We’ve been at it for some time now, utilizing granular exit-speed and launch-angle data to evaluate 2016 contact management (for ERA title-qualifying pitchers) and contact quality (for regular hitters) performances on a position-by-position, league-by-league basis. To wrap up this series of posts, we’ll next look at additional pitchers and hitters who didn’t meet the playing time thresholds to be covered previously.
When I was researching a piece about the Cubs’ clubhouse culture last month and the similarities it shared with the Clemson football program (i.e. it’s OK to have fun), I stumbled upon an interesting detail about the Cubs’ new clubhouse.
I knew the Cubs had the celebration room, regarded by some as a superfluous addition to the clubhouse. There’s also an impressive new strength-and-conditioning component. The old clubhouse, something of an subterranean alley way, was converted into a batting cage. There are a number of other amenities, as well, as one might expect of a new facility like this. The new clubhouse’s footprint of 30,000 square feet is about a quarter of the size of the Wrigley Field playing surface.
But it’s one of the smaller departments of the new clubhouse that I find interesting – the actual locker room space within the clubhouse. From an Associated Press story:
The Cubs decided to go with a circular shape — 60 feet, 6 inches in diameter, matching the distance on a baseball field between the mound and home plate — rather than the more conventional rectangle to encourage more unity and equality. There are no preferred corner lockers. Everyone can see one another.
Almost every other major-league home clubhouse I have entered is rectangular in shape. Certain locker spaces, like those with no neighboring locker on one side, are reserved for the most senior and/or most talented players. It’s not unlike the corner offices in your work place, which you might be hesitant to enter unannounced. There’s a sort of hierarchy of locker space, with certain players benefiting from a location next to unused locker space, which they use to store their spill-over belongings. The middle relievers, the bench players: they typically have no such luxuries.
While I’m not an expert in clubhouse design — nor the social manners and customs within those spaces — and while I’m only permitted clubhouse access along with other media for specific periods before and after games, I suspect the traditional clubhouse shape and layout does not always foster optimum discussion and collaboration opportunities.
And, to continue a theme from last week here at FanGraphs, one the great inefficiencies in today’s game is communication. Every club has the access to the same information, or similar information, but clubs ask different questions of the information and share information differently. I presume that there are different levels of collaboration in every organization.
It’s exciting to have so many statistics available to us when we’re trying to evaluate our favorite players. From the players’ perspective, though, it’s probably more exciting when those statistics allow them to improve themselves. From that point of view, metrics like launch angle and spin rate probably have a certain appeal that some others don’t: they provide a measurement of something that might help a player understand his game and get better.
There’s one problem, though — with spin rate, at least. Indications are that it’s difficult for a pitcher to change his in any material way. Still, as Jeremy Jeffress may have found, it can provide a window into betterment.
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan preview the Red Sox’ 2017 season with Alex Speier of the The Boston Globe and the Reds’ 2017 season with Zach Buchanan of the The Cincinnati Enquirer.
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As spring-training camps open this week, as pitchers and catchers report to complexes across sunny Arizona and Florida, we are about to be inundated with stories suggesting a number of players are in the best shape of their careers. These are often players coming off down years, or veteran players who’ve dedicated the offseason to better diet and exercise with a view to lengthening their careers, or maturing players who’ve become more serious about their training and conditioning. Such claims are less often associated with 24-year-old pitchers who’ve just led the majors in WAR (6.5) and fastball velocity (98 mph) the previous season.
But Noah Syndergaard arrived bigger and stronger to Mets camp in Port St. Lucie, Florda, claiming to have added 15 pounds of muscle.
Syndergaard told the the New York Post and other outlets about one of his favorite dishes, which he used to add the lean mass and perhaps fight against deer overpopulation:
“My go-to is the Bowl of Doom,” Syndergaard said. “It’s sweet potato and hash with bacon, and you have buffalo in it and venison sausage, avocado and scrambled eggs, and that is plenty. That’s primarily what my diet consisted of this offseason.”
Resident pitching guru Eno Sarris already wrote this afternoon that the weight gain and other potential improvements could mean even better things for Syndergaard.
Maybe because it’s an example of the Best Shape of His Life story taken to its inevitable conclusion or maybe because it’s the only news that’s occurred other than pitchers and catchers saying “here” in a spring-training facility somewhere. In either case, it seems relevant to discuss how Noah Syndergaard showed up to camp with a reported extra 17 pounds of muscle.
To understand the implications of that weight gain, we’d ideally examine big weight gainers of the past and use that data to discuss the situation. Unfortunately, that’s not really an option: listed weights are notoriously incorrect and also don’t change on a yearly basis.
What we can do is look at the best available research on strength training and pitching. We can also look at the pitcher himself and put this newest change in the context of the individual. Once you do, it doesn’t seem so drastic. Then the weight change is just another in a line of ambitious adjustments Syndergaard has already tackled.
