Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat — 9/12/18

Jeff Sullivan: Hello friends

Jeff Sullivan: Welcome to Wednesday baseball chat

Jeff Sullivan: This is just a one-week swap with Kiley because he was going to be unavailable today

Jeff Sullivan: Also many apologies for the especially absurd delay — podcast ran overtime

James: Where will be AL wild card game be played?

Jeff Sullivan: I think it would be a lot of fun to have the game played in Oakland, but I don’t see the A’s actually catching the Yankees (or the Astros for that matter)

Jeff Sullivan: But a one-game Oakland environment would be outstanding

Moelicious: What are the odds DeGrom wins the Cy Young award despite his won-loss record?

Jeff Sullivan: I think we’ve actually gotten to an interesting point — deGrom’s record is now *so* absurd I think it’s actually going to help his case

Jeff Sullivan: There’s so much attention being directed toward deGrom’s ridiculous season that I figure it’s going to convince enough writers to give him the credit he deserves

BJOGC: Given the way teams are currently not valuing averagish proven MLB players, should more teams embrace a stars and scrubs approach? Plenty of 1-1.5 War type players were available for nothing on waivers. Not to mention Moustakas, Lance Lynn and Neil walker having to take cheap 1 year deals

Jeff Sullivan: The problem is the stars. There aren’t very many of them! Every team has always wanted to build around stars. Almost by definition, they are limited in number

Jeff Sullivan: Now, in theory, yeah, you’re going to have teams wanting to give more of their effective payroll space to the best players. Less money spent on the supporting depth. But in practice I don’t think you’ll see that much of a difference

Ozzie Ozzie Albies Free: Are you a free will guy or a fatalist?

Jeff Sullivan: Free will. I don’t think fate could’ve ever imagined this dumbass career I fell into

Airport Banana: With Wade Miley, Zach Davies, Brent Suter, etc., the Brewers seem to like those low-velocity guys who throw cutters. Are you able to glean anything about their organizational philosophy from this, or are they simply trying to profit off a temporary market inefficiency?

Jeff Sullivan: I wouldn’t read too much into it. The Brewers, for example, rank 15th in overall team cutter rate

Jeff Sullivan: 20th, if you go with the Pitch Info data

Jeff Sullivan: Now, maybe the Brewers have some kind of slight internal preference, but this is a team that wouldn’t even be using Wade Miley if everything else had gone according to plan. A healthy Jimmy Nelson is a regular power pitcher

Brock: Hosmer said in today’s paper that he’s been working on his launch angle. Hiring Cameron’s already paying off for the Padres.

Jeff Sullivan: Hosmer last year had a wRC+ of 135. Hosmer this year has a wRC+ of 94. Playing for Cameron’s Padres, Hosmer has been worse than replacement!

Jeff Sullivan: In reality, of course, Hosmer was going to happen regardless of whether Dave had been hired. We all know how Dave felt about that inevitable move. And it only makes sense that Hosmer would start to think about making some changes after how bad he was for four or five months

Jeff Sullivan: Padres should’ve given eight years to Ji-Man Choi instead

Peter: Will DeGrom finish with a higher WAR or actual win total?

Jeff Sullivan: Current situation: 8 wins, 7.7 WAR, 8.2 RA9-WAR

Jeff Sullivan: I still think he’s going to win another game or two, just because this has basically been improbable, but I’d be lying if I said this isn’t one of my favorite active baseball storylines

stever20: Why are the Dodgers so mediocre against the bad teams?  vs Mets, Marlins, Reds, Giants, and Padres they are 25-25.  Vs everyone else they are 53-42.

Jeff Sullivan: The Dodgers as a team rank 7th in baseball in winning percentage against teams that are .500 or better. They rank 17th in winning percentage against teams under .500

Jeff Sullivan: But then the Cardinals rank 3rd and 18th, respectively

Jeff Sullivan: So, for one thing, the Dodgers aren’t alone in doing this. And for another, this is going to be a boring response, but I don’t think there’s anything to read into. The Dodgers have just been maddeningly inconsistent, and it’s easiest to notice when they lose games they ought to win

Jeff Sullivan: The Dodgers might be 25-25 against those five teams you named, but they’ve also outscored those teams 228-180

Jeff Sullivan: Fold in some luck and better clutch performance and you wouldn’t think anything of it

Jeff Sullivan: Except for the Reds part. That one just looks bad

ZoomZoom: At this point, did the Brewers have the best offseason? The two stars have obviously been great, but they also snagged Chacin and Miley for cheap while finding a way to keep Jesus Aguilar?

