Archive for Teams

The 2018 Dodgers found a new way to hit rock bottom, losing four straight at home to the Reds, the NL’s worst team. They’ve now lost 14 of 19 and, at 16-24, with Corey Seager out for the season, Justin Turner yet to play and both Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu on the disabled list, they entered Monday just a game ahead of the Padres (16-26) in the NL West. Read that again: a team with a payroll of nearly $200 million, one that lost Game Seven of the World Series, is within spitting distance of a rebuilding club that hasn’t seen a .500 season since 2010.

Through the first 40 games of the season, the Dodgers have fared worse than all but two of the previous 17 teams that lost the World Series — namely, the 2001 Mets and the 2008 Rockies, both of whom stumbled out of the gate at 15-25. Which raises the question: is there a “World Series hangover” for teams that lose the Fall Classic?

Last year, in the wake of the 2016 champion Cubs’ sluggish start, the powers that be at Sports Illustrated asked me to investigate the possible existence of a World Series hangover effect, particularly given that no team had repeated as champion since the Yankees in 1999 and 2000. While conceding that the numerous areas one might examine (such as a year-after effect on pitcher performance and injury, or on hitters and aging) are endless and potentially fascinating, I chose to keep things simple by testing a couple of theories — namely, that (a) the defending champions were more likely to start slowly the following year and that (b) said teams were more likely to finish slowly.

It’s easy to project narratives on either of those theories. In the case of the first, perhaps a shortened offseason left players too little time to rest and recover, or the front office was reluctant to break up a championship team. In the case of the second, perhaps it takes longer for the heavier workload to catch up, or for their luck to finally run out. But instead of falling back on such explanations, I simply decided to see where the data took me.

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If one were to assemble a list of the major-league pitchers whose strengths are most well suited to surviving in Colorado, Kyle Freeland would appear among that collection of names — in particular, because he possesses both a good sinker and strong command. The sinker is important for inducing ground balls, which cause much less damage than balls in the air at Coors, due both to the altitude at which the park rests and the spacious outfield it contains. Command is important not only because mistake pitches are punished more swiftly at Coors, but also because walks tend to amplify the consequences of those mistakes.

Kyle Freeland had a modestly successful rookie season a year ago, getting a lot of ground balls and putting together a 4.57 FIP, perfectly average when factoring in his ballpark. He struggled a little to start the season, but over his last four starts, he’s defied the Coors Field stereotype by abandoning his sinking fastball and pitching up in the zone. So far, it is working.

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Sometimes, when players are first promoted, their teams try to ease them in. After all, there’s already plenty of pressure, and you don’t want to give someone the shakes. Might as well give a guy the opportunity to get comfortable. Other times, whether by design or necessity, there’s no such special treatment. A few weeks ago, Eric Lauer became the 27th starting pitcher to make his big-league debut in Coors Field. You might remember Lauer for half-smiling after allowing a grand slam. Lauer was charged with seven runs in three frames, which is not good, but the history of these debuts is predictably not good — starters have allowed 6.9 runs per nine innings. Coors Field is a beast. Nothing in the minors can prepare you for major-league bats in Colorado.

Sunday afternoon, 21-year-old Freddy Peralta became the 28th starting pitcher to make his big-league debut in Coors Field. It wasn’t really supposed to happen that way, but Chase Anderson fell ill, and Peralta was scheduled to pitch in Colorado Springs. He was actually going to pitch in front of his family for the first time in his career. The sudden change of plans abruptly sent everyone to Denver. One would assume that expectations were modest. And yet, in the bottom of the sixth, this is how Peralta left the mound:

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The Mariners own the longest postseason drought among major North American professional sports teams, and their chances of breaking that streak, which began in 2002, only got longer on Sunday. Robinson Cano was hit on the right hand by a pitch from the Tigers’ Blaine Hardy and suffered a broken metacarpal. While the full prognosis won’t be known until he sees a hand specialist on Tuesday in Philadelphia, the team will be lucky if he’s back before the All-Star break.

“They didn’t say anything about how long I might be out, but it is broken bad, so there might be surgery,” Cano told reporters after Sunday’s game.

