Position: Sports Info Solutions Video Scouting Internship

Location: Coplay, Pa.
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I wouldn’t say the Cameron Maybin trade exactly opened the floodgates or anything, but now we do have another trade to talk about. In this one, Carlos Ruiz is going from the Dodgers to the Mariners, and Vidal Nuno is headed in the other direction. You’re not impressed. No one’s impressed. This is a low-profile move, and maybe the most interesting player involved in the whole thought process is Austin Barnes, who’s now going to get a roster spot in Los Angeles. The Mariners are getting a backup catcher, and the Dodgers are getting a relatively soft-tossing reliever. It’s one of the first of many “whatever” moves we’re going to see over the next handful of months.

There’s still something here, though. The way I figure, it’s on the Dodgers’ side. To tackle the Mariners’ side first — they get a year of Ruiz, for $4.5 million. That’s not a bad rate for a reliable backup, and even though Ruiz is almost 38, he just managed a .365 OBP, and he projects to be a half-decent hitter. Pitchers seemingly like working with Ruiz, despite the fact that he rates as a below-average framer. He’s said to have those leadership qualities, he’s a better backup than Jesus Sucre, and he’s reasonable insurance for the unpredictable Mike Zunino. Ruiz makes sense here. You see why the Mariners jumped.

And I think you can see why the Dodgers jumped. In part, this is about clearing space for Barnes. But beyond that — I was asked recently about the market. We all know the market is light on starting pitching, and I was asked if there are more guys out there like Mike Montgomery, relievers you could target and think about putting in the rotation. Nuno might actually fit here. Here’s a plot of 2016 starting pitchers, and I’ve also included a red dot to represent Nuno, overall in the major leagues:

If there’s one thing Nuno has proven, it’s that he’s a strike-thrower. He’s thrown strikes as both a starter and as a reliever, and while he’s never been a swing-and-miss type, his contact rates haven’t been terrible. On top of that, when Nuno moved to the bullpen, his stuff didn’t really play up. It’s easier, then, to imagine him as a starter again, throwing the same pitches around the same speeds. Don’t be too turned off by his home-run rates — he just allowed the same average exit velocity as Justin Verlander and Johnny Cueto. I don’t think it’s a stretch to look at Nuno and think he has some shot of being another Wei-Yin Chen. The core abilities there are pretty similar. Chen signed an $80-million contract.

Nuno is already 29. If he’s going to be Chen, he’d better hurry up. And the Dodgers aren’t hurting for starters, and starting candidates. Nuno isn’t going straight into the rotation, and maybe we’ll just never hear from him again. But Ruiz is an old catcher with one year of control left. Nuno is a younger strike-thrower with three years of arbitration eligibility. You can see why the Mariners wouldn’t mind this move. And you can see why the Dodgers would go for it. The Dodgers’ front office hasn’t forgotten its small-market roots, and they’re always trying to win the surplus-value game. Nuno could be something more than he looks like. The boring moves are seldom quite as boring as they seem.

This past season we debuted our custom splits tool for players, and over the weekend, we updated the tool to include filtering options. These filtering options allow you to remove the lines of stats which don’t meet a specific criteria.

For example, if you wanted to view only those seasons in which Dexter Fowler recorded more than 200 plate appearances at home, you can add a filter for that. You could also add a filter to see the seasons where Fowler had over a 20% strikeout rate on those splits. This filter also works if you group by months, weeks and games, so, for example, you could return all the games in which a player had three or more hits. Filters act like the splits in that they can be combined and customized.

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Detroit acquired RHP prospect Victor Alcantara (video from Fall League here) from Anaheim last night in exchange for OF Cameron Maybin. Alcantara has been pitching for the Scottsdale Scorpions in the Arizona Fall League, and I’ve seen him a few times over the past several weeks.

Alcantara has mostly been 91-95 with sinking arm-side movement. His fastball command is well below average, a 30 on the 20-80 scale for me, and his delivery is full of effort and violent moving parts. His mid-80s slider is consistently above average and features more length than is usual for a slider that hard. I’ve seen some changeups as well, mostly in the 86-87 mph range, but the best one I’ve seen has been a 40 on the scale.

