Here’s a link to the play, which isn’t yet embeddable. To summarize:

• 5-3 Tigers, top 8
• Runners on 1st and 2nd, nobody out
• Victor Martinez doubles to center
• Torii Hunter scores from second
• Miguel Cabrera tries to score from first
• fails
• Tigers lose 7-6

Cabrera was gunned down on the relay by Jonathan Schoop. Had he remained at third — with nobody out — then the Tigers would’ve had J.D. Martinez up, and he’s really good. It was a questionable decision to send Cabrera at the time, but now it’s even more questionable with the benefit of hindsight, because knowing the subsequent results makes critics of everyone. Brad Ausmus was asked specifically about sending Cabrera in his sad post-game press conference.

Here is pretty much everything you need to know. Obviously, the Tigers benefit if Cabrera scores. Relative to second and third with nobody out, the Tigers’ win expectancy would’ve increased about 0.7%. The cost of the out, however, was -3.2%, and what that yields is a break-even rate of 82%. Or, it makes sense to send Cabrera if you think he can make it 82% of the time. Some shots of Cabrera’s positioning:

Not only does Cabrera not run well — he’s long been playing through discomfort. Do those shots give him an 82% success rate? I don’t know. Probably not. Schoop made a perfect throw home, so that’s a factor, but he would’ve had Cabrera with an imperfect throw, as long as it was decent enough. Given that Martinez was coming up, it seems like Cabrera should’ve stayed put.

Two big points, though:

(1) It wasn’t completely and utterly insane to send Cabrera, since the Tigers would’ve benefited had he scored. Defenses screw up all the time.

(2) Even with the out, the Tigers’ win expectancy was a hair north of 93%. They had a runner in scoring position and a three-run lead with six outs left to get. I don’t care what the Tigers’ bullpen has done lately so much — it’s a big-league bullpen, if barely, and you expect even mediocre relievers to be able to get six outs before allowing at least three runs. Three runs in two innings is a 13.50 ERA, which is above position-player territory. Cabrera probably shouldn’t have gone. Probably, that was a mistake. But this was only a turning point in retrospect. To dwell on Cabrera is to spend time not dwelling on the misery of the Tigers’ relief. Once more, that’s why the game went to shit.

If you’re looking for detailed information about how to calculate, interpret, and use the park and league adjusted version of your favorite pitching statistic, the FanGraphs Library now includes an expanded section on ERA-, FIP, and xFIP-.

Making park and league adjustments are central to a lot of analysis because you want to isolate the factors within a player’s control and compare them to the other pitchers of their era. ERA-/FIP-/xFIP- allow you to do just that. The procedure outlined in the entry will also to allow you to create your own “minus” stat for any possible ERA-type statistic you want, so if you’re working on your own or really like SIERA or tERA or something else, this will provide you with the tools you need.

If you have questions, feel free to comment below, find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or attend our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chats (Wednesdays at 3pm eastern).

I think we’ve known since, oh, he debuted that Jered Weaver is capable of over-performing his pure stuff. He doesn’t blow anyone away, and he’s never blown anyone away, but he’s been terrific nevertheless, in part because of his home stadium but in bigger part because of something about his delivery. At least, that’s the presumption. Weaver appears to be the deceptive sort, and deception can be part of the recipe for a top-of-the-line starting pitcher. It’s a hard thing to teach, and a hard thing to recognize, but a wonderful thing to possess.

So, Weaver’s been something of a smoke-and-mirrors kind of guy. Because of that, he’s been hard to project –what’s the aging curve for a pitcher’s deception? But Weaver’s 32 years old in a couple days, and there’s evidence that there is indeed something missing for him. Check out his in-zone and out-of-zone swing rates over the PITCHf/x era, even including the relatively unreliable 2007 set:

This year, Weaver’s in-zone swing rate was right on his career average. However, his out-of-zone swing rate was lower than his average by five percentage points, dropping a little more than five percentage points from last season. For pitchers between 2013 and 2014 who threw at least 75 innings, Weaver’s O-Swing% drop is the greatest, and overall he posted the fourth-lowest O-Swing% in baseball given a 75-inning minimum. He was less than one percentage point away from last, and, interestingly, three of the four lowest rates were posted by Angels. C.J. Wilson saw a similarly big year-to-year drop, but he’d been around this level before, and he also struggled with his command. Hitters don’t swing as much against wilder pitchers.

