The team behind the Steamer projections has put together a tool to better visualize the steamer split projections. Just click on the image or various links and start slicing and dicing.

“In the visualization, you will find a new output of the Steamer Projection system: Rest of season split projections. This visualization is customizable: you may select different stats to display on the graphs, and choose to only display certain teams and positions. It was designed to be a stand-alone tool, and it can even be embedded directly on your website or posted on social media. We plan to update it weekly so that our ROS projection stay up to date.”

Click to enlarge.

“In Soviet Russia, television watches you,” famous bearded dissident Yakov Smirnoff revealed in his politically charged comedy jokes of the 1980s. In the United States, meanwhile, the arrangement is different. In the United States — or at least the United States of April 16, 2015 — what happens is you watch Red Sox GM Ben Cherington watching draft-eligible Vanderbilt right-hander Carson Fulmer.

As for who is watching you — or, for that matter, whom Carson Fulmer himself is watching — it’s difficult to say. That these and other similar scenarios are depicted in an MC Escher drawing is almost certain, however.

Image courtesy a combination of Kiley McDaniel and Cespedes Family BBQ.

I told Rafael Betancourt that he hadn’t hit a batter with any of his last 10,307 pitches thrown. He laughed, and said nobody had ever told him that before. “I remember it. It was Marcus Thames. Funny thing was? It was an 0-2 count,” the Rockies reliever said. When I asked if it was the last time he ever went inside, he only laughed. He wanted to protest, I could tell, but he also knew he didn’t go inside much.

The rest of the interview didn’t produce much, other than the fact that the deception he shows in his delivery wasn’t crafted. The way Betancourt’s arm comes up behind his head is just the way he throws the ball. “That’s the way I’ve always thrown the ball, even when I was a fielder, even when I played shortstop — but I feel that the ball is always coming from the same spot,” he said of his uncommon release action.

Even though he lives on the outside corner — and admitted as much — he didn’t really want to get into specifics about the adjustments he’d made to combat hitters hanging over the outside corner. You can see that he’s gone to the slider a little more over the years, and has even used the pitchfork changeup some more, but the location hasn’t changed.

Nor has his ability to avoid the free pass… or the hit batter.

Earlier this week, the author published a post claiming to include the top players by (maybe) predictive stats from college baseball’s most competitive conferences.

What follows are the three weekend series likely to feature the greatest number of players whose names appeared within that post. MPS+ and MPS- are index metrics based on those (maybe) predictive stats and designed for batters and pitchers, respectively. In each case, 100 is average, while above 100 is better for batters and below 100 is better for pitchers. Read more about the author’s questionable methodology here.

Arkansas at Texas A&M
Who It Features
One of the best players in all the SEC. Draft-eligible sophomore and Arkansas center fielder Andrew Benintendi (160 PA, 151 MPS+) leads not merely the conference but all of Division 1 with 14 home runs. He’s also recorded a strikeout rate (12.5%) about a standard deviation better than conference average and occupies (one notes) a place on the more challenging end of the defensive spectrum. All five of the following also appear among the conference’s top-20 batters: junior right fielder Tyler Spoon (148 PA, 123 MPS+) and junior third baseman Bobby Wernes (151 PA, 115 MPS+) on Arkansas; plus sophomore right fielder Nick Banks (148 PA, 114 MPS+), sophomore third baseman Ronnie Gideon (107 PA, 118 MPS+), and junior left fielder Logan Taylor (132 PA, 128 MPS+) for Texas A&M. Among pitchers, Arkansas’ Friday night starter Grayson Long (51.0 IP, 86 MPS-) has produced the best numbers. Long features a fastball that sits in the low-90s and peaks at 93 mph, according to Perfect Game.

When It’s On (ET)
Friday at 7:30pm
Saturday at 8:30pm
Sunday at 4:00pm

How to Watch It
SEC Network and Watch ESPN (link).

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It’s not very often you see Andrew McCutchen making a mistake, but it happened yesterday in Pittsburgh’s 1-0 loss to the Tigers. A tip of the hat to Pirates broadcasters Tim Neverett and Bob Walk for pointing out this interesting wrinkle.

It was the Pirates’ half of the fourth inning, with the game tied 0-0 and Alfredo Simon on the mound for the Tigers. With two outs and nobody on, McCutchen hit a single (the Pirates’ first hit of the game) and stood on first with Neil Walker at the plate.

Walker hit a bloop single to right field. It dropped just in front of J.D. Martinez:

What the baserunner on first, in this case McCutchen, has done since the dawn of time in this instance is go to second — and go to third only if the outfielder terribly misplays the ball. Here is McCutchen at second, monitoring Martinez to see if he misplays the ball. (He doesn’t.)

The modern(ish) wrinkle here is that the Tigers were shifting against Walker. Here is their formation before the pitch (click to embiggen):

And here is what their defense looked like the moment McCutchen was rounding second. Martinez is throwing in the ball from right, and arrows are pointing at Tigers, while McCutchen is in the tiny circle:

So here’s McCutchen’s mistake: he should not be looking at Martinez, because it almost doesn’t matter how Martinez plays this ball. What’s important is that Detroit’s shift has left third base vacated. Third basemen Nick Castellanos (underneath top arrow) is near McCutchen at second base, and also facing Martinez. Castellanos is a few steps closer to third, but that doesn’t matter: he would need to turn around, beat McCutchen in a footrace, turn back towards the field (only now can the relay man deliver the throw), see and catch the ball, and finally apply the tag. Simon (underneath second arrow) is a bit closer to third base, but is also faced towards right field, and I’d take McCutchen in the race to apply the tag.

