Archive for Teams

There was, I’m sure, a certain amount of message-sending last night, when the Twins went into Cleveland and knocked off the Indians. The Twins right now are trying to make a statement, ensuring that opponents take them seriously. More important than any of that, though, the win moved the Twins to the verge of sealing up a playoff spot. All they need now is one more win, or one more Angels loss. Say what you will about the odds, but the Twins would love to just make things official. You could see that in Brian Dozier’s expression, as he rounded the bases following his lead-changing, eighth-inning, three-run homer. The Twins were likely to make the playoffs with or without the home run, yet Dozier was elated by the prospect of moving one step closer.

There’s nothing so unusual about Brian Dozier going deep. He’s one of the better power hitters in his division. But I’d like to show you a screenshot of his homer in flight.

Brian Dozier’s right-handed. He homered the other way.

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You have to look past the raw runs-allowed numbers. If you do, though, you’ll quickly realize that a large part of the Rockies’ success this year has been their bullpen. Second in the National League in Wins Above Replacement, second in the entire league in Win Probability Added, third in Shutdowns, third from the bottom in Meltdowns, and first overall in Clutch: this is a strong unit. Talk to a some of Colorado’s relievers about what they’ve discovered this year and a trend emerges. There’s a bit of a secret, maybe, to building a good bullpen when you’re up a mile high.

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Some MVP ballots might have already been submitted, which is a real shame because there’s still a few games to be played and perhaps a few persuasive blog posts to be authored.

On Tuesday, this author examined some other factors that BBWAA members ought to consider when voting, particularly in a close race where voters might need to go beyond the convenience of one catch-all metric like wins above replacement.

The face of this argument is Aaron Judge, who’s had a remarkable rookie season and who leads Jose Altuve in WAR by a thin margin entering play Wednesday: 7.7 to 7.4. Judge also has 50 home runs — a nice, round, loud number that figures to sway some voters on the fence.

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James Shields is the oldest part of a young and rebuilding White Sox ballclub. For that reason, he’s easy to overlook. Even fans of the team itself would presumably rather focus on, say, Yoan Moncada or Lucas Giolito or Reynaldo Lopez. Those guys, and others — they could be around the next time the White Sox make the playoffs. Shields, almost certainly not. He might not even still be in the game.

So this isn’t a tale with widespread implications. This isn’t a story that’s going to change how you think about the broader baseball landscape. All this is is a story of a pitcher who’s come back from the brink of professional extinction. James Shields will turn 36 a few days before Christmas, yet over the last couple months, he’s changed the way that he pitches. Shields still has something left to give after all; all he had to do was alter everything, at a time when it would’ve been easy to wave the white flag.

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Chris Sale has obviously been the pitching story in Boston this year, as the team’s first-year ace surpassed expectations and stabilized a group that saw David Price miss most of the year and Rick Porcello go backwards once again. But in Sale’s shadows, Drew Pomeranz has also been quietly excellent, and is one of the main reasons the Red Sox are almost certainly going to win the AL East this week.

Among AL starters, Pomeranz ranks 5th in ERA-, 11th in FIP-, and 10th in xFIP-. His season line is a near identical match for that of Justin Verlander, for example. For all the heat Dave Dombrowski took for giving up Anderson Espinoza to acquire Pomeranz last summer, he’s been more than worth the price thus far.

But, of course, one of the reasons people weren’t thrilled about the trade is that Pomeranz hasn’t proven to be a durable starter, and there are always concerns about his health in the postseason, when the Red Sox need him most. And once again, as the calendar turns to fall, the Red Sox can’t be sure whether they can trust Pomeranz with the ball next week.

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Last night, in a game that meant little, the Astros clobbered the Rangers. It made sense, because the Astros are a very good baseball team, and the Rangers are not. Maybe the most interesting thing happened early on, before the clobbering part was underway. One at-bat before Carlos Gomez took inexplicable offense to nothing, Joey Gallo stepped in, and he looked at the following defense.