I don’t know what this means, exactly, in that I don’t know why this happened, but this happened. And it’s not a good thing for Weaver, because he’s been a limit-quality-contact type, and it doesn’t help those pitchers to have hitters focusing more on the strike zone. According to Baseball Savant, last year, 57% of balls in play against Weaver were in the zone. This year, that went up to 60%, and while that’s a small difference, little changes power the big changes. It’s not unlike the difference between a .300 OBP and a .330 OBP — baseball is all about seemingly marginal differences.

We know by now that Weaver is consistently going to beat his FIP, because of the fly balls and the pop-ups. But maybe this is the only trend to know:

Jered Weaver isn’t a big strikeout pitcher, and he’s coming off a league-average walk rate, and now he’s looking something like a league-average starting pitcher. His K% – BB% has declined four straight seasons, as his fastball has lost more than three miles per hour, and while the rest of his pitches have been less affected, something else about Weaver just isn’t the same. He’s not as deceptive as he used to be. He remains deceptive enough, and he’s blessed with a potent supporting offense, but where does Weaver go from here? Will he get even less deceptive? Will he identify something to change to gain an edge back? How many more years does Jered Weaver have, if hitters are consistently less willing to chase him out of the strike zone?

I know better than to try to predict Jered Weaver’s career death. I know, though, that I’m more worried about reduced deception than about reduced velocity. Weaver’s game was never about velocity. It was about confusing the hell out of guys, and lately guys have been considerably less confused.

* if that’s even possible

So, Jarrod Dyson’s stolen base. Pretty big deal. Here’s what it was worth. Here’s how it happened. Here’s what it looked like:

Didn’t decide the game, but it helped decide the game, and that’s about as valuable as a stolen base gets. What do I mean by that? First of all, considering context, Dyson’s steal is clearly the biggest steal of 2014, so far. But considering only game context, the only steals worth more WPA in 2014 are steals and throwing errors that allowed the runners to keep going. On May 2, in the bottom of the ninth of a one-run game, Brian Roberts also stole third with one out. By WPA, Roberts and Dyson are about equal, although Dyson gets a tiny edge for stealing in a worse run environment.

We can also look at this a slightly different way. I prefer to think of the one-game wild-card playoffs as being a part of the overall playoffs. That is, I think yesterday’s game was a playoff game. So, this is coming straight from David Appelman, who did the research for me: Dyson’s steal was the most valuable playoff steal, by WPA, since at least 2002, and that’s simply as far back as our data goes. Dyson’s steal was more valuable than, say, Dave Roberts‘, and while Roberts’ will be remembered forever because of everything else that happened afterward, Dyson’s steal will at least be remembered for a long time, and if the Royals were to win the World Series, well, who’s forgetting? The Red Sox didn’t win because of Dave Roberts, but he played an important role. If the Royals win, they won’t have won because of Jarrod Dyson, but he will have played an important role. Hell, Roberts’ steal came with the Red Sox behind 3-0 in the series. Dyson’s steal was arguably of a greater leverage.

Anyway, I don’t want to come off critical of Dave Roberts, because he did an important and memorable thing. But, so did Jarrod Dyson, maximizing the value of an otherwise relatively minor part of the game. Biggest playoff steal in more than a decade. Maybe a lot more than a decade, I don’t know. The last three years, Dyson has baseball’s No. 3 wSB value, behind only Jacoby Ellsbury and Rajai Davis, who have played a lot more. Ellsbury’s had 580 stolen base opportunities. Davis has had 384. Dyson has had 332. Jarrod Dyson might not be a great hitter, but he’s a great something, and he’s a fitting player to have such a big play forever in his history.

#Angels Matt Shoemaker will start Game 2

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) October 1, 2014

One requirement — perhaps the only real requirement — of a baseball weblogger interested in retaining his role is that he (or she) possess the capacity to produce, if not necessarily substantive, then at least a lot of content.

For proof of same, one need look no further than the author’s own contributions to FanGraphs — insofar as (a) there are over 2,000 of them and (b) they’re all, by and large, an exercise in nonsense.

