Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about teams and players of particular interest (including the Astros, Marwin Gonzalez, and Aaron Hicks), Scott Boras vs. Theo Epstein, the brawl battle between Eduardo Jimenez and Jesse Stallings, bat-boy uniforms, Corey Dickerson’s real name, pitcher hitting and Walter Johnson’s unsung skill, many a mascot, and more.
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Brock Burke is on a roll. The 20-year-old southpaw has made nine starts for the Bowling Green Hot Rods, and he hasn’t allowed more than one earned run in any of them. His record is an unblemished 5-0, and his ERA is a sparkling 1.23. He’s been one of the most-dominant under-the-radar pitchers in the minors. Of the 52 A-ball pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched this season, his ERA ranks third.
Burke’s fast start for Tampa Bay’s Low-A affiliate has been partially fueled by Driveline Baseball.
“I came down early and did a weighted-ball camp,” explained Burke, whom the Rays took in the third round of the 2014 draft out of a Denver-area high school. “It was mostly a Driveline program. Our pitching coordinator, Dewey Robinson, invited a bunch of us — it was voluntary — and it was definitely beneficial. It got me in better body shape, which has helped my accuracy and my velo.”
Midwest League hitters have seen firm fastballs from the lefty, but it’s not as though he suddenly morphed into a flamethrower. What’s changed is that his velocity is no longer temperamental. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rockies have lost five of their last eight games, a stretch that began last Thursday with a walk-off, extra-inning loss in Philadelphia. They’ve also lost sole possession of first place in the process, although they retained a share of it entering play following yesterday’s win. Still, things looked a lot better just a week ago. Overall, the team’s 83 wRC+ ranks 27th in the majors. They rank the same lowly 27th even when pitcher hitting is removed from the equation. Clearly, reinforcements are needed, right? Well, yes. But here’s the thing: they’re coming from inside the organization.
After the White Sox traded Chris Sale, rumors flew that Jose Quintana would be on the move soon, as well. Quintana has been quite good for Chicago, but the club had no designs on contending in 2017. With four more years of control at under $40 million, Quintana was a valuable trade chip. The White Sox were right to expect a return for Quintana that rivaled their hauls for Chris Sale and Adam Eaton. Those demands weren’t met, however, and the White Sox entered the season with Quintana as their ace.
Looking at Quintana’s line so far this season — he has a 5.60 ERA and 4.28 FIP — it’s hard to imagine that his current trade value remains as high as it was this offseason. The main problem has been home runs. Let’s take a closer look.
First, some good news: Quintana has actually increased his strikeout rate relative to previous seasons. That mark stands at to 23.0% currently, higher than his career average of 20.1% and last year’s 21.6%. His walks have gone up, too, though: up to 8.6% from his career average and last year’s average around 6%. A 40% increase in walks is definitely something to note, but more alarming is Quintana’s home-run rate. Here are Quintana’s relevant home-run statistics during his career:
| Year | HR/9 | HR/FB |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 0.92 | 10.5% |
| 2013 | 1.04 | 10.2% |
| 2014 | 0.45 | 5.1% |
| 2015 | 0.70 | 8.6% |
| 2016 | 0.95 | 9.5% |
| 2017 | 1.40 | 13.0% |
| Career | 0.84 | 9.1% |
Quintana has been pitching in a tough pitcher’s park for the duration of his career, so the regularity with which he’s suppressed home runs would appear to be a bit of a skill at this point. That said, there’s definitely been a departure this season from his established levels. His walks seem to indicate he’s not quite the pitcher he has been, but a lot of other indicators check out. His velocity seems decent enough. He’s getting first-pitch strikes. He’s pitching in the zone roughly the same amount and swings in and out of the zone don’t seem overly alarming. The home runs are only a big deal to the extent they have a tangible effect on Quintana’s stat line.
This coming Monday, Jeff Sullivan and I will be joining a talented group for a Pitch Talks show in Seattle.
Jeff will be joined by current Lookout Landing editor (and FanGraphs first resident) Kate Preusser along with Meg Rowley and Patrick Dubuque of Baseball Prospectus for a panel that should be pretty entertaining. I’ll be hanging out with local scribes Shannon Drayer and Ryan Divish for a panel on the state of the Mariners, and how 2017 factors into the future of the organization. And between those discussions, Kyle Boddy, the owner of Driveline Baseball, will chat about the changing face of training and rehab, and how organizations like his are attempting to develop a very different generation of pitchers.
Mike Salk (ESPN Radio) will host the event, and with that line-up, it should be a pretty great night of baseball talk. You’re definitely going to want to make it to this one.
