Last week, we took a look at the hitters who have been the most productive on balls in play in both leagues, and peeled back a layer or two of batted-ball data to see how much of it was real. This week and next, we’re going to do the same with pitchers. Today, the AL.
It’s quite a title to throw on someone, “most patient.” It’s rewarding someone for not doing instead of doing. And, as a singular skill, unless you’re Eddie Gaedel, “not swinging” isn’t quite enough to make a major-league career. So maybe it’s not that surprising that the name here — Robbie Grossman, an outfielder for the Twins — isn’t particularly well known. And that he’s struggled to scratch out an everyday role. And that some of his good work this year has come from being more aggressive, even.
Nobody reaches at pitches outside the zone less than Grossman. Not this year, at least. And if you relax the requirements (1000 plate appearances minimum), he’s among the five best by out-of-zone swing rate since he entered the league in 2013. He knows the zone.
Let’s call him elite at that fundamental skill and admit that he has it. To the player, it’s no big deal. “A walk is a pitcher’s inability to throw three strikes,” pointed out Grossman. “That’s the biggest thing I’m trying to teach the young guys, that they can stand there and the pitcher couldn’t throw three straight strikes.”
But for a guy with an elite skill, it’s taken him a long time to get a regular role. Even on the way up, he wasn’t mentioned as a prospect, even if Carson Cistulli featured him in a series that served as a precursor to the Fringe Five. “I’ve always been that guy on the outside looking in, trying to prove myself,” confirmed the Twins outfielder, “and I’ve always used it as a chip on my shoulder, to kind of prove myself, that I belong among the best baseball players in the world.”
To provide a greater understanding of his approach, he discussed specifically a difficult lefty he’d recently faced, James Paxton. “I had an at-bat against Paxton the other day and I didn’t swing once,” he remembered. “He can’t throw three strikes in… He’s trying to throw the ball in to right-handed hitters, but he can’t consistently do it, so you look for the pitch away and get that pitch, because the one in is a low-percentage play for him and for you.”
We’re still 100 games away from the end of the season, but we’re getting closer to that time when teams have to decide whether they’re in or out of contention for the playoffs. Some clubs might have to make the tough choice of moving themselves out of contention despite having a reasonable playoff shot. In the American League, nearly every team is still in the race. That might change over the course of the next month, of course, but the field certainly looks like it will still be crowded come July.
There are five playoff spots up for grabs in the AL, and while a lot can and will happen the rest of the way, there are four teams to which our playoff odds give roughly an 80% or better chance of making the playoffs: the Houston Astros, Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, and New York Yankees. The Astros look well on their way to potentially 100 wins, while the Indians, Red Sox and Yankees appear to be moving toward close to 90 wins, a figure that generally amounts to a spot in the postseason. Those four teams total 359% of the 500% total odds available. After that, seven teams have something close to a 10%.
After the first four teams, no club has a better than a 50% chance at the playoffs. The team at the top, Toronto, is currently in last place in its division. Here are the playoff odds since the beginning of the season for the rest of the teams in the American League — with the exception, that is, of the rebuilding Chicago White Sox, who have been near zero all season long.
Does that look like an incomprehensible mess? Well, welcome to the AL Wild Card race. If it helps at all, the list of teams at the bottom of the chart is in order in terms of their current playoff odds. There are seven teams with close to a 1-in-10 shot of making the playoffs, with a couple more in Kansas City and Oakland that possess an outside chance of getting back into the mix. If you picked the top team currently by the odds, Toronto, taking the field is probably a better bet.
Last year, Brian Dozier hit 42 home runs for the Twins. He’d never hit 30 before that, so it was fair to wonder if the power was repeatable. Earlier this year, he was on pace for a total much more similar to his career norms… and yet some of the factors we used to look at last year’s home runs suggest that he should have recorded more homers this year already. Notably, Andrew Perpetua’s xStats metric indicated last week that Dozier had an expected home-run tally that was four homers higher than his actual number.
