We’ve known for some time that the 2016 playoffs would begin on this evening. Many have known for less time that their favorite teams wouldn’t qualify for the tournament. My favorite team is done playing. This is a post and a poll for those of you who find yourselves in an identical circumstance. Of baseball’s 30 teams, 20 are finished. So for fans of those teams who’re finished, who from the remaining crop looks the most appealing, as a bandwagon?

I’ve run this once or twice before. I’ve been forced to acknowledge that there’s nothing I can actually do to prevent fans of playoff teams from also voting, presumably for their own playoff teams. I get that when one is overcome by the postseason spirit, irrational behavior can feel like rational behavior. But I would still ask you to please refrain. There is no benefit from a vote for your team. Literally nothing. Not even a moment of fleeting pleasure. I trust you’re not naturally inclined to be an asshole just because. You’re great! Keep it up!

Assuming you do indeed cheer primarily for a team of present-day golfers, who do you want to see do the best? Or can you not bring yourself to bandwagon at all? Vote below. And, vote, just.

Francisco Liriano has pitched his way into consideration for today’s American League Wild Card game by having been excellent since his return to the rotation — during which period he’s recorded 24.2 innings with 26 strikeouts, six walks, and four earned runs — but also by being on the right schedule to pitch today and by pitching with his left hand.

It’s easy enough to sort this list of teams and find that the Orioles have been the worst American League team against lefties this year. But that’s just what’s happened in the past. It doesn’t necessarily dictate what would happen in the future.

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You might’ve noticed that the regular season is over. As such, all the regular-season numbers are in the books, which gives us some good opportunities for evaluation on the outside. In this quick post, I would like to evaluate the preseason team projections. Last year, at least in the American League, the projections wound up being a mess. I remember there being a point about halfway through where it looked like one would’ve been smarter to bet the opposite of every AL team projection. How’d the numbers shake out in 2016? Below, see plots.

Several times before, I’ve used old team projections from seasons past. Not all team projections included here come from the same sources, because the same sources just haven’t always existed. For recent years, I’ve been able to use FanGraphs team projections. Going further back, I’ve had to search elsewhere, because FanGraphs just didn’t have projections. So I know that’s one potential source of error here, but I think it’s better than just not having data at all. And ultimately, all projection systems are built around similar foundations. You take recent numbers and weigh them and project them for the short-term future. There’s not a lot to change. So! Why don’t we just get to the information?

I have team projections stretching back to 2005. Here is a plot including actual team wins vs. projected team wins. What you see here is the average error per team per season:

This year, the projections fared much better than they did in 2015. I went with the last version of FanGraphs’ preseason team projections, and after the average projection missed by 8.1 wins a year ago, this time the average projection missed by 5.7 wins. That puts this year in line with 2014, as being fairly successful, math-wise. It would be the best-projected year since 2007. I have no idea if that means anything; I’m just putting it out there. This year’s biggest miss was the Twins, who fell an incredible 19 wins short of the March expectation. The word “Twins” has the word “wins” right in it. It also has a T, which looks like the symbol for perpendicularity. Other teams might be content to operate in parallel with winning. The Twins decided to challenge it head-on.

Another thing we can look at: What about BaseRuns wins vs. projected wins? We know there are elements that are just about un-projectable. What if we strip those away?

Last year, the average miss was 7.0 BaseRuns wins. This year, the average miss was 5.4 BaseRuns wins, standing again as the strongest year for the projections since 2007. You might say it’s strange that the projections haven’t improved on a set of projections from a whole decade ago, since that was so far back it was pre-PITCHf/x era. But this is at least evidence that last year’s weirdness was a blip. The biggest miss for 2016: The Red Sox, actually. They were projected for 89 wins, but they finished with 102 BaseRuns wins. Good team, the Red Sox. The Cubs were the second-biggest miss!

Just to close it out, we can leave out the projections entirely. Here are BaseRuns wins vs. actual wins. Are teams finding ways to beat their underlying statistics more often, or is that not the case?

This year, the average difference was 4.2 wins. That’s down from last year’s 5.1, but still, this is the second-biggest error in the sample. So that’s potentially of note. Last year it felt like the BaseRuns model was practically broken. This year has eased some of those concerns, but it’s still worth wondering about. The Rangers finished with 13 more actual wins than BaseRuns wins. The Rays finished with 13 fewer actual wins than BaseRuns wins. Go ahead and figure that one out. At least for the time being, I quit. What’s done is done!

