Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Diamondbacks’ baserunning, Rich Hill’s struggles, regrets about writing, reading the comments, and the prospect of an automated strike zone.
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So, I already had a post published today that talks about the struggling Rich Hill. Here it is! That includes just about everything I have to say. There’s one fact, though, that I wish I’d slid in, but it eluded my notice. I only stumbled upon it while talking about Hill this morning on Effectively Wild. Let’s stop beating around the bush.
Rich Hill is all about the curveball, right? Throws it all the time. Or, at least, throws it close enough to half of the time. Between 2015 and 2016, when Hill re-emerged, he had baseball’s third-highest curveball rate. No one didn’t know about that, and, of course, the curveball rated well, in terms of being an effective pitch. You are probably aware of our pitch-type run values. Between those two seasons, Hill had baseball’s fifth-most valuable curveball, by raw value. Focusing on all the pitchers who threw at least 100 innings, and then converting that curveball value to a rate stat, Hill ranked in third place. Nothing here is surprising. Hill threw the curveball a lot because the curveball was good. It’s a big part of what allowed him to occasionally resemble an ace.
Turn now to 2017. Hill has thrown 37% curveballs. That’s down, but it’s still very high. Hill has still been throwing plenty of curves. And yet, let’s look at the pitch-type run values again. Here are baseball’s least-valuable curves to this point:
| Pitcher | wCB |
|---|---|
| Rich Hill | -6.2 |
| Jeremy Jeffress | -4.2 |
| Phil Hughes | -4.1 |
| Joe Musgrove | -3.9 |
| Chris Tillman | -3.8 |
| Jesse Hahn | -3.6 |
| Tyler Glasnow | -3.5 |
| Drew Pomeranz | -3.4 |
| Ty Blach | -3.3 |
| Vince Velasquez | -3.3 |
Rich Hill: last place. Last place, even, by a couple of runs. The run values are by no means perfect measurements, but they do generally point you in the right directions — good pitches tend to get good values, and bad pitches tend to get bad ones. Rich Hill’s curveball has been horribly unsuccessful, the very most unsuccessful, after starring as a nearly unparalleled weapon. Hill won’t be right until his curveball is right. Said curveball has too often been wrong.
This doesn’t so much change the analysis. It’s still a problem of location, which is still a problem of either injury or mechanics. That’s what the Dodgers have to figure out, and these numbers don’t really help to shed light on what’s going on. The Dodgers already knew that something was awry. But still, this manages to tell a heck of a story. Rich Hill’s world-beating breaking ball has completely abandoned him. You could say that life has really thrown Rich Hill a curveball. Do not say that, though. It’s stupid.
Living in a world where Mike Trout doesn’t suit up nightly leads to some difficult questions about who might be the best player in his absence. Given their similar ages and trajectories, Bryce Harper is a decent choice. That said, we could consider a host of names, including Jose Altuve, Kris Bryant, Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, Clayton Kershaw, Manny Machado, Corey Seager… you get the idea. There are a lot of really good baseball players out there who aren’t Mike Trout and all have good cases for second-best player.
If we focus just on offense, the field changes a little bit. Bryant is probably still up there. Harper and Donaldson, too. Joey Votto has a pretty good case, Anthony Rizzo is still very good, and Aaron Judge is certainly a force this season. But if you combine track record, current performance, and expected future performance, Paul Goldschmidt might top them all.
In terms of hitting, patience, and power, Goldschmidt is the complete package. He’s got a career batting average over .300, on-base percentage over .400, and slugging percentage over .500. The only other active players to meet those standards are Mike Trout and Joey Votto. And while those numbers are subject to Goldschmidt’s inevitable decline, players who retire with .300/.400/.500 slash lines tend to end up in the Hall of Fame. Chipper Jones and Frank Thomas are two the most recent examples. And Goldschmidt might be having his best year with the bat. His .323/.448/.596 receives the benefit of his home park, but the 164 wRC+ plays anywhere.
Hitting isn’t the only aspect of Goldschmidt’s offensive profile, either. He’s an excellent runner, both stealing and taking the extra base on batted balls. The list of players with more steals than Paul Goldschmidt since the start of the 2015 season is a short one. They are (in order of total stolen bases): Billy Hamilton, Dee Gordon, Jonathan Villar, Jose Altuve, Starling Marte, Jarrod Dyson, and Rajai Davis. When you take into account runs generated from stolen bases and losses from caught stealing, the list of players better than Goldschmidt over the last two-plus seasons is even shorter: Hamilton, Gordon, and Dyson.
It’s not just on steals where he generates runs. He’s also in the top 10 since 2015 in Ultimate Base Runs (UBR), which measures extra bases taken. So far this season, his percentages of going first to third on a single (50%), first to home on a double (57%), and second to home on a single (63%) are all well above the respective league averages of 28%, 40%, and 60%. He’s done it without making an out.
A couple of years ago, Jose Bautista had some advice for Marcus Stroman. “He said I should screw with my timing more,” the Jays’ right-handed pitcher told me a couple weeks back. Maybe you’ve seen him employ the strategy this year. It’s a fun and makes watching him more interesting. The effect it has on his ability to prevent runs is less obvious, though.
