| 8:43 |
: The last few days have been more like
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| 8:44 |
: when I’m searching for my inner
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| 12:01 |
: Ever play in a league that had a 3rd place prize?
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| 12:01 |
: all the time
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| 12:01 |
: gub gub
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| 12:01 |
: bug
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The Angels, Mariners, and Rangers are all situated within a game of each other in FanGraphs’ projected standings.
The Blue Jays, Orioles, Royals, Tigers, and Yankees are also all bunched together with the those AL West clubs, all situated within in just three games of each other, suggesting there could be a crowded and parity-laden AL Wild Card race.
Any added value could be significant. For the Texas Rangers, there might be good news on that front. A full season of Jonathan Lucroy – who was acquired last summer – could offer additional benefits for Texas beyond the 3.7 WAR projected for him in the ZiPS forecasts.
Earlier this week, Texas Rangers manager Jeff Banister was asked by the Dallas Morning News about the benefits of Lucroy having a full season to work with the Rangers pitching staff.
“I think that it’s definitely going to be a benefit. He’s going to be able to learn the core guys that were here last year a little better. Obviously there’s some new guys coming in, but just to put his stamp and his brand on what he likes to do behind the plate and how he likes to call a guy. But we had a guy in Robinson Chirinos behind the plate that was a quality catcher too that helped these guys out. But I think the addition of Lucroy and what he’ll be able to do, just him as a hitter but also his game planning and our overall philosophy all year long will be a plus.”
To quantify all the ways Lucroy and the Rangers might benefit from Lucroy’s ability to work with his pitchers in February rather than on the fly in August is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. Last season, was a different kind of year for Lucroy.
Consider: from 2011 to 2015, Lucroy never caught more than 22 different pitchers in any given season. In 2016, meanwhile, Lucroy caught 40 different pitchers, including 18 new Rangers teammates after coming over from the deadline.
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about how and why the Astros and Royals seem to have exchanged strategies and revisit champagne in the clubhouse and trampolines, then answer listener emails about what to hack if you were hacking, Statcast and baserunning, catcher framing, and Mike Trout.
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Episode 713
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. On this edition of the program, he examines the very different experiences two evaluators might have while observing the same short, right-handed pitcher — and how those two experiences might ultimately be resolved into some kind of mutual understanding. He also addresses the Oakland A’s, a club that produced one of the top BaseRuns records just two years ago but which has received very poor projections for 2017.
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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 37 min play time.)
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I talk about James Paxton a lot. I talk about him a lot because I like him a lot. I’m probably the biggest Paxton fan on staff. I might be the biggest Paxton fan on the continent. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn I have more confidence in 2017 James Paxton than James Paxton does. Why am I losing my mind over a 28-year-old with less than 300 big-league innings? This is basically why:
That plot shows every starter who threw at least 50 innings in each of the last two years. I’ve highlighted the Paxton dot in blue. This one is easy to eyeball. By strike rate, Paxton had the biggest year-to-year improvement. And by average fastball speed, Paxton also had the biggest year-to-year improvement. That’s a hell of a one-two punch, and it makes you wonder about the Paxton breakout. More specifically, does this make Paxton a breakout candidate, or did the breakout already happen? “Mid-breakout” might be the best way to describe him. He’s on the way, but he could be more consistent.
In the plot above, Paxton stands way out from the crowd. Yet that doesn’t make him the only pitcher of interest. Who else gained both strikes and speed? Spoiler alert: Read this post’s headline.
They give out Silver Slugger awards to pitchers, which is funny. Pitchers are terrible. Last year, pitchers had a wRC+ of -15. The year before, they had a wRC+ of -16. wRC+ is a statistic with a plus in the name. Jake Arrieta won the award this past season, recognition for having hit as well as Howie Kendrick and Scooter Gennett. I guess, in the world today, you don’t want to hurt feelings and leave anyone out. So pitchers are sluggers too. Okay.
To Arrieta’s credit, he was bad only relative to major-league hitters. He was tremendous relative to major-league hitting pitchers. He led the way with a 91 wRC+, and he knocked a couple of home runs. He even ran an OBP a little north of .300. The Cubs didn’t need the help, but when Arrieta was on the mound, they effectively had an AL lineup. Just another thing that went well for Chicago.
There’s just one problem. I get it — Arrieta appears to be a fine pick. I, personally, would’ve looked at wRC+, myself. But by picking Arrieta, the award selectors whiffed. I’m not sufficiently interested in the award to look up who does the voting in the first place, but we just saw the best pitcher-hitting season of the DH era, and Arrieta didn’t have it.
We’re headed down the homestretch of our position-by-position look at hitter contact quality, utilizing granular exit speed and launch angle data. Last week, we examined American League right fielders; today, we turn our focus to their National League counterparts.