Jeff Sullivan: The Brewers’ offseason was great. They picked up the two players who have turned out to be the best players on the team

Jeff Sullivan: I don’t know how you could argue anyone did better

Jeff Sullivan: I mean, the Astros got, say, Gerrit Cole and Hector Rondon, and that’s really good, but it’s not Brewers good

Jeff Sullivan: The Brewers’ offseason was great, and the Cubs’ offseason was ugly. Which is why we have a division race even though the Brewers haven’t had their best starting pitcher all season long

stever20: Does Sale have any shot in your mind realistically of the Cy Young if he doesn’t get over 162 innings?

Jeff Sullivan: I’m a voter this year for the AL Cy Young, so I can’t talk about this very much, but the fact of the matter is that, even right now, Sale remains the AL leader in pitching WAR. I don’t care if he somehow did that in 40 innings. If you’re the leader in quality, of *course* you have a case

tb.25: Is it Friday already? Yippee!!

Jeff Sullivan: I have terrible news!

Slider: How many orgs contract third parties to evaluate their own methods in an attempt guard against bias? Thinking about Adam McCalvy’s article yesterday on the Brewers and shifting.

Jeff Sullivan: Here’s the article: https://www.mlb.com/brewers/news/brewers-leading-way-with-defensive-sh…

Jeff Sullivan: Here’s the relevant excerpt: “The Brewers attempt to qualify a sort of “plus/minus” of their shifts, but it’s an inherently subjective task to determine whether a shift helped, hurt or was neutral. To account for that bias, the Brewers get a separate analysis from a third-party vendor.”

Jeff Sullivan: I’m not able to speak to this directly, but just in terms of outside consulting, teams contract with them all the time

Jeff Sullivan: Tango, for example, has been a consultant. Same with MGL. It’s very common

Matt: Oh god, I am actually rooting for Ben Cherington to be the next Mets GM. Every other name tossed around just sounds brutal. Shapiro is at least professional I guess. But deep down, in my heart of hearts, I know the Mets are gonna hire Dan Duquette or just give the job back to Minaya. The next decade of Mets baseball is gonna be such a disaster…

Jeff Sullivan: The guy in charge of the front office is important, but he’s not as important as the guy in charge of the guy in charge of the front office. The Mets aren’t going to feel like a stable organization until there’s some kind of change at the ownership level

Jeff Sullivan: Very obviously, it’s possible for the Mets to be very good under the current owners. But they are lacking for leadership and direction, and that won’t change no matter who they hire to be the next GM

Bo: Now that the NL East picture is becoming much clearer, how should the Braves line up their NLDS rotation? Folty and Gausman are the only truly reliable starters at the moment.

Jeff Sullivan: It’s going to depend on who they play. But as you already understand, they’re not exactly rich with great options

Jeff Sullivan: Against all odds, Sanchez would make sense as the No. 3

Jeff Sullivan: Teheran vs. Newcomb would then come down to whether the opponent is better from the left side or the right side

The Old Buccaneer: Colin Moran and Josh Bell are both under 1 WAR for the season. Is there any reason to think either can end up being an above average regular for the Pirates?

Jeff Sullivan: Sure, because all it would take is a moderate power boost, and those are the kinds of improvements we’re seeing every single season. There’s still upside in both Bell and Moran. But I don’t think anyone should expect them to become consistent 3+ WAR players. That’s just never been the likelihood

Vslyke: Do the Braves have enough pitching to win in October? While the offense has the potential to win some games, I am worried that the bullpen in particular won’t be able to hold leads.

