That Other Thing That’s Tough About Playing in Denver

Last night, the Rockies slept in San Diego. For the most part, they slept well. They’ll head to Colorado after today’s game, and they won’t sleep as well when they get home. This is important, and backed by the players and science, so stick with me.

I did not sleep with them, or ask each one, but the ones I did talk to all mentioned the difference between sleeping at home and sleeping in San Diego and San Francisco. “The first night we were here, everyone was talking about how well they slept,” Rockies’ starter Tyler Chatwood told me in San Francisco. “Sometimes you feel it the first night, you have a crappy night’s sleep and feel tight,” said setup man Adam Ottavino of Colorado.

Plus, science says sleeping at high altitude is hard, and that rest and recovery generally is a difficult thing up high. In 2013 a meta-study in Turkey summed up the research:

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KATOH’s Most Improved Pitching Prospects So Far

Now that we’re nearly one month into the minor-league season, 2017 performances are starting to mean something. The 2017 sample size is still small, but it’s large enough at least to merit a look at those prospects who may be in the midst of a breakout. This article aims to do just that by calling attention to the 10 pitchers who have most improved their KATOH+ projections over the season’s first few weeks. (The most-improved hitters were examined yesterday.) A reminder: a player’s KATOH forecast denotes his projected WAR total over the first six seasons of his major-league career.

Wilmer Font, RHP, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
Preseason KATOH+ Projection: 0.6
Current KATOH+ Projection: 1.9

Over the winter, KATOH tabbed Font as one of the most compelling minor-league free agents due to his serviceable performance as a starter in Triple-A last year. Through five Triple-A starts in 2017, Font possesses a 31% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate, giving him one of the best FIPs in Triple-A. As a 26-year-old journeyman, Font isn’t much of a prospect, but he’s currently pitching like one as a starter in Triple-A.

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Daily Prospect Notes: 5/4

Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Mike Gerber, OF, Detroit (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 24   Org Rank: 5   Top 100: NR
Line: 4-for-5, 2 2B, 3 R, BB, SB

Notes
A 15th-round pick in 2014 out of an underrated Creighton program, Gerber first garnered national media attention by performing well during the 2015 Fall League. He finished 2016 with 42 games at Double-A Erie and has started well there this season, hitting .300/.364/.450. Gerber has some swing-and-miss and platoon issues (he has a 26% career strikeout rate and so far this year his splits are 34% against lefties, 21% against righties) but has solid-average raw power. He also plays good defense in right field, so even if he never hits lefties, he could still play every day because of the glove. He projects as a low-end regular.

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The Other Times We Saw This Ryan Zimmerman

Ryan Zimmerman is off to a great start. We’re only 26 games into the season covering 104 PA, but anytime you’re running a .427/.462/.875 line, it’s worth celebrating. Among qualified hitters entering play on Thursday, Zimmerman led the league with a 241 wRC+. This is particularly noteworthy because, measured by outcomes, Zimmerman had a terrible season in 2016. Zimmerman posted a 67 wRC+ in 467 PA last year after many years as an above-average hitter.

During the offseason, Jeff Sullivan noted that Zimmerman’s 2016 probably didn’t portend doom. Jeff pointed out that Zimmerman was hitting the ball pretty hard in the air, but he simply wasn’t collecting extra-base hits at a rate consistent with that contact quality. Erstwhile FanGrapher Mike Petriello made a related argument, recognizing that Zimmerman was making hard contact, but that he simply wasn’t hitting the ball at a steep enough angle to turn that hard contact into productive contact.

I probably don’t have to tell you where this is going. This season, Zimmerman is hitting the ball a bit harder than last year, 93.6 mph on average vs, 92.5 mph in 2016, but his average launch angle has increased from 9.0 to 11.7 degrees in 2017.

But you don’t need fancy Statcast numbers to notice this difference. His fly-ball and ground-ball rates are plenty clear. Zimmerman has joined the ranks of so many players who are trying to hit more fly balls. And at least so far this season, it’s working quite well for him.

