Archive for Teams

You most likely heard over the weekend that Yankees righty Ivan Nova walked off the mound in the fifth inning of Saturday’s start in Tampa shaking his right arm, and now we know that he’s got a partially torn UCL in his elbow. While he’s yet to decide whether he’ll rehab or opt for surgery, this is the kind of thing that almost always, always ends in Tommy John surgery, and it seems more likely than not that we don’t see him again in pinstripes before mid-2015.

In and of itself, this is actually smaller news than it seems, if only because we all know by now that this is the year that elbows are popping at an alarming rate, with Nova — assuming he does choose surgery — becoming the 21st professional pitcher (including minor leaguers) to get a zipper this year alone. 14 of those are major leaguers. He is, depending on how you look at such things, only the fifth or sixth or seventh most accomplished of the afflicted. If you could make a starting rotation of 2014 Tommy John pitchers, he might not even be in it. (Why one would do such a thing is another question entirely. That rotation might still be better than Arizona’s, though.)

So this is really less about Nova than it is about what the Yankees will…  oh, hang on:

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The Pirates signed Edinson Volquez as a reclamation project, and it was easy enough to explain. A season ago, Volquez posted a 5.71 ERA, which is terrible. But he also posted a 4.24 FIP and a 4.07 xFIP, and on that basis alone, one could’ve argued that Volquez still had a place in the league. His pitches had remained the same as ever. The results didn’t follow, but the Pirates were willing to take a chance, just as they’d taken chances on other seemingly damaged pitchers in the recent past. Some got no better, but some were repaired.

Stop now and take a look at things. Between 2008-2013, out of pitchers who threw at least 500 innings, Volquez put up the second-worst walk rate and the second-worst strike rate. Now, out of qualified pitchers in 2014, Volquez is putting up a top-20 walk rate and a top-20 strike rate. Used to be, Volquez would throw about six of every ten pitches for strikes. So far this month, he’s thrown about seven of every ten pitches for strikes. There’s tweaking Edinson Volquez, and there’s making him a whole new guy. What might be a reasonable explanation for this?

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When the Diamondbacks won the National League West division in 2011, they looked like they had a pretty decent future. This week, things don’t look quite as rosy. According to our Playoff Odds page, only four teams have less of a shot at reaching the postseason as of this writing — the Astros, Twins, Cubs or Marlins. None of those teams were expected to contend for a playoff berth this season. The Dbacks were. Unless things change fast, they will not actually contend for a playoff spot, and then the question becomes how can the organization right the ship?

Since Jonah Keri had a great look over at Grantland at how we got to this point, and since I try to follow the mantra of Chris Tucker/Smokey and not bring up old ‘ish, I won’t waste your time repeating it. Here though, if you don’t feel like clicking through, is the money quote:
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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.

Summary
After a romp through the Pioneer League last year, McMahon is continuing to crush the ball, and he projects well going forward.

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The first step was identifying pitch-framing as a skill. I don’t mean to diminish all the work that was done — it was phenomenal work, and illuminating work. We can’t stop talking about it! But there are other steps, or if you prefer, follow-up questions. Three of them:

1. How much does pitch-framing matter?
2. Is there a pitch-framing aging curve?
3. To what extent can better pitch-framing be taught?

As far as No. 1 is concerned, we’ve got a lot of educated guesses. As far as No. 2 is concerned, it doesn’t seem like there’s much of an aging curve at all. And as far as No. 3 is concerned, it’s interesting to look at certain case studies. It seemed like J.P. Arencibia improved a season ago after working pretty hard on his receiving technique. And now we’ve got the case of Jason Castro, which, given his team, probably isn’t a coincidence. Well, no, it definitely isn’t a coincidence. I’ll get to that!

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Two things, both from Wednesday. Before the first game of a Yankees/Cubs doubleheader, the YES Network broadcast was profiling scheduled starter Masahiro Tanaka. They, of course, had very positive things to say, and at one point, Al Leiter remarked, “what I like is that he’s attacking the zone.” No nibbling, with that guy. Aggressive, polished rookie.

Later, Wednesday night, I got an email from Dave Cameron, asking if hitters should just stand there with their bats on their shoulders, since Tanaka doesn’t throw strikes. Why not force him to come into the zone? Is he even able to come into the zone often enough?

Two analyses by two analysts of one pitcher on one day, arriving at basically opposite conclusions. Leiter said Tanaka attacks the zone. Dave said Tanaka doesn’t attack the zone. What’s going on here? It’s time to gush some more about Masahiro Tanaka.

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The Houston Astros added outfielder George Springer to their major league roster on Tuesday night and batted him second in the lineup in their game on Wednesday against the Kansas City Royals. Springer had an infield hit in five at-bats plus a walk in his debut.

Astros fans — indeed, fans of young baseball talent — have been pining for Springer’s call up since last season when he batted .301/.411/.600 in 589 plate appearances with 37 home runs and 45 stolen bases between Triple-A and Double-A. That followed his successful 2012 campaign in Double-A and high Single-A, when he posted a .302/.383/.526 line in 581 plate appearances. In February, Baseball America ranked Springer as the 18th best prospect. My colleague Marc Hulet put Springer at No. 14 on his Top 100 prospect list.

Yet Springer remained in the minors, without even a whiff of the big leagues last September, when the Astros expanded their roster. And he was sent back to Triple-A during spring training, with no place on Houston’s 40-man.

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When we last talked to Brandon McCarthy, he was looking for a change-up. He didn’t find it. But he did find what he hopes will be the key to a successful — and full — season this year: Bulk.

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Even good hitters go through a cold streaks at some point. If they want to avoid fan panic, though, they need to make sure and save those week or month-long slumps for later in the season. When slumps happen at the beginning of the season, they sandbag the player’s line, and it takes a while for even a good hitter’s line to return to “normal.” Most FanGraphs readers are familiar with the notion of small sample, and thus are, at least on an intellectual level, hopefully immunized against overreaction to early season struggles of good players.

Nonetheless, at this time of the year it is often good to have some existential reassurance. Intellectually, we know that just because a cold streak happens over the first two weeks or month of a season it is not any different than happening in the middle of the year. Slumps at the beginning of the year simply stand out more because they are the whole of the player’s line. One terrible month (and we are not even at the one month point in this season) does not doom a season. Rather than repeat the same old stuff about regression and sample size, this post will offer to anecdotal help. Here are five seasons from hitters, each of which contain (at least) one terrible month at some point, but each of which turned out to be excellent overall.

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Earwigs are weird little bugs. They’re long, they have pincers on their butts and they have these weird little membranous wings they rarely use. Some species of earwigs have been traced back to the Jurassic Era, and they live on pretty much every continent. You know where they don’t live? Anyone’s ears. The term earwig is a bit of a misnomer as, at least according to the infallible Wikipedia, one would rarely find them in a human ear.

The term has also migrated to mean something that is found in the human ear, at least sort of. Songs, tunes and melodies can also be termed earwigs — referring to a tune that gets stuck in one’s head. I’d list some popular choices, but I don’t consider myself to be that mean of a person and I shudder at the comments if I were responsible for the quickening of some readers’ descents into madness. I do have to mention one, though, or this won’t have anything to do with baseball. Read the rest of this entry »