Rob Kaminsky got off to a rocky start in 2016. His delivery compromised by a balky back, he put up plenty of clunkers. Over his first 10 outings for Double-A Akron, the Cleveland pitching prospect allowed 30 runs in 45 innings of work. He also spent time on the disabled list. All in all, Kaminsky was a wreck.

Then things turned around. Buoyed by mechanical fine-tuning that accompanied his rehab sessions, the young southpaw was a stud from mid-June onward. In his last 17 starts, Kaminsky allowed two-or-fewer runs 14 times. Over that span, which included the Eastern League playoffs, he hurled 103 frames and saw just 30 runners cross the plate.

Despite his rebound — and having pitched the entire season as a 21-year-old in Double-A — Kaminsky is going in the wrong direction with regard to prospect rankings. He’s plummeted all the way to 26th on Baseball America’s Indians list after coming in at No. 9 a year ago. Our own prospect guru, Eric Longenhagen, has Kaminsky 14th, which is six spots lower than he was 12 months ago.

How did the 5-foot-11 left-hander’s season unfold, and what looms in his future? Here are answers to those questions, courtesy of Kaminsky himself, and Dave Wallace, who was his manager in Akron.

———

Wallace: “If I had to pick one story from this year — pick a specific player — [Kaminsky] would be it. He was absolutely our bulldog down the stretch, and in the second half in general. But in the first half, there were some games that weren’t pretty. He had some significant delivery adjustments that needed to be made. And they weren’t easy.”

Kaminsky: “I would have benched myself, with the first half I had. Everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. I was pitching terrible, and I was pitching hurt. But there were some days I actually felt alright and still got hit around, so it’s not something I can completely blame on the injury. I need to take some ownership of my performance.”

Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Oakland Athletics. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / Miami / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Yesterday, in these pages, Jeff Sullivan wrote a brief post entitled “How Much Hope Do the Bad Teams Have?” In it, he examined the end-of-season outcomes for clubs that had received uninspiring preseason projections. It’s likely that Sullivan’s post has some relevance to this Oakland club as it’s currently constructed.

According to Dan Szymborski’s computer, only two field players, Marcus Semien (627 PA, 2.7 zWAR) and Stephen Vogt (467, 2.1), are expected to exceed the two-win threshold, typically the mark of an average player. By comparison, the Milwaukee Brewers — a club definitively in the midst of a rebuild — feature six field players forecast for two or more wins. Minnesota also has six. San Diego, five.

One, searching for optimism, might note that a number of Oakland’s starters — Rajai Davis (410, 1.1) and Jed Lowrie (399, 0.4), for instance — receive only modest plate-appearance projections, and thus better prorated figures. That said, the playing-time numbers are based on sums from previous seasons, too, which themselves have been modest due either to injury or role.

Read the rest of this entry »

What happened to Clayton Kershaw in Game 6 of the NLCS? According to a new study by Northwestern University, maybe it was jet lag.

Looking at 20 major-league seasons and 40,000 games’ worth of data, researchers found that jet lag perceptibly “impairs” player and team performance. The study is likely to be passed around many major-league front offices and strength-and-training departments. In a sport where every team is looking for hidden value at the margins, the value of better rest and recovery is just beginning to be explored, understood and focused upon — and is perhaps a considerable inefficiency in the game.

Dr. Ravi Allada, a circadian-rhythms expert, led the study:

“The negative effects of jet lag we found are subtle, but they are detectable and significant. And they happen on both offense and defense and for both home and away teams, often in surprising ways….

“For Game 6, the teams had returned to Chicago from LA, and this time the Cubs scored five runs off of Kershaw, including two home runs. While it’s speculation, our research would suggest that jet lag was a contributing factor in Kershaw’s performance.”

One of the homers in question:

Of course, Kershaw did pitch on extra rest that start, and Kyle Hendricks himself did just fine after traveling back east, but perhaps the rest could not save Kershaw from the clutches of jet lag.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The results are in, and Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez are Hall of Famers. Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman aren’t — at least not yet. Today, I’ll take my mostly annual look at the results within the context of recent history. How far did we progress toward alleviating the ballot logjam that has plagued the sport for quite a while now?

Read the rest of this entry »

In one way, Mike Schmidt is the prototypical third baseman: he was a great hitter and provided excellent defense. In another way, though, he isn’t: a prototype is a model on which subsequent reproductions are based. But no other third basemen has ever reproduced Schmidt’s accomplishments. He’s the best third baseman ever.

There’s a view that’s prevailed for some time to the effect that third basemen are just like first basemen except slightly more mobile. This was never really the case, though — and, on offense, third basemen now have a lot more in common with second basemen than their counterparts on the other corner of the diamond. This view likely cost Ron Santo the chances to enter the Hall of Fame by way of the writers’ ballot and, ultimately, prevented him from living to see his own induction.

A very similar player, Scott Rolen, will appear on the ballot for the first time in 2017. Based on the value he provided both on offense and on defense, Rolen deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Here are some mostly mainstream stats, with a few other metrics worked in, comparing Santo and Rolen:

That’s pretty darn close across the board. Rolen’s capacity for doubles resulted in a much higher slugging percentage. Because he played in an era defined by greater run-scoring, though, he sits slightly behind Santo in wRC+. Rolen closes the gap with superior defensive numbers, however — only Brooks Robinson and Mike Schmidt have more Gold Gloves than Rolen at third base, if you’re into that sort of thing — to end up with nearly identical WAR numbers.