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I’ve been thinking about how to start this post for a week, and it looks like I’ve decided on writing about how I’m still thinking about what to write. I guess I always have been better at talking about baseball than about myself.

The conclusion of the World Series will also mark the conclusion of my tenure at FanGraphs. Later this week, I’ll begin my new job working for a major league front office. I can’t say too much about the specifics of what it is I will be doing or who I’ll be doing it for, but just know that it is an incredible opportunity, and one which I am unbelievably excited to begin.

On the one hand, this was an easy choice for me to make. I’m living out a childhood dream, doing what I can to help a major league baseball team win actual games (I think I can finally give up my dream of one day playing). On the other hand, it was an incredibly difficult decision to make. I adore FanGraphs. I look up to my co-workers. I love interacting with each and every one of you, the readers, in my chats, on Twitter, and even in the comments (mostly). There’s so much about this job that I love. Writing about baseball for a living, for FanGraphs in particular, was a dream I set out to achieve in college. Working for a major league front office was a dream I never realistically thought I could achieve. I’m beyond grateful to have been given both of these opportunities.

There’s no sense in this going on any longer than it has, but I have to thank Dave Cameron and David Appelman for taking a chance on me two-and-a-half years ago based on a silly article I wrote in the Community Blog section about Brian Dozier’s baserunning. My first article for the main site was a silly one about Kurt Suzuki’s baserunning, so shout out to the Twins, too, I guess. The Davids gave me my first real shot in this industry, and without them, none of the opportunities I’ve been given since them would be possible. I will forever be grateful toward these two people, not just on a professional level, but more importantly on a personal level, too.

Thanks to Jeff Sullivan and Eno Sarris and all the amazing writers here at FanGraphs who inspired me to be a better writer long before I began working for the site, and then especially once my work began appearing alongside theirs. Thanks to Carson Cistulli for putting up with my habitual tardiness and for making the posts I gave him enough time to edit become much better than what I gave him. Thanks to all the guys in the Cleveland media who have made my time in the Progressive Field press box these last three years so much fun, and to all the fellow writers I’ve met over the years who welcomed me with open arms into your awesome, unique, talented community. And lastly, thank you, the reader. The readership of FanGraphs is such a fantastic, bright, curious group of individuals who genuinely inspire and challenge all of us to be better at our jobs. I can’t thank you all enough for reading along.

I suppose it’s only fitting that my goodbye post went several hundred words longer than I intended it to. And there aren’t even any .gifs.

This post is centered around a controversial call. Maybe I’m being mealy-mouthed. This post is centered around a bad call. As such, I want to make something clear right now. I don’t root for the Indians, and I don’t root for the Cubs. My team of choice is not very good, and it’s not alive in the playoffs. Hasn’t been in forever! This post is not about me complaining, and it’s not about excusing the Indians’ loss, or asserting that the Cubs got lucky. A game result comes out of hundreds of events, and had this particular event gone Cleveland’s way, chances are they still would’ve come up short. We all good here? I just want to point something out, and introduce some context. Sorry if it makes your emotions flare up.

Game 5, fifth inning, 3-1 Cubs. Runner on third, one out, full count on the hitter. The hitter was Brandon Guyer, and the pitcher was Jon Lester. Lester executed the pitch he wanted. The second out went up on the scoreboard.

The funny thing about that being the pitch Lester wanted — the pitch was more of a ball than a strike.

Lester nailed David Ross‘ target. That much can’t be argued. What also can’t be argued is that Ross’ target was off the plate in the first place. Tough calls are nothing unusual, but they mean the most in full counts in close games. When Guyer was hitting, the Indians’ win expectancy was right around 29%. Had that pitch been called a ball, as it should’ve been, the Indians’ odds of winning would’ve increased to 32%. The strikeout dropped their odds of winning instead, all the way to 22%. That’s a swing of 10 percentage points. That swing is huge. Jose Ramirez’s solo homer was worth 11 percentage points.

