect. Bauer, today, has the same 2014 strike rate as Cole Hamels.

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It’s kind of hard to imagine a man who is 6’6 and weighs 240 lbs. It’s easy to imagine the numbers, but it’s hard to fathom a person that size standing behind you in line at the bank or teaching social studies to third graders. We see numbers like this bandied about in sports, and when big men are playing on a field with other big men, the baseline is shifted. They don’t seem that much bigger than everyone else.

A few years ago, I was in the Twins clubhouse and got to talk a little with Justin Morneau. Justin Morneau is listed at 6’4″ and 220 lbs. My first out-loud question was something about how his training regimen changed since his concussion problems. My first internal question regarded how quickly he could leave me in a bloody pulp should my questions anger him. Morneau has 4 inches and 30 pounds (40 if you don’t include my spare tire) on me. Yet the difference, when standing face-to-face with him, was staggering. Giancarlo Stanton and Justin Morneau are large men, is the point. Read the rest of this entry »

At some point in the near future — perhaps even within the next 48 hours or so, if you believe Ken Rosenthal, which you probably should — the Pirates are going to finally make the move that their fans have been desperately waiting for and promote outfielder Gregory Polanco. If you’ve been following this situation at all, you know most of the background there. Polanco is 22, he’s tearing up Triple-A (.353/.412/.552), he’s reportedly a plus defensive outfielder, and when he teams with Andrew McCutchen & Starling Marte in Pittsburgh, it might just be the best defensive outfield in the game on day one. Considering that the primary Pirates right fielders have been Travis Snider (56 wRC+ when playing right), Jose Tabata (76) and Josh Harrison (a shocking 139 that belies his 78 career mark entering the year), Polanco’s presence will be a welcome reinforcement to a disappointing Pirates club — even if he isn’t likely to go all Yasiel Puig on the league immediately.

When he does, we’ll all marvel at his talent and laugh at the lip service the Pirates paid to him “not being ready” and complain that the silly “Super Two” rules provide incentives for teams to keep their best players in the minors, and we’ll all miss the greater point about the Pirates: other than a bit of better defense, Polanco isn’t going to change the fact that the pitching staff is really, really disappointing.

Like, this disappointing, not including last night:
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You’re a pitcher? You need a change-up.

That automatic response seems reasonable enough given the state of modern pitching analysis. You’ve probably heard it plenty of times about pitchers like Justin Masterson or Chris Archer. After all, the change breaks away from opposite-handed hitters and helps pitchers neutralize platoon threats.

But you know what? There’s another pitch that breaks away from opposite-handed hitters: the two-seamer or the sinker, whatever you want to call it. And yet lefties love sinkers from righties. So why do two pitches with similar movement have such different results?

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Last summer, I saw Joey Votto pop out.

I traveled to Chicago, as I do every summer, to enjoy the city and catch a couple Cubs games at Wrigley Field. The Cincinnati Reds were in town and Jeff Samardzija was pitching for the Cubs. In Votto’s first at-bat against Samardzija, he doubled. In his second at-bat, Votto walked. But in the fourth inning, Samardzija got Votto to pop out to third base. I immediately recognized what had happened. Nobody I was with quite understood why I was so excited. I explained to them how Joey Votto doesn’t pop out to the infield. It ended up being his only infield fly of 2013. He did it one time in 2012. He did it one time in 2011. He didn’t do it at all in 2010.

I’ve been to a ton of baseball games. I’ve never seen a pitcher throw a perfect game, or even a no-hitter. I’ve never seen a batter hit for the cycle. But I have seen Joey Votto pop out. And as lame as it may sound, I contend that pop out is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen at a baseball game in person, alongside Greg Maddux’s 3,000th strikeout, Manny Ramirez hitting three homers and Lou Pineilla kicking his hat all over the infield.

After attending Monday’s game in Cleveland between the Indians and the Boston Red Sox, I can add another statistical quirk to the list of coolest things I’ve seen in person at a baseball game: an Immaculate Inning.
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One of the remaining great unknowns is finding a reasonable way to evaluate the performances of coaches. With managers, we have only so much of the picture. It’s the same with hitting coaches and pitching coaches, and while sometimes we can credit a pitching coach for helping a guy learn a new pitch or smooth out his mechanics, hitting coaches are even more of a mystery. It would appear that teams haven’t even figured out who is and isn’t a worthwhile hitting coach, yet while their overall value isn’t known, one thing we can do is focus on individual cases. A team’s hitting coach won’t have the same effect on every hitter. In Toronto, one hitting coach has had a significant effect on one hitter.

