FanGraphs Baseball

Fall League Daily Notes: October 19

October 19, 2016

Eric Longenhagen is publishing brief, informal notes from his looks at the prospects of the Arizona Fall League and, for the moment, the Fall Instructional League. Find all editions here.

Yankees RHP James Kaprielian sat mostly 92-93 mph and touched 96 one start after sitting 94-97 in his first appearance since an elbow flexor strain. His velocity is worth monitoring, not only because he’s returning from injury but because the 94-plus we saw before his injury and in his first AFL start was not the kind of velo was saw from Kaprielian at UCLA and we’re still trying to figure out exactly what this guy is.

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It’s No Coincidence Playoff Hitting Is Down

by Jeff Sullivan

October 19, 2016

You might’ve noticed there hasn’t been much in the way of hitting lately. As always in the playoffs, the samples are small, but numbers are numbers, and I was thinking about putting together a post on the subject. Then Dave put together a post on the subject! He addressed a lot of what I wanted to address, so, go ahead and read that. Relative to the regular season, playoff hitting has so far come in surprisingly low. Or, maybe not so surprisingly low, if the image you have in your head when you think about the playoffs is the face of Andrew Miller.

When I was thinking about my original post, I envisioned a plot much like the one Dave included. What I did instead was dig a bit deeper. In reality, you can’t so easily just compare playoff teams to teams in the regular season, because the teams and players alive in October belong to subgroups. What if you just examine the subgroups? So, that’s what this is.

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The Value of Getting Aroldis Chapman Off the Mound

by Eno Sarris

October 19, 2016

When there’s only one or two games on the television every night, every decision a manager makes gets blown up from all directions. Already this postseason, we’ve had the Zach Britton Decision, and Andrew Miller in the Seventh, and Kenley Jansen in the Seventh, and the Max Scherzer Decision. This past weekend begat us one more signature event: the Walk Chris Coghlan Decision. The interim has seen rabid takes defending both sides of the issue.

Despite having occurred four days ago now, the choice by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to intentionally walk Coghlan — and, consequently, pitch to Miguel Montero — remains relevant for tonight’s Game 4 in Los Angeles. The Dodgers are still playing the Cubs. Dave Roberts is still their manager. There are still decisions for him to make. And there are still opportunities to be second-guessed. For the moment, I’ll attempt to decide whether Roberts’ logic was suspect — or, alternatively, if he made the best choice he could given the information available to him.

To return to that moment: with two outs and two on in the eighth inning of a tied NLCS Game 1 in Chicago, Roberts elected to intentionally walk Chris Coghlan to get to Aroldis Chapman’s spot in the lineup. Pinch-hitter Miguel Montero then stepped in and stroked a grand slam off of Joe Blanton to put the game out of reach for the Dodgers. Immediately, the second-guessing began.

Let’s try to run through the decision-making process up to that moment, because it’s actually a little complicated, and not at all clear-cut.

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Bullpen Usage Is Destroying Offense This Postseason

by Dave Cameron

October 19, 2016

The story of this postseason has been the dramatic change in the attitude towards relief pitcher usage. It’s been most notable in Cleveland, where Andrew Miller has been used anywhere from the 5th through 9th inning, but basically all of the teams still left have been utilizing their best relievers as often as possible, and relying more on their bullpens than ever before.

Yesterday, over at FiveThirtyEight, Rob Arthur showed that this isn’t just our perception, but that teams really are pulling their starters earlier than ever this year. Below, I’ll borrow a neat graphic from his post.

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Julio Urias Is Really, Really Young

by Craig Edwards

October 19, 2016

Left-hander Julio Urias starts for the Dodgers tonight in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Cubs. Here’s something you probably already know about him: he’s really young. Urias turned 20 on August 12 of this year. For the purposes of websites such as this one (which use July 1 as a cutoff), that places Urias in the midst of his age-19 season. When Urias pitched in relief during Game 5 of the NLDS, he became the fourth-youngest pitcher in major-league history (Bert Blyleven, Ken Brett, Don Gullett) to pitch in the postseason, per Baseball-Reference Play Index — and he’s already pitched more innings than Brett and as many as Blyleven. With his first pitch today, he’ll become the youngest pitcher in postseason history to record a start. By comparison, consider that most of the players on both the Cubs and Dodgers had never even appeared in a professional game at the same age Urias ascends to the spotlight.

