Watch enough baseball and you’ll start to think of yourself as something of a scout. You’ll think that you’re an attentive observer — that you can pick up on things, individual strengths and weaknesses. In my younger days, I thought I was pretty good about identifying hitters who struggled with low, away sliders. You know the types, and you know the swings. In truth, everybody struggles with low, away sliders. Some struggle more than others, but righties have trouble with low, away sliders from righties, and lefties have trouble with low, away sliders from lefties. Executed properly, it’s almost the perfect pitch. It breaks away late, so it looks like a strike, often in a defensive count. Yet swinging is virtually futile — if you don’t swing through the pitch, you’ll put it in play pretty weakly. A well-thrown low, away slider is a ball, but usually, it’s a strike, or an out. There’s no hitter in baseball who can resist it on a consistent basis. It’s too potent a weapon.

What follows is the story of a Yasiel Puig home run.

Read the rest of this entry »

“I didn’t send him out there to paint,” Dusty Baker would say. “It was no secret.”

One of the things about strategic maneuvers in baseball is that they’re usually evident ahead of time. There aren’t many equivalents to, say, a corner blitz. If a manager goes to the bullpen, the other team sees the new reliever first, and can get ready to hit him. If a defense shifts for a hitter, the hitter can observe the shifted positioning, and think about how he wants to adjust. If a manager inserts a pinch-runner, the other team can figure that runner might be running. There’s little sense in a pinch-runner otherwise. Much about baseball can be surprising. The same cannot be said for much of baseball strategy.

Billy Hamilton made his major-league debut Tuesday night, in a scoreless game between the Reds and the Cardinals. He made it not as a starter, but as a runner, having recently come up as a September promotion. Hamilton ran for Ryan Ludwick with none out in the bottom of the seventh, and it didn’t matter that the opposition had Yadier Molina behind the plate. I mean, it did — of course it mattered — but Molina’s presence wasn’t going to stop Hamilton from trying to do what he was going to try to do. Everybody understood why Hamilton was in the game. He wasn’t out there to paint.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I’m writing this on Wednesday night, the Reds are clobbering the Cardinals, 9-0. All those runs, incidentally, were charged to Adam Wainwright, which means both Wainwright and Felix Hernandez imploded on the same day. Joey Votto, so far tonight, has batted three times against St. Louis. He’s drawn three walks, as Votto is wont to do. He walked with two on in the first inning, and later scored a run. He walked with one on in the second inning, and soon thereafter scored a run. He walked again in the fourth, but the bases were empty — and that’s not what this is going to be about.

If you haven’t read the arguments, you’ve probably at least heard about them. Votto has been a polarizing player for the Reds, because he’s drawn a ton of walks in run-scoring situations. With runners in scoring position, he’s walked more than a quarter of the time. The end result is that Votto has an underwhelming RBI total, and he’s supposed to be in the lineup to produce runs. In theory, run-producers are supposed to swing the bat. Run-producers like Brandon Phillips. One’s instinct is to think this is absurd — and it is pretty silly — but we might as well dig in for a few minutes. Are people warranted to be frustrated by Joey Votto’s patient approach?

Read the rest of this entry »

One time, and one time only, has a pitcher had the nerve to make Joey Votto pop up twice in the same game. One time has a pitcher simply looked like he had Joey Votto’s number. Back in September 2008, the Reds played the Marlins, and when Votto faced Ricky Nolasco the first time, he popped out. Later, when Votto faced Nolasco a second time, he popped out again. Later still, when Votto faced Nolasco a third time, he clubbed a dinger. Votto wouldn’t face Nolasco a fourth time.

By now, you must be aware that Joey Votto simply doesn’t hit infield pop-ups. We’ve written about it here a few times before, and other people have written about it in other places. People have asked Votto about it directly, and Votto has given thoughtful responses, as is his way. There might be something to be written about batted-ball data taking off like that, just as a sign of the times, but there’s no time for that today. Because yesterday, Joey Votto hit an infield pop-up. Facing Jeff Samardzija, Votto had his first official 2013 moment of weakness, relatively speaking.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not everyone liked Dave Parker. Certainly the fans who threw things at him in the Pittsburgh outfield, slashed the roof of his convertible and even threatened his life could be counted in this camp. Pundits who may have poured cold water on Parker’s Hall of Fame candidacy thanks to his involvement in the Pittsburgh Drug Trials might also find themselves in this camp. But whether you loved him or hated him, Parker was always one of the game’s most entertaining and best players, and his recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease shouldn’t overshadow that fact.

Read the rest of this entry »

The last time I wrote about Edge% it was in the context of the Tampa Bay Rays using it to get their pitchers into more favorable counts on 1-1. But now I want to take that topic and drill a little deeper to understand how often edge pitches are taken for called strikes.

Overall, pitches taken on the edge are called strikes 69% of the time. But that aggregate measure hides some pretty substantial differences. Going further on that idea, I wanted to see how the count impacts the likelihood of a pitch on the edge being called a strike.

Here are the results:

Read the rest of this entry »

Before yesterday’s game, Dusty Baker talked about his line-up choices, specifically his decision to stick with Zack Cozart in the #2 spot in the order despite his .261 on base percentage. From John Fay’s article:

Read the rest of this entry »

Homer Bailey threw a no-hitter last night, putting him in the same group as a lot of other people. It was actually his second no-hitter, putting him in a much smaller group of guys who have done it twice. This post is not really about Homer Bailey’s no-hitter — I’m working on one of those too, but it’s a little more research intensive — but about the fact that Homer Bailey shouldn’t have needed to throw another no-hitter to get some attention. Because, even before last night, Homer Bailey was pitching like an ace.

Read the rest of this entry »

In his Major League debut for the Mets, 23-year-old Zack Wheeler struck out seven hitters in his six innings of work. Of those seven strikeouts, six came on fastballs — and of those six, four came on whiffs induced by fastballs.

This got me wondering, what pitchers this year have generated the largest percentage of their strikeouts off of their fastball? And how many generated those strike outs on swings and misses on fastballs*?

Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into last season, Devin Mesoraco was a consensus top-15 prospect, and it was thought that he would see significant time behind the dish with the Reds. After all, they had traded their other top catching prospect — Yasmani Grandal — away in the Mat Latos trade in order to supposedly clear the way for him. But instead, Mesoraco spent most of the season sitting on the bench, and things haven’t been much different this year. In doing so, Cincinnati and manager Dusty Baker may have squandered one of the rarest assets in baseball.

Read the rest of this entry »