If you’re a regular reader of the site, you probably heard this phrase, uttered the day after All-Star rosters were announced. In case you’re not, or you simply forgot about it, Daniel Murphy was upset that his teammate, Anthony Rendon, didn’t land a spot on the National League All-Star team. Someone asked him why. This was his response.
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| 12:03 |
: Good morning, all. I’ll start today by encouraging you to help our friends in Puerto Rico if you have the means to do so. Let’s chat.
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| 12:03 |
: Can you shed any light on what’s wrong with Maikel Franco? His peripherals are normal (except a low-BABIP). It’s it really just bad luck or is there a mechanical issue?
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| 12:06 |
: Just based on the Phillies games I’ve seen he’s not a very good ‘Baseball Player’ which is to say he makes poor approach decisions at the plate that lead to bad contact when he’s making it. Was it yesterday or the day before he swung 2-0 with the team down two in the ninth inning? You need a baserunner in that situation and should be taking a strike. It wouldn’t surprise me if, upon deeper analysis, you were to find the quality of his contact suffered because his approach is just bad.
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| 12:06 |
: Luis Garcia of the Nats seemed to show decent bat skills. Could he maybe start the year in Hagerstown? What is his development looking like?
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| 12:06 |
: I have no idea. I like Garcia but that will be probably be largely determined by how he looks next spring.
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| 12:06 |
: Who are your favorite prospects (<131 AB) to stash or keep for early-mid season MLB returns in fantasy next year?
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With less than a week remaining in the regular season, a number of end-of-year player awards appear to lack a decisive winner. With so few games left, a decisive winner is unlikely to emerge.
In the American League MVP race, for example, you couldn’t have a greater contrast between the top two candidates. Jose Altuve is the smallest position player in the majors, Aaron Judge the largest. They possess different offensive skills and different defensive homes. Yet these two very different players had produced exactly 7.3 WAR entering play Monday. Lurking behind Altuve and Judge is the game’s best position player, Mike Trout. After losing time to injury, Trout isn’t the favorite. He’s been excellent when healthy, however.
The American League Cy Young race might be even more fascinating. After Chris Sale seemed to have run away with the award by the end of July, Corey Kluber has made it very much a contested race thanks to a remarkable series of performances since he returned from the disabled list in June. How one chooses between the two might depend on which version of pitcher WAR one consults: either the FIP-based version (denoted at the site just as WAR) or the one calculated by runs allowed (RA9-WAR).
As I write this, six teams have already reached 90 wins. Another three teams still could. Four teams have won at least 60% of their games, which is the highest total for the league in more than a decade, and that doesn’t include the Yankees, who have baseball’s second-highest run differential. It also doesn’t include the Cubs, who last year were one of the better teams in recent memory, and who this year picked up Jose Quintana, among a few others. The Dodgers, who are great, added Yu Darvish. The Astros, who are great, added Justin Verlander. The Nationals, who are great, added Sean Doolittle, Ryan Madson, and Brandon Kintzler. And so on. The top of the league is always good, by definition, but this year the best teams seem particularly strong. Particularly talented, and particularly deep. This year has marked a step away from what had been a trend toward greater parity. Now the parity is simply among the elite.
The great teams are going to the playoffs. That’s what’s supposed to happen. The Twins, also, look like they’re going to the playoffs. It’s not yet locked up, but it’s just about there, with the Twins looking ahead to a date in New York. Playoff entry, of course, is everything, because each of the final 10 teams gets a chance to win it all. It’s inarguably true that the 2017 Twins could win the World Series in a month. The question is, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? It’s a question I’m actually posing to you, but not before I go over each side.
Episode 770
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the serious guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 77 min play time.)
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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan follow up on their Glory Hole Recreation Area discussion and banter about a Brandon Crawford bunt attempt, an Andrelton Simmons deke, Oakland catcher Bruce Maxwell’s decision to kneel during the National Anthem, whether the 2017 season has been bad, and how one would even decide such a thing.
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Compelling articles frequently begin with an anecdote. Let me therefore begin with one of my own. Aaron Judge annoyed me on Monday. See, Judge hit a home run, and after the ball left the yard, I started working on this post about the details of his full rookie season. Heck of a rookie season! Just as I was really getting into it, though, I had to stop and re-work a few things, because then Judge hit another home run. New data. New tables. New images. Here’s one of them.