Before the year, the Blue Jays added Kevin Seitzer, and one of Seitzer’s messages was stressing the importance of using the whole field. Seitzer came into a situation featuring Jose Bautista, who blossomed into a star by becoming an extreme pull power hitter. This season, Bautista has performed at a level well above what he did the previous two seasons. He’s back to what he was at his peak, yet he’s gotten there by following a different sort of path.

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On Sunday, the Marlins made a head-scratching trade, acquiring reliever Bryan Morris from the Pirates in exchange for their Competitive Balance selection — #39 overall — in Thursday’s amateur draft. Morris does have some virtues as a very hard-throwing groundball guy who is decently effective against right-handed batters, but he also has a long list of flaws; his command is lousy, he can’t get left-handers out, and even used as a situational reliever, he’s been pretty terrible this year.

If you evaluate his Major League career solely by runs allowed, he’s been essentially a replacement level arm. If you evaluate that performance by metrics that predict ERA better than ERA itself, Morris has been one of the worst relief pitchers in all of baseball over the last year. Morris is somewhere between bad and unrosterable, and yet the Marlins gave up a draft pick that has some real value in exchange for a right-handed specialist who isn’t even all that great at that very niche job.

But on Monday, we found out why the Marlins made that trade. Rather than justifying the deal, however, the actual motivation for the move reinforces every negative perception about baseball’s worst organization.

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Who’s the best all-around center fielder in baseball? Well, that’s easy. It’s Mike Trout. I could give you a bunch of stats to illustrate that, but I won’t. It’s Mike Trout. Discussion over, at least on that point. Second-best? You can make a case for Carlos Gomez. You can also make a case for Andrew McCutchen. There’s not really a wrong answer there between the two. One gives you a bit more defense, one a bit more offense. No matter which one is No. 2 or No. 3, it’s safe to say that they’re the only two names there.

But after that, it gets a little more questionable. If this was two years ago, maybe Austin Jackson is in that conversation, but he’s well into his second consecutive year of decline from a great 2012, to the point that’s he’s playing like a replacement player right now. Colby Rasmus has his supporters, and he’s also got a .266 OBP. Lots of people like Adam Jones, and it’s hard to argue with the 55 homers he hit over 2012-13. He’s also been a below-average hitter in 2014. Jacoby Ellsbury probably belongs in the discussion, but his 98 wRC+ isn’t doing him any favors. Maybe you like Coco Crisp, although his once-stellar defense has collapsed in recent years.

I guess the point here is this: how many total names would you have to go through — Desmond Jennings, Lorenzo Cain, Denard Span, Juan Lagares, etc. — before you got to Arizona’s A.J. Pollock, who broke his hand over the weekend when Johnny Cueto hit him with a pitch? A dozen? More? And yet, Pollock is one of just five true center fielders worth six WAR since the start of 2013. (I’m discounting Shin-Soo Choo here, who isn’t a center fielder now and was merely trying to impersonate one last year.) If you prefer “over the last calendar year,” he’s still No. 5, behind the big three and Ellsbury. With 2.5 WAR through 50 games this year, he was on pace for 6 WAR in 2014 alone, and had been behind only Trout and Gomez before getting hurt. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Summary
Payano has two interesting pitches from the left side, but he’s been derailed by inconsistency his whole career.

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Among starting pitchers with at least 40 innings, here are the biggest increases and increasers in strikeout rate since 2013, by percentage points:

• Jon Lester, +9.5%
• Zack Greinke, +7.7%
• Jason Hammel, +7.3%
• Brandon McCarthy, +7.3%
• Garrett Richards, +6.9%

The Red Sox are playing well again, which means we get to write positive things about them. Among the most positive things has beenJon Lester, who’s taken a step forward after having taken a step back. Lester, for a couple years, posted ace-like numbers. The following three years he lost a lot of strikeouts, but now he’s back to the old level and then some, carrying what’s otherwise been an inconsistent starting unit. For Lester, it’s a good strategy in what remains a contract year — play better baseball. After all, better baseball means better baseball money.

An increase like Lester’s causes one to dig around for potential explanations. It’s not that he’s really throwing harder. It’s not like he’s dramatically changed his pitch mix. It’s not a matter of getting ahead more. Between 2011 and 2013, 29% of Lester’s pitches thrown were with two strikes. This year, he’s at 30%. But over those three years, under 18% of those two-strike pitches turned into strikeouts. This year, he’s at 24%. That’s a change, and it might lead you somewhere else.

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