Episode Eighty-Six
In which baseball sells itself.
Headlines
The Events of September 28th — Recapitulated!
The Saddest Story Ever — Told Briefly!
The 2011 Playoffs — Super-Previewed!
Featuring
Dave Cameron, Full-Time Employee
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As Bradley Woodrum detailed earlier today, much went into putting the Rays into the postseason this year, and if they had just a little less of any one ingredient, they’d probably be packing their bags right now — or at least would be locked and loaded for the proverbial Game 163. But they made it, so let’s examine how they will move forward.
From Dirk Hayhurst’s Twitter:
“You know what would be really cool…”
~Baseball Gods, right before THIS all happened.
They’re calling it “Wild Wednesday,” and it was, but it was also Wild Twenty-Aught-Eleven. The Tampa Bay Rays closed the books on their 2011 campaign with one of the craziest nights in baseball history and one of the most absurd paths to the postseason ever.
At 12:03 a.m. ET this morning, Robert Andino hit a sinking line drive to left field off Jonathon Papelbon. Carl Crawford charged the ball, but it popped off his glove and Nolan Reimold dove onto home plate, giving the Orioles a 4-3 win. The first Orioles player to reach Andino chest-bumped him to the ground — maybe knocking the wind out of him — as the cameras watched the Baltimore bench fall onto his seemingly-frightened and breathless face.
At 12:05 a.m., Evan Longoria reached out — almost into the other batter’s box — to foul off a slider from New York Yankees pitcher Scott Proctor, holding the count at two balls, two strikes. Longoria exhaled deeply, puffing his cheeks like a trombone player, as Scott Proctor wound for the next pitch. It was a fastball away that got lost and asked Longo for directions.
“Two-two and line SHOT! DOWN THE LEFT FIELD LIIIIINE! THAT BALL IS GONE!!!” Rays television announcer Dewayne Staats called, presumably leaning out of the booth to watch as Longoria’s 31st homer ricocheted around behind the Crawford Cutout — a low wall added so then-Ray Carl Crawford could rob a few extra home runs.
Last night’s (and this morning’s) Rays game was beyond spectacular (for non-Red Sox fans, that is; my condolences to the northeast). It was parts Spring Training game (with the parade of Yankees pitchers), parts Little League World Series (with the Rays using nearly the entirety of their bench in key roles), and all parts unbelievable.
The 2011 Rays season has shown that though baseball is about probabilities, it is probabilities with replacement — truly any event can occur with the very next pitch, even if it happened just a few innings ago — or if it has never happened before.
Read the rest of this entry »
Below, you will find a graph detailing the probabilities that the Rays or the Red Sox would represent the American League as the Wild Card as the wild night of September 28th, 2011 progressed, based on Win Probability. Although we could never truly quantify whatever it was that happened yesterday, let these numbers be a handy guide as we highlight 16 of the key moments (with video links when possible) that ultimately resulted in the craziest night — and the craziest five minutes — in my baseball life and probably in baseball history.
Odds are calculated assuming a 50% win probability in a one-game playoff.
Click to embiggen as we dive into the night that was.
Going into tonight’s action, the common assumptions seems to be that the Yankees are going to coast on into the playoffs. They have already clinched the division and home field advantage, and since they got most of their regular starters and bullpen arms work yesterday, they have little incentive to play their hardest on Wednesday night. Why work yourselves hard in a meaningless game? Why risk injuries to your players when you have nothing to play for?
But I’m not sure that the predominating narrative is correct in this case. Joe Girardi has already said that he’s planning on starting many of his regulars tonight — although who knows how long he’ll keep them in the game — and he seems to be practicing some “gamesmanship” by choosing not to announce his starter until closer to game time. Could it be that the Yankees are treating tonight’s game more seriously than many people are assuming?
If they are, I have to tip my cap to the Yanks for looking past their history with the Red Sox and realizing the larger fact: it’s in their own best interest if the Red Sox to make the playoffs.
That’s right, Yankees fans. As horrible as it may sound, you should probably be rooting for the Red Sox tonight.
For the past three season, James Shields and David Price have battled it out for the status of ace of the Rays’ staff. The title has flopped back and forth between the two of them, with Price gaining the upper-hand in 2010 but relinquishing his hold slightly this season, but there’s one aspect of the game that Shields has always trumped Price in: nicknames.
Shields has seemingly rotated through a new nickname each season. He was “Big Game James” after his performance in the postseason in 2008, and then christened “Yields” in 2010 due to his homer-happy tendencies; this season, he’s been dubbed “Juego G” due to his complete game prowess.* And Price? He’s never had a nickname that stuck for long, besides for a brief bit of time in 2008 when he was lovingly known as Velociraptor Jesus.
But after improving himself as a pitcher for the third straight season — just look at the trend in his FIP and SIERA scores — it’s about time Price was rewarded with a nickname. And so, without further ado, I’d like to bestow upon Price the much-fought-after nickname “Tinkerbell”.