Some time ago, in another InstaGraphs post, I mentioned something that could potentially become true about the 2016 Reds. We spend a lot of time writing about things that could potentially become true, and inevitably, a lot of those paces fall off. There are reasons for that, and that would be a subject for another post. But the 2016 numbers are official now, dammit. There’s no more “on pace for;” there only is. Here is something that is:

That’s bad! Boy, it gets worse. Here are the worst team pitching staffs since 1900, by our version of WAR:

To be absolutely clear about what we have here: By our numbers, the Reds just became the first pitching staff in modern history to finish with a negative WAR. It’s only slight, sure, and the difference between them and those 1915 Athletics is less than one win, but that negative symbol is conspicuous. It pushes the digits over to the right, so they can stand out. The Reds, as a collective, featured a major-league pitching staff that was a worse-than-replacement-level pitching staff. That’s almost unfathomable, is what that is.

Did the Reds really have the worst pitching staff ever? I mean, hell, I don’t know. Their pitching staff had one of the biggest home-run problems ever. By actual runs allowed, they were a little bit better than replacement-level, but you know where we stand on all that. There’s no way to actually compare across seasons or eras, not with the desired level of precision. We just don’t understand pitching that well yet, and we understand it even less the further back we go into history. We can say this: If you wanted to talk about the worst staffs of all time, you might use FanGraphs WAR as a starting point. It couldn’t make the Reds look any worse.

Reds pitchers, month by month:

• April: -1.3 WAR, 30th place
• May: -1.1, 30th
• June: -0.6, 30th
• July: +1.9, 20th
• August: +1.0, 26th
• Sep/Oct: +0.2, 30th

The first half is what did the Reds in. In the second half, they accumulated 3.2 WAR, good enough to edge out the Twins, Braves, and Diamondbacks. In each of the last three months, the Reds’ staff finished in the black. Yet it’s appropriate that, in the final stretch, they were dead last again. All they needed were one or two more good games, to avoid finishing in the…red. But a league-worst September and October locked the Reds into place. They had a chance to run away from history, but instead they suffer its embrace.

A negative WAR. It’s not that there weren’t some success stories. Anthony DeSclafani was pretty good. Dan Straily was all right. Raisel Iglesias adjusted well to the bullpen. Brandon Finnegan got stronger in the second half. But let me tell you: 32 Reds pitchers pitched. Twenty of them finished below 0.0 WAR. Alfredo Simon allowed more runs in 58.2 innings than Jon Lester allowed in over 200. J.J. Hoover allowed more runs in 18.2 innings than Zach Britton’s allowed the last two years combined. For the Reds, 2016 was never going to be about winning. Yet it also definitely wasn’t supposed to be about this.

To be clear, there are three postings here.

Position: Colorado Rockies Analyst – Baseball Research & Development

Location: Denver

Description:
This individual will collaborate with the Research and Development team and will assist in the development and maintenance of a player information and projection system along with other statistical analysis and on field strategy. This position requires strong statistical development skills and experience as well as a demonstrated ability for independent curiosity and a commitment to excellence while working within a team framework.

Responsibilities:

• Utilize advanced statistical techniques to analyze large datasets for actionable conclusions.
• Design and document development of new analytic applications to assist in player evaluation.
• Utilize existing Baseball Research and Development applications and databases in order to perform quantitative research related to baseball strategy and player evaluation.
• Work with Baseball Research and Development team to design and integrate new statistical ideas into existing analytical systems.
• Build automated solutions to import, clean and update datasets for use in downstream analyses.
• Complete ad-hoc database queries to answer specific questions from Front Office colleagues.

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The Nationals have had an excellent bounce back season after last year’s struggles, and have already locked up the NL East with a 91-65 record. But all is not well in Washington.

The team was already dealing with the potential absence of Stephen Strasburg, who had to leave his first start back from the disabled list with lingering soreness. Daniel Murphy, probably the team’s MVP this year, has not played in over a week due to a glute strain, and while it doesn’t seem like a major injury, you never like to see important players dealing with issues right before the playoff start.

And now, the Nationals will need Murphy more than ever, because Dusty Baker just confirmed that starting catcher Wilson Ramos has suffered a torn ACL, ending his season a week before the team takes on the Dodgers in the NLDS.

There it is. Wilson Ramos has a torn ACL, Dusty Baker says.

