Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ichiro’s home run in his return to Seattle, the feasibility of intentionally allowing dingers, a John Jaso quote, and manager bobbleheads, then discuss the present and future use, abuse, and presentation of Statcast data.
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It’s not a shock that Madison Bumgarner has never been on the disabled list before now. He’s a big horse of a man, made purely of muscle and tree sap. The only thing that’s prevented him from being sidelined is Bruce Bochy not letting him throw 400 innings in a year and, apparently, that he’s been steady on a dirt bike until now.
Bumgarner is on the DL after a dirt bike accident. He has bruised ribs and a Grade One or Two Strain of his shoulder AC joint. #SFGiants
— Henry Schulman BLUE CHECK MARK (@hankschulman) April 21, 2017
I’m an idiot, and looked up where the All-Star Game was last year. The All-Star Game this year is in Miami. So, yes, corrections below.
The story of the first few weeks of this season has almost certainly been the arrival of Eric Thames, who has returned from Korea to look like one of the game’s best power hitters. While Thames won’t keep hitting like Babe Ruth in his prime, unless there’s some hidden exploitable flaw that no one has found yet, he’s probably going to be a pretty decent hitter for the Brewers for the next few months.
And if he does keep hitting even near what the projections think he’ll be going forward, it’s going to be nearly impossible to fill out the first base portion of the National League All-Star ballot. Thames has simply made the most crowded position in baseball even more so.
Just for fun, let’s look at the top 15 hitters by our rest-of-season wOBA projections from the combined ZIPS/Steamer forecasts. I’ll highlight the NL first baseman in this table.
| Name | wOBA |
|---|---|
| Mike Trout | 0.410 |
| Bryce Harper | 0.403 |
| Joey Votto | 0.385 |
| Anthony Rizzo | 0.383 |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 0.382 |
| Miguel Cabrera | 0.382 |
| Freddie Freeman | 0.380 |
| Nolan Arenado | 0.379 |
| Josh Donaldson | 0.378 |
| Giancarlo Stanton | 0.374 |
| Kris Bryant | 0.371 |
| Mookie Betts | 0.371 |
| Eric Thames | 0.367 |
| Manny Machado | 0.364 |
| Andrew McCutchen | 0.359 |
By our forecasts, five of the 13 best hitters in baseball over the remainder of the season play first base in the National League. That doesn’t even account for what has already happened, with Thames and Freeman putting themselves in very strong positions to have All-Star numbers by the break. And even with the DH now being used in every All-Star Game, the reality is that there’s really only room to carry four first baseman on the roster.
And we haven’t even mentioned that, of these five players, there are probably only going to be three spots available, because Wil Myers is very likely to be the Padres best representative, and as their best player, is nearly guaranteed a spot in the game given that the contest is in his home park. If we assume Myers is going to get one spot, that leaves three chances for some combination of Freeman, Thames, Votto, Rizzo, and Goldschmidt. Sorry Brandon Belt, but we’re going to pretend you don’t exist, and I hope you don’t have any All-Star incentives in your contract.
Rizzo is probably the most likely bet to win the fan’s vote as the starter, given the Cubs current popularity and the fact that their fans elected their entire starting infield last year. Freeman seems like something close to a lock, given his start and the likelihood that the Braves won’t have a lot of other compelling options to pick from. So that leaves Thames, Votto, and Goldschmidt probably fighting over one spot.
Yeah. All-Star rosters aren’t a thing that really matter, but I can’t remember a time where some obviously great players were effectively guaranteed of being shut out of the midsummer classic.
A tough thing about analyzing pitching is that it’s a moving target. You can get a decent sense of what a pitcher is like right now, and then he can completely change his approach over the next month and become a different pitcher. There’s evidence of this in the data: a pitcher’s exit velocity becomes stable relatively quickly, but then that stat’s predictability doesn’t actually improve as the sample increases. In other words, you can see what the pitcher’s got now, but what about tomorrow? Ask us then.