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I Guess Now Trevor Cahill Is Good

Before the start of the year, the Padres’ starting rotation was the butt of so many jokes. They essentially had to build it out through free agency, but not even through the appealing parts of free agency. More like the Jered Weaver parts. Here and there, there was occasional speculation the Padres could go on to have one of the worse rotations in recent memory. At the same time, people held the Cubs in the conversation for having maybe the best rotation around. It was certainly one of the best a season ago. Why would anything change? Cubs good. Padres bad. These statements were inarguable.

We’ve completed just a sixth or so of the season. You should be sticking to many of your preseason thoughts. But let me just show six numbers. Here’s how the Cubs’ rotation has done:

  • ERA-: 109
  • FIP-: 109
  • xFIP-: 94

And here’s how the Padres’ rotation has done:

  • ERA-: 106
  • FIP-: 106
  • xFIP-: 95

The Padres are basically right in the middle in WAR. It’s been a mixed bag of results, but overall it’s been fine, even slightly more effective than the Cubs. It’s a strange place for us to be, and surprising group effectiveness is driven by surprising individuals. Trevor Cahill has earned a front-page post.

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Harvey’s Struggles Continue

The Mets, of course, were dealt a significant setback with the news on Noah Syndergaard earlier this week. Steven Matz is on the DL and has a long injury history. Robert Gsellman has some ominous velocity and spin-rate trends. That represents the majority of the starting-rotation arms upon which the Mets were counting this season.

Then there’s Matt Harvey.

The Mets — along with the entirety of baseball — had no idea what to expect from Harvey entering this season. There were plenty of concerns this spring, certainly, when Harvey was sitting at 92 mph with his fastball. The concerns have continued into the regular season.

Harvey struggled again on Tuesday in Atlanta. A month into the season, the right-hander now owns a 5.14 ERA and even worse 5.75 FIP. He’s striking out a paltry 13.5% of batters while walking 8.8% — not even a five-point difference. Here, the sake of context, are Harvey’s K-BB% marks over the last four seasons: 23.2% (2013), 20% (2015), 12.7% (2016) and 4.7% (2017).

The 2013 and 2015 versions of Harvey seem less and less likely to reappear.

Said Mets manager Terry Collins to reporters present:

“You’re talking about a guy that did not pitch very much last year. He’s coming back from a surgery that not a lot of guys have really come back to be 100 percent again. Especially when you’ve lost the feeling in your fingers and you’ve got to regain the feel of the seams.”

That’s not encouraging. That sounds like the description of a pitcher who has a long way back if he’s ever going to return to something near to what he was, which was a legit ace. Harvey had surgery in July for thoracic outlet syndrome. (Some PITCHf/x forensics on the issue were conducted here by Mike Sonne.)

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Cole Hamels Hits the DL, Rangers Season Hits the Skids

April didn’t go very well for the Texas Rangers. Their closer imploded, their offense sputtered, Adrian Beltre couldn’t get healthy, and the Astros started off red hot, opening a sizable early lead in the AL West race. Well, today, things got even worse, as Cole Hamels was found to have a strained oblique that is going to put him on the shelf until at least July.

Before this news came down, our forecasts already weren’t that optimistic about Texas’ chances this year. Their 11-16 start meant we had them finishing 78-84, so they’d need to win roughly 10 more games than projected over the rest of the season to put themselves in legitimate Wild Card contention. Our playoff odds calculation put the chances of that happening at about 10%, with another 3% chance they’d get hot enough to catch the Astros and win the division. Their 13% playoff odds put them ahead of only the A’s, Twins, Royals, and White Sox in the AL.

Take Hamels out of the picture for a couple of months, with the team already lacking rotation depth, and those odds probably sink under 10%. It’s not definitively time to throw in the towel, but this certainly hurts the Rangers chances of turning things around before they’ll have to make a decision on Yu Darvish in July. An impending free agent, if the Rangers aren’t sure they can re-sign him, they’d probably have to trade him, given the return he’d command. To avoid having to make a decision on Darvish, Texas was going to have to get hot in May and June, but now they’ll have to do that without their other good starting pitcher.

One of the main stories of 2017 is how many expected contenders might end up as sellers this summer. The Royals, Blue Jays, and Giants are all staring at significant hills to overcome to get back in the race, and now they might be joined by the Rangers in putting some impact talent in play at the trade deadline.


April Attendance Matters for MLB

Attendance in April isn’t likely to make or break a team’s season at the box office. Numbersgenerally trends upwards from the beginning to the end of a season. Nor is that surprising: the weather gets better, kids get out of school, and the games generally have greater playoff implications.

April’s attendance numbers are more often based on a combination of expectations and tradition. Teams that are expected to be competitive — the Cardinals, the Dodgers, the Giants — are going to sell a lot of tickets. As the season progresses, of course, clubs that fall out of a playoff race can expect a decline in attendance relative to their more competitive seasons. Conversely, teams that have surprisingly good years can see increases. Nevertheless, in terms of predictive measures of yearly attendance, a club’s April attendance is more significant than its April win-loss record. For teams like the Mets and Royals, that’s bad news. For the Orioles and Phillies, however, the outlook is much better.

Early on in the season, here’s what the average attendance per home game looks like for every team.

The Dodgers, just like they do every year, have the early lead and will likely continue to have one all year. That’s not surprising: they play in a massive stadium and even bigger market. The Cardinals, Giants, and Chicago Cubs are up there, too, with the defending World Champions benefiting not only from a great team but a renovated ballpark. The Blue Jays were a middle-of-the-pack team just a few seasons ago, but have shot up the last few years following a string of successful seasons. The general lesson here? Be competitive and the people will come — especially in larger markets.

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There’s Another Yankee Taking Off

The Yankees have gotten off to a surprising start, sitting in a first-place tie in the AL East even despite having mostly played without Gary Sanchez. These being the Yankees, there’s not much that happens under the radar, and I’ve already fielded a number of chat questions about a reasonably young outfielder with a high walk rate and a 191 wRC+. He’s helped to power the Yankees to where they are today, far exceeding expectations with a slugging percentage of .640. Aaron Judge, also, has been terrific.

Judge, in fact, has been the club’s best player. For one month, he’s played at his ceiling, and he’s become a household name just as a function of his highlight home runs. Yet Aaron Hicks, too, has also been playing at his ceiling. Where Judge is a 25-year-old prospect, Hicks is a 27-year-old post-prospect, if you will. Until now, he felt a little like a bust. It might still end up a bummer of a season. But maybe, just maybe, for Aaron Hicks, it’s clicking.

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D-backs Prospect Jon Duplantier Is No Longer Perfect (But His Shoulder is Fine)

It was inevitable. Jon Duplantier was eventually going to allow an earned run, and it happened last night. After 21.2 professional innings with a 0.00 ERA, the Arizona Diamondbacks pitching prospect surrendered a pair of markers in the first inning of a game against the South Bend Cubs.

It’s worth noting that he’s not superstitious. That was the first thing about which I asked him when we spoke on Monday. Given that he was about to make his fourth start of the season for the Low-A Kane County Cougars, the last thing I wanted to do was jinx him.

Deplantier told me he used to be somewhat superstitious. Having found it mentally draining, though, he’s “pretty much scratched that” from his psyche. Addressing his run of perfection was thus perfectly acceptable. “Giving up runs is going to happen,” he told me. “If I never gave up a run… I don’t know how I’d be doing it, but I do know there’d be a lot of money to be made.”

He has a chance to make a lot of money. Arizona drafted Duplantier in the third round last year, and were it not for health concerns, he likely would have gone higher. The 22-year-old Rice University product has a classic pitcher’s frame — he’s listed at 6-foot-4, 225 pounds — and his fastball has touched 97. He’s currently commanding the pitch well, and he’s doing so with a delivery he trusts. Despite his injury history, the D-backs haven’t tinkered with his mechanics.

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