Last month, I mentioned that we were going to be partnering up with the Pitch Talks guys, and would be helping with their efforts to bring the fantastic baseball speaker series to the U.S. this summer. Today, we’re excited to announce what the summer tour is going to look like.
After a breakthrough summer in the Cape Cod League, Mercer outfielder Kyle Lewis entered the spring as a potential first-round pick and has managed to dramatically improve his stock over the course of the season. He’s among the country’s leading hitters with a .411/.545/.729 line, 17 homers and 61 walks against 43 strikeouts at the time of this publication, numbers that helped him win the Southern Conference Player of the Year Award for the second straight season. With elite performance to back up five-tool promise and one of the best swings in the class, he’s in the conversation to be one of the first five players off the draft board.
I saw Lewis this past weekend when the Bears traveled to North Carolina for their regular-season series finale at UNC-Greensboro. The video below offers two angles from batting practice and a couple throws from center field, concluding with his first three plate appearances of the series. Other draft follows from this series get their own blurbs at the end.
Physical Description
Playing in the Southern Conference, Lewis looks pretty different from everyone else on the field. He’s listed at 6-foot-4, 210 pounds, and features a high-waisted, athletic build that should add another 15 pounds or so. He shows fast-twitch ability in all phases, coupling athletic movements in the box with fluid actions in the field.
This is a follow-up post that could practically write itself. Last year, the Kansas City Royals won the World Series in spite of (because of?) weak-hitting shortstop Alcides Escobar leading off each and every game and almost always swinging at the first pitch, even when the opposition was nearly certain it was coming. It became a thing. Broadcasters talked about it every game, we all laughed about it on Twitter, and the Royals rallied around the idea that they’d win as long as Escobar went after that first pitch. He kept doing it, and they kept winning, and I honestly believe that plenty of rational people (myself included, I think) legitimately began questioning whether magic — specifically, Esky Magic — might be real.
And as long as Escobar (inexplicably?) continued to lead off for the Royals this season, his first-pitch tendencies would be worth a review at some point in the year. Escobar has continued to lead off, and so his first-pitch tendencies are worth a review at some point in the year. This is that point.
| 1:34 |
: Be here shortly. Also, shuddleywap.
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| 12:01 |
: URIAS TIME BABY
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| 12:02 |
: Yes. Supposedly very polished. But I had a question about dropping Ryan Madson for him, I wouldn’t do that.
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| 12:02 |
: Think after Caminero “rehabs his quad injury” he can get things back on track?
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| 12:02 |
: Would take a bit to get back into setup, he’s droppable even in holds leagues.
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| 12:03 |
: Joey Gallo got called up to….sit the bench? WHY?!?!?
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On Friday night, the Dodgers were set to start LHP Alex Wood against the Mets in New York, but he has been scratched due to tightness in his triceps. To replace Wood, LA is calling up 19 year old sensation Julio Urias to make his big league debut.
To say Urias has earned the promotion would be an understatement. Just 19, even making it to Triple-A is an accomplishment, and for most pitchers in the PCL, the goal is to just not suck too badly. For instance, two years ago, a 21 year old Noah Syndergaard ran a 4.60 ERA/3.70 FIP, as he controlled the strike zone but got torched for a .389 BABIP, thanks to the fun-sized ballparks and offensive environments that make the league a hitter’s haven.
Urias, though, is running a 1.10 ERA/2.89 FIP in his first 41 innings in the PCL, and four of the five runs he’s allowed came in one appearance, back on April 16th. He allowed the fifth run in his next outing on April 22nd, a five inning affair where he gave up just two hits, walked one, and struck out eight. He’s pitched in five games since then, and posted the following line.
26 IP, 13 H, 0 R, 6 BB, 24 K.
In the toughest environment for a pitcher in baseball, Urias is destroying the competition. As a 19 year old.
So tomorrow, we’ll get to see how ready he is to get big leaguers out. His initial test, pitching against the defending NL champs in Citi Field, is not an easy one, but Urias has been dominating hitters in less-than-friendly environments all year. There is always a tremendous amount of uncertainty when it comes to projecting pitching prospects making the leap to the big leagues, but with Urias doing what he did to Triple-A batters this year, it was time to see how well he’ll handle the transition.
Steamer’s already sold on Urias, projecting him for a 3.43 ERA/3.58 FIP over the rest of the season, which would work out to put him on a pace for +3 WAR if he were to pitch a full season’s worth of innings. Whether the teenager can live up to those lofty projections and the hype that surrounds him is something we’re all about to find out.
