Yesterday, we rolled out Fielding Dependent Pitching in an effort to provide a more thorough evaluation of pitching and run prevention. Today, I want to talk about how FDP can be used to examine the Cy Young races, and specifically, why it illustrates that Johnny Cueto should be the frontrunner for the NL Cy Young Award.
The double-surprise success of Fernando Rodney has received appropriate documentation and laud, but a grander epic is unfolding daily in the Tampa Bay Rays bullpen.
The Rays ‘pen has the second best ERA and third best FIP in the MLB. Their ERA trails only the National League Reds, and their FIP has only one AL rival, the New York Yankees. Only the Rangers (30) and the Diamondbacks (35) have fewer meltdowns than the Rays bullpen at 36 (and the Rangers have a much better offense, meaning fewer meltdown opportunities).
And it has been the same story since 2008. The Rays bullpen has made relief magic on a mom-and-pop-store budge:
Source: USA Today.
The Rays are paying approximately one (1) Jonathan Papelbon this season for one of the best bullpens in the Majors. And they are accomplishing this one excellent pitch at a time.
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With about a month left in the minor league baseball season, one of 2012’s worst kept secrets has been the prodigious speed of Cincinnati Reds shortstop prospect Billy Hamilton. With 139 stolen bases entering today’s action, Hamilton is six away from the minor league record of 145 set by Vince Coleman in 1983.
Video after the Jump
Last night, on the Sunday Night Baseball telecast of the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets, announcer Dan Shulman facilitated a discussion surrounding relievers and the Cy Young Award.
Quite simply, should Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel be considered legitimate candidates for the NL Cy Young Award this season?
Relievers possess a difficult time making noise in the Cy Young Award voting because they do not throw nearly as many innings as starting pitchers. Fewer innings equal fewer opportunities to make an impact and provide value to one’s baseball team. This sentiment was largely echoed by Orel Hershiser and Buster Olney on the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast.
The topic of relievers and the Cy Young Award seems to surface annually. This season, however, the conversation has become more earnest because Chapman and Kimbrel are compiling video game numbers on the mound. Just look at how dominant both have been for their respective teams, prior to Sunday’s games:
The Cincinnati Reds acquired right-handed relief pitcher Jonathan Broxton from the Kansas City Royals in exchange for minor-league pitchers Donnie Joseph (LHP) and J.C. Sulbaran (RHP). Broxton signed a one-year deal with the Royals for $5.6 million and has been the Royals closer. He will be a free agent at the end of this season.
Joseph has pitched in relief for the Reds’ Double-A and Triple-A teams this season. Subaran has been a starter for the Reds’ Double-A squad.
The Reds’ acquisition of Broxton was a bit surprising, given the strength of Cincinnati’s bullpen this season. As we profiled last week, Aroldis Chapman has been lights out as the Reds’ closer, posting record-breaking strikeout numbers with his 100 mph fastball and his nasty slider. But Chapman’s not the only Reds reliever having a strong season. Overall, the bullpen has posted a 10.23 K/9, a .79 HR/9, and a .216 batting average against. Walks have been a bit of a problem, particularly for right-handed relievers Logan Ondrusek and Jose Arredondo. Broxton somewhat adds to that problem.
The burly right-hander was having a nice season for the Royals, but is no longer the dominant closer he was with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2007 to 2009. Broxton’s strikeout numbers — which used to rival what Chapman is doing this year — have steadily declined; his K/9 this season is at 6.31, the lowest of his career. Broxton has gotten his walk rate under control — now at 3.53/9 — after a disastrous season of walks with the Dodgers in 2011. He’s also been much stingier with home runs this season, but that may very well change as he moves from the spacious Kauffman Stadium to the launching pad at Great American Ballpark.
USA Today is reporting that the Reds will use Broxton in the 8th inning to set-up Chapman in the 9th. But a mix-and-match scenario with left-hander Sean Marshall makes more sense. Marshall’s been effective against all batters this season with a 5.75 K/BB and a 2.39 FIP in 38 innings pitched. On the other hand, Marshall hasn’t yielded a home run to a left-handed batter all season and posts a higher strikeout rate and lower walk rate against left-handed batters.
The Reds added to a strength by trading for Broxton. Cincinnati’s bullpen has performed well so far this season, but also been one of the least used ‘pens at only 273.1 innings to date. Manager Dusty Baker will have more flexibility in the later innings to use Broxton against right-handed batters and Sean Marshall against lefties. That will free up Arredondo, Ondrusek, Alfredo Simon and Sam LeClure for middle relief.
