Read the rest of this entry »

When a top prospect completes his ascension through the minor leagues and begins to carve out the early stages of a big-league career, a little war wages in all our heads, whether we know it or not. It’s the battle between our pre-debut perception of that player and our post-debut perception. Really, it’s just a variation of the age-old debate of scouts vs. stats.

When a player debuts, our knowledge of his skill set and abilities is limited almost entirely to the information found in public scouting reports. Sure, there’s minor-league numbers, too, but those can often be misleading or difficult to translate. Early on in a player’s career, the scouting report trumps all.

The more we see of the player in the majors, though, the more data we collect, and the balance of power regarding what informs our perception begins to shift from the scouting reports to the stats. The major-league stats become not only the more recent information but the more detailed. Sometimes, the data aligns with what the scouts reported. Other times, the two are at odds. It’s up to the individual to decide how much weight to give to either side, and why.

Twins rookie Max Kepler hit three homers against the Indians the other day, and has been among baseball’s best hitters since the All-Star Break. Digging through his scouting reports recently, something stuck out. Any emphasis that follows is mine.

Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Boston at Seattle | 22:10 ET
Pomeranz (116.1 IP, 90 xFIP-) vs. Miranda (2.0 IP, 38 xFIP-)
Cuban left-hander Ariel Miranda, signed originally by Baltimore for $725,000 and recently just traded to Seattle for Wade Miley, is expected to record his first major-league start tonight. Though lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen gave the 27-year-old a future-value grade of only 40, he also suggested that said grade didn’t fully account for all the possible outcomes regarding Miranda.

From Longenhagen’s report:

While he only projects as a back-end starter or up-and-down type of pitcher, I think there’s a chance the Mariners have netted themselves an arm that can compete every fifth day rather than one upon which they call merely in emergencies. Cuban prospects have been volatile because, at least in part, of how inconsistently they play in real games leading up to their MiLB/MLB careers. It’s possible Miranda is just now beginning to hit his stride and that the Mariners have caught some lightning in a bottle, even if it’s just an inning-eating, slightly above-replacement kind of lightning.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Pitchers’ duels or slugfests?” It’s a lot like asking “beer or tacos?” There’s a pretty good chance you like both. At the same time, you might have a preference. Some would rather see an 11-10 game than a 1-0 game. Others would prefer to see a pair of pitchers match zeroes into the late innings.

What about the men behind the microphones? Do they consider one more enjoyable than the other? I asked a cross section of MLB broadcasters for their preference — pitchers’ duel or slugfest — urging that they try not to stay neutral. Here is what they had to say.

———

Uri Berenguer, Boston Red Sox (Spanish-language) radio: “It seems to get more exciting when it’s a slugfest, but after too many of them, it’s too much excitement. Too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing… except when it comes to pitching. My preference is the pitchers’ duel.

“I really appreciate the craft of pitching. There’s something to be said about a pitcher who really knows how to manipulate the ball and make the best hitters in the world look silly. When you have one of those guys on the mound on a given night, it’s impressive. When you have two of those guys going at it, that’s baseball.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I wrote about the emergence of Mariners reliever Edwin Diaz, in part because, on Tuesday, I watched him record his first career big-league save in dominating fashion. I was watching the Mariners and the Red Sox because that game was of some interest to me. I wasn’t watching the A’s and the Angels, because that game was not of some interest to me. It would’ve been of interest to almost no one — the game had zero playoff implications. What happened at the end of that game, though, was that Cam Bedrosian recorded his first career big-league save in dominating fashion. If I’m going to be honest, I’ve been more aware of Diaz’s success than I have of Bedrosian’s. Right now I want to try to make up for that.

Even though Bedrosian was a first-round pick in 2010, I first became aware of him in 2014. He got my attention by steamrolling through the minors — when he was first brought up to the majors, it was because in 24 minor-league innings, he’d struck out 45 batters, allowing a .285 OPS. The results were obscene, but they didn’t repeat in the bigs, so Bedrosian started bouncing back and forth. Between later big-league promotions, Bedrosian threw nine innings in the minors, striking out 22 while allowing another .285 OPS. Bedrosian made a mockery of lesser opponents. His inability to get outs with the Angels was frustrating, and I gradually lost interest. Sometimes the lower-level freaks don’t become upper-level freaks.

