Archive for Teams

You’re going into the bottom of the ninth inning, and your favorite baseball team is trailing 7-0. The game’s being played in a roughly neutral run environment, and so your team’s odds of winning are about 0.2 percent. That’s one-fifth of one percent. Maybe you’ve stopped paying close attention, and maybe you’ve stopped watching entirely, because the game is basically hopeless. It’s clearly not impossible to score at least seven runs in one inning, but it is exceedingly rare.

The first batter draws a walk. The next batter draws another walk. Now maybe the guy after that strikes out, but then a single loads the bases, and another single scores two. A walk loads the bases once more. You’re paying close attention again, if you didn’t turn the game off, because suddenly things are interesting, and your team has tons of momentum. Your team’s odds of winning with one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth of a 7-2 game are about four percent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the big Tuesday night games, perhaps none was bigger than the barn burner in Minnesota between the Twins and the Royals. The Twins failed in their quest for that elusive 60th win, and the Royals solidified their grip on third place in this 9-1 thriller. Some might say the game was not compelling, but I found at least two things that drew my attention in the first inning alone: a failed bunt and a failed steal. When these plays first happened, I found each a source of irritation and I planned on writing that up. However, after looking a bit more closely, things were not so clear cut, and I thought it would be even more interesting (to me, at least) to write that up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Odds are, as FanGraphs readers, you aren’t Oakland A’s fans, but you are at least somewhat familiar with Jerry Blevins. You know something about who he is and what he does for a living. You might have an idea of how good he is at it. To you, this isn’t weird; Blevins is a baseball player, and you know a lot about a lot of baseball players. To other people outside the baseball-fandom bubble, you know a lot about a lot of guys you’ve never met. Speaking generally, it is profoundly unusual to be familiar with Jerry Blevins. Tuesday night, though, Blevins got himself in headlines, so it’s very slightly less unusual to be familiar with him than it was before.

As you might’ve seen or read about already, Blevins came through with a clutch ninth-inning relief appearance that allowed the A’s to beat the Angels, 6-5. According to Cool Standings, the win boosted Oakland’s playoff odds from 85 percent to 90 percent, and the loss dropped LA’s playoff odds from 32 percent to 26 percent. Recall that the Angels were supposed to be one of the best teams in recent baseball history. There is now a three-in-four chance they don’t even reach the one-game playoff. I don’t know how these odds would’ve swung had the Angels rallied and won, but suffice to say things would look very different indeed.

Read the rest of this entry »

“I love his upside. If he can harness his fastball, throw a few more strikes, he’s got a chance to be pretty good. Guys have a tough time squaring up balls against him; it’s tough to make solid contact. When you see some of the reaction of some of the hitters, I don’t think there’s any fluke about it.” — Ryan Doumit on Samuel Deduno

Few things are inevitable in baseball. Preseason favorites fail to deliver postseason destinies, future Hall of Famers go through prolonged slumps both at the plate and on the mound, and under-the-radar prospects burst onto the big league stage and become household names in a matter of weeks. It’s one of the main reasons we so passionately follow the game.

As of mid-August, though, perhaps nothing seemed so inevitable as the downfall of right-hander Samuel Deduno.

The 29-year-old journeyman began his season in Triple-A Rochester for the Minnesota Twins — his third team over the past three years — and eventually worked his way into the big league rotation. He took advantage of the opportunity by only allowing eight earned runs in his first 29 innings, winning three of his first five decisions and posting a 2.48 ERA. Given the state of the Twins’ starting staff, that type of production secured him a permanent place in the rotation for the remainder of the season.

Plenty of reasons for concern existed, however. Our very own Mike Podhorzer outlined why Deduno was unlikely to continue his early success on the mound, which largely centered around his lack of command. He has historically struggled to command his pitches — particularly his fastball — and that resulted in an astronomical walk rate. Even today, his walk rate currently stands at 5.45 BB/9. Far too high for a guy who possesses a below-average strikeout rate.

Almost a month later, Deduno’s statistics continue to defy common sense. His 1.12 K/BB ratio currently ranks seventh-worst in the league amongst starting pitchers who have thrown at least fifty pitches this season. He owns a 5.06 FIP and 4.93 SIERA. His 80.3% strand rate continues to beg for a regression.

Yet, instead of experiencing a tremendous regression of his skills on the mound, Samuel Deduno has shown marked improvement in recent starts. He has only surrendered four earned runs in his last three starts (spanning 20 innings), while striking out 19 and only walking six. And as his catcher Ryan Doumit said in the quotation above, success for the right-hander begins with throwing more strikes.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are rate stats for just about every kind of opportunity a hitter faces in a game. Batting average tells you how often a player reaches base via a hit. On-base percentage tells you how often a player avoids making an out per plate appearance. But what about swings as opportunities?

Last year, I played around with the idea of production per swing. The idea was to examine what hitters gave the most value when they took a swing. The methodology was pretty simple: calculate the Weighted On-base Average (wOBA) each hitter generated using their swings — instead of plate appearances — as the denominator*.

