Archive for Teams

Walk around AT&T Park and ask people inside and outside of the organization what’s wrong with Matt Cain and you’ll get a different answer every time:

“He’s tipping his pitches from the stretch.”
“It’s just the Cardinals, that’s all.”
“The Cardinals got our signs from Bengie Molina.”
“It’s his command.”

It’s worth trying each pair of pants on, but there’s also one person who might have special insight on this matter. Matt Cain.

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Fairly ordinary business on Wednesday. The Yankees beat the Indians, in New York. Makes sense. CC Sabathia beat Corey Kluber. You’d expect that to happen. Sabathia went the distance. Sure, all right, his decline is overstated. Travis Hafner clubbed a two-run dinger. Sounds like ol’ Pronk! Brett Gardner mashed a three-run dinger of his own. Well, not unheard of. It was Gardner’s sixth dinger of the season. Okay, stop right there.

Pretty much every day, I scan pretty much every box score. It’s a way to compensate for not being able to watch all of the actual action. Box scores can help generate ideas, and failing that, they can at least keep one updated. Seldom am I surprised when I look at a box score, because I think I have a pretty good awareness of the state of the numbers. But somehow this escaped me. I only learned today that Gardner’s more than halfway to double-digit dingers. Granted, he’s only more than halfway as of today, but you know what I mean. This isn’t the Brett Gardner I’ve been aware of.

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Matt Moore was a tippy-top pitching prospect, and like all tippy-top pitching prospects, he was supposed to become an ace. Based on his current sub-3 ERA and number of strikeouts, he’s arrived at a young age. Based on the rest of the picture, Moore remains at least partially unfinished, as he continues to struggle with command consistency. But that’s “unfinished,” relative to perceived ceiling. And players, of course, don’t always reach their ceilings. Most of them fall well short. Just how “finished” is Matt Moore?

Command has been a problem for Moore in the past. Here’s a thing from this past spring:

With Opening Day now a week away, Moore said he isn’t too concerned about his command issues.

“I’m pretty competitive,” he said. “It’s not so much that I can turn it on, but when the time comes around and I’m battling in those moments, when I have runners in scoring position, it’s better (when it’s the regular season).”

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After finally giving up on the idea of Danny Espinosa being able to produce while playing with a fractured wrist, the Nationals have promoted top prospect Anthony Rendon to take his place on the roster. And, by doing so, the Nationals are going to become the latest team to join the growing trend of changing the second base profile.

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The Angels won 89 games last year despite starting Mike Trout in the minors. After they promoted at the end of April, they played .580 baseball the rest of the way. Over the winter, they added Josh Hamilton, but more importantly, they added the Houston Astros to the AL West. 19 games against the Astros was supposed to give the western contenders a significant advantage, as they could pencil in 12 or 13 easy wins against a team that wasn’t even trying to compete.

Whoops. The Astros just swept the Angels — in Anaheim — and have now beaten LA’s other expensive disappointment in seven of their first 10 match-ups. In fact, the Astros may end up being the primary reason that the Angels miss the playoffs.

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Welcome to the second edition of The Fortnight. Read here for our initial post, and here for the explanation of our depth charts and standings pages, which fuel The Fortnight in its utmost.

This week, I thought we’d take a look at the teams whose projected full-season run differential has changed the most since we last left off. Stats for this edition run from May 21 through the games on June 2.

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Chris Davis has had power for as long as he’s been a professional, and probably longer. His first year, in Low-A, he slugged .534. The next year he slugged .598. In Triple-A he slugged over .600. The power is what got Davis to the majors. But Davis now is taking things to new levels. It wouldn’t be right to say Davis has been hitting everything, because he’s missed quite a lot. But he’s hit more things than he used to, and that’s why he’s currently leading the majors in home runs, with 20. His isolated slugging percentage is more than double Adrian Beltre‘s career number. It’s more than double Robinson Cano‘s. It’s got 50 points on Babe Ruth’s. If baseballs had snot in them, there would be a lot of snot on Chris Davis’ uniform.