Yes, I know, having stuff like this pointed out isn’t fun. Cubs fans feel like something is being taken away from them. Indians fans feel like something was taken away from them. Sorry! Even zanier, Lester got a worse call against Guyer earlier in the same series. From the sixth inning in Game 1:

The replay tells you what you need to know:

The pitch was literally on the chalk, so Guyer got screwed. But the win-expectancy swing there was under two percentage points, so in the end no one minded too much. The Game 5 call was a bigger deal.

But we’re not just dealing with freak called strikeouts here. Those aren’t necessarily good strikeouts, but Lester and Ross love those strikeouts. Here are all of Lester’s called strikeouts since 2014, with Game 5’s against Guyer in red:

Here’s the same plot, but with Game 1’s against Guyer in blue:

You see how they kind of blend in? Lester records a ton of arm-side called strikeouts off the plate. Over the last three years, Lester ranks 13th in rate of two-strike pitches taken for strikes. But he moves all the way up into second in rate of two-strike pitches taken for strikes off the plate in that neighborhood. Over the whole PITCHf/x era, Lester is the easy league leader in total number of these called strikeouts. And here’s a year-to-year breakdown:

An established, long-standing pattern doesn’t make the calls more correct, but it does make them less surprising. Lester loves that strikeout, and while he couldn’t get it without the umpires, it’s a credit to his own command, and it’s a credit to his catchers, which have often just been Ross. Lester can repeatedly hit that spot, and throughout the whole of baseball history, pitchers have been rewarded for being so accurate. I know that, from a certain perspective, it seems unfair. Strikes should be strikes, and balls should be balls. But it’s at least Lester’s own ability that leads him to a lot of these strikeouts, and while Brandon Guyer had every right to be annoyed, he couldn’t have been too astonished. Not in Game 1, and then, certainly, not Sunday night.

It was a few years ago when we all learned about Jon Lester’s pick-off problem. There was speculation that the Royals might take advantage in their one-game playoff against the A’s. The Royals could run, after all. And, against Lester that evening, Royals base-stealers went 3-for-4. In the one failure, Billy Butler just wandered off first base for some reason.

Lester’s same problem was supposed to be a major factor in the current World Series. The Indians were supposed to be able to take better advantage than the Giants and Dodgers. I suppose it’s possible that Lester could show up in relief in Game 7, but assuming that doesn’t happen, the Series is in the books as far as Lester on the field is concerned. Twice, the Indians were successful stealing against him. Twice, the Indians got thrown out. Jon Lester wasn’t exploited.

In the first game, Francisco Lindor went 1-for-2, as a runner. Sunday night, Rajai Davis was 1-for-1, and Lindor went 0-for-1. Davis stole in the sixth, and he scored to narrow the deficit to one. Lindor tried to steal in the sixth, but it didn’t work. It would’ve been a pretty big advance, but Lindor was done in in part by skill and in part by psychology.

Here’s Davis. David Ross couldn’t handle the baseball on the transfer, which is also how Lindor stole in Game 1.

And now here’s Lindor:

It’s time to dig into this! Quickly, you might notice something. Here’s Davis as Lester began to throw:

Here’s Lindor at almost exactly the same time:

Okay, that’s one factor — Davis had a better lead by about two and a half feet. In other words, Davis was about 4% closer to second base, based on the distance there from the secondary lead. Clearly, a huge factor is that, with Davis, Ross couldn’t even get off a throw. Ross got off a perfect throw with Lindor running. Javier Baez applied a perfect tag. Lester was even about 5% faster getting the ball to Ross in the first place. Compared to Davis, Lindor arrived at second base about 0.2 – 0.3 seconds slower. That’s huge, as steals are concerned, and so Lindor was out without so much as a replay review.

Lindor getting thrown out reduced the Indians’ odds of winning by about 3.7 percentage points. Had Lindor gotten in there safely, it would’ve increased the Indians’ odds of winning by about 1.9 percentage points, so, the break-even rate there is 66%. It made sense for Lindor to go if he believed he’d be safe at least two-thirds of the time. That feels like a safe assumption, when you’re Francisco Lindor, running against Jon Lester. It’s supposed to be nearly automatic, right? Even Joe Maddon conceded as much before the series began.