I was curious about it, so I decided to go directly to the source. Before a recent Twins-Giants game in San Francisco, I made a trip to the visitor’s clubhouse with video of the longest fly balls that Dozier has hit this year. “Where are those missing home runs?” I asked him.
The 2017 MLB Draft kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. ET, and the Minnesota Twins will have the first pick from what is generally considered to be a pretty a mediocre class. And how the rest of the draft goes depends on how the Twins answer one pretty simple question: can a high-end MLB player really contribute as both a hitter and a pitcher?
The Minnesota Twins remain among the season’s early surprises, as they still reside in first place in an AL Central Division that includes a heavy division favorite and reigning AL champion in the Cleveland Indians.
There are a number of reasons the Twins are where they are atop the division. They have improved offensively from a 95 wRC+ club a year ago, to a 101 mark this season. Miguel Sano is the loudest reason for that — literally, as a loquacious presence in the clubhouse and also as owner of the most violent contact in the league. A more selective Sano is mashing, and the public seems to recognize this: the 24-year-old leads All-Star balloting at third base. In a world with a lame Mike Trout, Sano is in the MVP discussion, as well. Max Kepler and Robbie Grossman are raking, and while Joe Mauer remains a shell of what he was, he has posted a .359 on-base mark.
Let me set two arbitrary thresholds for you. One is going to be 25% strikeouts. Nice, clean, familiar dividing line. The other is going to be 20 innings pitched, as a starter. That’s not very many innings, but it’s probably enough to show whether you’re a strikeout starter or not.
Between 2008 and 2016, the Dodgers had 17 pitcher-seasons meet those criteria. That’s a lot! The Indians are in second, with 11. Then the Nationals had 10, and the Tigers had nine, and so on. The Orioles had one. The Rockies had one. The Twins had zero. They’re the only team with zero, and this just further demonstrates a point we’ve all understood seemingly forever: The Twins haven’t collected strikeout starters. It’s been a while since Francisco Liriano, and it’s been even longer since Johan Santana.
This is one of the reasons why there’s been so much hype around Jose Berrios. Berrios, last year, had a chance to make an impression. I suppose he did make an impression, but it wasn’t the one anyone wanted. The winter afforded the opportunity to hit the reset button. Berrios has gotten a chance of late to make a *new* impression, a better impression. This time, he’s succeeding. This time, Berrios is pitching like he ought to pitch. Don’t look now, but the Twins have a quality starter.
When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.
If we can just be up front about things — I don’t think the Twins are very good. Chances are, you don’t think the Twins are very good, either. They didn’t come in as a consensus contender, and even now, the rest of the way, our projections have the Twins as the second-worst team in the American League. If they’re good, actually good, well, I know at least I will need a lot more convincing. That’s enough of that. Let’s get to the positive stuff.
I don’t know how much longer it’ll last, but right now one can find the Twins at the top of the AL Central. It’s not a division many expected to be good, but it *is* a division that includes the defending AL champs, so seeing the Twins where they are is a surprise. As long as the Twins are successful, they’re worth our attention, and for now I’d like to bring your attention to something about the team’s hitters. Recently, I noted that the Twins have experienced something of a defensive turnaround. There are also signs of progress on the offensive front. Stick with me, because you know I have plots.
CLEVELAND – Miguel Sano knows what he wants.
In the visiting team quarters in Progressive Field, there’s a small kitchen — like something you might find in a World War II-era submarine — that offers players various pre- and post-game sustenance. On Sunday morning, Sano, apparently unsatisfied with the options, disappeared from the clubhouse and reappeared with rectangular aluminum carry-out pan containing mangú, a Dominican breakfast dish of mashed plantains topped with a type of thinly sliced sausage. He said he had procured it from a local restaurant. The 6-foot-4, 260-pound Sano is known as a popular teammate and this catering feat was a prime example. As he appeared with breakfast, several of his teammates, also of Dominican origin, huddled around a card table in the center of the clubhouse for a Sunday morning feast.
Sano is selective at the plate, too.