We’ve seen our share of aggressive shifting. We’ve seen infields stack the left side, and the right side. We saw what the Diamondbacks did to DJ LeMahieu. Still, that Astros shift for Gallo is something else. Depending on how you word your definitions, either the Astros had four infielders on the right side, or they had two infielders on the right side, with a five-man outfield. The positioning sort of blurs the traditional lines. But, these days, tradition doesn’t matter for much. Defenses are just trying to get as many outs as possible. For Gallo, this defense just might have been perfect.

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As I write this, six teams have already reached 90 wins. Another three teams still could. Four teams have won at least 60% of their games, which is the highest total for the league in more than a decade, and that doesn’t include the Yankees, who have baseball’s second-highest run differential. It also doesn’t include the Cubs, who last year were one of the better teams in recent memory, and who this year picked up Jose Quintana, among a few others. The Dodgers, who are great, added Yu Darvish. The Astros, who are great, added Justin Verlander. The Nationals, who are great, added Sean Doolittle, Ryan Madson, and Brandon Kintzler. And so on. The top of the league is always good, by definition, but this year the best teams seem particularly strong. Particularly talented, and particularly deep. This year has marked a step away from what had been a trend toward greater parity. Now the parity is simply among the elite.

The great teams are going to the playoffs. That’s what’s supposed to happen. The Twins, also, look like they’re going to the playoffs. It’s not yet locked up, but it’s just about there, with the Twins looking ahead to a date in New York. Playoff entry, of course, is everything, because each of the final 10 teams gets a chance to win it all. It’s inarguably true that the 2017 Twins could win the World Series in a month. The question is, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? It’s a question I’m actually posing to you, but not before I go over each side.

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Compelling articles frequently begin with an anecdote. Let me therefore begin with one of my own. Aaron Judge annoyed me on Monday. See, Judge hit a home run, and after the ball left the yard, I started working on this post about the details of his full rookie season. Heck of a rookie season! Just as I was really getting into it, though, I had to stop and re-work a few things, because then Judge hit another home run. New data. New tables. New images. Here’s one of them.

At first, on Monday, Judge hit his 49th home run, tying Mark McGwire’s record for a rookie. You can tell it’s a remarkable record, too, because of the gap between McGwire and the next guy on the list. Well, the record is split no longer. Judge and McGwire shared the spotlight for a handful of innings, but the record now belongs to Judge and Judge only. Judge is the first rookie to ever reach the 50-homer plateau. Although, perhaps plateau is an incorrect word, because Judge could continue to climb ever higher in this season’s final week.

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Quick: who’s the best left-handed hitter likely to appear in the American League playoffs this October? If you took more than three seconds to come up with an answer, don’t worry, that’s perfectly normal. The National League contenders have plenty of high-profile left-handed hitters: Charlie Blackmon, Cody Bellinger, Bryce Harper, Daniel Murphy, and Anthony Rizzo immediately stand out. Not so in the American League.

Postseason roster construction can have a lot of consequences. Once rosters are set, there are only so many machinations that can or will surprise us, but in a lot of cases, series can be won or lost by the selection of the the last five guys on the roster. I focused on some interesting roster-construction decisions last week. In the meantime, the possible configurations of the Astros bullpen have remained with me. If Houston utilizes a tandem-starter approach, it will lessen their flexibility for their bullpen; as such, they might not have room for LOOGYs. Of course, a LOOGY is only necessary to the extent that there are dangerous left-handed batters to face. The potential absence of a LOOGY from the Houston bullpen led me to a larger question about the batters whom that pitcher might face — specifically, whether any of the AL teams need a LOOGY to navigate October?

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Jon Lester pitches tonight against the Cardinals in St. Louis, and how he performs in that start may have some impact on his postseason rotation spot. The 33-year-old lefty is in the middle of his worst season by most metrics, and he’s had an ERA over 5.00 in the second half, so it’s only gotten worse. There are plenty of reasons to be worried about the pitches the Cubs starter is throwing right now. Even more worrisome might be the pitches he’s not throwing anymore, though.

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