Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about their Hurricane Harvey relief raffle’s status, hot and cold teams, Trevor Bauer’s run-in with Avisail Garcia, and evolving pitch-selection in the major leagues, then talk to EW listener Max Schleicher about his fan-sentiment-based study on the best and worst big-league ballparks (and big-league-ballpark amenities).

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Yesterday, the Diamondbacks throttled the best team in baseball, winning by 13 runs. Last Thursday, they beat the same team by seven runs. Wednesday, they beat them by two; Tuesday, they beat them by one. Before that series, the Diamondbacks swept the Giants, and took three of four from the Mets. Between the last two series against the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks swept the Rockies, and they did so on the road. In all, the Diamondbacks have won 11 in a row, and 13 of 14. A playoff position that was once in some doubt has now been effectively sealed.

It’s certainly true that the Diamondbacks aren’t this good. No team is this good, because no team has ever been this good, because no team could ever be this good. Every team looks perfect when it’s riding a winning streak, and winning streaks end. Heck, from June 28 until the start of this run, the Diamondbacks went 17-29. That’s bad! But that’s why you always need to look at the bigger picture. The Diamondbacks have baseball’s fifth-best winning percentage. They have baseball’s sixth-best BaseRuns estimated winning percentage. This team is good, and better than it was expected to be. Let’s think about that for a few minutes.

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There have been 23 perfect games in major-league history but only 18 four-homer games.

While we’d expect to see the quantity of the latter increase during a home-run spike like the one baseball is currently experiencing, the four-homer game remains one of the rarest individual, single-game achievements of which a player is capable. Perhaps the only rarer deeds are the 20-strikeout game (accomplished five times) and unassisted triple play (recorded 15 times in major-league history).

J.D. Martinez, as you’re probably aware, became the 18th player to produce a four-homer game this Monday. He became just the third one to reach the mark against four different pitchers.

Only six players have hit four homers in a game since the start of the 21st century. Mike Cameron (May 2, 2002), Shawn Green (May 23, 2002), Carlos Delgado (Sept. 25, 2003), Josh Hamilton (May 8, 2012), and Scooter Gennett (June 6 of this year) represent the other five. While Gennett is the unlikeliest player in the modern era to accomplish the feat, Martinez is also an unlikely candidate — if you account for the unusual path he’s taken to stardom.

More immediately, the four-homer game renders even more puzzling the lack of interest in Martinez’s services at the deadline — and, perhaps, helps his case en route to the free-agent market, hinting that this is a hitter who’s still improving.

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Last night, the Diamondbacks beat the Dodgers 13-0 to record their 11th consecutive victory. Now 80-58, Arizona has effectively wrapped a Wild Card berth, and given how they are playing, everyone else in the NL has to be hoping they lose that play-in game. Because they look formidable right now.

But as good as the Diamondbacks look, the Dodgers look equally bad. Last night’s drubbing was their fourth loss in a row and their ninth loss in their last 10 games. If it wasn’t for Clayton Kershaw returning to throw zeroes at the Padres on Friday night, in a game the Dodgers won just 1-0 over one of the worst teams in baseball, they’d be staring at a 10 game losing streak. And it’s not like they’re just playing well but losing close games due to some bad fortune. During this 10 game slide, the Dodgers have played like a team that deserved to get beat every night.

Since August 26th, the Dodgers 57 wRC+ is the worst in the Majors. They are hitting .201/.267/.320 thanks to a combination of the third-highest strikeout rate and the second-lowest ISO. Over this span of 10 games, their offense has been 20 runs worse than the average line-up.

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This is Mike Hattery’s first piece as part of his September residency at FanGraphs. Hattery writes for the Cleveland-based site Waiting for Next Year. He can also be found on Twitter. Read the work of all our residents here.

While there are certainly examples to the contrary, it’s generally the case that outlets such as Baseball Prospectus and this esteemed institution approach their analytical work on an individual player in the context of that player’s value to his team. Since most writers begin as fans, and because fandom in baseball — and, ultimately, most sports — tends to begin with an allegiance to a city or team, this isn’t surprising.

