Archive for Teams

There exists the perception that the Detroit Tigers are just this total disappointment. The Tigers, you’ll recall, came into the year looking like the favorites in the AL Central, and now it’s the middle of September and they’re three back of first. They’re about as far out of the wild card as the Padres are, which means for the Tigers it’s probably division title or bust. They won’t play the leading White Sox again down the stretch. Many thought the Tigers would be able to coast to the playoffs, and now the Tigers are fighting for their very playoff lives.

Truthfully, I’d say it’s less about the Tigers being surprising, and more about the White Sox being surprising. Major media types liked the Tigers because of their stars, but check out those linked projections above. Statistically, the Tigers didn’t look like an elite team, and they’re on pace to win 85 games. People just didn’t expect for the White Sox to give them such a push.

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Rick Porcello throws a slider. He doesn’t throw it very often, but when he does, the results are typically disastrous. You might be able to work in a not-very-great pitch if everything else you had in your repertoire was overwhelming, but for the ground-balling Porcello, that’s just not the case.

But let me step back a moment. Rick Porcello is having a very Rick Porcello-like season, which, objectively, is just a wee bit better than your average starter. His 4.57 ERA is spot on with his career 4.55, his 3.82 FIP is the lowest of his career, and he’s striking out more batters than he has in his career with a 13.6% strikeout rate. Peachy.

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In a piece of news that would have seemed impossible at one time, there’s scuttlebutt that New York Mets might be open to trading Ike Davis this offseason. A source told Adam Rubin of ESPNNY that the option of moving Davis in order to both upgrade the team elsewhere and move Lucas Duda to his natural position is on the table. Though much of Queens would be dismayed — “We like Ike” T-shirts abound — it’s definitely possible that this is the right move for the Metropolitans.

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The San Diego Padres didn’t play on Monday, which means the San Diego Padres didn’t win on Monday. We currently live in a world in which this is an infrequent occurrence. We currently live in a world in which the Padres, Orioles, and A’s keep on winning, and the Red Sox have one of their worst rosters people can remember. In some ways this was a gradual shift and in other ways this was rather sudden. Anyhow, the Padres have been amazing, and one of the players allowing them to be amazing has been Cameron Maybin.

Last offseason, it wouldn’t have seemed weird to know that Maybin would help the Padres down the stretch in 2012. Two offseasons ago, sure, for two reasons, but last offseason, Maybin was coming off a year in which he seemed to put his skills together. Maybin was 24 years old in 2011, and for three years in a row he had been a Baseball America top-10 prospect. Last year was a career year and the Padres rewarded Maybin for his development with a five-year contract. It seemed like he was becoming the player he was supposed to be.

But after Maybin figured it out in 2011, he lost it again to begin 2012. Maybin was left in the position of having to figure it out again.

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Perhaps inspired by teammate Mariano Rivera’s vow to come back in 2013 after suffering an injury, Andy Pettitte is apparently considering a 2013 return in the wake of his injury-limited innings this season. Pettitte’s numbers this year (3.22 ERA, 3.41 FIP, albeit in a small, sub-60 inning sample so far) would be good for any pitcher. They are even more amazing considering that Pettitte turned 40 in June and did not pitch in 2011. Few pitchers have done what Pettitte is considering doing, let alone left-handed starters. Rather than doing a detailed (and premature) analysis of Pettitte’s 2013 outlook, it might be interesting to see how some 40-year-old southpaws have done in the past when coming back for their age 41 seasons.

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With a 1.73 ERA including a 172/58 strikeout-to-walk ratio across two levels, Cincinnati Reds prospect Tony Cingrani was arguably the best pitcher in minor league baseball from a statistical standpoint. That success earned the left-hander a call up to the show where Cingrani has struck out eight, while walking only a single batter in four-plus innings pitched. Drafted in 2011, the former third round pick has made a meteoric rise to the big leagues. To put it in perspective, the only 2011 first round pick to reach Major League Baseball faster was Arizona Diamondbacks Trevor Bauer.

