Archive for InstaGraphs

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

What follows are the three weekend series — one from each relevant conference — likely to facilitate the greatest number of players whose names appeared within that post. KATOH+ and KATOH- 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.

North Carolina at Pittsburgh
Who It Features
A lot of pitchers who’ve been successful so far this season, including North Carolina sophomore right-hander Zac Gallen (16.0 IP, 77 KATOH-) and Pitt freshman right-hander T.J. Zeuch (27.1 IP, 78 KATOH-) in the Friday game. Probably right-handed Pitt sophomore Matt Pidich (12.2 IP, 77 KATOH-) in relief. And maybe also UNC senior right-hander Benton Moss (15.2 IP, 74 KATOH-), who’s exhibited a velocity spike but missed last week’s start with an injury.

When It’s On
Friday at 1:45pm ET
Saturday at 3:00pm ET
Sunday at 12:00pm ET

How to Watch It
College Sports Live (link).

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If Dan Farnsworth could set up a website where you might pay to sit next to him during a game, I would recommend that website. If you like any of the hitting interviews I’ve done recently, you’ll understand what it can mean to a person just to pick his brain.

Tthere are times when he just says something small after an at-bat, and off go three FanGraphers with their databases and their queries and their coding languages. Seriously, it took me, Jeff Zimmerman, Jonah Pemstein, and a few attempts to even get a first answer to this sort-of question from Mr. Farnsworth.

“I wish teams wouldn’t teach their batters to swing to protect the runner. They don’t do that anymore I hope, it has to be easy to disprove as a good strategy” is roughly what he said. “DO THEY?” is what I wondered. “IS IT?”

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Click to enlarge.

It might come as a surprise to learn that the present author is the sort of person who has persuaded a real human woman to enter with him into matrimony of any sort, be it holy or otherwise. It’s an improbable thing, I admit, but as the character Psmith from certain of Wodehouse’s novels advises, one ought never to confuse the improbable with the impossible.

The aforementioned wife is relevant to this brief post insofar as, on a day trip yesterday to Manchester, New Hampshire — a city famous largely for its contributions to child labor (facilitating more of it, that is) — on a day trip to that city, she visited a place called Collectors Heaven and purchased there a pack of ProCards-brand Triple-A baseball cards from 1989.

The image above features all 10 cards from that pack arranged in something vaguely approximating alphabetical order and including, in red font, the career WAR figures of each player. N/A denotes those players who made zero major-league appearances. An asterisk (*) denotes Rich Morales, who wasn’t actually a player at the time, but rather the manager of Seattle Triple-A affiliate Calgary.

A brief examination of cards here reveals that:

• Seven of the nine Triple-A players featured here recorded at least one major-league appearance; and
• The most successful of the players here was Darryl Hamilton, who produced nearly 15 wins over 13 seasons; and
• Vancouver shortstop Carlos Martinez has glimpsed into the future and isn’t satisfied by what it holds for him.

“How many individuals are in the top 1% of anything? If you’re a Stanford graduate and you made it to the major leagues, who’s complaining about that?” Michael Taylor told me in 2013. He retired yesterday.

Taylor was once the darling of prospect hounds. He ranked as high as 29th overall on Baseball America’s top 100, and was the third-best prospect on the Phillies before he was traded to Oakland. He was only given 114 plate appearances in the big leagues and is only 29 years old. We might not really know what Michael Taylor’s true talents look like.

The player agreed, even when we talked two years ago. “It’s a tough thing to quantify — how many of my at-bats came pinch-hitting against the closer or an ace after not getting many at-bats or not being in the big leagues period. I don’t think I’ve ever played two games in a row, maybe in 2011 once,” he said. “16 plate appearances in three years.”

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What a lousy week for pitchers. Yu Darvish, Cliff Lee, and Gavin Floyd have been felled by their arms, and now Marcus Stroman will join them on the disabled list after tearing the ACL in his left knee during practice today. Surgery to repair a torn ACL will cause him to miss the entire 2015 season.