You can learn a lot about a hitter by the way he gets pitched to. Granted, you can also learn a lot about a hitter by the way that he hits, but when you look at the approach, you learn something about perception. You learn how opponents see the hitter. Two useful measures: fastball rate, and zone rate. You could of course go deeper than this, but fastball rate tells you something about fear. The same goes for zone rate. If someone keeps getting fastballs in the zone, the pitchers probably aren’t afraid. If someone rarely sees fastballs or pitches in the zone, well, something else is going on.
Some 2016 numbers, for reference:
| Split | Fastball% | Zone% |
|---|---|---|
| Pitchers | 71% | 55% |
| Non-Pitchers | 56% | 48% |
| Top 25 ISO | 53% | 45% |
| Bottom 25 ISO | 59% | 49% |
You can see how aggressively pitchers are attacked by other pitchers. The fastball rate skyrockets, and you get five out of nine pitches in the strike zone. More powerful hitters see fewer fastballs, and fewer strikes. Less powerful hitters see more fastballs, and more strikes. This is all easy and intuitive, and although there are other variables to consider, we’ve touched on the big stuff.
Using these statistics, we can attempt to quantify a hitter’s intimidation. No, it’s not perfect, but I’ve still run the math, calculating z-scores for both of the rates. The last step is just adding the two z-scores together. In this table, the least intimidating hitters in baseball in 2016, given a minimum of 200 plate appearances.
| Player | Season | Fastball%, z | Zone%, z | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ben Revere | 2016 | 3.5 | 1.9 | 5.3 |
| Nori Aoki | 2016 | 1.8 | 2.6 | 4.4 |
| J.B. Shuck | 2016 | 1.9 | 2.1 | 4.0 |
| Billy Burns | 2016 | 1.2 | 2.7 | 3.9 |
| Shawn O’Malley | 2016 | 1.9 | 1.9 | 3.8 |
| J.J. Hardy | 2016 | 1.5 | 2.2 | 3.7 |
| Angel Pagan | 2016 | 2.6 | 0.9 | 3.5 |
| DJ LeMahieu | 2016 | 2.3 | 1.0 | 3.3 |
| Darwin Barney | 2016 | 1.3 | 1.9 | 3.2 |
| Derek Norris | 2016 | 1.6 | 1.6 | 3.2 |
It’s Ben Revere! And it’s Ben Revere by a mile. Revere just saw 70% fastballs, and he saw 52% of all pitches in the strike zone. That’s not quite where pitchers wound up, collectively, but Revere was nearly pitched like a pitcher, and that certainly sends a message. No one was afraid of him, and not coincidentally, Revere finished with a 47 wRC+. He did, though, smack a couple of dingers.
For some context, I calculated numbers for individual hitter-seasons throughout the PITCHf/x era, stretching back to 2008. Where did Revere’s season rank in terms of its unintimidatingness?
| Player | Season | Fastball%, z | Zone%, z | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| David Eckstein | 2009 | 3.1 | 2.7 | 5.8 |
| David Eckstein | 2010 | 3.1 | 2.5 | 5.6 |
| Marco Scutaro | 2013 | 2.6 | 2.9 | 5.5 |
| Nick Punto | 2013 | 2.8 | 2.7 | 5.5 |
| Ben Revere | 2016 | 3.5 | 1.9 | 5.3 |
| Jason Kendall | 2010 | 2.8 | 2.5 | 5.3 |
| David Eckstein | 2008 | 2.8 | 2.2 | 5.1 |
| Denard Span | 2011 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 5.0 |
| Ryan Hanigan | 2015 | 1.9 | 3.0 | 4.9 |
| A.J. Ellis | 2015 | 3.0 | 1.9 | 4.9 |
Not a bad showing — fifth place, out of 3,148 hitter-seasons. David Eckstein occupies the top two spots, and, sure, of course he does. Because I’m sure you’d wonder, the lowest combined score is -6.7, belonging to 2012 Josh Hamilton. Pitchers definitely didn’t want to throw him any fastballs, and they didn’t want to risk anything he’d find particularly hittable.
Back to Revere. There was an article on Nationals.com after the home run embedded above, which was Revere’s first of the season. Said Dusty Baker, unironically, or maybe ironically, how should I know:
“I’m just hoping he doesn’t get that dreadful disease of home run-itis,” Baker said.
Said Revere, referring to same:
“If I try to hit it in the air, I’ll probably be at .250 or a Mendoza-line .200 hitter. But if I hit the ball on the ground or line drives, I’ll be .300 for a long time.”
Revere ran the same ground-ball rate he had as a regular in 2015, when he hit .306. He finished the year batting .217.