The flimsy pretense upon which the author has chosen to construct this post is the very recent announcement by Angels manager Mike Scioscia (and relayed by Jeff Fletcher above) that right-hander Matt Shoemaker is scheduled to start Game Two (and a hypothetical Game Five, it would seem) of the club’s Divisional Series against the victor of Wednesday’s night wild-card game. The information is notable both because Shoemaker (a) missed the last two weeks of the season due to an oblique strain and (b) is probably the club’s best available starting pitcher.

Regarding that latter point, consider this table, which features the top-six Angels starters by projected WAR per 200 innings, according to Steamer:

With regard to this table, the reader will likely recognize the first and second pitchers within it as the injured Garrett Richards and also injured Tyler Skaggs. Third overall is Shoemaker, who entered the season as a 27-year-old having recorded 5.0 total major-league innings and leaves it as an integral member of one of the postseason’s strongest clubs. Relative to Hector Santiago (who presumably would have started Game Three), Shoemaker is worth probably somewhere between 0.2 (if one uses projected ERA) or 0.8 (if one uses FIP) runs per nine innings. Prorated to the ca. 5.0 innings one expects from a starter in the postseason, that’s about 0.1-0.4 runs per game in the Angels’ favor, with the added benefit of allowing Santiago to pitch out of the bullpen in lieu of an inferior arm, thus potentially saving further runs.

Some time towards the end of my conversation with Madison Bumgarner last week, I couldn’t resist making a comment about his hitting. He does lead all pitchers in Wins Above Replacement as a batter, after all. (He also leads them in weighted runs created, weighted on base average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, isolated slugging percentage, batting average, home runs, runs, and RBI, so it’s been a good season at the plate.)

That excellence deserved some mention. When I asked him about it, he smiled.

“Sometimes I’ll go mess with some of my buddies on the team about who’s getting hits,” Bumgarner said. His WAR as a position player is eighth-best on the team! Better than regulars Brandon Belt and Michael Morse even. His wRC+ is seventh-best. Imagine being a position player and having a starting pitcher give you guff about hitting. Especially a Cy-worthy pitcher.

“I just try to — whether it’s pitching or hitting — I just try to stay with my strengths.” So, power? “Guess so, guess you could say that.” he laughed.

It’s not quite legendary power — Mike Hampton hit seven homers to Bumgarner’s four, and the Bumgarner’s ISO is about 17th on the list since 2000. He’s behind such pitcher-hitting luminaries as former position player Jorge Sosa, two-way player Micah Owings, Dontrelle Willis, and … Joe Nathan, whose .229 ISO leads all pitchers in hitting since 2000.

But Bumgarner is a good hitter, who admits to asking the hitters for scouting reports before he walks to the plate. He’s also all about hitting the ball hard, strikeouts be damned (he has a 37.2% strikeout rate this year). Enough to make Vin Scully take notice, as he told Alex Pavlovic that “the last pitcher who swung that hard was Babe Ruth.”

Might as well swing hard. It’s not like he’s going to get on base with that 2.6% walk rate. And nobody expects the pitcher to be a power threat. One more thing to watch for today.

It’s playoff time, which means every game matters, which means every little detail matters, which means every little detail gets analyzed. We all have to give you information, and you all have to talk about the information, and then together we’ll all pretend like not everything is almost literally a coin flip. We’re here to talk about edges and x-factors, and left unsaid is that almost every team is pretty much even and the winner will have been both good and fortunate.

In a short while the Royals will host the A’s in the AL’s wild-card playoff, and the detail du jour: an incredible Jon Lester stat. I don’t know who had it first, but I saw it first here, in the comments, left by Jon Roegele. All of this season, Jon Lester didn’t attempt a pickoff. Last year, he attempted seven, and the year before that, he attempted five. The year before that, he attempted 70. The Royals are an extremely aggressive team on the bases, so this seems like the kind of thing that might be taken advantage of.