Overall, the Broxton trade may not have been a necessary one for the division-leading Reds, but it makes them stronger down the stretch.
July 15th was a good-news, bad-news kind of night for the Cincinnati Reds. On the one hand, they won their sixth-straight contest. On the other, that was the night they lost their star first baseman, Joey Votto, to a knee injury that would keep him out for at least a month. At that point, it was reasonable to think the Reds might backslide a little. And when Cincinnati lost two of their next three games that seemed like an even more reasonable line of thinking. Then the Reds decided to stop losing baseball games, and their now season-best winning streak stands at 10 games as they begin a four-game set with the lowly Padres this evening.
Aroldis Chapman is hot. His fastball tops 100 mph. His slider is nearly unhittable. And he’s on the verge of breaking two strikeout records.
In 47.2 innings pitched through Wednesday, the Reds closer has racked up 16.99 strikeouts per nine innings, the highest in the majors this season for pitchers with at least 30 innings under their belt. In July, in 11.1 innings pitched, his strikeouts per nine innings has jumped to 20.65.
But it’s not just the number of strikeouts he’s recorded. It’s the lethal efficiency with which he’s dispensed with his adversaries. Chapman has struck out nearly half the batters he’s faced this season, posting a 49.7 strikeout rate through Wednesday. He’s faced 181 batters. He’s struck out 90 of them. In July alone, Chapman’s strikeout rate is at 65%. Forty batters faced. Twenty-six strikeouts. Oh, and he has a negative FIP for July.
Look at those numbers again and let them sink in. Almost unfathomable.
I’ve written quite a bit this year on trends in pitcher aging, specifically velocity loss and gain. In the last iteration I focused on the odds of pitchers gaining velocity back after a season where their fastball dropped by at least 1 mph.
In that piece I listed a few pitchers to keep your eye on given that their velocity was down from 2011. In June, I wrote about CC Sabathia for ESPN and noted that the big lefty is likely beginning to “age”, as the odds are quite a bit higher that pitchers over the age of 30 do not gain their velocity back once they’ve lost it.
After thinking about it a while it occurred to me that there is of course the chance that these pitchers will gain their velocity back by the end of the year (as I noted in both pieces). We know that, generally speaking, pitchers gain velocity as the season goes on. Temperatures rise, and so too do fastball velocities. If this is the case I wondered at what point in the season we can say with greater certainty that a pitcher is throwing as hard as he is going to throw. Is there a particular month where a velocity decline is more likely to translate to or predict a full season velocity decline?
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On Sunday, Barry Larkin will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Larkin was the star shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds from 1986 through 2004. It is said that he revolutionized the shortstop position, particularly in the National League, by combining steady hitting, power, speed and excellent defense. Among players who played shortstop their entire careers, Larkin compiled 2,340 hits, ranking him fourth; he hit 198 home runs, ranking him second behind Derek Jeter; and he stole 379 bases, ranking his sixth.
He was a twelve-time All-Star, and won nine Silver Slugger Awards and three Gold Glove Awards. In 1995, he was voted as the National League’s Most Valuable Player.
With yet another day to go before actual baseball returns to the field, I thought I would take a quick look at some of the potential MVP candidates in both leagues based on the first half of the season.
Identifying MVP candidates is certainly not a straightforward process, nor is the criteria universally agreed upon. Knowing this I will not begin or end this article with any claim to have identified the “proper” candidates. These are my candidates based on my way of looking at the term “valuable”.
So what is my criteria? Well, I like to think of MVPs as players that provide an exceptional amount of production in both an absolute and relative sense. This means identifying players that lead or are close to leading the league in production, but where there is also a sizable gap between their production and that of the second best player on their own team. This means that I do tend to discount great performances by players that happen to share the same uniform as equally great players. Is it their fault? Absolutely not. In fact, those players could likely be the best all around players in the entire league. But when it comes to value I think there is a relative component that should be considered. This isn’t to necessarily give credit to the player (i.e. they don’t “step it up” to make up for the gap in talent on the team), but rather to the performance itself.
Like I said, this is my criteria and I don’t claim that it should trump all others, nor would I say it is complete on it’s own. Rather, I think it’ a useful starting place.
Okay, enough with the preamble. Let’s get to the data.