Individual comparisons often make for a poor method for evaluating a potential Hall of Famer’s case. Going to the lowest common denominator will inevitably end up lowering standards for the Hall of Fame. (Consider what would happen if comparing every outfielder to Jim Rice, every first baseman to Orlando Cepeda, every second baseman to Red Schoendienst, etc.) That said, comparing a candidate to a clearly deserving member of the Hall can provide solid insight.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below, please rate your favorite baseball team. Is that so hard?

In last Friday’s Effectively Wild podcast, we evaluated the Orioles against every other team. Of course, we did it subjectively, and we did it on the fly, but most of the time it wasn’t hard for us to make up our minds. The question we tried to answer 29 times: Would this given team trade everything for the Orioles’ everything?

I liked the exercise, but we only did it for Baltimore. That, in turn, left me wishing we had some information about the entire landscape. And so, per usual, this is where I’m bringing you into the fold. You all can provide that information about the entire landscape. Because our audience comprises fans of everyone out there, and you’re a knowledgeable bunch. So I’m very excited to see how you respond.

Beneath the fold, there are 30 polls, one for every organization. You probably have a favorite one. You might have a favorite two or three. For your favorite team(s), I’d like for you to select a rating, based on as many factors as you can imagine. This isn’t just about the short-term; this isn’t just about 2017. Think of it as a rating of your team’s overall outlook, weighted according to your own priorities. Consider the players on the roster today. Consider their contract statuses. Consider the strength of the farm system. Consider the financial resources available, and consider the people responsible for how all that money gets assigned. In a sense, it’s a different way of asking how many games you think a team will win over the coming five or 10 years. Is your organization looking awesome across the board? Is it miserable across the board? Do you love the future more than the present? Is the team competitive but approaching a cliff? How do you feel about that, personally?

With every one of these polling projects, I know that nothing is perfect. At the end of the day, you’re a fan, and you can know only so much. But it’s not like there’s way superior information available, and this is the easiest way to get it all in one place. In short: Please rate the health of your favorite baseball organization. Think about the players, young and old, and think about the people in charge of them. In a day or two, I’ll be able to analyze how everyone answered. And that’s going to be a whole lot of fun! Thank you in advance for your participation and enthusiasm. Onward.

Read the rest of this entry »

There may be no more confounding player in baseball than Yasiel Puig. His natural talent seems boundless. For bursts of weeks and months, Puig will look for all the world like a demigod in a Dodgers uniform, mashing and running and throwing like he was put on this planet to torture pitchers and baserunners.

Those stretches of time have grown scarcer, however. Every year since his blistering 2013 debut, Puig’s wRC+ has steadily fallen. It wasn’t as apparent in his five-win 2014, and frankly nobody expected him to keep up the 160 wRC+ he’d notched the year before. The last two years, though, have been rough. Puig has been limited to just 183 games since the start of 2015. He’s been sidelined by a variety of injuries, and that’s affected both his playing time and (likely) his production. Puig was even sequestered away in Triple-A for a month this year.

The question of who Puig really is as a player might be an easy one, but it feels complicated. Is he still going to be a star? How many offseasons in a row have we had this conversation now? Why do we care so much about a man who may just be a good-but-not-great cog on a great team? There have been plenty of blue-chip prospects who have developed into merely average players before, and there will be again. Puig may be the latest in that long line. It’s a simple answer, and it’s an acceptable one. What is it about Yasiel Puig that captures your attention and imagination?

It’s this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Blanton was all kinds of “meh” as a starting pitcher.

In 1,553 career innings a starter – his role during the first nine years of his career – Blanton produced a 4.47 ERA and 4.20 FIP. He was a back-of-the-rotation arm. He soaked up innings. His starts were not going to spike ratings or attendance or win expectancy.

But in 2015 he found himself in the Kansas City bullpen and something strange occurred: he became one of the game’s most effective relievers despite an atypical tools profile.

Blanton was effective in the Royals’ bullpen, and when he was traded to the Pirates at the trade deadline, he was again successful in a relief role. During the following offseason, he signed a modest one-year, $4 million deal with the Dodgers and was, again, successful pitching out of the bullpen.

Since 2015, Blanton has appeared in 107 games, all as a reliever. In that time he ranks 11th in ERA (2.29) among all relievers, 24th in FIP (3.02) and 26th in K-BB% (19.1 points).

So what’s strange — in an era during which we hear more interest and talk about teams relying more heavily on their bullpens, when we saw inspired bullpen usage by the Cleveland Indians and other clubs in the postseason — what’s strange is Blanton remains available in free agency.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over 450 innings into his major-league career, Kyle Hendricks possesses both an ERA under 3.00 and a third-place finish in Cy Young voting. That’s impressive. Even after accounting for the regression he’s likely to experience in the future, he’s nevertheless proven himself to be an apt pitcher at the major-league level, something that we didn’t see coming as he ascended the ranks as a prospect. He’s done enough to wonder why we missed on him, and what he can teach us about other young pitchers out there.

Read the rest of this entry »