#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.

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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.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Internet in my years covering prospects, it’s that people are irrationally interested in the next big thing. A well-known former first rounder close to the big leagues moves the needle for fans, but the completely unknown flame-thrower that hits 100 mph in rookie ball gets almost the same amount of attention for some reason.

Part of this is the proliferation of ridiculously deep dynasty fantasy leagues, but I think, at a deeper level, humans like the “new shiny thing” aspect of learning something completely new. I think this explains why trade rumors often get more attention than breakdowns of actual trades.

I’m often asked way before July 2nd if that year’s international signing class of Latin 16-year-olds has a franchise type, once-a-decade player—Miguel Cabrera, Miguel Sano, Felix Hernandez, etc.—which is the question I often find myself asking scouts to open a discussion about the top players in the class. In short, there isn’t that player (yet) for next July 2nd, though I’ll get another look at many of the top players in the class next month. There are already rumors of a player in the upcoming class having a deal for $3 million, but multiple players get about that much every year, even with the new international pools in place, so that doesn’t automatically make him that super elite prospect.

However, there is a player for the 2016 July 2nd period, 22 months from now, that is drawing that kind of scouting attention. He’s 14 years old and he’s a Venezuelan shortstop named Kevin Maitan.

I won’t waste time breaking down the tools for a 14-year-old, though I should admit I have scouted Latin kids this young when trainers want to show me their best players for future July 2nd periods after I watch a workout for their best players in that year’s class. International scouts start paying real attention to prospects as early as 12 or 13. There are some things that aren’t natural for domestic scouts that you do when projecting kids that are this young, like projecting speed to improve as the kid physically matures, but the broad scouting indicators are often surprisingly accurate for projecting years into the future. Player like Bryce Harper, Eric Hosmer and Justin Upton were all noticed as early as 14 or 15 to be elite draft prospects and in a country where the kid is training for and scouts are scouting for his age-18 season.

You hear almost every star player from a Latin country eventually used as a comparison for a raw teenager, but international scouts generally don’t invoke Miguel Cabrera. That’s the Bo Jackson-type talent you don’t use to compare to teenagers. Even Vladimir Guerrero gets comp’d sometimes, though with Vlady’s son being in this year’s July 2nd crop and having similar mannerisms, that at least makes some sense.

Maitan has been compared to Cabrera by most of the scouts I’ve asked about him. He’s unusually physically mature for his age and flashes all the tools you want to see to throw that Cabrera comp around: he can play shortstop pretty well now, he’s got more raw power than most kids a few years older than him, he has smooth actions in defense and at the plate and so on.

Obviously, it’s still ridiculously early in the process to anoint a 14-year-old the next big thing, but scouts have already starting doing it, with rumors Maitan has already been offered seven figures by multiple clubs.  I won’t name the clubs that have been tied to him for a few reasons, but it’s still unclear if that matters, because MLB could still be aiming to institute an international draft for 2016.  If that happens, it would add another big benefit to having the worst record in the 2015 season.

At the beginning of August, the present author utilized what a reader might have recognized as “the least possible amount of effort” to the end of compiling a pair of leaderboards — one for hitters, one for pitchers — of all the players who’d been traded both (a) during the month of July and (b) to a contending club, where contending was defined as a club that possessed better than 10% odds of qualifying for the divisional series as of July 31st.

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Grantland’s Ben Lindbergh published a great piece last Friday, going through the laundry list of myths we hear rolled out every October, and showing that there is little or no evidence to support nearly any of them. On his hit-list:

Recent Performance Doesn’t Matter.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but it’s maybe the most important thing to remember, as we’re going to hear the word “momentum” about a million times in the next 24 hours. The A’s stumbled into the playoffs, going 29-38 in the second half of the year, the worst second-half record of any team that has made the postseason since 1995, but two of the three prior teams to win fewer than half of their games in the second half of the season went on to meet in the World Series. And as Jay Jaffe showed, even looking at just the final month, or the final few weeks, or even the final week of the season doesn’t really tell us anything about what is going to happen in October.

It’s very tempting to put a strong emphasis on what we’ve seen lately. Don’t do it. Recent performance isn’t predictive of future performance.

Experience Doesn’t Matter.

Lots of people have studied this. Lots of people have reached the same conclusion. Young, old, experienced or not; we can’t find any evidence that any particular group outperforms in the playoffs. I guess this is why the “they don’t know they’re not supposed to win” cliche was invented for times when the “experience is the only thing that matters” cliche is proven wrong.

Pitching Doesn’t Win Championships.

Having a heavily loaded front of the rotation is great. Having really good hitters is great. Having a great bullpen is great. There are lots of ways to win. No single way has proven better than the other.

He goes through a longer list, and provides plenty of good links, so keep the piece handy when you’re being inundated by announcer cliches over the next month. Most of them are total bunk.

The 2014 MLB regular season is officially something that happened. With its passing comes the need to get our affairs in order, for the lists, they are coming. They will be many, they will be tenacious. You, there! Guard that outpost! Get those archers ready, there’s no time to lose! The first of the lists are coming over the horizon. Brace yourselves, there is no end in sight.

Here are the most-improved (qualified) hitters of 2014, by the metric of wRC+:

Seeing names like Martinez, Brantley, and Altuve on this list shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise, given the news surrounding their 2014 efforts. Some other interesting names pop up, however. Anthony Rizzo has taken a significant jump. Alcides Escobar has gone from loathesome to respectable, and Jose Bautista got better which doesn’t seem very fair.

In contrast, here are 2014’s least-improved (again, qualified) batters. You could also say these batters got the most worse, but that doesn’t sound either correct or pleasing.

The top three names here offer an interesting juxtaposition of two sluggers falling to around league-average, and a pretty-good hitter falling off like a Clayton Kershaw curveball. The inclusion of Davis and Craig on this list is notable, as if I expand the search to the last 20 years, they also make the cut.

Both Chris Davis and Allen Craig rank in the top seven of worst hitting drop-offs of the last 20 years. The reasons why should warrant some deeper digging. This is neither the time nor place for such digging — with these things typically being left for the cold, dark expanses of winter. For now, let us gaze upon these lists, acknowledge that they are indeed lists, and glean whatever value or joy we desire from them.