At first, on Monday, Judge hit his 49th home run, tying Mark McGwire’s record for a rookie. You can tell it’s a remarkable record, too, because of the gap between McGwire and the next guy on the list. Well, the record is split no longer. Judge and McGwire shared the spotlight for a handful of innings, but the record now belongs to Judge and Judge only. Judge is the first rookie to ever reach the 50-homer plateau. Although, perhaps plateau is an incorrect word, because Judge could continue to climb ever higher in this season’s final week.
Quick: who’s the best left-handed hitter likely to appear in the American League playoffs this October? If you took more than three seconds to come up with an answer, don’t worry, that’s perfectly normal. The National League contenders have plenty of high-profile left-handed hitters: Charlie Blackmon, Cody Bellinger, Bryce Harper, Daniel Murphy, and Anthony Rizzo immediately stand out. Not so in the American League.
Postseason roster construction can have a lot of consequences. Once rosters are set, there are only so many machinations that can or will surprise us, but in a lot of cases, series can be won or lost by the selection of the the last five guys on the roster. I focused on some interesting roster-construction decisions last week. In the meantime, the possible configurations of the Astros bullpen have remained with me. If Houston utilizes a tandem-starter approach, it will lessen their flexibility for their bullpen; as such, they might not have room for LOOGYs. Of course, a LOOGY is only necessary to the extent that there are dangerous left-handed batters to face. The potential absence of a LOOGY from the Houston bullpen led me to a larger question about the batters whom that pitcher might face — specifically, whether any of the AL teams need a LOOGY to navigate October?
I’ve spent a good chunk of the morning trying to find a way to write about the weekend’s events in a way that adds something to the conversation. I didn’t want to just write about the controversy surrounding anthem etiquette simply because it was what everyone else was writing about today, nor did I want to use the FanGraphs platform to preach to the choir who might agree with my stance, or to lecture those who don’t.
But, at the same time, with this topic at the forefront of the national sports discussion, and with Puerto Rico in desperate need of aid after getting devastated by Hurricane Maria, trying to write about anything else feels hollow. Maybe I’ll be able to write about the NL Cy Young race tomorrow. I couldn’t do it today.
So here’s what I’ve settled on. Jeff Passan wrote a really good in-depth piece on Bruce Maxwell, who became the first MLB player to kneel during the National Anthem this weekend.
“Usually the first person to do something when it comes to difference or controversy is the person who bears the brunt of negative comments. That’s fine with me,” Maxwell said. “I told the [A’s] owners, it’s nothing I’m not used to. I was an African-American growing up in Alabama. I got a lot of stuff there. I knew my life would change. I was staring directly into the flag because this is my country. My dad fought for this country. My grandfather fought for this country. I got a lot of feedback from them, and I’m standing up for my rights. This isn’t old America. People shouldn’t be treated unequally because of the color of their skin. There’s a problem. I’m doing my part to stand up and have the world of baseball understand it’s not the NFL standing out. It’s not basketball players rejecting an invitation to the White House. It’s all our responsibilities as humans, as Americans, to do what’s right.”
Whether you agree with his form of protest or even what he’s protesting, the story behind his decision to do so should help inform our understanding of his motivations.
And in this day and age, we could all use more understanding of the other side. Getting to see things from Maxwell’s perspective, and from those who know him best, is imperative to repairing the issues that create a compulsion to take a knee. And repairing these issues, not attacking the messengers, should be everyone’s primary goal.
So I’d like to encourage everyone to take the time you might have spent reading my words on this issue and instead read Passan’s piece on Bruce Maxwell. But before you do that, I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to pick a charity dedicated to helping Puerto Rico rebuild, and donate whatever you’re able to in order to help those who need it most right now. This is a legitimate crisis, and we can’t afford to just say that someone else can help them. They are U.S. citizens, and they desperately need other Americans to assist them in their time of need. Let’s not let them down.
Donate to any of these charities.
Then read this.
And maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about Clayton Kershaw versus Max Scherzer.
Jon Lester pitches tonight against the Cardinals in St. Louis, and how he performs in that start may have some impact on his postseason rotation spot. The 33-year-old lefty is in the middle of his worst season by most metrics, and he’s had an ERA over 5.00 in the second half, so it’s only gotten worse. There are plenty of reasons to be worried about the pitches the Cubs starter is throwing right now. Even more worrisome might be the pitches he’s not throwing anymore, though.