It’s almost inconceivable, almost impossible to explain. You figure a guy won’t really vary his pickoff frequency. Between 2009 – 2011, the leader in pickoff attempts was Justin Verlander. Between 2012 – 2014, the leader in pickoff attempts was Justin Verlander. That first set of three years, Lester attempted 247 pickoffs. The last three years, he’s attempted a dozen pickoffs, tying him with Donnie Veal, Phillippe Aumont, Michael Tonkin, and Charlie Leesman. Lester didn’t change teams until this past summer. Nothing dramatic should’ve changed, but something dramatic did change, or at least, something forgettable changed dramatically. From the standpoint of someone who loves playing with numbers, I’m fascinated by this sudden and whopping change in Lester’s approach.

He’s not the only guy who’s dramatically cut his pickoffs. Between those sets of three years, Lester’s pickoff total dropped by 235. Mark Buehrle’s dropped by 244. Buehrle might have better control of the running game than anyone, and here’s a comparative table:

People know better than to try against Buehrle, and we all know Buehrle doesn’t like wasting time. This has actually helped him work even faster. But Lester’s dropoff feels a lot more meaningful, because he’s dropped down to zero. Not one throw over, in a full year with a full slate of starts and innings.

It feels like something of a vulnerability. The last three years, attempted base-stealers have been successful against Lester 77% of the time, against an average of about 73%. And Lester’s left-handed, so it seems like he’s losing a lot of his lefty advantage, if not actually all of it. Here’s the way Buster Olney talks about Lester, pickoffs, and the running game:

But a different narrative has developed recently among some evaluators: that Lester is not comfortable throwing to first base. He allowed five stolen bases over his final three starts of the season, including four to the Mariners on Sept. 14. The Royals do not hit homers and they don’t draw walks, but they led the majors in stolen bases — by a wide margin — and figure to be aggressive on the basepaths tonight.

“Not comfortable throwing to first base.” Lester doesn’t have a history of racking up a ton of throwing errors, but he does have a history of articles talking about him working on his move. From March 2012:

This week, Lester talked about the work he has been doing on his pickoff move, and why it matters.
[…]
“Those kind of got away from me. I’m trying to get back to doing one thing. That’s the hardest part, just knowing I’ve got to throw the ball over to first and doing the same stuff to do it. It’s something that’s important, something you have to do, something you have to feel comfortable doing.”

That same spring training:

Jon Lester working on his pickoff move under the watchful eye of Bobby Valentine. “It’s better,” Bobby V said #RedSox

— Scott Lauber (@ScottLauber) February 26, 2012

Just a couple weeks ago:

Starter Jon Lester spent part of the early afternoon on the mound at the Coliseum, working on his pickoff move. He threw shutout ball for six innings Sunday, but the Mariners stole four times against him and catcher Derek Norris. Before that, he hadn’t allowed a steal since his trade from the Red Sox. “He’s been so quick over the years, he really hasn’t had to throw over there,” manager Bob Melvin said. “So he came out early to work on that with some guys getting extended leads.”

Lester knows the pickoff isn’t a strength. He knows it’s important to control the running game, and he does know about changing speeds and looks. Something important to understand, though: pickoffs, usually, aren’t about picking runners off. It’s more about keeping runners close. Lester this season didn’t attempt even one single pickoff, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t, whenever he wants. The name of the game, mostly, is deterrence, and the last three years, runners have tried to steal against Lester in 5.5% of opportunities. The three years before that, when Lester picked off quite often, runners tried to steal in 9.1% of opportunities. So even though Lester’s not throwing over anymore, he’s still keeping runners closer, and the average is a steal attempt in about 5.9% of opportunities. Lester hasn’t been easily exploited. Some games maybe he’s been easier to read, but on the whole, he hasn’t needed to throw pickoffs, because the runners aren’t going crazy.

Being a lefty, Lester’s looking right at first base when he comes set and holds the ball in his glove:

That’s from this year, and while Lester didn’t throw over, and never threw over, nothing was stopping him except himself. If the runner had taken a massive lead, Lester could’ve thrown over quite easily. It’s not about the pickoff as much as it’s about the threat of a pickoff, and that’s where Lester gets to make up for the fact that maybe his pickoff move isn’t so great. Also, he’s not slow to the plate. So stealing requires a particularly good jump.