Jeff Sullivan: To use a very simple angle, the Braves are basically tied with the Brewers and Cardinals in pitching-staff WAR. They’re well ahead of the Cubs. Do the Cubs have enough pitching to win in October?

Jeff Sullivan: Brach/Winkler/Venters/Minter/Biddle isn’t the greatest bullpen that’s ever existed, but I think it’s okay. It’s definitely not a liability. The Brewers are the only team with a Josh Hader, but then, he’s easily their most prominent weapon

Jeff Sullivan: Remember that literally last year’s World Series champion got that far while more or less ignoring their closer

Will: Are the A’s going to bullpen more than half their playoff games? If so, is a guy like Familia going to suffer based on what happened to Morrow this year?

Jeff Sullivan: We don’t even know if they’re going to experience multiple playoff games

Jeff Sullivan: We certainly don’t know if they’re going to make it to Game 7 of the World Series

Jeff Sullivan: Brandon Morrow made 14 pitching appearances in last year’s playoffs. 14! The A’s might be toast in three hours.

Brian: The Mets have used an MLB leading 13 (non position player) pitchers this year that have produced negative WAR (-4.1 cumulative which leads baseball) and an MLB leading 12 (non pitcher) position players that have produced negative WAR (-3.7 WAR tied for 6th worst in baseball).  Is there path to contention as simple as getting rid of their crappy players?

Jeff Sullivan: There are worse core groups around than deGrom/Syndergaard/Wheeler/Nimmo/Conforto. The Mets have absolutely had a problem of depth. Vargas, of course, was supposed to be better. Swarzak was also supposed to be better. Those seasons just went off the rails. But the Mets have the pieces to push for a WC berth. They just need to be better at the back of the roster

Nick: David Price says he won’t opt out of his contract after this season because he wants to be in Boston.  But do you think he could get the ~4 year, $130 mil he has remaining in his contract on the open market?  Seems pretty steep.

Jeff Sullivan: No, that money wouldn’t be there for him

Jeff Sullivan: He’s 33 years old and teams would still be a little spooked by his elbow. He’s put some of that concern to bed this year, but it’s almost impossible for me to imagine him getting $130 million this winter

Jeff Sullivan: To say nothing of how unpleasant it seems to be a free agent these days in the first place

Guest: I realize the chances of Acuna winning the MVP are slight, but I can’t think of another player in the NL who has had a more positive transformative effect on his team.  Did anybody really think the Braves could take that division this year?

Jeff Sullivan: Well, a huge part of that is the Nationals underachieving. Yes, the Braves have clearly exceeded expectations, but the Nationals far undershot their own

Jeff Sullivan: Matt Carpenter has been huge for the Cardinals. Ditto Christian Yelich for the Brewers. (And so many other players as well)

Chuncey Wiggins: Did we just watch the final straw of the Phillies’ playoff hopes when they lost game 2?

Jeff Sullivan: Maybe even when they lost game 1

Jeff Sullivan: It’s come apart in a hurry, that much is for sure

Southi: During this upcoming off season if you were the GM of Atlanta would you be more likely to address needs through free agency, trades, or a blended method?  What do you see as the area that has the largest possibility of improvement in 2019?

Jeff Sullivan: I don’t see a lot of realistic help among free-agent outfielders

Jeff Sullivan: I could see a consolidation trade for an outfielder or a starting pitcher

Jeff Sullivan: I doubt the Braves’ game plan is going to involve throwing around a lot of free-agent money

Jeff Sullivan: Especially with a farm system that’s rated so highly

Derek: Please have something to contribute to Carson’s space home runs concept.

Jeff Sullivan: Talk about the antidote to the fly-ball revolution

John: Fangraphs playoff odds still give the Nats a 1.6% chance of making the playoffs. Would that be the greatest stretch run comeback ever?

Jeff Sullivan: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SEA/1995-schedule-scores.shtm…

Jeff Sullivan: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/COL/2007-schedule-scores.shtm…

Jeff Sullivan: Those, at least, are some contenders

Jeff Sullivan: Not sure if they’re superior contenders, but, those are the teams that stick out

Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: Stupid hypothetical: The Rays can give up players and they get to change divisions. Say the players just go to random clubs in the other league or something. What is the most they would give up? Like if Manfred said give up Honeywell and you get to go to the NL East they’d do it in a heartbeat. I would think they would give up a lot. Chris Sale package sort of deal and then some.