With the Angels in 2014, Bedrosian was bad. With the Angels in 2015, he was hardly any better. With the Angels in 2016, he’s been one of the game’s best relievers. Only Zach Britton has him in ERA. That’s a fine name to look up to.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about a hard-to-believe baseball ad, then answer listener emails about the NL Central, GM metadata, Aaron Sanchez, deceptive debuts and more.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Over the last few weeks we have taken a position-by-position look at ball-in-play data for both hitters and pitchers, assessing their respective contact quality/management ability. Next up: a macro-type evaluation of overall team performance in those areas. An overview of this series appeared in this space last week.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a division-by-division look at each team’s granular data through the All-Star break, ultimately comparing their actual won-lost records to projected ones based on exit speed/angle of every ball in play hit and allowed by each club. About 90 games’ worth of balls in play is a fairly substantial sample size, one that enables us to make fairly educated guesses about the true talent level of each team. Today, we’ll begin to drill deeper into the data.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a general manager itching to cause a stir among your team’s most devoted fan base, you can announce that you’re moving one of your most promising pitching prospects into the bullpen. For as little as some fans might actually know, one thing that’s widely understood is that a good starting pitcher is better than a good relieving pitcher. More valuable, anyway. So fans are inclined to be patient, letting pitching prospects sort their things out. Moving to the bullpen is often considered a last resort. Something that should happen only to lesser players. Fans don’t love when it’s a move that’s made early.

And just generally speaking, I’m sympathetic to that perspective. I’m mostly in alignment — I, too, like being patient with prospects. I want starters to have time to develop. But on the other hand, there’s the case of Edwin Diaz. Before the year, Baseball America ranked Diaz as the No. 2 prospect in an admittedly lousy Mariners system. Early in the season, the Mariners announced that Diaz was being transitioned to relief, citing an inability to learn a third pitch. At the time, the decision was questionable. I suppose it still is, and forever will be. But, why do teams move starters into the bullpen? Because relievers can move quickly, and the best ones can become hugely important. Diaz, already, has become hugely important. Diaz is already pitching like one of the very best relievers in baseball.

Read the rest of this entry »

When a player puts up a great first half that departs considerably from his established levels, it’s generally expected that the player will come back to earth in the second half. This is regression in its simplest form, and it’s baked into the sort of projections which appear at this site. This isn’t to say the player won’t continue to be good, just that he might not be as good as he showed in the first half. The same is true for players with uncharacteristically poor first halves. We expect them to figure things out and get back closer to their prior performance level. We can look at many indicators of the poor performance — BABIP is usually prominent — and tie some of the performance to bad luck. Sometimes it’s injuries. Another avenue we can travel down is to look at exit velocity.

Over the winter, I looked at players who under- or overperformed their average exit velocities in the first half of 2015 and then compared it to their second-half production. Standard caveats about the importance of launch angle and somewhat incomplete data apply, but those players who most outperformed their exit velocity in the first half last season saw massive drops in production in the second half. Here’s the methodology I applied in February (and repeated a few weeks ago in looking at players who underperformed last season):

I created IQ-type scores for exit velocity and wOBA from the first half of last season based on the averages of the 130 players in the sample. In each case, I assigned a figure of 100 to the sample’s average and then, for each standard deviation (SD) up or down, added or subtracted 15 points.

Once the IQ scores for both stats were calculated, I subtracted the IQ score for exit velocity from the IQ score for wOBA to find the players with the biggest disparities.

Here are the overperformers from the first half of last season — i.e. the players whose production most exceeded their exit velocity:

As you can see, players who outperformed their exit-velocity numbers in the first half of 2015 produced a collective wOBA that was 50 points lower in the second half of that season.

With that in mind, here are the overperformers from the first half of this season:

Read the rest of this entry »