Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan talk to 18-year-old Effectively Wild listener/pitcher Connor Watrous about his heroic accomplishment of keeping score at an 18-inning Cubs-Yankees game, banter about a besieged closer and a Matt Albers milestone, and discuss the implications of a new development in the high-home-run-rate mystery.

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Jed Bradley was honest when I talked to him in January 2013. A first-round pick by the Milwaukee Brewers 18 months earlier, the left-hander admitted his velocity was down, and that he’d been experienced “a big learning curve.”

He was also thoughtful and realistic. The Georgia Tech product spoke about how most fans don’t understand “the pathway you have to take to get to the big leagues,” and about how the high minors are populated by veteran players who are supporting families and “putting everything on the line just for a shot.”

Bradley got his shot last September, appearing in six games, and hurling seven innings, for the Atlanta Braves. Last week, at age 26, he bid baseball adieu.

When I asked him why he retired, the former ACC Honor Roll student was every bit as honest and thoughtful as he was four years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

14 months ago, Jeff wrote a post titled “Welcome Back, Alex Wood“. In the piece, Jeff noted that Wood’s arm slot had been dropping each year, corresponding with decreases in effectiveness since he debuted with the Braves and established himself as one of the game’s best young starters. But during Spring Training of 2016, Wood got his arm slot back up to where it was earlier in his career, and his velocity also was higher than it had been in 2015, when the Braves decided he was about to break down and traded him for Hector Olivera.

With better velocity and a return to his previous release point, Jeff suggested that the Dodgers might get the good version of Alex Wood again, and to some extent, that turned out to be right. His strikeout rate jumped from 17% to 26% while also posting the highest GB% (53%) of his career, so while his 3.73 ERA wasn’t amazing, his FIP and xFIP were both back to his Atlanta levels. But Wood also battled elbow problems that put him on the shelf at the end of May, and when he returned at the end of the year, the team used him as a low-leverage reliever. He showed flashes of promise in his 10 early-season starts, but 2016 wasn’t exactly the hoped-for justification of why the team targeted Wood at the 2015 trade deadline when better pitchers — specifically Cole Hamels — were available.

2017 looked like more it might continue that trend, as Hyun-Jin Ryu‘s return to health pushed Wood back to the bullpen to start the year. And even when he was pressed into starting duty a week into the season due to Rich Hill’s blister problem, the results weren’t that encouraging, as he walked five of the 19 batters he faced and couldn’t make it out of the fourth inning. But despite the wildness, there as one big reason for optimism that came out of that start; Wood showed that his spring training velocity bump wasn’t just preparation for a relief role, but that his fastball might really be back to 2013 levels.

While he sat 94-95 in relief in his first appearance of the year, that could have easily been written off as a normal velo bump that starters get when they move to relief work. But when pressed into a starting role, he still managed to sit 93-94, which is what Wood was throwing back when he was a dominating rookie in Atlanta. The command wasn’t there, but stuff wise, this was as good as Wood had looked in years. And after Hill and Ryu’s DL stints gave Wood the chance to rejoin the rotation for more than just a spot start, Wood has finally looked like the guy the Dodgers hoped they were trading for.

Since April 21st, Wood has made four starts, throwing 20 2/3 innings in the process. And while he hasn’t been asked to pitch deep into those games, he’s dominated opposing hitters over that span.

Wood has struck out 30 of the 84 batters since rejoining the rotation, including 11 strikeouts in his start against Pittsburgh last night. He’s walked just one batter in each of those four starts (one of them intentionally), so his 30/4 K/BB ratio shows how well he’s owned the strike zone. But his dominance goes beyond even that level, as 32 of the 50 batters to put the ball in play against him during that span have hit the ball on the ground. You almost never see a pitcher combine a better than 30% strikeout rate with a 60% ground ball rate, but during these last four starts, Wood’s at a 36% strikeout rate and a 64% groundball rate.

That is Dallas Keuchel‘s groundball ways combined with Chris Sale’s control of the strike zone. Those are good things to have, and insanely good things to have simultaneously. And it’s not like the groundballs Wood is giving up have been rockets; he’s allowed just an average exit velocity of 86 mph during these last four starts, and his .216 expected wOBA based on Statcast data is actually lower than the already-absurd .233 wOBA he’s allowed during this stretch.

Of course, this is all super small sample data. We’re talking about four starts, and only 84 batters faced in those four starts. But it’s worth noting that Wood has never really had a four start stretch this good in his big league career. The closest he came was back at the end of 2014, when he ran a 34/5 K/BB ratio across 28 innings while getting grounders on 54% of his batted balls. Even in the best year of his career, when he ran a 2.78 ERA/3.25 FIP/3.19 xFIP, he didn’t quite dominate over four starts like he has since rejoining the Dodgers’ rotation.

The key for Wood this year really does seem to be the effectiveness of his fastball. For reference, here’s the amount of contact on fastballs in the strike zone against Wood, by year.

In the first couple of years, when Wood was really good in Atlanta, his sinker not only got grounders, but it missed enough bats in the zone to help him get ahead in counts as well, and then he could get hitters to chase his curve and change-up out of the zone. Over his first four years, the pitch became more and more hittable, and Wood lost the ability to miss bats, relying on walk-avoidance and grounders to keep him afloat.

This year, though, the fastball is missing bats again, like it was earlier in his career, and that’s putting him in more advantageous counts, which leads to chases on breaking balls out of the zone. Last year, opposing batters swung at just 33% of his curveballs out of the zone, but this year, that’s up to 46%. Wood’s ability to get early strikes with his fastball has put him in a position to bury his off-speed stuff in the ground and still get hitters to chase.

And so, for the first time in a Dodger uniform, Alex Wood looks like the guy Atlanta had at the beginning of his career. He’s mixing a mid-90s fastball with a mid-80s curve and a high-80s change-up, and getting both whiffs and groundballs with all three pitches. He’s never been a guy who has pounded the strike zone, but by getting ahead in counts and getting chases out of the zone, Wood can keep his walks down and his strikeouts up. And even when he’s giving up contact, it’s been of the weak groundball variety.

For right now, the Dodgers are effectively manufacturing injuries in order to keep Wood in the rotation, pushing back a decision to ship someone else to the bullpen in order to keep Wood starting every five days. But with the way he’s throwing right now, Wood might be the team’s second or third best starter (depending on Rich Hill’s ability to stay on the mound), and it’s hard to see him getting bumped back to the bullpen again any time soon. This version of Alex Wood is a high-quality starting pitcher, and the one the Dodgers have been waiting for since they acquired him.

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Had a few calls gone differently in the ninth inning Sunday night, everyone could have gone to bed earlier. The poor beat scribes could have returned home, or to their Marriott Courtyards or SpringHill Suites, at a reasonable hour. I wouldn’t have fallen asleep on my couch. And the Cubs would have scored victory of sorts as they would have arrived to their charter flight earlier. The Cubs traveled to Denver after the game. The first night in adjusting to altitude in Denver after an 18-inning affair in Chicago is the kind of game some believe you can pencil in for a loss.

If Austin Romine could have had a better night receiving in the ninth inning, everyone could have enjoyed an earlier night. Romine is a league-average framer. Of course, it’s not easy to catch Aroldis Chapman.

Others have studied velocity and the affects it has on framing, including FanGraphs’ Jeff Sullivan way, way back in in 2013 when framing was still a relatively new development. Sullivan devised his own home-made recipe to quantify the effect:

For starters, the correlation between average fastball velocity and Diff/1000 is -0.26. For relievers, the correlation between average fastball velocity and Diff/1000 is -0.34. These aren’t real strong, but they are meaningful, and they don’t account for catcher identity. What the numbers show is that, the harder a guy throws, the less favorable a strike zone he gets.

For the first time, this season, we, the people, have the ability to search a more detailed strike zone at BaseballSavant.com. Instead of 13 zone to study, there are 29. I was curious to look at that new gray area on the edge of the zone you can search at Savant, zones No. 11-19 on the detailed search. I wanted to study borderline calls there by velocity. What I found:

Fastballs 92 mph or less: 2,805 called strikes, 2,602 balls (51.8% called strikes)
Fastballs between 93-96 mph: 2,474 called strikes, 2,627 balls (48.5% called strikes)
Fastballs 97 mph or greater: 251 called strikes, 363 balls (40.8% called strikes)

So a league average fastball, this season, has been called a strike 11% more often than a high-velocity fastball on the edge of the zone. That’s interesting.

Chapman threw eight fastballs in the border region Sunday night, five were called for balls. While many hitters probably feel Chapman has plenty advantages as is he could benefit from another one: a robot ump.

The balls:

The strikes:

This is not one of the pitches studied, but consider the amount of momentum created by this pitch to have Romine nearly skid into the home team’s on-deck circle.

This is also not one of the pitches in question, but it is glaring evidence to demonstrate it is not easy to simply to catch a 100 mph fastball if it is off target.

Catching Chapman ain’t easy.

The bottom of the ninth inning began Sunday night, with Chapman walking Addison Russell without controversy. Chapman missed badly with location.

Jon Jay followed by singling on a 2-2 pitch, but consider the 1-2 offering:

The 1-2 pitch was a ball, just missing the corner. But consider the movement of Romine, moving not just his glove but his upper body moving to his left, perhaps needing to get his body behind the ball to limit his glove being demonstratively moved out of the zone.

After a Wilson Contreras strikeout, Chapman began Albert Almora with this pitch, which was unjustly deemed a ball. We know the difference between a 2-1 and 1-2 count is nearly 200 points in batting average. So that missed call represents a significant swing in probability. Again, the 99 mph pitch caused some recoil to Romine’s glove.

Almora singled in Russell to cut the Yankees’ lead to 4-2. Javier Baez followed with a single to score Jay and make it a 4-3 score with one out. Chapman struck out Kyle Schwarber for the second out and then faced the reigning NL MVP with. The one-strike, one-ball offering to Bryant:

If Chapman gets that pitch perhaps he more aggressive attacks Bryant, gets the third out, and the Yankees win. Instead, Bryant is ultimately intentionally walked to load the bases and Chapman hits Rizzo to tie the score at 4. Nine innings later, the game ended.

Chapman did not get many benefits of the doubt in the ninth inning, rare velocity doesn’t help a pitcher in every regard. Sure, you’d rather have elite velocity than not have it. But sometimes it can hurt an arm.

Sunday was a glaring reminder that velocity must be taken into account when evaluating a catcher’s framing, along with playing on the road and trying to close out a game in the ninth inning in a hostile environment. Umpire ball-strike bias explains much of home-field advantage. Sunday night was also a reminder that as great as Chapman’s stuff is, sometimes it can work against him.

It is Chapman, and the other high-velocity arms in the game, that would benefit most from an automated zone. An automated zone, would make some of the most dominant arms even better.

Previously
Changeup: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveball: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.
Four-Seamers: AL Starters.

We’re over halfway through this analysis of 2016 ERA’ qualifiers individual pitches, based on their relative bat-missing and contact management performance. Once complete, those 2017 sample sizes will be nice and plump, and the focus will turn to this season. Today, NL four-seam fastballs are on the docket.

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We ought to consider Jameson Taillon the person before we consider Jameson Taillon the pitcher.

On Sunday, the Pirates sent burgeoning top-of-the-rotation arm to the 10-day disabled list for groin discomfort. A day later, the club announced that Taillon had undergone surgery for suspected testicular cancer.

Pirates announce Jameson Taillon was treated this morning at Allegheny General Hospital for suspected testicular cancer. pic.twitter.com/JLM3KpxEBQ

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) May 8, 2017

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