Though they had merely been alternating wins and losses over the course of their past 11 games, the Mariners entered Sunday with a 22-16 record, matching their best start since 2004, and just 1.5 games behind the Angels in the race for the second AL Wild Card spot; with Seattle’s loss to Detroit and Anaheim’s win over Minnesota, the gap is now 2.5 games. Their Playoff Odds were at 13.9% entering Sunday. Without Cano for the foreseeable future, however, they’re down to TK.

The 35-year-old Cano has been the Mariners’ top position player thus far in terms of WAR (1.4) and second best in terms of wRC+ (128, on a .287/.385/.441 line) behind hot-starting Mitch Haniger. He’s been a remarkably durable player, averaging 159 games per year from 2007 to -17, visiting the disabled list only for hamstring strains in 2006 and 2017; he still played 150 game last year. That day-in, day-out durability has helped him rack up 2,417 career hits and 305 homers. Yes, he’ll be a Hall of Famer some day. He’s already seventh in JAWS among second basemen.)

Cano’s loss is a shame, first and foremost, for what it means to his team, but secondarily because he’s in the midst of a couple is-this-for-real trends about which we won’t get satisfactory answers for months. Inquiring minds want to know now!

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More or less, the public perception of a ballplayer’s value correlates pretty strongly with the reality of that player’s value. Mike Trout, for example, is almost universally regarded as the best player in the game. The numbers bear that out. José Altuve and Kris Bryant have both won MVP awards in recent years. Their records suggest that such accolades are warranted.

That said, an examination of the FanGraphs leaderboard for WAR since 2016 — which you can examine for yourself by means of this convenient link — reveals a case where perception and reality seem to diverge. Here are the top players from same:

You may be a more observant baseball fan than I am — or you may be from Cleveland (some people are!) — but I’m not sure that one out of every 10 reasonably aware fans would be able to say, without checking, that José Ramírez has recorded the fifth-most WAR of any hitter in the game over the last two-plus seasons. I’m not sure they would say he’s been more valuable than Josh Donaldson, Corey Seager, and Joey Votto over that span. But he has been.

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Mike Clevinger is a pretty great pitcher. He throws 94 mph. He’s cut his walk rate in half since last year. He’s been the best starter so far this season in one of the league’s best rotations.

Mike Clevinger also has pretty great shoes. They’re designed by by artist Jonathan Hrusovsky. Look at these things.

Ben Zobrist is a pretty great player himself. In his age-37 season, he’s recorded a batting line about 15% better than league average. He still plays multiple positions well. He’s the eighth-best player by WAR over the last decade.

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Position: Data Engineer

Description:

The Rockies are looking for a Data Engineer to join their Research and Development team. The successful candidate will be responsible for expanding and optimizing their data warehouse and data pipeline architecture, with a focus on collecting, cleaning, transforming, managing and validating data using distributed computing and storage systems. The goal of the Data Engineer is to democratize data, support data initiatives, ensure consistent data delivery and empower Rockies personnel to derive powerful and actionable insights.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Create, maintain and optimize data ETL/ELT pipelines
• Documentation of data/pipelines
• Ensure the ingestion of data and errors are handled without interruption
• Process and securely store extremely sensitive data for callback and future use
• Prepare distributed, disjoint, multi-formatted data sets for data scientists
• Research and investigate new and interesting datasets to include in our data warehouse
• Perform quantitative research related to baseball strategy and player evaluation
• Collaborate with coaches, scouts and baseball operations to suggest process improvements

Requirements:

Education and Work Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering
  • Candidates still in school (junior or senior level) with extensive work towards such degree will be considered
• SQL knowledge and experience working with a variety of relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server
• Experience with a variety of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data formats including delimited files, XML, JSON and natural language text
• Ability to effectively use multiple programming languages including one of the major data science languages of Python, R or Scala
• Experience or working knowledge of “Big Data” tools such as Hadoop, Hive, Spark or Presto is a plus
• Experience with AWS Cloud services such as EC2, RDS, and S3 is a plus
• Experience with data workflow tools such as Luigi, or Airflow is a plus
• Knowledge and understanding of baseball and baseball statistics

Functional Skills

• Ability to work evenings and weekends required
• Passion for the intersection of baseball and data
• Passion for quality data
• Strong organizational skills and ability to self-start
• Strong intellectual curiosity
• Desire to learn and contribute
• Ability to work in a collaborative and open team environment
• Ability to develop and maintain successful working relationship with members of the Front Office

To Apply:
Qualified candidates should send their letter of interest and resume to BaseballJobs@rockies.com no later than June 3, 2018.

The Cleveland Indians were looking into the future when they selected Will Benson 14th overall in the 2016 draft. The powerfully-built Atlanta, Georgia product was a week shy of his 18th birthday, and his left-handed stroke — lethal against prep competition — was going to require polish if he hoped to reach his sky-high ceiling. Two years later, that process is well underway.

“You really wouldn’t,” Benson responded when I asked if now-versus-then film footage would show the same setup and swing. “In high school, you’d see a very athletic kid just competing and somehow getting it done. What you’d see now is more efficient movement — that’s a big thing I’ve worked on — and I’m maintaining better posture throughout my swing. Mechanically, making sure I’m getting behind the baseball is huge for me.”

Hitting the ball long distances isn’t a problem for the young outfielder. His power potential is a primary reason he went in the first round, and 545 plate appearances into his professional career — keep in mind he’s still a teenager — Benson has gone yard 23 times. The youngest position player on the roster of the Lake County Captains, he currently co-leads the low-A Midwest League with seven round trippers.

While Benson’s swing is conducive to clearing fences, his mindset is that of a well-rounded hitter. While he’s embraced launch-angle concepts, his focus is on simply squaring up the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Cal Quantrill’s potential is considerable. Drafted eighth overall by the Padres in 2016 despite having undergone Tommy John surgery while at Stanford — he missed all of his junior year and much of his sophomore season — the 23-year-old right-hander possesses a combination of plus stuff and pitchability. Baseball America and MLB.com rank him as the fourth-best prospect in the San Diego system, while our own list — expect that soon — will have him a bit lower.

Quantrill, who is lauded as having one of the best changeups in the minors, has made seven starts for Double-A San Antonio this season and has a 3.52 ERA, a 3.29 FIP, and is striking out 8.2 batters per nine innings. He discussed his multi-pitch mix, and his take-no-prisoners approach, during spring training.

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Cal Quantrill: “I’m a fastball pitcher. Am I a power pitcher? I guess that would depend on how you want to define it. To me, a power pitcher is someone who attacks hitters, regardless of how fast their fastball is. They don’t fool around — they don’t play around with the edges of the strike zone — they go right after them. Getting ahead in the count is something I take great pride in. I try to make hitters get themselves out, and I want that to happen quickly so that I can go deep into games.

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NEW YORK – On Thursday night in the Bronx, the Regression Monster clawed back at CC Sabathia, whose stellar work over his previous three starts had been one of several factors in the 17-1 surge that allowed the Yankees to overtake the hot-starting Red Sox and claim sole possession of first place in the AL East. Though no longer able to muster the 95 mph fastball of his heyday, Sabathia’s remade repertoire — along with the smoke and mirrors produced by a .211 batting average on balls in play — had helped him to a 1.39 ERA entering the night, the league’s second-best mark among starters. Alas, the Red Sox teed off on a handful of pitches that Sabathia called “probably too good to hit with two strikes” and allowed a season-high four runs in a rain-shortened four-inning start. The Yankees’ 5-4 loss brought their eight-game winning streak to a halt and at least temporarily ended their sole occupancy of first place in the AL East.

Though Sabathia netted a season-high 15 swings and misses against the Red Sox, he was peppered for nine hits, three of which never left the infield — death by BABIP. Just after he served up a solo homer to Hanley Ramirez to start the fifth, putting the Yankees in a 4-0 hole, the skies opened up and drenched the playing field, causing a 55-minute rain delay and ending the 37-year-old southpaw’s night after just 80 pitches. The Yankees lineup, though held to just one hit by Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez and reliever Matt Barnes over the first six innings, rallied to tie the game in the seventh, only to fall behind for good via J.D. Martinez’s eighth-inning solo homer off Dellin Betances.

“I felt pretty good, maybe a little too aggressive a couple times with two strikes,” said Sabathia afterwards. Indeed, while he had held opposing batters to a .159/.183/.261 line with two strikes (the AL average is .175/.247/.280), five of the nine hits he surrendered were two-strike hits. Each one led to runs: Mookie Betts‘ game-opening ground rule double, the three straight third-inning hits by Betts, Andrew Benintendi (a double), and Ramirez that keyed a two-run rally, and Ramirez’s solo homer.

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