Tickets are $25, but using Homestand as the coupon code, you can get it down to just $20. I should note that the venue states this is a 21 and up show, so unfortunately, adults only at this one.
Hope to see you guys on Monday night.
This is Michael Lortz’ first piece as part of his June residency at FanGraphs. Lortz covers the Tampa Bay baseball market for the appropriately named Tampa Bay Baseball Market and has previously published work in the Community pages, as well. You can find him on Twitter, as well.
By most accounts, Tampa Bay is a growing region. There is job growth, revenue growth, housing growth, and billions in development happening throughout both Tampa and St. Petersburg. But one number that is not growing, despite an increase in expendable income, is attendance at Tropicana Field.
Fortunately, the main reasons why the Rays continue to struggle at the gate have become somewhat well known. Most knowledgeable Tampa Bay residents and baseball fans know Tropicana Field is too far from the population center and the gridlock too tangled for enough fans to see the Rays on a daily basis. This media appears to have become aware of these particular challenges: we’ve seen fewer national editorials of late blaming the Rays’ fanbase for lack of attendance. There’s still the occasional tweet, but published commentary criticizing Tampa Bay sports fans for lack of Rays attendance is rare.
Regardless of how often the problem is covered, there aren’t many articles offering solutions. That is a problem. From the outsider’s perspective, it seems the Rays are running out of ideas to get people to the ballpark. While they can only put so much lipstick on the pig that is Tropicana Field, they’ve altered prices, involved their people in the community, and offered a smorgasbord of various promotions with varying results.
The lack of attendance is putting the Rays in a bind: without revenue from attendance and with lower-than-average broadcast revenue, they have to rely on revenue sharing to stay competitive in one of the more affluent divisions in baseball. And there’s skepticism from baseball owners and front-office personnel throughout the sport as to whether Tampa Bay can ever be a successful major-league market — despite the fact that four franchises spring train in Tampa Bay, two others train just over an hour away, and four minor-league teams call the region home.
At my website, I’ve covered Rays attendance since 2007, the last year the Rays had the Devil in their name. Over the history of the franchise (excluding the inaugural season), there have been four different eras of Rays attendance.
As you can see, even with more recognition and more active ownership, the Rays now draw as many people to Tropicana Field as they did during the Dewon Brazelton years. That’s not a good thing.
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: Hello friends
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: Welcome to Friday baseball chat
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| 9:07 |
: Hello, friend! Apologies for my absence last week. Bork Jr can be very distracting.
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: Hello friend
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: You were dearly missed
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: Will FG be doing a live chat for the draft?
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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.
Scott Kingery, 2B, Philadelphia (Profile)
By almost every measure, Kingery has been the best player in the Eastern League. Entering play Thursday, he’d produced both the best adjusted batting line and top speed score among the league’s 81 qualifiers. Those numbers have been supported by equally strong offensive indicators — offensive indicators which are, in turn, complemented by roughly average defense at second base.
In short, the selection of Kingery for this edition of the Five is embarrassing for the lack of imagination it has required. It would only be more embarrassing were the author not to have included Kingery here. As for what would be most embarrassing, this is a matter of some debate among thought leaders, although referring to oneself as a “thought leader” is a candidate for the distinction.
In conclusion, here’s one of Kingery’s three home runs from the past week — in this case, against the Blue Jays’ Double-A affiliate in Manchester, New Hampshire:
Joey Votto might have the most discerning eye in all of baseball, and this season he’s somehow made his own approach something even closer to perfect. Votto has swung at just 19% of pitches out of the strike zone, a rate which counts as especially low. At the same time, Votto has swung at 70% of pitches in the strike zone, a rate which counts as unusually high. When running discipline analysis, I like to compare those two rates. Votto has a swing-rate difference of 51 percentage points. It’s enormous. Joey Votto swings mostly at strikes.
Chris Tillman has started five games since coming off the disabled list, and he’s thrown 452 pitches. When he’s thrown a pitch out of the zone, he’s gotten a swing 24% of the time. When he’s thrown a pitch in the zone, he’s gotten a swing 75% of the time. Tillman, therefore, is running a swing-rate difference of 51 percentage points. Hitters who’ve faced Chris Tillman to this point in 2017 have, on average, been about as disciplined as Joey Votto.
Baseball has long been a game of tradition, and one rightful criticism of our “national pastime” has been its tendency to be slow to change. One of the most welcome enhancements of some fans’ enjoyment of the game has been the introduction of Statcast in recent years. No, it’s not for everyone, but its existence — and most of all, its availability for free to the populace — adds another avenue of potential involvement for the fan base, while also offering countless opportunities for study of any aspect of our game from a nearly infinite number of perspectives.