For the actual major-league clubs, this imbalance is naturally even more pronounced. All 30 organizations feature an analytics department of some sort, and all 30 of those departments are constructed ultimately to benefit the team. Even in those instances, for example, where an observation about spin rate aids an individual pitcher, the added value is ultimately passed on to the club.

And here we arrive at a point of concern: while analytical work in baseball offers tremendous insight and can even benefit individual players, it appears that organizations have a significant advantage over players in their access to data and their capacity to use that data in decision making.

Now, if this analytical work were limited merely to assessing player value or estimating the possible range of a player’s outcomes, the informational asymmetry would represent less of a concern. However, as teams and public analysts continue their pursuit in the direction of health-risk modeling, the impact on players is increasingly serious.

In a recent piece illuminating the information gap between teams and agents, R.J. Anderson wrote the following:

The ongoing data revolution has obscured a simple fact. With teams receiving improved information, their greatest competitive advantage is perhaps no longer over one another. Rather, the information gulf now resides between the teams and the players — or, precisely, the players’ agents. With the league investing in new data sources, like Statcast, the gap could continue to grow.

Of most concern, perhaps, is that player agents are guaranteed no greater access to data than the common fan by the terms of the 2017-2021 MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement. Teams, meanwhile, are afforded extensive access to additional data gathered by Statcast technology.

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When Seattle selected JP Sears 333rd overall in this year’s draft, they knew they were getting a pitcher with a propensity for punch outs. In his junior season at The Citadel, the 21-year-old left-hander fanned 142 batters — the most in Division I baseball — in 95.1 innings. What they couldn’t possibly have known was that his strikeout rate would rise once he got to pro ball.

In 17 relief appearances between short-season Everett and Low-A Clinton, the 11th-round pick struck out — drum roll, please — a staggering 51 batters in 27.2 innings. He also allowed just 13 hits and two earned runs.

You can’t hit what you can’t see, and according to Clinton Lumber Kings pitching coach Doug Mathis, that’s the secret to the southpaw’s success.

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In the age of the shift, it takes a lot for a particular defensive alignment to merit real attention.

But over the weekend, the Diamondbacks managed to do just that, utilizing what appears to be the most dramatic shift in recent history — notable even more so because the park at which they did it, Coors Field, features one of the game’s largest outfields.

We’ve seen about every variety of infield shift over the last four years, but we’ve never witnessed anything quite like what the Diamondbacks employed against DJ LeMahieu.

That gets your attention. That is bold.

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A few weeks ago, colleague Jeff Sullivan wrote that Tommy Pham is the best player on the Cardinals. It’s hard to argue. With a month to go in what has been a breakout season, the 29-year-old outfielder is slashing .311/.407/.522, and he has 19 home runs in 431 plate appearances. He attributes his success to two things.

“Vision,” said Pham. “I got my contacts squared away this year, and that’s helped me improve tremendously. I’d say we could start there. The other thing is that I’ve put myself in a position to where I’m playing every day. In previous years I played for stretches, but then I’d sit on the bench. Last year I had an .870 OPS in the middle of August, then I basically became a designated pinch hitter. In 2015, I had an .824 OPS in my rookie season. I’ve always produced. It’s just that I’m playing every day now, so you get to see more.”

His production has never been better, and seeing the ball better is clearly helping.

“Just look at the numbers, man — I was striking out 38% last year,” stated Pham, who elaborated that depth perception was the issue. “Now I’m striking out 15% less. That means I’m putting more balls in play, which means I’m going to have better results.”

He’s well-versed in more than just probability. The Las Vegas native is a big believer in using any and all data to his advantage. Pham — an affirmed FanGraphs reader — studies his stat page to see which aspects of his game need improvement. If data shows that he’s a negative in a specific area, he strives to turn it into a positive. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 763
The average American man is roughly 5-foot-9 and 195 pounds. The most notable major-league player with those measurements isn’t actually American, but he is a catcher. Because American men have the body of a catcher. This revelation and others on this edition of FanGraphs Audio featuring Jeff Sullivan.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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