Jeff Sullivan: Yeah, the Rays would be over the moon if they could switch their division. The NL East isn’t exactly the AL Central or anything, but there’s nowhere tougher than the AL East

Jeff Sullivan: Changing divisions would effectively add multiple wins to the Rays every season, because of their schedule and because they wouldn’t have to deal with the Red Sox and Yankees anymore. You’d absolutely be looking at some kind of hypothetical prospect haul

Slider: NL MVP race looks fun this year. Got any predictions?

Jeff Sullivan: Going to depend on how the final playoff picture looks, but my current favorite is Carpenter, with Yelich No. 2

robertobeers: If Verlander has a down season next year, he becomes a FA. Assuming he still has a ~3 WAR season with the velocity, 94+ avg FB and 86+ on the SL, what kind of deal would a future HoF guy get going into his age 37 season in 2020?

Jeff Sullivan: Was going to make one point, but then I remembered that Verlander’s 2020 vesting option was dropped shortly after the trade

Jeff Sullivan:

 

Bob Nightengale

@BNightengale

 

So Justin Verlander will be a free agent again after the 2019 season. He had a vesting option in 2020 that now has been voided. #Astros

1 Sep 2017

Jeff Sullivan: I’d think Verlander could get something around three years and $60 million

Jeff Sullivan: Of course it would depend on what Verlander’s down 2019 actually looked like, but if the stuff is still there and if he’s still above-average, then enough teams could convince themselves he’s worth a big investment

Mike: Ryan O’hearn is top 10 in baseball in average EV, barrel %, and hard it rate (minimum 60 batted balls). Tiny sample, and really only hitting against righties. But my goodness, he is destroying them. Is an article on its way?

Jeff Sullivan: I was looking at him just yesterday. One cool thing about O’Hearn is that he has a 165 wRC+. One weird thing about O’Hearn is that, in Triple-A, he had an 87 wRC+. Obviously, something doesn’t match!

Jeff Sullivan: The Statcast information we already have moves the estimate — O’Hearn is better than we thought one month ago. But one thing I couldn’t help but notice is that he’s mostly brutalized bad pitching. It’s not his fault; the Royals see a lot of bad pitching. But he’s started a quarter of his games against the White Sox

Jeff Sullivan: There’s also this: O’Hearn ranks 9th in average exit velocity, but he ranks 378th right now in maximum exit velocity (out of 458 players). My suspicion is that O’Hearn has just fluked his way into an inordinate number of barrels

Thanks for the Analysis: What would Brewers pitching look like in a Wild Card game? Who starts, and for how few innings?

Jeff Sullivan: Adams, Carpenter, Wong, and Garcia are the Cardinals’ only lefties

Jeff Sullivan: Let’s assume, then, the Brewers are facing the Cardinals

Jeff Sullivan: I think you see Chacin for at least one turn and quite possibly two, depending on how things are going

Jeff Sullivan: Chacin is a great option to have against a righty-heavy lineup

2-D: How much faith do you have that second half Luis Castillo can become full time Luis Castillo?

Jeff Sullivan: Castillo has been really quite good since the start of May

Jeff Sullivan: He’s had a bit of a home-run problem, but he’s also pitching in an unforgiving environment

Jeff Sullivan: It took a little while for Castillo to rediscover the sinker he developed last year on the fly. Once he’s folded that in, he’s been strong

Jeff Sullivan: I’m a big fan of Castillo. One of the best things the Reds have going

Todd: Any chance that minor league playoff stats can be included in the season stats on player pages?

Jeff Sullivan: This is actually the first time I can recall receiving such a request

Jeff Sullivan: I’ll see how easy it is

Lunch Angle: It’s funny that McNeil and McNeill are completely opposite kinds of rookie hitters

Jeff Sullivan: There is no McNeill

Jeff Sullivan: There is an O’Neill

Jeff Sullivan: In which case, you are correct!