Now that I’ve projected all of the college players taken (and not taken), I thought it would be fun to see what would have happened if a team picked straight from the KATOH rankings. In practice, this would be a terrible strategy, as KATOH would be picking from a talent pool less than half the size of everyone else’s. Since I only have projections for guys who played regularly in Division 1 this year, a lot of talent would not even be considered. All high-school, junior-college, Division II, and Division III players — plus Division I players who were injured or benched — would not be eligible.
It also doesn’t account for the fact that many of KATOH’s top guys were near certain to fall to the middle or late rounds. Or that some had likely informed teams they were going back to school next year. A competent front office would have drafted accordingly, rather than blindly picking names off of a list. In an effort to compensate for these disadvantages, I gave KATOH the No. 1 pick in the draft and the top pick in the two supplemental rounds, as well. I excluded registered sex offender Luke Heimlich from KATOH’s draft board, as all 30 MLB teams did the same with their own boards.
On Tuesday, I published a post projecting the players taken on day one of the draft. On Wednesday, I did the same for the players taken on day two. Yesterday, I did the same for day three. Today, let’s take a look at what my math says about the players who were eligible to be drafted but weren’t selected.
Below, you’ll find some quick thoughts on KATOH’s top-five hitters and top-five pitchers who weren’t drafted. Below that, you’ll find by a table with projections for all undrafted players who project for at least 0.4 WAR. As a reminder, I only have projections for college players who logged at least 100 plate appearances or batters faced in a Division 1 conference. I do not have projections for JuCo or high-school players. Note: WAR figures are projected totals for the relevant player’s first six years in the majors.
Cody Anderson, LHP, Washington State, 0.9 WAR
A 6-foot-6 lefty from Washington State, Anderson held his own in the Pac-12 this spring. He didn’t strike many guys out, but still managed to put up a 3.40 ERA.
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: Hello friends
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: Welcome to Friday baseball chat
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: Hello, friend!
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: Hello friend
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: Chris Sale ended the Phillies losing streak. How much has his value tanked?
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: Probably just unmovable at this point
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If the data age were to help one group of pitchers more than any other, if video and scouting reports and pitch data were to help one club’s pitchers relative to all the other ones, you could make a case it should be the Colorado Rockies.
As we know, the Rockies play in baseball’s most extreme run environment. But it’s not just the predominately negative effects of mile-high altitude that make things difficult for Colorado’s pitchers. It’s that those same pitchers also have to visit 14 other National League ballparks that play much differently than their own park — this after more than a month of training in a different environment during spring, as well. Perhaps it is information that can better guide Rockies’ pitcher in making adjustments from location to location.
Jake McGee struggled at times during his first year in Denver last season, a year when he was also dealing with a knee injury. This year he’s healthy, and this season he’s diving into data more than ever before. The combination has allowed the Rockies to enjoy one of the game’s most dominant relievers through the first third of the season.
The Rockies’ surprising start — surprising to some — has been, in part, fueled by a bullpen that ranks second in the NL in WAR (2.6), and third in ERA- (81). Both McGee and offseason reclamation project Greg Holland are significant reasons for that success.
Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.
The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.
Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated list — such as the revised top 100 released last week by Baseball America — will also be excluded from eligibility.
*All 200 names!
In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.
Jose Miguel Fernandez, 2B, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
In the context of other deals the Dodgers have given to Cuban players over the last decade — players like Erisbel Arruebarrena ($25 million) and Alex Guerrero ($28 million) and, of course, Yasiel Puig ($42 million) — their $200,000 commitment to Fernandez this offseason is notable for its modesty. Indeed, there were some clear risks with Fernandez: because of a failed attempt to defect, the infielder hadn’t played since 2014. He was also an older prospect (now 29) whose defense at second base, according to Ben Badler, remained questionable.
Whatever the risks, the rewards have been abundant so far this season. In just over 200 plate appearances with Tulsa, Fernandez has recorded the lowest strikeout rate among all qualified Double-A hitters. His .167 isolated-power mark, meanwhile, is nearly 40 points greater than the Texas League average. Overall, Fernandez has recorded a 138 wRC+, and Steamer projects a 96 wRC+ at the major-league level.
As for the defense, the methodologies employed both by Baseball Prospectus and Clay Davenport do rate it as slightly below average. In the context of his various impediments, however, Fernandez has been excellent thus far.
Here’s Fernandez hitting a home run this past week by means of a swing that does not appear to be the sort typically employed by batters distinguished for their contact skills:
From the case of Rich Hill, I’m not sure one could learn any lessons. For one thing, he still has more time to pitch, so his final chapters are unwritten. But even if Hill is already underwater, so what? No one needs to be told that there are risks inherent in committing to a free agent 37-year-old. And it’s not like anyone else is following the Rich Hill career path. His case is unique. What matters for him might not apply to anyone else. Everything about what he is is atypical, and so we stand to learn about Hill and Hill only.
It is fair to say, though, there are things to be learned. The Dodgers are probably anxious to learn them, because they’re counting on Hill, and he’s not pulling his weight. Now, no one thought Hill would throw 200 innings. I don’t think anyone expected 140. But here’s Hill now, at 35 innings after eight starts, eight starts in which he’s run up a 5+ ERA. Hill’s strikeouts have fallen and his walks have exploded, and Thursday in Cleveland saw him cough up seven runs. Rich Hill isn’t right, and although the Dodgers aren’t so worried about his June, they’d like to know if he’ll be fine by October. Something right now is borked up.