Of course, there is a healthy correlation between actual wOBA and wOBA per swing (.83 in 2012), but less so Isolated Power (ISO). (wOBA/swing and ISO share only a .53 correlation.) Some of the results may not be all that surprising, but many certainly are.

Let’s first look at the top-25 so far this year:

Read the rest of this entry »

Aroldis Chapman is referred to as the Cuban Missile, because Chapman is from Cuba, and we used to associate Cuba with missiles, and missiles are fast, and Chapman throws really fast, and we are horrible. It would at least make a little more sense if we just referred to Chapman’s fastballs as Cuban missiles, but even there, fastballs don’t travel nearly as fast as missiles do. Regardless, Chapman has posted crazy numbers this season, in large part thanks to his missiles. Lately his missiles have been missing some speed, and ending up at the wrong coordinates. I think I’m done now with the missile thing.

A few days ago, Chapman blew a save against the Astros, which is a double whammy. His fastball averaged just over 96 miles per hour and his slider averaged just over 84, down from the usual 98 and 88. That’s troubling, but it’s not so bad so long as it’s just a blip instead of a pattern. Monday night, Chapman hinted at this becoming a pattern. Chapman faced five Pirates and walked three of them, with just seven strikes out of 22 pitches. His fastball averaged just over 95 miles per hour, and his slider just over 84. Aroldis Chapman raised some eyebrows, because he wasn’t pitching like himself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Within the drama of the pennant races and playoff chases exists a more morbid pursuit. Towards the end of the season, I always like to rummage through our vast chasm of data to see if there are players that have a chance to be historically bad in any particular category. Maybe it’s because I typically root for teams that play below .500 baseball, but I have an appreciation for the uniqueness of the ugly.

To that end, I looked at starting pitchers. Specifically, pitchers that had a penchant for allowing home runs. And that turned up Ervin Santana. (honorable mention to Phil Hughes). Suddenly, I have a new outcome to root for.

Read the rest of this entry »

Collin McHugh’s nine-strikeout debut against Colorado at the end of August (box) created reason for enthusiam apropos the Mets right-hander. His third major-league start, Monday night in Washington (box), was decidedly more challenging.

Here are three lessons regarding Collin McHugh from that same Monday start.

Lesson One: Slider Location Is Probably Important for McHugh
McHugh’s slider does not have particularly sharp break or particularly excellent velocity. As a result, he’s (a) unlikely to induce as many chase swings with it as another pitcher and (b) more likely to be punished for mistakes. As a further result, McHugh’s ability to locate his slider will have no little effect on his overall success.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nationals Ballpark sits in the southeast quadrant of Washington, D.C. Take a look at this map of the District and its environs. More than half way down, right of center, is a marker for Washington Navy Yard. That’s approximately where the  ballpark is. As you can see, the area is accessible by highways connecting the District to Virginia and Maryland. There is also a Metro stop at the ballpark. Metro is the subway run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Here’s the Metro map. Notice the stop on the Green Line for Navy Yard-Ballpark.

The Nationals encourage fans to take public transportation to the ballpark, but also provide plenty of options and information for driving to — and parking near — the ballpark. The Nationals may keep track of how many fans drive to games, versus take public transportation, but that information isn’t publicly available.

The Metro stops running at midnight Sundays through Thursdays.. Typically, that’s not a problem for Nationals fans traveling to and from the ballpark on the Metro, as the night games start at 7:05 p.m. local time. Unless a game extends well into extra innings, fans usually have plenty of time to take a Metro train home.

But some games have gone well into extra innings, and that’s been a problem for fans who took Metro to the game and expected to take it home. This issue first arose in June, when the Nationals played the Mets on June 5, and the game lasted into the 12th inning. As the game moved toward 11 p.m., ballpark officials announced the Metro would stop running at midnight. That meant that fans had to leave the ballpark with enough time to catch a train at the Navy Yards/Green Line station and get to their destination by midnight. Some fans left, and missed the Nationals’ walk-off victory on a Bryce Harper single in the bottom of the 12th, at 11:20 p.m.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over this past weekend, the Orioles split a 4 game series with the New York Yankees. Baltimore was able win 2 games and stay only 1 game behind the Yankess in the AL East standings, even though they were outscored 31 to 23. This trend of winning while being outscored is not uncommon for the Orioles this season.

The most remarkable part about the Orioles keeping pace with the elite teams in the AL is that they have done it with a negative run differential, (608 Runs scored vice 637 Runs Allowed). It may seem that it would not be too uncommon for a team to be a few wins over .500 and have a allowed a few more runs then they have scored, but it isn’t. Only the San Francisco Giants achieved the feat in 2011 (86-76, -17 runs) and no teams in 2010. Since 1962, when both leagues went to 162 games, 54 teams have been able to reach this feat, or just about 1 per season. The average run differential for the teams was -18.6 runs and the average number of games over .500 was 6.8 games.

Read the rest of this entry »