Davis possesses what you might call “easy power.” Several people have characterized it as “effortless.” According to FanGraphs commenter farrpar, “He has the most effortless power in baseball, no doubt about it.” According to this guy, “Wow! Chris Davis! Effortless Grand-slam!!! Go O’s.” According to David Miller, “The thing about Davis is that his swing looks so effortless on homerun balls like the one he hit on Sunday.” According to OsLuvrInKy, “Gotta love it. His swings just look so effortless.” Last season, in fact, Davis hit a home run on a broken bat. Because Davis is all the some of the rage right now, I’ve decided to prepare a top-five list of his most effortless home-run swings of the 2013 season so far. One way to measure effortlessness would be biomechanical examination. Another way would be guessing.

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Introduction
Over the weekend, the present author visited Fifth Third Bank Ballpark in Geneva, Illinois — home to the Cubs’ Midwest League affilliate, the Kane County Cougars — for a game between those same Cougars and Twins affiliate, the Cedar Rapids Kernels. The objective of the trip was to interview very celebrated Minnesota outfield prospect, and the second-overall pick from last year’s draft, Byron Buxton.

In just his age-19 season, Buxton, who’s nearly as fast as Cincinnati prospect Billy Hamilton, has exhibited a startlingly mature offensive approach, posting nearly equal walk and strikeout rates while also hitting seven home runs in 240 plate appearances. His defensive range and throwing arm are also regarded as elite.

Excerpts from the author’s conversation with Buxton appear below. In addition to printing those excerpts here, the author has taken the liberty of commenting upon other aspects of his experience, as well — either because those aspects are informative (like, regarding the Kane County ballpark, for example) or amusing (like, regarding the author’s incompetence, for example) or both (although probably not both, in most cases).

It is not entirely clear whether this approach has anything like merit. In any case, it has occurred to the author that it’s not the worst possible idea — the litmus test by which he (read: I) composes most of his work.

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Here is a true sentence about Mariano Rivera. Though, for his career, he’s managed to strike out the same rate of batters as Arthur Rhodes, he’s issued a higher rate of walks than Carl Pavano, and he’s allowed the same BABIP as Armando Galarraga. Based on one’s associations, one might not read that sentence and conclude that Rivera is amazing. But then, who’s familiar with Pavano and Galarraga, and not Rivera? Rivera is amazing, for all of the reasons you know, and for additional reasons we haven’t yet even discovered. Rivera’s going to retire soon, at 43, and his ERA’s under 2. He’s walked as many batters this year as Shawn Tolleson, who has faced two batters.

Though Rivera didn’t invent the cut fastball, he made it a somebody. In Rivera’s hands, the cutter became a pitch with which everyone’s familiar. Rivera knows how to throw lots of other pitches, but he doesn’t take them into games. He just leans on the one pitch, and if another pitcher in baseball leans heavily on one pitch, we say he’s being Rivera-esque, at least in approach. It’s rare that a pitcher can have Rivera’s success, and it’s rarer still to be able to do it with one weapon — the list of such pitchers basically reads “Mariano Rivera.” Clearly, in order to do what he’s done, Rivera’s had to have impeccable command.

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Sunday afternoon, Domonic Brown did something he’s been doing a lot of lately. Brown faced Mike Fiers in the bottom of the first, with two on and two out. After a first-pitch curveball found the zone, Fiers missed three straight times, with a heater and a couple changeups. Brown scooted up in the box, and Fiers came inside with a cutter, or a slider, as if that detail’s important. Brown saw it, swung at it, and blasted it, way out to right field for a three-run dinger. It was Brown’s 14th home run in 32 starts. It was his 16th home run of the season. Brown is the National League leader in that category, after a spring in which people were concerned he might not find enough playing time.

Sunday afternoon, Domonic Brown did something he hadn’t done for a while. Brown faced Tom Gorzelanny in the bottom of the seventh, with one on and two out. After a first-pitch slider found the zone, Gorzelanny missed three straight times, with a slider and a couple heaters. The 3-and-1 pitch was a fastball that Brown went after and tipped for a strike. The next and final pitch was a slider that just missed, a little low and a little away. Brown watched it, and Brown walked — unintentionally — for the first time since April 30. Brown had just walked the day before, too, but that one was done on purpose.

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