Jeff Sullivan wrote earlier today about the excellence of Madison Bumgarner’s relief performance last night in Game Seven of the World Series — and over the course of the playoffs, generally. What follows is a similar document to Sullivan’s, except designed for a person for whom reading and thinking are burdensome.

1. Bumgarner’s Fastball Velocity Was Higher in the Postseason
According to Brooks Baseball, Bumgarner recorded an average fastball velocity of 92.76 mph during the regular season. In October, he threw about 1 mph higher, on average — 93.66 mph, according to Brooks.

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If you’re looking for goat horns upon which to hang the Royals Game 7 loss, you should probably start with Madison Bumgarner. He had as much to do with their loss as anyone.

Maybe, if you’re desperate, you look to Royals third base coach Mike Jirschele for holding Alex Gordon at third base in the ninth. Rather than send Gordon home to his all-but-assured doom, he placed the season in the hands of Salvador Perez. Damned if you do, you might say.

But if you need a boneheaded play with immediate and negative repercussions for Kansas City, look no further than the man who slid headfirst into infamy after Joe Panik made a very memorable stop at second base, starting a third inning double play you’re going to get sick of seeing this winter.

No, I’m not talking about Eric Hosmer’s slide into first base, slowing him down enough for the Giants to record two huge outs. I’m talking about Lorenzo Cain, seconds earlier during the very same play.

We all remember the incredible diving and flip made by Panik, tossing to Brandon Crawford for the force. Crawford made a strong throw to just nail Hosmer. It took a video replay to determine he was really out. It’s a play that will remain in Giants lore forever.

Every split second matters on this play. And yet there is Cain, with the entire thing developing right in front of him, sliding headfirst into second base. The Giants shortstop is able to comfortably plant and fire a strike to first. If Cain makes even a passable attempt at a takeout slide, the chances of converting this improbable double play shrink even more.

It was a mistake, simply put. A brain cramp on the bases at an inopportune time by a player who perhaps contributed more to the Royals postseason surge than any other. There really isn’t any excuse for it, mind you. Cain must, at the very least, disrupt the play and make any relay throw a little more difficult.

With Bumgarner looming and the Royals offense predicated on taking advantage of every opportunity, this play was a killer. Easy to say in hindsight, but there’s no real excuse for Cain’s thoughtless base running in this situation.

Update:

Here is the Statcast breakdown of this play. Hosmer’s only out by .02 seconds even after sliding headfirst. Crawford is able to get rid of the ball after 0.77 seconds. If he’s dodging a takeout slide, that surely goes by more than two hundredths of second, right?

The Blue Jays have have a strong recent track record of taking failed hitters and turning them into franchise cornerstones. In 2008, they traded minor league catcher Robinzon Diaz to Pittsburgh for Jose Bautista, then watched him turn into Joey Bats. In 2009, Edwin Encarnacion was one of three players they acquired from the Reds in exchange for Scott Rolen, but they ended up having to re-sign him as a free agent after the A’s claimed him on waivers and then released him two weeks later; that move has worked out pretty well, I’d say. So now they’re trying it again, claiming Justin Smoak off waivers from the Mariners.

The Mariners put Smoak through waivers for two main reasons:

1. They had a $3.6 million option on him for 2015 that was unlikely to be exercised, so they would have had to pay a $200,000 buyout to void the final year of the contract.

2. He’s kind of terrible.

Okay, maybe point #2 is a bit of hyperbole. There are worse players in baseball than Justin Smoak, and he was a pretty decent prospect not too terribly long ago. But Justin Smoak is a remarkably slow-footed first baseman, so to be a valuable contributor in the big leagues, he needs to hit. And he just hasn’t. Over the first five years of his career, he’s posted a wRC+ of 94, putting him in the same group as Vernon Wells, Brennan Boesch, and Peter Bourjos, among others. If he could run like Bourjos or even play the outfield in a reasonable manner, he’d have some value, but as a plodding first baseman, a 94 wRC+ is basically replacement level.

In fact, that Smoak has lasted as a regular this long is kind of amazing. Over the last 50 years, 92 first baseman have been given 2,000 or more plate appearances by the end of their age-27 season; of that group, Justin Smoak ranks 89th in wRC+, ahead of only Travis Lee, Casey Kotchman, and Dan Meyer. Kotchman was an elite defensive first baseman, while Lee was a very good baserunner relative to his peers; Smoak is neither of those things, so he ranks behind both in WAR at this point of his career. Only Meyer produced fewer WAR through this point among first baseman who got this many chances, and from ages 28 to 32, he would produce another -2.0 WAR over 900 plate appearances before finally getting forcibly retired.