It seems like the only Tiger aware of the danger is catcher James McCann, playing in career game #13, who is moving up the third-base line while facing right field. Despite his gear, he would have been the only Tiger to have a shot at catching McCutchen. Nice.

Keep in mind, McCutchen has a great chance to beat the Tigers to third after he has decelerated to a stop, and then turned around. With a more aggressive pre-pitch strategy, I think third base could easily have been his.

We always wonder what factors could lead to the shift’s natural death — or at least a factor that would start the frequency of the shift trending downward. Perhaps enough baserunners going from first to third on well-played bloop singles would do the trick.

Vanderbilt junior right-hander Carson Fulmer entered the spring as a probable first-round selection in this June’s amateur draft. His performances, certainly, have only reinforced the likelihood of that contingency. After hovering among the conference leaders for a while, Fulmer appeared atop the (maybe) predictive leaderboard for the SEC published here earlier this week. His most recent start was his best of the season. Pitching at home against Ole Miss, Vanderbilt produced a 14:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 30 batters over 9.0 innings (box).

Lest there were concern about Fulmer’s endurance or his capacity to maintain velocity into the later innings, the purpose of this post is to assuage that particular concern. The other purpose is to “produce content” lest the author is “fired from his job.” The third and final purpose is to use do some work with the word lest. For practice, like.

Here, by way of example, is Fulmer’s third-to-last pitch from that start against Ole Miss — a 94 mph fastball:

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Before the start of Saturday’s game between Louisiana State and Auburn, the SEC Network revisited several decisive plays from the previous night’s contest (won 3-2 by LSU) between those same clubs. Present in a disproportionately high number of those clips was LSU junior shortstop — and possible top-10 draft selection this June — Alex Bregman.

On the one hand, this isn’t surprising: as the (maybe) predictive stats reveal, Bregman is among the SEC’s top-10 hitters. Notably, though, none of the footage depicted Bregman’s hitting — but rather only his fielding — exploits from that same game.

The purpose of this post is (first) to steal the aforementioned footage from the SEC Network and then (second) to disseminate it to the FanGraphs readership so that they might experience undue optimism regarding the future of the Pastime.

Here, first of all, is Bregman making a play from the hole:

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Position: Arizona Diamondbacks TrackMan Operator

Location: Geneva, Ill.

Description:
Operator will be responsible for running TrackMan system at the Single-A Kane County Cougars affiliate during each home game. This position is available from April until mid-September.
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Matt Williams wasn’t a happy camper after yesterday’s loss at Fenway Park. It wasn’t so much the final score – Boston won 9-4 – it was the manner in which it transpired. The Nationals played defense like they were allergic to horsehide. A pair of sky-high fly balls were allowed to fall untouched. Ground balls resembled hot potatoes. Bag coverage was shoddy. Only one error was charged, but the ineptitude was undeniable.

The prohibitive favorites in the National League East have lost five of seven games, and while it’s way too early to panic, it’s never too soon for pointed questions. The Washington skipper received several of them after the defensive debacle. Here are a handful of his responses, which were delivered with exasperation and a hint of snippiness:

* “Balls that are up there for four, five seconds need to be caught. Ground balls (that) are hit need to be caught and thrown across the diamond. It’s got to get better.”

* “These are big league baseball players. They’re here because they can catch a baseball. Any time you go out there against a club like this and you don’t catch fly balls, and you don’t catch ground balls, they’re going to kick your fanny.”

* “A wake up call? We’re fully awake, man. Believe me. With all that’s been said about our club, we’re fully aware of it. We’re fully awake.”

* “Last year’s over, man. Last year’s way over. We have to catch the ball tomorrow.”

* “Nobody is playing tight. It’s a function of catching it, making pitches, and getting base hits. Nobody’s tight. Those expectations were there long before today.”

Chances are, this game, and the 2-5 start, will become forgotten footnotes in a pennant-winning season. But for now, Matt Williams’ team is playing poorly, and defense is one of the culprits.

activate the andrelton simmons ridiculous play batsignal

— pete beatty (@petebeatty) April 11, 2015

Like all of us, Pete Beatty is a writer/editor formerly born — and now currently living — in Cleveland who’s also had an entire career (whilst living in New York City) in the publishing industry. What else Pete Beatty is, is someone who has the People’s Interests at heart — and one of those manifest Interests is consuming as many of Andrelton Simmons‘ feats of athleticism as possible before both Simmons and all the rest of us are dead together.

To that end, Beatty has sounded tonight — after witnessing the Atlanta shortstop getting intimate with the Impossible — Beatty has sounded the Andrelton Simmons Ridiculous Play Batsignal. Further to that end, the current author has rendered Simmons’ exploits into animated GIF form, which GIFs one can find below.

Here, for example, in something not unlike “real time”:

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