Only seven players in history have started a playoff game at an age younger than Urias, and they were all position players. They are, in declining order of age at playoff debut: Justin Upton, Claudell Washington, Bryce Harper, Mickey Mantle, Andruw Jones, Phil Cavarretta, and Freddie Lindstrom.

That’s one way to frame Urias’s accomplishment. Another? By means of this brief timeline concerning the distinction Urias is about to receive:

On October 9, 1913, Bullet Joe Bush started for the Philadelphia Athletics in the third game of the World Series. he pitched a complete game as the A’s beat the New York Giants 8-2. Bush was 20 years and 316 days old. Bush would hold the record until…
October 3, 1984, when Bret Saberhagen started for the Kansas City Royals in Game 2 of the ALCS against the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers won 5-3. Saberhagen was 20 years and 175 days old.
Urias is 20 years and 68 days old today.

Urias’s age is not remarkable solely for how it relates to his postseason appearance and playoff start. His regular-season performance this year, even in limited innings, represents one of the better seasons in history for a player his age. In 77 innings this season, Urias put up a 3.39 ERA and 3.17 FIP, which was good enough to produce a 1.8 WAR. Over the last 40 years, only seven players, position players included, have recorded a better WAR number in a season at 19 years of age or younger: Read the rest of this entry »

Projecting Indians Game 5 Starter Ryan Merritt

by Chris Mitchell

October 19, 2016

In a few hours, Ryan Merritt will take the mound for the Indians in Game 5 of the ALCS. Statistically, Merritt doesn’t look like much. He’s posted exceptionally low strikeout numbers at every stop, and although he’s coupled them with minuscule walk rates, KATOH isn’t sold. KATOH likes tall pitchers who strike guys out. As a 6-foot hurler who pitches to contact, Merritt is the exact opposite of that.

KATOH pegs Merritt for just 1.4 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 1.5 WAR by KATOH+, which integrates Baseball America’s rankings. To help you visualize what his KATOH projection entails, here is a probability density function showing KATOH+’s projected distribution of outcomes for Merritt’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

merritt

To put some faces to Merritt’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the command-oriented lefty. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Merritt’s performance this year and every Triple-A season since 1991 in which a pitcher faced at least 350 batters. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

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Everything You Need to Know About Ryan Merritt

by August Fagerstrom

October 19, 2016

Listen, we can all be adults here. We all understand what’s going on, in that none of us understand what’s going on. The Cleveland Indians are a few hours away from playing Game 5 of the ALCS, a game that could advance them to the World Series, and they’ll be handing the ball to Ryan Merritt in the first inning. Ryan Merritt, a 24-year-old who’s faced all of 37 batters in his major-league career, which began with a mop-up relief appearance against the Texas Rangers back in May of this year. Ryan Merritt, a lefty whose fastball sits at 87 mph and tops out at 90. Ryan Merritt, who has never appeared within the top 10 of an Indians prospects list.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m some Ryan Merritt expert. Who is? About 48 hours ago, I knew as much about Ryan Merritt as the rest of you. What follows is simply a collection of more or less public information compiled from data, film, and scouting reports. Let’s get to know Ryan Merritt.

The biographical information is always a good place to start. The Indians selected Merritt in the 16th round of the 2011 draft. That’s not a very high round! He was picked 488th overall. He doesn’t have a particularly imposing frame, at 6-foot-0, 180 pounds, though BaseballAmerica’s 2015 scouting report calls it an “athletic frame.” He cracked Double-A last year, and pitched well, to the tune of a 3.51 ERA and 3.25 FIP in 141 innings. In 143 Triple-A innings this year, he ran a 3.70 ERA and 3.82 FIP.

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Dave Cameron FanGraphs Chat – 10/19/16

by Dave Cameron

October 19, 2016