And before you ask, no, I’m not trying to cast aspersions about Price’s manhood. The nickname simply fits. Price can do magical things on the mound with the baseball, but more than that, he tinkers with his pitch selection more than any other pitcher I know. Even though he was selected #1 in the 2007 Draft and has since developed into an ace starter, Price has changed his pitch repertoire and selection multiple, multiple times since first reaching the majors. It’s as though he has this compulsive urge to keep innovating and adapting….or he just gets bored really quickly.
So how exactly has Price changed over the years? What’s his current pitch selection, and how does he attack hitters now? Let’s take a look.
*Don’t ask me to explain why. It just is.
Matt Moore has pitched in two major league games. Considering the fact that came into the year as one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball, his debut garnered plenty of interest. A four-inning, 85 pitch sample isn’t much, but it still should be able to tell us some things about the Rays’ young southpaw.
First, let’s start with what Moore himself says. This is taken from an interview with SUN Sports that aired on Wednesday before his debut:
“Right now, I just throw a four-seam fastball, a circle-changeup, and a curveball. My gameplan, basically, is probably the same as 90% of the pitchers out there: get strike one over, and attack the zone and attack the hitter until you need to make adjustments otherwise.”
With that in mind, we can take a look at the PITCHf/x data we have on him. Moore has used all three of his pitches in his two major league appearances at Camden Yards and Fenway Park; the scatter plot below shows their horizontal movement (pfx_x in the PITCHf/x columns) and velocity. Be mindful of the fact that Camden’s pfx_x measurements are shifted positive by a few inches, while Fenway looks pretty accurate.
Moore’s fastball looks like it gets about 8 inches of armside movement, once you compensate for the miscalculation from the Baltimore game. That’s a lot more movement than the average four-seamer (the natural tailing action comes from Moore’s ¾ arm angle). Also, the 96 mph he’s averaging on his fastball this year is harder than any lefty not named Aroldis Chapman. As for his secondary pitches: his changeup is fast but still has 10 mph separation from his fastball. The curveball is in the mid-80s and gets more than two-and-a-half inches of topspin than would a spinless pitch – that might qualify as a “tight” curveball; the “biggest” curveballs have about ten inches of topspin. At faster than 84 mph, it’s faster than the average lefty slider AND it has a few inches more movement; if he can command it down in the zone, it looks like it could be a lethal strikeout pitch.
In his eight plate appearances against lefties and eight plate appearances against righties, here is how Moore has mixed up his pitches in some different count situations (not meant to be predictive since our sample is small):
LHB
First (10) 2 Strikes (13) Behind (8)
FF 90% 69% 100%
CH 0% 0% 0%
CU 10% 31% 0%
RHB
First (10) 2 Strikes (10) Behind (1)
FF 80% 50% 100%
CH 20% 40% 0%
CU 0% 10% 0%
“Behind” in this case is for pitches thrown in a 2-0, 3-1, or 3-0 count.
The parenthetical numbers indicate the total number of pitches thrown in that count situation.
So far, he’s been comfortable using the curveball in a put-away spot against lefties and the change against righties.
And finally, some pitch results (sample size caveat applies here more than ever!).
vs LHB vs RHB Ball Called Whiff Foul In Play FF 40 23 24 11 7 10 11 CH 0 11 4 1 3 0 3 CU 9 2 8 1 1 1 0
This is just a brief look at what Moore has to offer. As the Rays have inserted themselves into the thick of the playoff chase, we’ll likely get to see him handle quite a few meaningful innings down the stretch.
The Red Sox are reeling. Over the last month, they’ve seen a 10-game lead over Tampa Bay shrink down to just three games. They’ve seen their rotation suffer from injuries and poor performances, and lately, even the normally reliable Daniel Bard has been blowing up at inopportune times. As hard as it would have been to believe even just a few weeks ago, the Rays could pull into a tie in the Wild Card race if they can complete the weekend sweep in Boston.
And yet, despite all the injuries, the poor performances, and the threatening kids from down south, I still don’t think the Red Sox really have all that much to worry about. Even if we presume that the Red Sox and Rays are of somewhat equal talent levels for the remainder of the season, the Sox still have a lot of advantages in this race for the final playoff spot.
The MLB season is drawing to a close, which means it’s about time for rampant speculation about next year’s free agents. One of my favorite off-season storylines is that of the east Asian baseball markets both giving and absorbing talent.
This past off season, we witnessed the likes of Chad Tracy, Wladimir Balentien, and Micah Hoffpauer head west to the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league while Japan sent Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Ryan Vogelsong Minnesota and California’s way.
Let’s look at the present NPB league statistics, so we can start writing our wishlists and dreaming about next year’s rosters.
Althought it appears Andrew Friedman has the Midas touch, not every move he makes turns to gold. While no front office will hit on every transaction, the hope is they come out more often than not. For the Tampa Bay Rays this has been the case since the Friedman regime took over prior to the 2006 season. Relatively small in regards to the grand scheme of things, the team’s decision to release right-handed reliever Cory Wade in June serves as an example of a rare misstep by the Rays front office.