Jeff Sullivan: Fun fact about Tyler O’Neill: he has a contact rate of 57%!

Jeff Sullivan: That’s the lowest in baseball for anyone with at least 100 plate appearances, and it’s the lowest by like five percentage points

Jeff Sullivan: He’s looking up at Drew Robinson of the Rangers, Joey Gallo of the Rangers, and Jorge Alfaro formerly of the Rangers

James: What do the Dodgers need to do to get back to being a contender next season?

Jeff Sullivan: They’re a contender this season

Jeff Sullivan: They have the best run differential in the National League

Jeff Sullivan: They have the best BaseRuns record in the National League

Jeff Sullivan: There’ll be some work for them to do, but I have been assuming for a while they’ll figure out a way to keep Kershaw around

Jeff Sullivan: I don’t think they’ll miss many of their other free agents. Obviously they’re going to lose Machado, but they have more financial flexibility than any other team that isn’t the Yankees

Jeff Sullivan: The Dodgers are going to be fine

The Old Buccaneer: Has the season long slump of Carlos Correa dimmed his future outlook at all? Or is this just a one-off hampered by injury?

Jeff Sullivan: Carlos Correa before the DL: 128 wRC+
Carlos Correa since the DL: 31 wRC+

Jeff Sullivan: It’s been his power that’s disappeared, but I can’t imagine there’s anyone in baseball who’s worried this will become a long-term problem

Johnny : Serious question – why do you think teams still give expensive long-term contracts to players like Eric Hosmer, Ian Desmond, etc?

Jeff Sullivan: Because they don’t think they’ll work out like the long-term contracts given to Eric Hosmer, Ian Desmond, etc

Jeff Sullivan: Free agency makes things “easy,” and it’s tempting to believe in the power of immediate solutions. Teams are more comfortable spending money than spending prospects. Teams find it easier to talk to an agent than to a competing GM. And free agency is just good for short-term PR. It feels good to receive positive offseason attention. I bet the Twins loved all those articles about how they won the winter!

Jeff Sullivan: Free agency has been a tease forever. The danger is that teams are more aware of that now than ever before. Which is why there should be such urgency to shift money toward the earlier seasons of a player’s career, because free agency isn’t likely to ever be what it was

Jeff Sullivan: And it’s fine in a way — complaining about the free-agent market is complaining about how the 0.1% take advantage of the 1%. Everyone’s wealthy. The players who deserve our collective attention are the players who aren’t even close to their FA years

Jacrispy: Per FG, the Dodgers have the best odds of any NL team of winning the WS despite having a 35% chance of missing the playoffs. Are they really that much better than the other NL teams?

Jeff Sullivan: The projections are still too low on the Braves and the Brewers, but, yeah, the odds don’t give a shit about the Dodgers’ unclutch performance, and I can’t blame them. By almost all indications, the Dodgers are great

Jared: Does Brad Keller profile as a #3 going forward? how many AL ROY votes does he pick up?

Jeff Sullivan: I’m not convinced he has any answer for left-handed hitters. He’s a ground-ball guy with a platoon split and no special putaway pitch. Not even sure he’s a long-term starter at all

Jeff Sullivan: For the Royals, he’s been more good than bad, but I wouldn’t be pinning my future organizational hopes on Brad Keller’s right arm

The 13th Inning : Stadium of the future – the outfield walls move in by 20 feet in each inning after the 9th. I mean, right?

Jeff Sullivan: If a game ever reached like the 27th inning, all the players would be crushed to death 🙁

Jeff Sullivan: Which, hey, what a spectacle!

Jeff Sullivan: Stay out of the splash zone

Sleepy: The A’s lead all of baseball in position player WAR.  What a world.

Jeff Sullivan: In the second half they have a wRC+ of 121. No one else is above 110

Jeff Sullivan: It’s been quiet, but the discovery of Ramon Laureano and the understandable turnaround of Stephen Piscotty have been enormous

Jeff Sullivan: It’s no fun to analyze a situation like Piscotty’s, since he’s been through more than most people could imagine, but holy hell has he ever been good

Buck Schowalter: Astros are one win away from owning the most road wins over a two year period in baseball history (surpassing the 01-02 Seattle Mariners). That’s pretty incredible when you think about it.