This is all relevant to Tyler Chatwood. You might have thought you had an idea of who he was as a pitcher — great sinker, uses his four-seamer for whiffs, and doesn’t have great secondary stuff, so it’s all about the ground balls. That’s who he was! It isn’t who he is right now, though. I had to ask him about who he is right now when I had the chance.
Eric Hosmer is a free agent after this season. Maybe the most interesting free agent of the upcoming winter. If you are an unnamed scout who talked to Jon Heyman back in spring training, you think Hosmer should get far more than the 5 years/$73 million Brandon Belt got as an extension from the Giants, because anyone who thinks Belt is better than Hosmer should “get a grip”. The old $200 million rumor is so ridiculous we don’t even need to bother addressing it, but as Jeff wrote in February, it wouldn’t be that hard for a team to rationalize their way into a deal for more than $100 million if they believed a few things that aren’t entirely unbelievable.
But, as a counterpoint to Jeff’s perfectly reasonable post, I’d like to present a leaderboard that offers another perfectly reasonable position; the one that just acknowledges that Eric Hosmer isn’t very good.
Hyun Soo Kim posted a .382 on-base percentage last season. He was one of just 20 players to post a .380 OBP or better (min. 300 plate appearances). As I’m sure you’re aware, that’s a pretty great mark. As I detailed a little in the positional power rankings for left field, Kim had a rocky start with the Orioles, who generally seemed not to like him very much. But by the end of the season, he was the club’s starting left fielder. He started only 78 of the team’s 162 games in left field, but he did start 40 of their final 64 there. And yet, despite ending the season as the team’s main left fielder and despite recorded a .382 OBP, he’s been buried on the bench to begin the 2017 season.
Let’s go back a second to that .382 OBP. That’s getting hard to pull off these days.
OBP is the heartbeat of an offense. So long as a club is avoiding outs, good things can happen. But it’s been a lot harder to find high-OBP figures over the past 10 years. Two years ago, for example, just eight players produced an OBP of .380 or better. It was the third-lowest total (after 1968 and 1963) since baseball integrated in 1947. Last year, only 20 batters reached that mark, which was tied for the 22nd-lowest total since Integration. The last few years, it has been very tough to find hitters who are really good at not making outs. And when teams find them, they cherish them. Here’s the list of the 20 players who pulled it off last season, and how much they’ve played this season. You’ll see one outlier.
| 2016 | 2017 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | G | GS | PA | G | GS | PA |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 158 | 158 | 705 | 17 | 17 | 74 |
| Dexter Fowler | 125 | 117 | 551 | 16 | 16 | 71 |
| Kris Bryant | 155 | 155 | 699 | 15 | 15 | 71 |
| Mike Trout | 159 | 157 | 681 | 17 | 17 | 70 |
| Jose Altuve | 161 | 160 | 717 | 16 | 16 | 70 |
| Anthony Rizzo | 155 | 151 | 676 | 15 | 15 | 70 |
| Brandon Belt | 156 | 149 | 655 | 15 | 15 | 69 |
| Charlie Blackmon | 143 | 135 | 641 | 16 | 16 | 69 |
| Joey Votto | 158 | 155 | 677 | 16 | 16 | 68 |
| DJ LeMahieu | 146 | 144 | 635 | 16 | 15 | 64 |
| Freddie Freeman | 158 | 158 | 693 | 15 | 15 | 64 |
| Daniel Murphy | 142 | 134 | 582 | 14 | 14 | 64 |
| Miguel Cabrera | 158 | 156 | 679 | 15 | 15 | 62 |
| Ben Zobrist | 147 | 142 | 631 | 14 | 12 | 58 |
| Matt Carpenter | 129 | 125 | 566 | 14 | 13 | 56 |
| Robbie Grossman | 99 | 89 | 389 | 13 | 12 | 51 |
| Cameron Maybin | 94 | 89 | 391 | 12 | 12 | 48 |
| Josh Donaldson | 155 | 153 | 700 | 9 | 8 | 35 |
| Hyun Soo Kim | 95 | 78 | 346 | 8 | 6 | 22 |
| David Ortiz | 151 | 140 | 626 | – | – | – |
Well, OK: two outliers, I guess. But David Ortiz voluntarily stopped playing games. Kim, on the other hand, hasn’t walked away from the sport. The Orioles simply aren’t playing him. His plate-appearance total is less than half of every other active player except Donaldson, whose total would be higher if he were healthy. They have a lot of other players to whom they’d rather give time, it seems. Joey Rickard was the favorite at this time last season, and remains on the team, despite a career .312 OBP and a negative career DRS and UZR. He’s a candidate to be the next Willie Bloomquist.