So, yeah, the comparisons for Justin Smoak aren’t good anymore. He had promise as a college player and minor leaguer, but he hasn’t shown enough power to justify the rest of his skillset, which essentially requires power to play in the big leagues. The good news is that Toronto is a much more friendly place to hit than Seattle, and the Blue Jays have had success with these reclamation projects before. Even if they can just get his BABIP up from the .260 to .280 range, he could be a useful part-time player.

If you have money to burn, $3.6 million to see if there’s any glimmer of hope left in Smoak isn’t the worst idea ever. The Blue Jays better not count on this working, though, because history suggests that guys who get this many chances and fail to take advantage probably aren’t worth many more chances.

Travis Sawchick of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is one of the more analytically oriented mainstream baseball writers you’ll find, so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that he penned a terrific piece looking at the Pirates upcoming decision on Russell Martin. Included in that piece is this quote from GM Neil Huntington:

“We’re in an interesting era for age curves because of the skew of performance-enhancing drugs,” Huntington said. “We are trying to re-evaluate aging curves because they were taken way out of whack because of the influence of performance-enhancing drugs.”

Jeff Zimmerman noted a similar change in aging curves last year, showing that, since the 2006 season, offensive production has followed a continuous negative slope, rather than the traditional improve-peak-decline curve of the past. Given that the effects of PEDs on energy, stamina, and fitness are more clearly proven than the effects on hitting a curveball or recognizing a pitch out of the hand, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that veteran players may have gotten a disproportionate advantage from the use of PEDs.

As Huntington notes, if the traditional aging curve models that were developed during the PED era no longer apply, this has some pretty significant ramifications for teams chasing free agents, especially at a position as physically demanding as the catcher spot. Last winter, I noted that the idea that catchers fall off a cliff in their early-30s was mostly a myth, but that data was based on a 30 year sample that included the heart of the “Steroid Era”, and it’s possible that using the substances that allowed catchers to play well into their mid-30s have been diminished in MLB.

As a sidebar in the piece, Sawchick included this graph:

Certainly, it seems clear that productive older catchers were far more prevalent in in the 1990-2004 period than they were before or since, but it is interesting to note how much flatter the curve is in both the supposed non-PED time periods are. In both samples, the curve actually slopes up from 32 to 33, in fact, though this is likely just an artifact of having a small number of players in the samples. Still, the relative production from 32-35 is pretty stable, and as others have shown, framing skills seem mostly immune to aging. So, while the downturn in aging curves might be bad news for a 32 year old catcher, Martin’s own skillset might be one that ages better than others.

Martin’s going to be one of the most fascinating free agents of the winter. How teams handle their own internal aging curve forecasts might very well determine where he signs.

One of the most visible and discussed aspects of modern analytics is PITCHf/x data, whether it relates to pitcher tendencies, an umpire’s strike zone, or the hole in a batter’s swing. We carry plenty of PITCHf/x data on FanGraphs, but there are other sites that provide invaluable resources for analyzing the game through this lens.

To wit, we’ve updated our Library entry on PITCHf/x resources to include a couple of sites that weren’t around a few years ago when that page debuted. You’ll find links to Brooks Baseball, Texas Leaguers, Baseball Heatmaps, and Baseball Savant, in addition to a couple of nice primers from Mike Fast and Alan Nathan.

If you want to talk about PITCHf/x or ask related questions, drop a line in the comments, grab me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or stop by our weekly Q&A chats Wednesdays at 3pm. Also, if you know of any resources we’re missing, please let us know.

As he did last week, the author has published below a statistical report for the Arizona Fall League — less because such reports are of great utility to prospect analysis, and more because, for those of us currently not residing in the Greater Phoenix area, one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league is by dwelling for too long on very small statistical samples.

What follows is an example of such a statistical report for this year’s iteration for the AFL about three weeks into the season.

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Take a look at Ryan Vogelsong’s career fastball velocity from Brooks Baseball:

So, yeah, he always gets a velocity boost when October rolls around. When I asked him about it, he mentioned making some “adjustments mechanically” that helped him this time around. But he admitted: “At the same time, there’s adrenaline, no question… It’s going to make you throw harder and do some things that you prodably don’t do on a normal afternoon in Milwaukee or Colorado. No offense to those cities, they just came to mind.”

That adrenaline affects most starting pitchers in the postseason, as they can see the finish line and rest is for the offseason. But Vogelsong is getting the biggest velocity boost of anyone on these World Series rosters:

Vogelsong does his best not to let this turn into a situation where he’s overthrowing — Doug Fister found himself in a similar situation this postseason and had to adjust. The pitcher cited experience in helping him know when to use the velocity best. “Knowing how to curb it and make it work to your advantage” is something that comes “from being their before,” the pitcher said Friday before Game Three.