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
Miami at Tampa Bay | 13:10 ET
Fernandez (53.2 IP, 66 xFIP-) vs. Smyly (56.0 IP, 91 xFIP-)
Having read no fewer than two or maybe one popular-science books on the subject of human cognition, the present author is prepared to state unequivocally that a central feature of the brain is its tireless search for patterns — and tendency to extract meaning from mere coincidence. As a product of those traits, one might reasonably expect the human brain to regard these numbers with some interest:
| Season | GS | TBF | IP | xFIP- | FIP- | ERA- | WAR | WAR200 |
| 2015 | 11 | 265 | 64.2 | 68 | 60 | 75 | 2.1 | 6.5 |
| 2016 | 9 | 217 | 53.2 | 66 | 62 | 75 | 1.7 | 6.4 |
Those are the the 2015 and 2016 seasons of Jose Fernandez. What one observes are the similarities between certain of the right-hander’s index stats from one season to the next. Nearly identical adjusted xFIP marks, for example. And nearly identical (and lower) adjusted FIP marks. And actually identical (and slightly higher) adjusted ERA marks. Of course, the figures aren’t entirely random; they have, for example, been produced by the same pitcher. Nevertheless, the symmetry of the data is unusual. The brain is stirred! Or, at least: maybe the brain is stirred!
Most of what I do here is provide you with fun facts. Let’s be real — you already have a decent idea of which players are good and which players are bad. A healthy portion of my job, then, is to tell you what you already know, but in some new and different way. When it works, I think we all get to come away feeling smart! Hopefully it continues to work.
What I have for you here is an Andrew Miller fun fact. Not just a fun fact — my absolute favorite Andrew Miller fun fact, at least of the moment, at least as long as it’s factual. It’s not like you didn’t already know that Andrew Miller is good. We all came to terms with that years ago, and Miller hasn’t gotten any worse. He’s gotten better! Boiled down, this post is just “Andrew Miller is great at pitching.” But there’s this thing, see. He turns hitters to brain-dead mush.
Ben and Sam talk to FanGraphs writer Carson Cistulli about his recently completed television broadcast rankings for baseball’s local markets.
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Shelby Miller just started his tenth game of the season. He has, to his name, all of one single quality start. It came a few weeks ago, in Atlanta, where Miller went to work against one of the worst team offenses in recent baseball history. Miller was removed after the six-inning minimum. He racked up one strikeout, to go with a pair of walks. He also hit a guy. That guy was Erick Aybar, who has a .423 OPS. In Miller’s one quality start, he was statistically bad. Then there are the nine other starts.
In an era of fair and balanced transactions, no offseason move got even a fraction of the criticism of Arizona’s Shelby Miller trade. Those opposed to the move believed the Diamondbacks overpaid for a non-elite starting pitcher. FanGraphs, of course, figured the Braves made out like bandits, and that also happened to be the industry consensus. But to be absolutely clear, no one back then thought that Miller was anything less than a legitimate No. 3. The criticism then had to do with Ender Inciarte and Dansby Swanson. If anything, there were indications Miller might’ve been on the verge of breaking out. At the moment, he’s a shell of himself. Miller has gone completely awry, and he and the Diamondbacks are suffering.
An interesting nugget from a recent edition of the always-excellent Ken Rosenthal notebook:
White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper accepted responsibility for Jeff Samardzija’s struggles last season, telling reporters, “Man, I failed.”
Samardzija, with the benefit of hindsight, takes a more magnanimous view, saying that Cooper only was trying to help him. As it turns out, the foundation of his early success with the Giants came in his final two starts with the White Sox, a one-hit shutout of the Tigers and a strong seven-inning effort against the eventual World Series champion Royals.
Samardzija, 31, said he made an adjustment in September after realizing that he was tipping pitches based upon the time he stayed set in the stretch — coming out of it quickly, he threw a fastball or cutter; taking more time, he threw a slider or split.
A handful of times each year, an article will surface with a pitcher, manager, or even reporter, suggesting that a struggling starter might be tipping his pitches. Seems like, more often than not, these suggestions are sort of brushed aside, either because they’re viewed as nothing more than an excuse, or because without any explanation regarding the nature of the tipping, they’re just viewed as hearsay. Well, Rosenthal provided some pretty specific explanation, and so I went looking to see if I couldn’t find some good ol’ Jeff Samardzija pitch-tipping in action.
