FanGraphs Baseball

When Jake Arrieta made his 2017 season debut, he raised a certain amount of alarm. Although he held the Cardinals to all of one single unearned run over six innings, his velocity was sharply down, and that never escapes an analyst’s notice. Arrieta, therefore, was immediately put on the watch list. The reasons, I’d say, were justifiable.

Arrieta just made his eighth start. As with his first, this one came in St. Louis. The good news? His velocity is coming back. Compared to that first game, Arrieta’s sinker bumped up by a tick and a half. The same thing happened with his curveball. His cutter jumped up even more. Joe Maddon said before he wasn’t worried about Arrieta’s zip, and now we’re seeing some more familiar readings. So much for that early-season panic.

Yet now there’s different early-season panic. Through his first eight games a year ago, Arrieta allowed a combined nine runs. This year, he’s allowed a combined 33. Arrieta’s sitting on a worse ERA than Jhoulys Chacin, and with the Cubs a game under .500, this, too, can’t escape notice. Arrieta doesn’t look like himself.

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Below, one finds the first edition of this year’s daily NERD scores. Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is mostly available here. Please do not expect to be impressed by any of it.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Wheeler (32.1 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Godley (12.0 IP, 69 xFIP-)
While Zack Godley’s occasional appearances on a major-league mound might not be universally regarded as “appointment television,” he’s been excellent over two starts this year, recording a swinging-strike rate (14.3%) and ground-ball rate (75.0%) that would rank sixth and first among the league’s 97 qualifiers at this point of the season. As a club, meanwhile, Arizona continues its exemplary baserunning, having recorded nearly twice as many runs as baseball’s second-best club by that measure.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Greg Harris, RHP, Tampa (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 29   Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 1 BB, 4 H, 2 ER, 11 K

Notes
After seeing Harris last fall, I projected him to the bullpen due to loose command. Other than one bad start on May 4 at Biloxi, however — when he walked four batters — he’s generally avoided issuing free passes, walking just six in 36 innings. Harris throws hard, in the low-to-mid 90s, has an above-average changeup, a viable cutter, and curveball. If he can maintain his upright, stiff-looking delivery and fill the zone, he could pitch in the back of a rotation. He has a 3.26 ERA at Double-A Montgomery.

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CLEVELAND – Byron Buxton sat before his locker in the road clubhouse at Progressive Field before a game last week, intermittently scrolling through his smart phone and chatting with several nearby teammates. As I approached Buxton to request an interview, his clubhouse neighbor, Miguel Sano, morphed from a 6-foot-4, 260-pound third baseman to clubhouse bouncer. He was prohibiting me from addressing Buxton until I paid a fee, something of a toll. He was joking, I think, and I played along, asking if he would give me a receipt for business expenses. While Sano, who’s known for his loquaciousness and sense of humor, prompted some laughter in the corner of the Twins clubhouse, he was also perhaps trying to protect his teammates a bit from another prying journalist.

Buxton wore the label of “No. 1 Prospect in the Game” for multiple years, which has placed his offensive struggles at the major-league level under great scrutiny. But no one has placed more pressure on Buxton than himself. And that pressure was creating something that prevents success from occurring in the batter’s box: anxiety.

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This is Alex Stumpf’s fourth piece as part of his May residency at FanGraphs. Stumpf covers the Pirates and also Duquesne basketball for The Point of Pittsburgh. You can find him on Twitter, as well. Read the work of previous residents here.

Andrew McCutchen is struggling early in the season. If you’ve followed him for the last three years, you’re aware that this is nothing new.

In 2015, he hit .194 in April. In 2016, he slumped his way to a .719 OPS through the first four months of the season. After getting benched for a series in Atlanta, he posted an .852 OPS over the rest of the campaign, just north of the .844 career mark he’d possessed entering the year.

Last year’s strong finish created optimism for this season. So far, however, McCutchen is slashing just .212/.218/.401, with a career worst 84 wRC+.

The absence of both Jung-Ho Kang and Starling Marte — due to visa issues and a PED suspension, respectively — means that the Pirates require an excellent performance from McCutchen just to keep the offense afloat. So far, that hasn’t happened. In fact, the results have been even worse recently: entering play Sunday, McCutchen had recorded a .132/.207/.302 line in 58 plate appearances since April 29th.

As usual, though, the results only tell part of the story. The quality of contact is sloping downward, too. In 2015, McCutchens’ exit velocity averaged out to 90.7 mph. In 2016, it was 89.6 mph. Through May 13th of this year, it was 87.6. The rate of balls hit at 95 mph or above is down, from 44.8% in 2015 to 42.6% in 2016 to 39.3% in 2017. The same goes for barrels, too, dropping from 9.5% to 8.5% to 5.6%.

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Over the winter, the Washington Nationals were interested in a bunch of closers. Most notably, they were the runners-up in the Kenley Jansen bidding, with Jansen publicly stating that the Nationals offered him more money than the Dodgers did. The team was also linked heavily to David Robertson in trade rumors, so it was a fairly surprising development when the team ended up not acquiring anyone to replace Mark Melancon, instead leaning on their internal options to fill the ninth inning void.

So far, it hasn’t gone well, with Shawn Kelley blowing another ninth inning lead yesterday, the third time this year the Nationals have lost a game they led headed into the ninth inning. Kelley’s blown save included his sixth home run allowed this year, a staggering total for a guy who has thrown just 11 1/3 innings so far in 2017. Blake Treinen and Koda Glover haven’t been much better, with Treinen walking too many guys and Glover striking out too few, so while the Nationals maintain a comfortable 7 1/2 game lead in the NL East, it’s becoming more and more obvious that the team will be making a trade for another closer this summer.

But while acquiring an available closer certainly may help, the reality is that the Nationals 2017 bullpen issue doesn’t appear to be as easily fixed as it was in 2016. Last year, the team had a bunch of quality setup guys pitching well in front of Jonathan Papelbon, and was able to solidify an already-strong unit by bringing in Melancon to anchor the squad. This year, though, the problems are running much deeper than just the ninth inning.

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Ian Happ made his MLB debut with the Cubs yesterday. He did so as a right fielder, which is one of four positions he’s played since Chicago drafted him ninth overall in 2015 out of the University of Cincinnati. But while versatility is handy, Happ’s bat is his calling card. The 22-year-old switch-hitter can mash.

Happ’s rapid ascent to the big leagues took him through Iowa, where he was slashing .298/.362/.615, with nine home runs, at the time of his call-up. And while he profiles more as a doubles machine than he does a home-run champion, his bombs aren’t anomalies. He has pop, and his approach is all about loft.

“I’m trying to hit balls in the air to center field,” explained Happ, who left the yard in his fourth big-league plate appearance. “If you get the ball in the air, you give yourself a chance to find some green and get on base. Ground balls are out. The instruction guys talk about trying to elevate, in order to produce. Your slugging percentage is in the air. You don’t slug on the ground.”

Happ doesn’t feel he’s markedly changed his approach, although he acknowledged that hitting the ball in the air wasn’t prioritized at the collegiate level. All in all, he’s pleased with how the Cubs organization has approached his development. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan follow up on two topics from the previous episode, announce an upcoming live event, banter about seven winning teams that weren’t supposed to win and Oakland’s monthly ballpark pass, and then discuss whether they’re pro- or anti-ties in baseball..

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