Lester, still, is more vulnerable than a normal southpaw. He allows more steals than a normal southpaw, and if I’m the Royals, I’m instructing my quick runners to take aggressive leads, just to see. See how far you can push it. See if you can draw a throw, or see if Lester is truly hesitant. The Royals like to run, and they should give it due consideration, given the opportunities. But Lester is not a guy who’s easy to steal a base against. He’s a guy who hasn’t thrown a ball over. From a statistical standpoint, that’s amazing, but from an in-game standpoint, that means surprisingly little. And given that the Royals have a weak lineup, the A’s might be unusually willing to call for a pitch-out, and then a well-timed one of those can kill an attempt where it stands.

Earlier today, managing editor Dave Cameron requested (perhaps idly) of Kansas City manager Ned Yost that he resist the temptation to persevere with starter James Shields any longer than is necessary during tonight’s wild-card game against Oakland. The logic of Cameron’s point rests not in the fact that Shields is a bad pitcher — to the contrary, he’s quite talented — but that (a) starters almost universally becomes less effective during their second and third and fourth trips through an opposition lineup and also (b) the Royals feature a number of relievers who, on a per-batter basis, are Shields’ equal or, in many cases, even better.

Indeed, the Royals feature such a panoply of talented bullpen arms that Cameron neglected to mention one of that bullpen’s newest members: left-hander and 2014 draftee Brandon Finnegan. Since his major-league debut on September 6th, Finnegan has been excellent in limited exposure, recording strikeout and walk rates of 35.7% and 3.6%, respectively, and a 38 xFIP- over 28 batters and 7.0 innings.

Read the rest of this entry »

So your baseball team didn’t make the playoffs. Bummer! Neither did mine. Of you, I ask a simple question: who’s going to be your playoff bandwagon? I suppose maybe you don’t have one, but if you’re hanging out on FanGraphs after the elimination of your favorite team, you’re probably a pretty big baseball fan, so you’re probably going to pay some attention to the tournament. You have to pick somebody to like more than the others.

Note that there’s nothing I can do about fan votes coming from people whose teams are actually still alive. This poll isn’t for you. I don’t care that Nationals fans are rooting for the Nationals. Nobody gains anything if you’re a Nationals fan who votes for the Nationals here even though this is for fans of the Padres and the Phillies and the White Sox and the others. Just, please, stay out of this, if your No. 1 team isn’t among the 20 currently dead. Don’t be a dick for no reason. If you have to be a dick, at least be a dick for a reason. There is no reason, here, for dicking.

So let’s find out who’s being bandwagoned, by the fans who’re otherwise emotionally uninvested!

One-game series are interesting in their own right. Everything’s on the line. But it doesn’t seem very much in the tradition of baseball. We’ve usually preferred longer series, which do a better job figuring out which team is truly better.

Of course, adding more days to the already-packed postseason schedule is a problem, too. The World Series ended October 30th last year. Are we prepared for November baseball? For a schedule that’s already longer than any other major sport season, adding another month would push the boundaries. Pitchers on World Series champions would have two months off.

Could there be a simple solution? How about cutting Spring Training down?

Spring Training used to be all about getting in shape. Players had second jobs, and came into camp out of baseball shape. Now players are year-round athletes that spend most of the winter with nutrionists and trainers.

The current version of Spring Training seems to be roster decision focused. Teams decide on the slots 20 through 25 and 25 through 40. They sort through the available fifth starter types, and they decide on the second lefty in the pen. Pitchers try out new pitches, and batters add a toe tap or remove a leg kick.

How long would it take a starting pitch to stretch back out again? That might be the most important part of Spring Training — making sure your starter can go six or seven innings when the bell rings. If starters, who are required to show up earlier than everyone else, can finish the job in a month, that means we could cut a week out of Spring Training.

Even five days could do the trick. Of course, starting the season a little earlier will require some scheduling tricks. Minnesota might need to be on the road for ten days to start things off, for example. Boston may need to play in Tampa in March. Hey, if the Bulls can leave Chicago for two weeks every winter on something called the Circus Trip, then baseball can have their own branded road trips. “The Twins are in town again on their annual Snow Trip,” we might hear on the radio.

If baseball could cut a week out of Spring Training, it could — at the very least — make the Wild Card game a Wild Card Series. Even a three-game series might be more baseball-like than a one-game playoff. Especially for Royals fans, who may deserve more than one game and one chance at the postseason after so many years away. And more postseason revenue (and as shorter spring training) should be an easy sell to the owners.