The Dodgers signed Franklin Gutierrez over the weekend. Now, I didn’t realize the Dodgers still had room on their major-league roster, but they probably know better than I do. Here is a list of problems that have sent Franklin Gutierrez to the disabled list over the past several years:
Related to the above, here are Gutierrez’s year-to-year plate-appearance totals after getting traded to the Mariners:
That zero stands out. Gutierrez missed all of 2014, making the personal decision to sit out so he could focus on treatment. Treatment for what? Treatment for ankylosing spondylitis! Young athletes are not often diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, but Gutierrez was, and there isn’t a cure. It’s a condition he’ll deal with for the rest of his life, and it costs him flexibility and mobility. It’s cruel and unrelenting, and when Gutierrez elected to not play, he couldn’t have known whether he’d ever be able to return.
But he tried in 2015. He tried, and he succeeded, having settled on a treatment plan that left him feeling somewhat okay. Gutierrez batted almost 200 times with the 2015 Mariners, and then he batted almost 300 times with the 2016 Mariners. And the player that Gutierrez turned himself into was and is dramatically different from the player he’d been before.
| Years | PA | Def/600 | BB% | K% | wRC+ | ISO | HR/FB% | Hard% | Zone% | WAR/600 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 – 2010 | 1999 | 18.3 | 7% | 21% | 94 | 0.143 | 9% | 32% | 53% | 3.6 |
| 2015 – 2016 | 472 | -10.3 | 9% | 29% | 135 | 0.255 | 30% | 44% | 45% | 3.7 |
That’s a comparison of recent Gutierrez to what’s basically peak, healthy Gutierrez. Earlier in his career, Gutierrez was as smooth an outfield defender as anyone had ever seen. He was one of the best defensive players in baseball, and at the plate, he showed some promising pop. Now look at the last two years. Gutierrez has become a negative defensive asset, because he simply doesn’t move so well anymore. For the same reason, he’s seldom aggressive on the bases. So much of that old athleticism is gone, and it’ll never return. But Gutierrez has found a way to compensate. He’s gotten bigger, and he’s made a conscious effort to try to just beat the living crap out of the ball.
Some percentile rankings from the last two years:
No hitter in baseball has managed a higher rate of home runs per fly ball. Gutierrez has some of the best hard-contact measures around, having sacrificed contact to get there. At this point, he has a lot of power and a lot of swing-and-miss, and so pitchers increasingly treat Gutierrez like a terrifying threat, avoiding fastballs and avoiding the zone. As far as other things go, Gutierrez can still play the outfield, but he isn’t very good at it. And there will be days he’ll wake up and he simply won’t be able to play. On those days, his condition won’t let him.
The reality is, Gutierrez isn’t getting healthier. And teams are reluctant to sign a player whose availability is unpredictable. From time to time, the Dodgers might end up frustrated, playing games with a short bench. But they know what they’re getting into, and they know what Gutierrez has been able to do since his return. Having lost a lot of his ability to move around, Gutierrez has focused on more light jogs and fewer hard sprints. He remains active with his 34th birthday coming next week, and given where he’s been, that’s almost impossible to believe.
Location: New York
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The Braves aren’t going to go very far this year: that’s an assertion that’s unlikely to bite me six months from now. Both our Depth Charts projections and Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA forecast Atlanta failing to clear the 80-win threshold. The acquisition of Brandon Phillips over the weekend did little, if anything, to change that. Phillips is roundly projected to be just a touch over replacement level this season. The man he’s supplanting, Jace Peterson, is who you see a picture of when you look up “replacement level” in the baseball dictionary. Peterson has taken more than a thousand trips to the plate and played more than 2,000 innings in the field. He’s put up a career WAR of 0.4. Phillips needn’t do much to represent an upgrade.
That’s good, because (as just stated) Phillips probably isn’t going to represent much of an upgrade — a sentiment that basically other every club appears to share. Nor do new additions Bartolo Colon or R.A. Dickey, or Jaime Garcia appear set to turn the club around. The Braves have spent their winter loading up on veterans on one-year deals like these players, using them to round out a roster that has some desirable elements and other pieces that are less helpful. There’s unquestionably value in replacing bad players with somewhat competent ones.
Doing that isn’t enough to make the Braves contenders. They seem to understand this, of course. The Braves don’t appear to be banking on a postseason spot this year. They’re unlikely to compete with the Mets and Nationals in the NL East, and their projected high-70s win total puts them in position to have another nice draft. Even with all the Freddie Freeman in the world, the Braves are no match for the forces of superior baseball and sweet, sweet prospects.
What they do seem to have done is field a team that’s palatable enough to draw people into their new taxpayer-funded stadium. Because of that new stadium, the organization will attempt to pull of a difficult balancing act this year. Fans will need to be sold on the product currently on the field, and on what’s to come.