Video after the jump

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Every year around this time fans, broadcasters, and baseball people get into the whole expanded rosters debate. Some don’t like that the final month of the season is played under a different set of rules while others don’t mind the extra players. What always seems to get lost in the shuffle is that very few September call-ups actually have an impact when they’re brought up. Most are relegated to mop-up relief innings or pinch-running duties, minor roles like that, but every once in a while someone will come up and become an instant difference maker.

Perhaps the greatest September call-up in recent memory is Francisco Rodriguez, who went from dominating the minor leagues — 13.0 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 with a 2.27 ERA in 83.1 innings between Double-A and Triple-A — to a key setup cog for the World Champion Angels in 2002. K-Rod pitched so well in his 5.2-inning trial (13 strikeouts and one unintentional walk) that the Halos squeezed him onto the playoff roster, where he threw another great 18.2 innings (28 strikeouts and five walks). The Angels struck September call-up gold that season.

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In a couple of weeks, we’re going to be treated to a couple of one-game, winner-take-all showdowns to determine the final playoff team in each league. The addition of the wild card play-in game changes the context of the playoff races in a new and meaningful way, and also creates some interesting questions for a handful of teams. While MLB has had tie-breaking games before, they’ve never been known to be necessary until the final day of the regular season, and teams simply had to make adjustments to play an unscheduled game at the last minute.

Now, however, it’s likely that one or more teams are going to head into the final few days of the regular season essentially certain that they’re going to be involved in the play-in game. For instance, the Braves currently have a seven game lead over St. Louis in the wild card race, and even after sweeping Washington this weekend, they’re still 5.5 games back in the NL East. CoolStandings currently gives the Braves a 96.3% chance of winning one of the two wild card spots, but only a 3.6% chance of winning their division. Barring some kind of epic collapse by either the Braves or Nationals, Atlanta is going to be one of the two NL teams in the play-in game, and they can start planning for that game right now.

And, as part of that planning, they should seriously consider the idea of skipping the starting pitcher entirely.

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People care about home-run distance, because people like impressive home runs, and impressive home runs tend to have considerable distances. One is impressed when a batter drives a baseball 480 feet and out of the yard. As far as quality of contact is concerned, though, what might be more significant is the baseball’s speed off the bat. All a hitter ever wants to do is hit the baseball hard, so looking at the speed off the bat tells us who hit the baseball the hardest. The ESPN Home Run Tracker provides this data for dingers, and unsurprisingly, the hardest-hit homer of the year so far was hit by Giancarlo Stanton. It was a homer that damaged a scoreboard.

You can sort the data in the other direction to see the weakest-hit home runs. On average, home runs have left the bat at 103.5 miles per hour. The weakest homer was hit by Jayson Nix, to right field in Yankee Stadium. It left the bat at 89.8 miles per hour. The next-weakest was hit by Chris Iannetta, also in Yankee Stadium. Then the next two weakest after that were hit in Fenway Park. These aren’t astonishing results — people are familiar with the idea of Yankee Stadium and Fenway conceding some cheap dingers. People love dingers, but some of those cheap ones can make them roll their eyes.

The fifth-weakest dinger of the year so far was hit in Petco Park.

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With Kingsport being no more than 40-minutes away from Elizabethton, the Mets showed up 30-minutes before game time robbing me of a chance to see batting practice and infield/outfield. Nonetheless, I’m not sure it would have mattered as 2012 Mets first round pick Gavin Cecchini was penciled in the lineup as designated hitter and the rest of the starting lineup was short on prospects beyond diminutive second baseman Branden Kaupe. I also lucked into three innings of Akeel Morris, a relief pitcher rumored to have big velocity who fell apart early on as a starter before reeling off 16 innings of two earned run ball to end the season. Read the rest of this entry »