But no matter what, he’ll be throwing closer to 93 than 91, and that changes how you appraise him as a pitcher — every mile per hour of velocity is worth about .28 runs allowed per nine innings.

When Andrew Friedman was hired to take over as the Dodgers President of Baseball Operations, speculation immediately began that he might try and bring Joe Maddon with him to take over as manager. Both sides immediately tried to squash those rumors with strong public denials, a selection of which appear below.

Andrew Friedman:

“I have a tremendous personal relationship with Joe. He’s a very good friend of mine and have a really good professional relationship as well,” Friedman said after his introductory news conference in Los Angeles. “That being said, Joe is now working with Matt Silverman and the baseball operation people (with the Rays), and I’m excited about working with Donnie.

“I’m going into it with the mind-set we’re going to work together for a long time. I had one manager in the 10 years I’ve been doing this and am looking forward to working with Donnie for a long time.”

Joe Maddon:

“I’m a Ray, I’ve said it all along, I want to continue to be one,” Maddon said. “‘I still believe … it’s the best place in all of baseball to work…

Andrew Friedman, when asked whether Don Mattingly will manage the Dodgers in 2015:

“Definitely.”

And then today, we get this:

Sources: Manager Joe Maddon has exercised an opt-out clause in his contract and is leaving the Tampa Bay Rays immediately.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) October 24, 2014

Things happen. I have no problem believing that everyone was being honest a week ago, and fully expected Maddon to sign an extension to stay with the Rays. Clearly, though, something changed, and now Maddon is a free agent. And if he’s not managing the Dodgers on Opening Day, it will be a pretty big upset.

For much the same reason that he published a statistical report yesterday for the Arizona Fall League, the author is publishing here a combined statistical report for the various Caribbean winter leagues that have started play — again, not necessarily because such reports are of great utility for evaluating players, but because they provide a means by which to participate in those leagues which doesn’t also require a substantial investment in transportation and lodging.

In this case, what the author has done is to identify the regressed hitting and pitching leaders in the Dominican Winter, Mexican Pacific, and Venezuelan Leagues separately*. What he’s then done is to combine the hitting and pitching leaders of those leagues into a pair of top-10 lists, which one can find below. Note: all ages are as of July 1, 2014.

*The fourth major Caribbean league, the Puerto Rican League, doesn’t commence until October 30th.

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Madison Bumgarner throws a pretty good something. Aside from his fastball, I mean. Some people call it a slider, and some people call it a cutter. From here, a month ago:

“I call it a cutter but I feel like it’s in between the two — I think people call it different things because I change speeds with it,” he said. “But I throw it the same.”

From Tuesday’s Game 1, we have Eric Hosmer talking to Mike Moustakas.

An attempted transcript:

Hosmer: Cutter’s slow, huh?
Moustakas: Yeah, it comes all the way across, too.
Hosmer: It’s a slider for sure.
Moustakas: Yeah I looked up at it, I was like, 86? Geez.
Hosmer: Yeah.
Moustakas: I wasn’t even close to it the first time.

We can infer a couple things. One, the Royals were tipped off about a cutter. Maybe a previous hitter talked about it. Two, Hosmer and Moustakas consider sliders and cutters different pitches — sliders would be slower, with more movement.

The first such pitch Moustakas saw was 86.5 miles per hour, and he held up a swing attempt:

Shortly thereafter, Bumgarner bumped it up to 88.7 miles per hour, and Moustakas whiffed in a 3-and-1 count:

It sounds like maybe Moustakas didn’t pick up on the speed difference, or maybe he was just so flabbergasted by the first offering. That same inning, with the bases loaded, Hosmer came up and put a first-pitch cutter or slider in play.

Hosmer was clearly ahead of it, thinking fastball or perhaps faster cutter. The pitch was 86.9 miles per hour, and it broke down more than the sliders to Moustakas, and a little more away. The three such pitches to Moustakas were around 0 in terms of horizontal movement; Hosmer’s pitch came in at -2.4 inches.

Then the next time Hosmer came up, he saw four pitches like this. They varied between 88-89 miles per hour. All had less horizontal movement than the first such pitch to Hosmer in the third inning. Hosmer was ahead of the last one again, although he managed to hit the ball decently up the middle:

Royals hitters saw cutters/sliders between 85.9 – 89.0 miles per hour. Hosmer and Moustakas agreed early on that the pitch is more of a slider than a cutter. I don’t know what difference it actually makes, but this speaks to Bumgarner’s ability to keep the pitch disguised and varied. He mixes it up such that labels might be more trouble than they’re worth. Does Madison Bumgarner throw a slider, or a cutter? The answer is yes.