But not only did the Cubs execute with perfection — Lindor just couldn’t bring himself to go crazy. This is the same thing I wrote about a week and a half ago. Based on his lead and jump, sure, you can see how the Cubs threw Lindor out. But why didn’t he take an even bigger lead, to get an even better jump? Lindor simply would’ve felt too vulnerable. He would’ve felt naked out there, doing something you’re never supposed to do against a lefty. Jon Lester looks the part, and you have to really, really, truly believe he’s not throwing over. Lindor couldn’t accept that, even though Lester had just bluffed.

Go back to Game 1. This is nuts.

Lindor saw this for himself. In Game 1, he would’ve been an easy out, but Lester couldn’t do anything, so Lindor could scamper back. Lindor observed firsthand that Lester couldn’t and wouldn’t throw over. It’s so easy to sit here now and say “Just go! Just go! Who cares!” But that sells the psychology short. Lester is protected by the uniqueness of his pick-off problem. Francisco Lindor probably could’ve had a way bigger lead, and, given that lead, he probably could’ve stolen second base. It would’ve been a pretty important steal, with Mike Napoli batting. But Lindor fell into the same trap most runners fall into. Jon Lester’s problem doesn’t make sense. Therefore, it’s mighty difficult to believe.

Josh Tomlin will be on the mound for the Indians tonight — and, with the World Series having moved to Wrigley Field, he’ll also be in the batter’s box. The right-hander isn’t complaining.

“I think getting to hit is cool,” opined Tomlin. “I enjoy being part of the game as a whole, as opposed to just being a part of it when I’m out there pitching. Being able to impact the game on both sides of the ball is more fun than sitting in the dugout, doing nothing. I take a lot of pride in trying to have good at-bats.”

Tomlin — using baseball parlance — isn’t “an automatic out.” He had two hits in five at-bats this year, and he’s 6-for-12 in his career. That’s not totally by accident. He was a shortstop at Angelina Community College, where one of his teammates was Clay Buchholz. The equally athletic Red Sox righty had designs on the position, but he couldn’t beat out Tomlin.

Whether or not Cleveland’s Game Three starter is able to help out his own cause tonight remains to be seen. Either way, he will step into the box with a good attitude.

“I always joke with [Michael] Brantley that I could hit .270 in the big leagues,” Tomlin told me. He tells me, “‘No, you couldn’t.’ I say, “I’m hitting .500.’”

As I write this, Kyle Schwarber just worked a 3-0 count against Indians starter Trevor Bauer in Game 2 of the World Series, and then Schwarber ripped an RBI single into center field. Now there’s a mound visit. Things aren’t going well for Bauer in his first start since his drone-shortened outing against the Blue Jays in the ALCS.

And in that outing against the Blue Jays, however short, I noticed something about Bauer that I made a note to keep an eye on the next time he took the mound. I’ve watched Bauer pitch his entire career, and I’d never noticed it before.

I want to show you a couple pitches. This first one is a fastball, Bauer’s first pitch of the game:

And now a curveball, the very next pitch:

The difference stuck out to me like a sore thumb. To me, Bauer sure looks like he’s decelerating his motion significantly in the second pitch, and slowing his arm action. I started trying to identify the curve as Bauer was throwing it with each pitch, and I was doing so with success.

I took a screenshot when Bauer’s arm stopped going back and started moving forward, at the moment when his glove reached its highest point. Again, the fastball is on the top and the curve on the bottom:

The MLB logo makes it easy to compare, and it’s noticeably higher on the curve, in the second clip. This is something our own Jonah Pemstein sort of wrote about this earlier today, that Bauer’s release point on the curve is unusually high, relative to his other pitches. But this has less to do with release points and more to do with timing.

Take these clips from Bauer’s best start of the year, back in June against the Mariners.

First, a fastball

Now the curve:

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m see more conviction with the curveball, and less slowing of the arm action. The same screenshots:

They’re almost indistinguishable. The bottom of the glove more or less lines up with the chalk.

Back to tonight. I’m seeing it again. Again, I’ve been trying to identify the curves as Bauer winds up, and I’m getting it right almost every time. If I’m getting it right from the press box, I have a hard time imagining Cubs hitters aren’t.