— CSN Nationals (@CSNNationals) September 27, 2016

Ramos’ career year has been one of the primary reasons the Nationals have been better this year than last year, as he’s posted a 124 wRC+ and +3.5 WAR, solidifying what was a black hole in 2015. He gave the lineup depth it didn’t have last year, and provided some right-handed thump to counter team’s left-handed pitching; he had a 160 wRC+ against LHPs this year, second-best on the team.

Jose Lobaton will take over as the Nationals starting catcher, and the offense is going to suffer as a result. Lobaton has a career 77 wRC+, and is putting up a normal-for-him 82 wRC+ this year. He takes some walks and makes okay contact, but there’s not much power there, and the Dodgers pitchers will probably have no problem coming right after him and making him do damage with his swing. Facing a pitching staff as good as Los Angeles’, especially one with two frontline left-handed starters, Lobaton is going to be a huge dropoff from Ramos.

This injury doesn’t sink the Nationals chances, of course; no one player is that important in baseball, and Ramos isn’t the kind of impact player that can swing a series by himself. But no question, this is a significant loss for Washington, especially given that the Dodgers are a formidable opponent. The team has had a great season, but they’re likely going to need some Murphy and/or Strasburg to make it back for the NLDS, because without Ramos too, they’re going into the playoffs undermanned.

Think about what you know about hitters and pop-ups. Pop-ups, for all hitters, are bad. They might as well be one-pitch strikeouts. And, you know who doesn’t hit them? Joey Votto. You know that Joey Votto pretty much never hits a pop-up. It’s among the many things that make him extraordinary. Joe Mauer also doesn’t really hit pop-ups. Christian Yelich. Ryan Howard. Shin-Soo Choo. On and on. And there’s Howie Kendrick. Kendrick doesn’t hit pop-ups. But:

@based_ball ICYMI: Howie Kendrick hit a pop-up today. (leading off the 7-th inning).

— Santiago Padilla (@SantiPadillaR) September 25, 2016

That was tweeted at me yesterday. And when I checked the live statistics on FanGraphs, Kendrick had an infield fly. Yet when I check those same statistics today: nothing. It’s as if it’s been erased. Here is the batted ball in question:

Fielded comfortably by the second baseman. We’d all identify that as a pop-up, right? In one sense, then, Kendrick did pop up yesterday. You could say it’s the most important sense. Yet, here’s the leaderboard, when I look at everyone who’s batted at least 500 times over the past three calendar years. This is why this matters. (It doesn’t matter-matter, but, you know.)

Kendrick is the only guy with double zeros. Everyone else has hit at least one infield fly. So, what are we supposed to do, here?

In truth, it’s not that much of a mystery. We get batted-ball data from Baseball Info Solutions, and they have a specific definition of what makes an infield fly. Yesterday, when I checked the live stats, those were getting fed in by MLB Gameday, and that has a different, looser definition. So Kendrick’s fly ball was a pop-up by one definition, but not by both. If you take the BIS data as gospel, Kendrick objectively remains without such a blemish. But you can’t really say Kendrick hasn’t hit a pop-up. He just hasn’t hit one particular kind of pop-up.

Heck, this was just a matter of weeks ago:

The last time I checked, the BIS cutoff was 140 feet. That is, any fly ball hit more than 140 feet wouldn’t count as an infield fly. Kendrick still hasn’t popped up within the infield. But these flies flew only a little beyond 140. And now that we have Statcast, we can try to run some numbers ourselves. We’re still going to have to define things arbitrarily, and Statcast sometimes has trouble picking up batted balls hit at extreme angles, but let’s just see what we can do for 2016. Why don’t we set a cutoff at a launch angle of 60 degrees?

Joey Votto has zero such batted balls. Christian Yelich, zero. Joe Mauer, one. Howie Kendrick, one. Starling Marte, one. I don’t know how many batted balls are missing from the sample, so it’s not authoritative. But, it’s something. No definition of a pop-up is going to be the definition of a pop-up. This is the issue with bucketing. But Howie Kendrick either has a pop-up or two, or he doesn’t. According to the numbers we have here, Kendrick hasn’t popped up once in three years. That’s amazing! It still, no matter what, reflects a legitimate ability of his, but his is a soft zero. There’s no arriving at a one true answer.

Howie Kendrick most certainly doesn’t hit pop-ups. Except for the rare occasions when he does. Welp?

One of my favorite things about baseball is how Clayton Kershaw has never been able to master a changeup. There’s absolutely no one in baseball who needs a changeup less than Clayton Kershaw, but, drive is drive. He’s been frustrated by his own lack of progress, because as far as he’s concerned, he’ll forever see room for improvement. He still has an ERA. Runs are mistakes.