History dictates that a single month of baseball — say, 20 or 30 games — isn’t sufficient to reveal which teams are legitimate playoff contenders and which aren’t. In some cases, a club jumps out to a hot start only to fade away as the season continues. This was the case both for the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies last year. Other teams might follow an arc more like the Texas Rangers in 2015, starting off slowly only to pick up speed by the end of the season. As such, it’s generally wise to refrain from reaching any strong conclusions about the standings in early May.
That being said, I’ll be paying especially close attention to the Baltimore Orioles at the beginning of the 2017 season. The team could find themselves at a crossroads this year if contention seems unlikely, which could lead to one of the more interesting sell-offs in recent times.
An initial glance at the Orioles roster might not reveal a team that’s primed to sell. Teams with a collection of free agents (like Kansas City) or in the midst of a rebuild (like a number of teams) would seem to provide better trading partners than Baltimore. Here are the Orioles’ pending free agents at the end of the 2017 season.
| Name | Age | Projected WAR | 2017 Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welington Castillo | 30 | 1.7 | $6.0 M |
| Chris Tillman | 29 | 1.5 | $10.1 M |
| Ubaldo Jimenez | 33 | 1.4 | $13.5 M |
| J.J. Hardy | 34 | 1.3 | $14.0 M |
| Seth Smith | 34 | 1.3 | $7.0 M |
| Hyun Soo Kim | 29 | 1.1 | $4.2 M |
| TOTAL | 8.3 | $54.8 M |
So that’s not really a lot to sell at the deadline. We don’t see a single player even projected to provide average production over the course of next season. The best might be Welington Castillo. Given that he was just signed for $6 million, however — and holds a player option for $7 million — it wouldn’t seem that his trade value would be quite high. Hardy is a glove-first shortstop while Smith and Kim are part-time bats. Jimenez would have to undergo a pretty big rebound to have decent value. That leaves Tillman as the only real potential trade chip.
First, some data.
| Player | Games Played | Home Runs |
|---|---|---|
| Alex Rodriguez | 1114 | 298 |
| Jimmie Foxx | 1109 | 266 |
| Eddie Mathews | 1029 | 253 |
| Albert Pujols | 933 | 250 |
| Mickey Mantle | 1102 | 249 |
| Mel Ott | 1288 | 242 |
| Frank Robinson | 1050 | 241 |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | 1057 | 238 |
| Orlando Cepeda | 1062 | 222 |
| Andruw Jones | 1137 | 221 |
| Hank Aaron | 1039 | 219 |
| Juan Gonzalez | 817 | 214 |
| Johnny Bench | 1094 | 212 |
| Miguel Cabrera | 1040 | 209 |
| Jose Canseco | 853 | 209 |
| Giancarlo Stanton | 827 | 208 |
This is quite an illustrious list! We have quite a few Hall of Famers, we have a few slam-dunk future members of that group, and we have Jose Canseco. There’s also one Giancarlo Stanton there, and that’s who we’ll be discussing herein.
Stanton is something of a mythic figure in today’s game. Seen only in bursts, and sequestered away with an under-followed franchise at an ill-attended park, Stanton often only reveals himself to the average fan in highlight reels and on magazine covers. Stanton is the strongest man in the league, a demigod among mere mortal dinger-hitters. He makes the cavernous stadium in Miami look tiny. He breaks scoreboards.
Imagine what we’d see from Stanton if he stayed healthy.
Stanton just completed his age-26 season. He’s played in just 827 games so far. As you can see above, that’s the second-lowest figure of the group, 10 games more than Juan Gonzalez. His seasons have a habit of being derailed by injury: only once has he reached the 150-game mark. Even still, he’s never hit fewer than 20 homers — not even when he played just 74 games in 2015. That was the year Stanton hit 27 bombs, played his final game in June, and still finished 10th in the National League in home runs.
That’s the kind of talent and raw power that Stanton possess. It’s the sort of prowess on which you can dream, and has already produced more than 200 home runs and 27 WAR. How many home runs can Stanton tack on? Is he going to reach 500 before his career is over? 600?
Many of the relatively well known — and relatively expensive — imported bats from foreign pro leagues have adapted quickly and proficiently to major-league pitching in recent years.
We’re familiar with what Yoenis Cespedes and Jose Abreu have accomplished. Jung Ho Kang, when he’s on the field, has silenced questions about his ability to hit velocity. Dae-Ho Lee arrived with more modest expectations but was still a league-average bat (102 wRC+) last year in his first year in the majors, and Hyun Soo Kim posted a .382 on-base mark and 119 wRC+ in his first season in transitioning from the KBO to the majors.
Which brings us to Byung-ho Park. Park came advertised with 80-grade power, according to some evalutors, and he demonstrated last year that the power was very, very real.
Of course, Park didn’t display that power very often, because he didn’t make contact often enough.
Park struck out a lot.