Here’s a couple of curves to Kris Bryant, and while FOX, somehow, still has not yet captured a full Bauer windup on a curve, the slowed arm action is still apparent:

And the comparison shot:

Again, the lettering makes it easy to compare, and it’s clear Bauer is reaching higher. Part of that is likely just by design, the nature of throwing a curve, but we see that it wasn’t as extreme earlier in the season, and it’s hard not to notice the change in arm action.

Either way, the curve is just missing. Bauer had trouble throwing it for a strike against the Blue Jays, and here’s his current pitch chart as I write this post:

He can’t throw it for strikes, and when he is getting it inside the zone, he’s leaving it up. Also, there’s this:

Bauer’s curveball spin is way, way off after one inning: 2514 RPM is his season average, in the first it was 2005 RPM.

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) October 26, 2016

So, yeah. Something is up with Trevor Bauer’s curve.

Inarguably, one of the biggest moments of Game 1 happened in the seventh inning. Really, a handful of the biggest moments of Game 1 happened in the seventh inning, but the top half ended with Andrew Miller whiffing David Ross with two down and the bases loaded. The score at that point was a manageable 3-0, and the showdown got people talking. In part, there was confusion over why Ross was hitting there in the first place. Ross is not that good a hitter! But, he was definitely the one up there, and he is not a bad baseball player. Maybe most remarkable was this:

That’s the other thing people have discussed. At 3-and-1, with nowhere for Ross to go, Miller threw a slider. At 3-and-2, with still nowhere for Ross to go, Miller threw a slider. Those are what are referred to as classic fastball counts, and the perception is that there’s a lot of risk in going offspeed, because those pitches are more likely to be balls. Indeed, the final pitch wound up out of the zone, but Miller got Ross to chase, which is kind of his thing. It’s not Ross’ fault that Miller is some sort of baseball god.

The at-bat inspired some wonderful writing. In there, you see a discussion over what pitches there were, and what pitches Ross was expecting. It takes some balls to throw back-to-back sliders in that situation. I searched for precedent. I bet you’re not surprised to learn Miller hasn’t pitched that much this year with the bases loaded. When he has, he’s even less frequently been in three-ball counts. In fact, this year, before yesterday, Miller had thrown two three-ball pitches with the bases loaded. They both came on May 6, with the Yankees leading the Red Sox 3-2 in the top of the ninth. Miller threw a 3-and-1 pitch to David Ortiz, and he threw a 3-and-2 pitch to David Ortiz.

Here’s the first of them.

The count ran to 3-and-1 in the first place after a fastball/slider/fastball/slider sequence. It’s the same sequence that took Miller to 3-and-1 against Ross. Back in May, against Ortiz, Miller threw a 3-and-1…slider, for a close called strike. Now, it looks worse in the video, because the catcher was crossed up. The catcher was crossed up! And Miller still got the strike. That’s good umpiring! But it made Ortiz upset, because he turned around and saw the catcher fumbling, and so he made some assumptions. John Farrell came out to keep Ortiz from getting ejected. Farrell got ejected.

So, full count. Bases still loaded, one still out, one still the deficit. This is about as high-leverage as it can get in the first week of May. Miller threw the baseball that he had.

Slider, called strike, strikeout. Does the pitch seem kind of low to you? It definitely seemed kind of low to John Farrell, who — wait, what was Farrell doing still in the dugout? Get out of there!

People were heated. Ortiz got ejected. His getting ejected mattered less after the at-bat than it would have in the middle of it. It was a generous strike call. It was maybe probably a ball. Tough couple pitches.

But it’s not the results that matter to me. It’s just the process and the precedent. Miller got a lot of credit for throwing Ross two three-ball sliders. On the only two comparable pitches he threw this year, he also threw sliders. That’s kind of the thing about guys who throw 60% sliders — they don’t do that unless they really, really trust the pitch. For all intents and purposes, Andrew Miller’s slider is his fastball. At least, in the way we think about pitchers conventionally. Against Miller, it’s impossible to rule out the slider, ever. It’s among the things that make him nearly unhittable.

Andrew Miller threw David Ross some tough sliders in a difficult spot. Andrew Miller throws tough sliders. The best pitchers can do whatever they want.