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: Hello friends
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| 9:06 |
: Welcome to Friday baseball chat
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| 9:06 |
: Hello, friend!
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| 9:07 |
: Hello friend
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| 9:07 |
: How do you envision Marte playing when he comes back?
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| 9:07 |
: I don’t imagine much of anything is going to change
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Location: New York, N.Y.
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It seems Stephen Strasburg is underappreciated.
Maybe it’s because of the hype and expectations that surrounded his draft position and prospect pedigree. It doesn’t help that he’s only been able to reach 200 innings once in his career. His durability and total volume of innings are real issues. But when he’s on the mound he has some of the best stuff in the game, and I’m not sure his reputation matches his actual value. Since his return from Tommy John surgery, he has produced the 12th-most WAR amongst all pitchers (20.1).
As I wrote in our positional power rankings, Strasburg’s teammate Max Scherzer is a pretty good comp for Strasburg — on a per-inning basis, at least. Scherzer posted a 31.5% strikeout rate, 6.2% walk rate, and 33.0% ground-ball rate last season. Strasburg finished with marks of 30.6%, 7.4%, and 39.5%, respectively. They’re each 6-foot-4 right-handers. But while they’re carbon copies in terms of size, handedness, rate stats, and stuff, the principle difference is that Strasburg has failed to reach 150 innings in the last two seasons.
But there’s something else, too: it perpetually seems as though Strasburg fails to get all that he can out of his mid-90s fastball, fall-of-a-cliff curveball, and fading changeup. For three straight seasons, and also over the entirety of his career, Strasburg’s ERA has underperformed his FIP. Scherzer, meanwhile, has outpitched his FIP (if just slightly) as a National. Of course, there are a number of factors out of Strasburg’s control with regard to runs that appear on the scoreboard and within his pitching line, but it speaks perhaps to not maximizing his full run-preventing potential. Strasburg’s 3.60 ERA last season was quite a bit removed from his 2.92 FIP.
To his credit, Strasburg was always been in search of ways to improve. Back in 2014, he added a slider, though he decided to discard it after last season, believing it might have played a role in time missed due to a flexor mass strain last season. (Hitters also produced a .302 average and .500 slugging mark against the pitch.)
The big change this year for Strasburg is his decision to scrap his windup. It’s a move often made by relief pitchers, but less commonly adopted by starting pitchers. And for what it’s worth, Strasburg has been better with no runners on base — allowing a career opponent slash line of .211/.266/.333 — as opposed to when runners are on base (.244/.304/.383).
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 a midseason list 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.
Matt Cooper, RHP, Chicago AL (Profile)
For the duration of his professional career, Cooper has mostly looked like the sort of polished collegiate pitcher who’s capable of thriving against less refined competition in the lower minors but who lacks the arm speed to succeed against more advanced hitters. In 213.0 innings as a professional, the right-hander has produced strikeout and walk rates of 33.3% and 6.8%, respectively. Statistically, that renders him the minor-league equivalent of Max Scherzer or Noah Syndergaard — except for that Cooper (a) recorded many of those innings in a relief capacity and (b) has typically thrown a fastball that travels about 10 mph slower than either Scherzer or Syndergaard’s.
As I say, he’s typically thrown such a fastball. At midseason of last year, however, reports suggested that he’d added a bit of velocity, sitting more comfortably in the low 90s. And, promisingly, he’s proved capable of surviving thus far against Double-A competition. After a successful run as a reliever in the Southern League last year, the former 16th-round pick has recorded strikeout and walk rates of 47.1% and 5.9%, respectively, over the course of two starts so far in 2017.
Here’s video from last season of what appears to be Cooper’s changeup thrown from a very high arm slot:
