Location: Minneapolis
Description:
The Minnesota Twins are seeking interns for three different positions:
This is classified as an InstaGraphs post. That means it’s short. For a variety of reasons, we don’t put up InstaGraphs posts much anymore, but every so often there’s a clear opportunity. I don’t have that much to say here about Yasiel Puig. I just want to show you an image.
As the Dodgers have reached the World Series, Puig has been a major contributor, batting .414 in the playoffs with a wRC+ of 210. He’s struck out just three times, and he’s done that while drawing twice as many walks. Now, let me give you some quick background. Puig has always been pretty aggressive. In 2013, he swung at an above-average rate of first pitches. In 2014, he swung at an above-average rate of first pitches. Same thing happened in 2015. Same thing happened in 2016 and then again in 2017. Puig, historically, has liked to go after the first pitch he’s seen. That’s neither good nor bad on its own; it’s just a thing. But now! Now, look at this.
This shows Puig’s entire career. This is Puig’s rolling-average first-pitch-swing rate, over progressive spans of 50 plate appearances.
It’s plummeted almost to nothing. Already, in 2017, Puig appeared slightly more patient, but now he’s far lower than ever. Puig has batted 35 times in the playoffs. He’s swung at the first pitch only twice. The first pitch has counted as a strike 37% of the time. During the season, that rate was 59%. And, in the playoffs, Puig has been ahead in the count for 45% of all the pitches he’s seen. During the season, that rate was 30%. Puig has the highest playoff rate out of anyone. It’s Yasiel Puig who’s most working the count.
As mentioned, Puig has gone after the first pitch just two times out of 35 in the playoffs. But this seemingly didn’t start right then. Over Puig’s final five regular-season games, he went after the first pitch one time out of 16. He’d gone after four of the previous 16 first pitches, and five of the previous 16 first pitches. Puig’s first-pitch aggressiveness slowed almost to a halt. And, interestingly enough, right before Puig started taking way more first pitches, he was benched for disciplinary reasons. Dave Roberts was annoyed with him. Through September 23, Puig hadn’t drawn a walk in 11 straight starts. Then he was benched. He drew three walks over the last five games, and then the playoffs happened. The discipline has carried over.
I don’t want to suggest that, all of a sudden, Yasiel Puig has a Joey Votto-like approach. I don’t think Puig has one of the best eyes in baseball. But, abruptly, roughly one month ago, Puig stopped swinging so aggressively, especially early on. He’s taken nearly every first pitch, and to this point it’s worked to his benefit. If only temporarily, the Dodgers might’ve gotten through to him. Ideally this would last forever, but, more realistically, it would be nice if it lasted another week and a half. When Puig is in control of his own zone, there’s not much he can’t do.
A few hours from now, Clayton Kershaw will take the ball in Chicago, hoping to help the Dodgers move on to the World Series. Even though the Dodgers lost last night, being able to turn now to Kershaw makes everything better, as he still deserves the benefit of the doubt, any recent struggles aside. Now, I want to take only a couple minutes of your time. Kershaw has already started once in this series. He made Javier Baez make this face.
That’s Baez’s expression after striking out looking. Did you know that it’s possible for Javier Baez to strike out looking? Kershaw made it happen for just the ninth time in 2017. And while it’s possible Baez could’ve been thinking about any number of things — or about nothing at all — maybe he was simply caught off guard. Because Kershaw showed him a little two-strike twist.
Here are two screenshots. The lower one is from the pitch you just watched. The upper one is from the pitch immediately preceding it.
Facing Baez, with the count 2-and-2, Kershaw changed his arm slot. He didn’t go completely sidearm, but considering that Kershaw is usually very much over-the-top, what you’re seeing is a drop-down ambush. Kershaw showed it to Baez. In the same game, he went to it two other times. This is the Rich Hill inspiration. Every so often, Hill will drop down, himself, and Kershaw thought it was a neat trick. So he’s folded it in, from time to time.
I wrote about this in June. Kershaw introduced the drop-down slot late in 2016, and here’s a summary of how it worked at first. When Kershaw dropped down last year, he threw exclusively fastballs. This year he’s mixed in a few breaking balls. He threw one to David Peralta in the NLDS.
But here’s what I find most interesting. We knew last year Kershaw was trying this out. We knew earlier this year he’d brought it back. Then it…it just quietly went away. It’s only recently come back again. Here are all 29 of Kershaw’s 2017 appearances, showing the number of pitches in each game thrown from the alternate angle.
