A report broke yesterday that Rafael Soriano may opt out of his $14 million option for next season with the Yankees in order to once again test the free agent market. On the surface, this would seem like a foolish idea. And when you dig deeper…it still sounds foolish, unless he is pulling a move similar to what C.C. Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez did with the Yankees, which is to opt out of his current deal in order to get a fresh deal with additional seasons on it.
In a recent article discussing the latest crop of international talent, valued commenter “Nate” offered a great, concise preview of soon-to-be international free agent Kyuji Fujikawa, who’s presently playing in the Nippon Professional Baseball league:
Kyuji Fujikawa – Closer for the Hanshin Tigers. Closest thing Japan has had lately to a Mariano Rivera-type. He’s 32, but will be a full free agent, so won’t require a posting fee. Expensive teams that forgot to buy a bullpen should look at him *cough* Angels *cough*.
And Nate is correct many times over; not only does one of Japan’s best relievers appear ready for a jump across the river, but he also has every chance to be an elite reliever in the United States.
Take a look at his numbers in Japan:
This is legit. And he could make for a talented addition to a number of teams in 2013.
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Over this past weekend, the Orioles split a 4 game series with the New York Yankees. Baltimore was able win 2 games and stay only 1 game behind the Yankess in the AL East standings, even though they were outscored 31 to 23. This trend of winning while being outscored is not uncommon for the Orioles this season.
The most remarkable part about the Orioles keeping pace with the elite teams in the AL is that they have done it with a negative run differential, (608 Runs scored vice 637 Runs Allowed). It may seem that it would not be too uncommon for a team to be a few wins over .500 and have a allowed a few more runs then they have scored, but it isn’t. Only the San Francisco Giants achieved the feat in 2011 (86-76, -17 runs) and no teams in 2010. Since 1962, when both leagues went to 162 games, 54 teams have been able to reach this feat, or just about 1 per season. The average run differential for the teams was -18.6 runs and the average number of games over .500 was 6.8 games.
Most people will remember the bad out call of Mark Teixeira by Jerry Meals from Saturday’s game against the Orioles. While Teixeira was obviously safe on replay, but perhaps the entire thing could have been avoided if Teixeira had simply run through the bag instead.
There have been a multitude of scientific studies on the merits of running through the bag or diving, including this recent one from ESPN’s Sports Science. The video is worth watching, but the conclusion is definite – running through the bag was 10 milliseconds faster on average than diving, and the difference can be significantly larger if the dive results in too much kinetic friction due to landing in the dirt too early. How good was Teixeira’s dive? Let’s take a look.
It was a really big deal when, on Tuesday, the Orioles beat the Blue Jays and the Yankees lost to the Rays, causing a tie atop the AL East standings. Just weeks earlier, the Yankees had had a ten-game advantage, and losing that kind of edge — to the Orioles! — was unimaginable. Then, Wednesday, the Orioles lost to the Blue Jays and the Yankees beat the Rays, restoring for New York a slim lead. So it was a really big deal when, on Thursday, the Orioles beat the Yankees in Baltimore in a series opener, tying the division once more. The Orioles clearly aren’t going to go away, and while we can’t actually know that, it sounds good, and it gets people amped for the stretch run.
Those who didn’t follow along will see that the Orioles beat the Yankees 10-6. In so doing, the Orioles slugged a half-dozen home runs, and remember that the game was not played in Yankee Stadium. Those who have taken a closer look, or those who watched, will see that the Orioles pulled ahead in the bottom of the eighth after the Yankees staged a massive rally in the upper half. A 6-1 game turned into a 6-6 game, which turned into a 10-6 game. After the Yankees tied it up, they probably felt good about handing the ball to David Robertson. Minutes later, they felt a lot worse.
Last Thursday, I took a stab at predicting how batter’s swing influences their ground ball / fly ball splits. One of the most important retorts to the research (a retort made both in the comments and on The Book blog) was that pitch location was the determining factor of bat angles — what I was attributing to hitter tendencies (at least for hitters who have big GB/FB platoon splits).
Consider today’s offering a second puzzle piece — hopefully an edge piece — in what is a 1000-piece puzzle of understanding GB/FB splits. Today I offer the case study of two (essentially randomly picked) hitters with large GB/FB platoon — Adam Dunn and Jay Bruce.
The results surprised me, twice, and in the end, it appears these two hitters employ different swing patterns, suggesting there may be traction with my original theory, even though pitch location does have a considerable affect on swing angles.
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Tuesday night, just before the Mariners started playing the Red Sox, ROOT Sports introduced a little graphic showing the Mariners’ record before and after the Ichiro trade, and showing the Yankees’ record before and after the Ichiro trade. If you’ve been paying any attention to baseball, which you probably have, you know that the Yankees haven’t been playing well lately, and you might know that the Mariners have. Why? If you’re a fan of correlation-to-causation alchemy, because of the Ichiro trade. Clearly, Ichiro is toxic. Alternatively, on July 19, the Yankees traded Dan Brewer to the Braves. That could be the problem. There are correlations everywhere. There are correlations everywhere.
Let’s assume, you and I, that it isn’t that simple. There are very complicated reasons behind the relative rise of the Mariners, and there are very complicated reasons behind the relative fall of the Yankees. We’ll stop talking about the Mariners now because they don’t have anything to do with the rest of this article, as we’re going to focus on the AL East. No matter the reasons, there’s no getting around what’s taken place. There’s no changing the standings as they are, and where once the Yankees had a massive lead over everyone else, Tuesday night they dropped into a tie. The Yankees woke up Wednesday without sole possession of first for the first time since June 12. (That was a very long time ago.) (Sort of.)
Andruw Jones was having a brilliant career, that is, until he turned 31 years old. Since that point, he’s barely been a league-average player. He went from an all-time great player, to an iffy hall-of-fame candidate.
An unintended consequence of Melky Cabrera’s 50 game suspension has been an uptick in the amount of conversation about what Nick Swisher is going to get as a free agent this winter. Swisher has been elevated in the free agent outfielder ranks, and is probably #2 behind Josh Hamilton on the list of interesting OF bats that will be looking for new deals this winter.
So, this newfound interest in Swisher’s value led to a column from Jon Heyman, in which he discusses this very topic.
Word going around is, Nick Swisher, the Yankees’ eternally upbeat rightfield power supply, may seek a “Jayson Werth contract” when he hits free agency at the end of the year.
To baseball fans, that is well-known to mean $126 million over seven years. In other words, it’s a lot more money than most folks have guessed so far for Swish.
Second-hand or not, some Yankees people have heard that’s the figure Swisher is thinking about and may at least shoot for, and one other source who’s spoken to Swisher said that, indeed, Swisher has shown real interest in Werth’s deal. It’s believed the two sides have had no extension talks yet, as it is team policy to wait for free agency, except in rare cases.
While the $126-million figure is two to three times more than most of the estimates for Swisher, free agency brings some surprises. The Werth deal, for instance.
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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