Jeff Sullivan: Home/road splits always trip me up. Like, in this case, I can’t tell if it’s good that the Astros have been so good in other ballparks, or if it’s bad that they haven’t been better in their own

Chuncey Wiggins: Do you have a personal limit when it comes to analytics “ruining the game” or at least making it less pleasant to watch? I sometimes find myself hating the shift when a well struck ball is fielded by a third baseman standing behind second.

Jeff Sullivan: I don’t think we’re yet at the point where we can really understand whether the game is better or worse

Jeff Sullivan: What we know is that the game is different from what we became used to. And, initially, different almost always feels bad. We loved baseball for what it was, and now it plays differently. That requires an adjustment

Jeff Sullivan: It’s like when a website undergoes a redesign. It doesn’t matter whether the redesign is way better than what came before it — at first, people lose their minds, because they became accustomed to something

Jeff Sullivan: Eventually the shift won’t be the shift anymore. It’ll just be the defense. Defenses change alignments, just like they do in football. It’s just going to take a long time to rewire our baseball-watching brains

Jeff Sullivan: And *then* we’ll be able to conclusively determine whether things like bulpenning are good, bad, or mixed

Pio: Luis Urias hit an upperdeck shot in the rain and then the gods punished him and took out his hammy.

Jeff Sullivan: Nature abhors a showoff

Travis: Trout/Harper is dead; it’s all about 2nd place now, between Harper/Machado.  What’re your guesses for their contract length/$?  Who do you think performs better?

Jeff Sullivan: How about Trout/Betts? It’s something new!

Jeff Sullivan: I don’t actually have a current contract prediction for Harper/Machado, because we haven’t recently seen many cases like these. I think, because of the competitive-balance-tax threshold, the contracts are going to be necessarily creative, structured in ways that don’t lend themselves to the familiar year/dollars construct

Jeff Sullivan: I think I slightly prefer Machado, for his superior bat control

Ko: How much has the outlook changed on Adalberto Mondesi? in an extended sample, he’s more or less what everybody’s thought, high K’s, low BB’s, plus power, defense & 80 speed. Seems pretty underrated for a barely 23yo

Jeff Sullivan: I think it’s always justifiably hard to trust a player with his approach. He needs so many things to go right in order to be an average hitter. It’s a good thing he’s so dangerous on the bases

Jeff Sullivan: Room for progress here, to be certain, but when I look at Mondesi I don’t yet see a plus regular

Acunami: Are people overlooking the Braves in the NL? With Folty and Gausman, the strong top of the lineup, could they emerge with the pennant?

Jeff Sullivan: Sure they could. Or someone else could, too

Jeff Sullivan: The best team in the National League doesn’t currently occupy a playoff spot. If the Dodgers remain out of the picture, that makes the path clearer for everybody

Jeff Sullivan: Don’t think the Braves are markedly worse than any of the other contenders

distracted in class: How am I supposed to feel that the best starting pitching staff the Rockies have had in my lifetime allows 0.88 runs per first inning?

Jeff Sullivan: That is weird!

Jeff Sullivan: Overall, not adjusting for park, the Rockies rank 21st in runs allowed. They rank dead last in runs allowed in the first inning

Jeff Sullivan: Now, last year, they ranked ninth in runs allowed in the first inning

Jeff Sullivan: So I’m not convinced there’s an actual problem. But it’s enough for them to reevaluate their warmup routines

Mordecai Brown: For how many teams would Shohei Ohtani become the best hitter if suddenly traded? Over/under 50%? (By my count everyone other than Yankees, Red Sox, Indians, Astros, Athletics, Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Reds, Nationals, Braves, Rockies, Cardinals, Brewers)

Jeff Sullivan: Yeah, I’d guess about half

Jeff Sullivan: All right, I need to get rolling

Jeff Sullivan: So thank you everybody for hanging out, and I’m sorry for what I didn’t or couldn’t address. We’ll do it again next week at the normal Friday slot, and until then, be well and have great days