There was nothing, then there was a flurry. Over a streak of seven starts, Kershaw dropped down a total of 35 times. But with the 35th attempt, Kershaw allowed a home run to Jay Bruce. And then the experiment disappeared. Nothing, for eight games in a row. Then a one-off, followed by another three games of nothing. Then the playoffs began. Kershaw dropped down twice against the Diamondbacks, and he dropped down thrice in his first game against the Cubs. It’s back, just in the nick of time. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Forget the second part. But, it’s back, anyway.
It’s still not clear if this is actually a successful tactic. When Kershaw drops down, he doesn’t become a strikeout machine. But this is Clayton Kershaw, and we’re in the playoffs, so I’d say this qualifies as automatically interesting. And it’s another thing for you to watch for tonight, as Kershaw tries to last as long as is possible. He’s already got his normal fastball, slider, and curve. He might throw in the odd second arm slot, just to keep the Cubs a little extra uncomfortable. It didn’t go so well in his last NLCS, but, this is a new playoffs, you know. Kershaw would like to forget about history.
Last month, I wrote about a new t-shirt inspired by Daniel Murphy that we had put up for sale. It looks like this:
Here’s some more info on it, in case you don’t want to click through.
Like our other recent t-shirt creations, this shirt is a Canvas Jersey T-shirt, and as you can see, it comes in black. The black, to me, is notable, as we’ve never made a black t-shirt before. The shirt, also like our other recent t-shirt creations, was designed by Aaron Gershman of Creative Sentencing. You should definitely hire Aaron for your next design project.
In short order, the shirt sold out in several sizes. I am here to tell you that those shirts have been re-stocked, and are available for purchase in sizes from small to 2X. So, go forth and order!
Well, OK, this has been a pretty short post, so let me leave you with this nugget of info. Did you know that of the 139 players who have accumulated at least 500 plate appearances with the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals franchise, that Murphy is tied for first with Rusty Staub in terms of wRC+? Well, it’s true. They both have a 146 wRC+ in an Expos/Nationals uniform. Now, you know. And knowing is half the battle.
In closing, please buy our t-shirts. Thank you.
Location: Chicago
Description:
The Chicago White Sox seek a passionate, knowledgeable, and dedicated individual with a desire to work in Baseball Operations. The fellowship will focus primarily on the numerical methods that drive Baseball Analytics, however there will be additional exposure to all facets of baseball operations. The fellowship is a paid position with a 10-12 month term.
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Location: St. Petersburg, Fla.
Description:
We are seeking candidates with a passion for winning through improving player development and performance, injury prevention, nutrition, and enhancing player well-being through sports science. These unique positions offer interns the opportunity to integrate sports science, athletic training, and nutrition aimed at improving the performance and well-being of players across the entire Rays organization. Both full season (Feb – Oct) and summer positions (May – Sept) will be considered. Please note that these internship positions often have the potential to lead to full-time employment offers with the Rays organizations, but such an offer is not guaranteed.
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Location: Cincinnati
Description:
Work with the Manager of Baseball Analytics to implement the department’s research and development efforts within new and existing applications. We envision the person in this position to play a major role in the creation of new baseball analytics concepts with the ultimate goal of enhancing on-field performance.
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Location: St. Petersburg, Fla.
Description:
We are seeking Research and Development analysts and interns with a passion for winning through mathematics, data analysis and computation. Our R&D group helps shape our Baseball Operations decision making processes through the analysis and interpretation of data. Our analysts and interns work both individually and collaboratively, coming up with interesting research questions to tackle, finding ways to answer those questions with the data at our disposal, communicating the results of their research to decision makers and other staff, and working to apply the results of their research to improve how our organization operates. We desire candidates who want to make an impact on how our organization makes decisions, will challenge the status quo and explore new ways to make us better.
Responsibilities:
Qualifications:
To Apply:
To apply, please send an email to researchresume@raysbaseball.com with the subject “R&D Positions” and include a resume, an unofficial transcript (if you were enrolled in a college degree program within the last three years) and answers to the following questions:
To be clear, there are three positions here.
Location: Various
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Last night, the Yankees and Indians combined to strike out 31 times, the most strikeouts ever recorded in a playoff game that didn’t go extra innings. And during our live blog, complaining about the size of Jeff Nelson’s strike zone was a common occurrence. Accusing the home plate umpire of malfeasance is a regular thing fans do, especially in the postseason when the stakes are the highest, but in looking at the data today, there is some validity to the arguments. Last night, Jeff Nelson called a pretty huge strike zone.