Kershaw wants to be better. It doesn’t matter to him how silly that sounds. He’s willing to try different things, and that brings us to this past weekend, when Kershaw and the Dodgers blew out the Rockies. We’re going to fast-forward to the seventh inning, when the Dodgers were up by eight runs. Actually, no, before we do that, here’s an image from Texas Leaguers. Kershaw’s estimated 2016 release points:

Three pitches stand out. Here’s the high one, from April:

You might’ve forgotten about that. The baseball season is long. Anyway, now, seventh inning, facing the Rockies. Here’s Kershaw throwing a pretty ordinary Kershaw-y pitch to Nolan Arenado:

Real good pitch. Here’s the following delivery:

You see that? So, Arenado singled. He was shortly eliminated. With two outs, up came Gerardo Parra. A typical Kershaw pitch:

And, the very next pitch:

You see Parra look out at the mound. Arenado did the same thing. That’s presumably because Kershaw gave them both a sudden, weird, different look. I’ll use screenshots now. The first of the two shown Parra pitches:

The second of the two shown Parra pitches:

Look at the arm. Look at the release point. Two times in the seventh inning, with the leverage about as low as it can get, Clayton Kershaw dropped down. He threw one ball, and he threw one strike, which earned a strikeout. Here’s a one-image comparison, with the ordinary release point shown by the yellow dot:

Just as Clayton Kershaw doesn’t need a changeup, he doesn’t need a second slot. He’s already the best at what he does in the game. But, I mean, what’s the harm? Especially at 8-0? I’m going to guess he’s tried this a few times in the bullpen. Might as well see if it plays in a game, with the playoffs coming up. Anything for an edge. I suppose even the best players have to work hard to remain the best.

I will say, Kershaw’s low-slot delivery doesn’t look so smooth. It doesn’t quite seem comfortable, and maybe you shouldn’t expect it to. That’s not how he’s thrown, but that second fastball was perfectly located, and you don’t need to be flawless if you’re offering a second look, for the surprise of it. The ball gets to the catcher in less than half a second. That doesn’t give hitters much time to process. I wonder if this was Kershaw’s idea, or if he’s been having conversations with Rich Hill. Hill loves his unpredictability. Imagine Hill’s deception with Kershaw’s stuff.

Or, don’t. The result would be terrifying. And besides, there’s not yet any indication this is going to keep up. For the time being, all we know is that Clayton Kershaw tried an experiment two times in a low-leverage inning. Maybe that’s all we’ll ever see. Or maybe, you know, it’s not. What am I, God?

Update

As shown in the comments, Kershaw was indeed inspired by Hill. And it turns out the strikeout pitch to Parra was the fastest pitch Kershaw has thrown in 2016, by a few tenths of a point. So.

With the minor-league playoffs finished, the Baltimore Orioles summoned first-base prospect Trey Mancini from Triple-A Norfolk this week to help sure up their offense. Mancini wasted no time making an impact for the O’s, notching his first career home run in Tuesday’s game against the Red Sox. Mancini broke out in 2015 when he slashed an outstanding .331/.370/.539 between High-A and Double-A. His raw numbers regressed a bit this season as he moved to a more pitcher-friendly park, but he still managed a strong .282/.357/.458 showing, with almost all of that coming at Triple-A.

Mancini’s power is enticing. In each of the last two seasons, he’s reached the 20-homer mark and ISO’d over .175. However, some of his other attributes take away from some of that shine. Mancini’s a first baseman, meaning he’ll need to hit a bunch to have a long-term future in the bigs. He also turns 25 next spring, making him a bit old for even the Triple-A level. And perhaps most importantly, he kind of strikes out a lot — likely due in part to his long swing.

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On Monday, I published a post about Addison Reed, and his Andrew Miller-like transformation with the New York Mets. Within that post, I talked about the Mets’ abundant, high-leverage usage of Reed, and to support that claim, I drew from some numbers hosted on Baseball-Reference — a combination of multi-inning relief outings (meaning three outs or more) and average leverage index upon entering the game — and found that only three relievers with more multi-inning outings also had a higher average leverage index.

And honestly, I’d never really thought to combine those two figures before. Each is capturing, at the upper limits, a very different type of pitcher. At the top of the multi-inning outing leaderboard, one finds a group of swingmen, long relievers, and mop-up pitchers. At the top of the leverage index leaderboard, one finds the game’s most elite closers and set-up men. Very little overlap exists between the two.

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