This is a huge blow to the Blue Jays, as Stroman projected as their #1 starter; our depth charts forecast had him at +3.5 WAR in just under 200 innings. While this will mean a larger opportunity for either Marco Estrada or Daniel Norris, neither one is likely capable of providing what Stroman would have given the Jays, and this was a rotation already lacking in depth. While the Blue Jays don’t need to panic, the reality is that they probably need another starting pitcher now, and preferably a pretty good one.

Given their spot on the win curve — prior to Stroman’s injury, we gave them a 23% chance of winning the division and a 19% chance of winning the wild card — and the fact that they have a good number of core pieces at the tail ends of their careers, the Blue Jays are somewhat committed to trying to win in 2015. You don’t sign Russell Martin to a five year deal if you’re not pushing in on 2015.

The most obvious answer — and one that will likely be suggested immediately — will be a trade for Cole Hamels. He’s the only pitcher on the market who would give the Jays a legitimate replacement for Stroman’s production, and the team now has an incentive to pay more than they were willing to offer previously. That said, if the asking price remains focused on big league ready players, it’s not entirely clear that the Blue Jays actually have the ability to give the Phillies what they want without doing too much harm to their own team in the process; they don’t have the pitching depth to give up a guy like Norris to acquire Hamels, especially without Stroman around.

So, perhaps instead of aiming for the most expensive replacement around, the Jays will look for cheaper upside instead. The Nationals probably don’t want to trade Tanner Roark, but it’d be worth a phone call. Dillon Gee isn’t any good, but if the Mets wanted to move Jon Niese or Bartolo Colon, the Blue Jays should consider it. Or if they just wanted to take on some money without giving up any talent, I’m sure Edwin Jackson could be had with a subsidy.

But no matter what they do, the Blue Jays are going to be worse. This is a big blow. While the Darvish and Lee injuries were bad for the sport because they’re good pitchers, this is the most significant loss a real contender has suffered yet.

The FanGraphs Depth Chart Projections, compiled as a combination of Steamer and ZiPS, while using our depth charts for playing time are now available in a sortable format and on the player pages!

This week, Brian Cashman commented that he doesn’t foresee any Yankee being named captain to replace Derek Jeter. After Jeter and Paul Konkero retired at the end of 2014, there is currently just one captain in Major League Baseball: David Wright of the New York Mets. The idea of having a captain in baseball has become antiquated. There never was a strong tradition for this practice like there is in hockey, and players are now so transient that teams are more likely tying their own hands with future transactions by naming a captain than they are creating good will with the player and fans.

I wanted to get a better idea of what the Yankees captaincy looked like over the years, so I created the following timeline to visualize the leadership position.

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He doesn’t speak much English, I don’t speak any Spanish, I couldn’t get video from the traditional behind the backstop location, so you can’t really see the break on his pitches, but… there’s not much video of Yoan Lopez out there, so maybe you’d like to see a little of this 21-year old Cuban pitcher the Diamondbacks signed this year.

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The purpose of this post is to announce — for the benefit, in particular, of those readers who possess responsibilities which might preclude them from monitoring very closely such developments — the purpose is to announce not only that spring-training baseball has begun in earnest, but also that audio and visual of same is now officially available by way of MLB.TV and probably by other means, as well.

The image embedded above depicts a moment from the Yankees-Phillies contest currently underway in probably Clearwater, Florida. In it, New York right-hander Nick Goody delivers a pitch to Philadelphia third baseman Cody Asche. What sort of pitch? It’s not immediately apparent. The result of the at bat? The reader is surely capable of finding that sort of information. As in most cases, the precise details are immaterial. One is satisfied to learn, merely, that this excellent and useless pastime continues.

Cuban jugador Alfredo Despaigne, whose exploits and spirit have been celebrated previously in these pages, appears to have recorded both the 14th and 15th home runs of his season in Cuba’s Serie Nacional today.

The footage above depicts the former of those home runs and also depicts Despaigne’s not technically slow-motion, but still 41-second tour of the bases. Were he (i.e. Despaigne) a late-19th century Frenchman, it would be appropriate to describe him as a flaneur. That he is of neither that time nor that place, it follows that no word exists to characterize his brand of wild insouciance.

In conclusion:

Credit to American folk hero Ben Badler for bringing video to author’s attention.