The Astros and Yankees are set to meet tonight in the first postseason game of 2015, with the winner advancing to play the Royals in the division series. While both teams are likely to do everything they can to win tonight’s game, there is one potentially significant variable they won’t be able to control; the called strike zone. So that’s preview what we might look for from the home plate umpire tonight.
17 year veteran Eric Cooper is going to be behind the plate for the Wild Card game. Per Baseball Heat Maps, here’s Cooper’s called strike zone compared to the league average (warmer colors indicate more calls in that area).
RH hitters
LH hitters.
The first thing that stands out is that Cooper has a very tall strike zone, calling far more pitches than the average umpire at both the top and bottom of the rulebook zone. He’s especially generous at the very top sliver of the zone with a right-handed batter at the plate, which is also a very tough area for hitters to make contact on. He offsets the height of his zone to some degree by having a fairly narrow strike zone compared to the average umpire, calling fewer pitches away against both lefties and righties, but the effect isn’t as large as his large vertical zone.
As you can see at the charts available over at Baseball Savant, Cooper calls an above average pitches out of the zone as strikes, and has one of the lowest rates of calling pitches in the zone balls. Overall, he’s a pitcher friendly umpire, and hitters are going to need to protect the plate more often than they normally would, especially on high and low pitches.
Interestingly, neither Keuchel nor Tanaka attack the top of the strike zone that regularly, as both are primarily trying to keep the ball down, so there’s not a clear advantage to either side based on the umpire tendency with regards to the starting pitcher. But both teams are likely to use an army of relievers, and Cooper’s zone could work out pretty well for a pitcher like Houston’s Josh Fields, who likes to pitch up with his fastball.
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Individual performances tend to be magnified in the postseason, and that is especially true of pitchers. While 16-18 other players appear in the lineups and many others will have profound impacts on the outcomes of games over the next month, the starting pitcher will likely have more influence over the outcome of a single game than any other player. Everything is magnified in the playoffs from managerial decisions to clutch hits, errors, and great plays in the field, but starting pitching is perhaps most deserving of the increased scrutiny. By the end of the second inning, perhaps sometime into the third, the starting pitcher will have taken part in more plays than any position player during the entire game.
In a winner-take-all game like the Wild Card, deserving players might be pushed to the background ahead of the game in favor of the pitching, but the matchup between pitchers will likely be the difference between the team that keeps playing and the team whose season is over. For those watching the Cubs take on the Pirates, they will witness one of the very best pitching matchups the playoffs have ever seen.
In Jake Arrieta and Gerrit Cole, both teams will feature bona fide aces. Arrieta might have just had the best half-season of all time. Overall, he’s pitched 229 innings with an ERA of 1.77 and a FIP of 2.35, giving Arrieta a 45 ERA- and a 60 FIP- over the full season after league and park are taken into account. He’s in pretty rare company. Consider: since the end of World War II, these are the qualified pitchers with an ERA- below 50 and a FIP- below 65 over a full season.
| Name | Season | Team | IP | ERA | FIP | WAR | ERA- | FIP- |
| Pedro Martinez | 1999 | Red Sox | 213.1 | 2.07 | 1.39 | 11.6 | 42 | 31 |
| Roger Clemens | 1997 | Blue Jays | 264 | 2.05 | 2.25 | 10.7 | 45 | 50 |
| Pedro Martinez | 2000 | Red Sox | 217 | 1.74 | 2.17 | 9.4 | 35 | 48 |
| Ron Guidry | 1978 | Yankees | 273.2 | 1.74 | 2.19 | 9.1 | 47 | 58 |
| Dwight Gooden | 1985 | Mets | 276.2 | 1.53 | 2.13 | 8.9 | 44 | 58 |
| Bob Gibson | 1968 | Cardinals | 304.2 | 1.12 | 1.75 | 8.6 | 38 | 64 |
| Zack Greinke | 2009 | Royals | 229.1 | 2.16 | 2.33 | 8.6 | 48 | 54 |
| Pedro Martinez | 1997 | Expos | 241.1 | 1.9 | 2.39 | 8.5 | 45 | 57 |
| Roger Clemens | 1990 | Red Sox | 228.1 | 1.93 | 2.18 | 8.2 | 47 | 55 |
| Greg Maddux | 1995 | Braves | 209.2 | 1.63 | 2.26 | 7.9 | 39 | 52 |
| Greg Maddux | 1994 | Braves | 202 | 1.56 | 2.39 | 7.4 | 37 | 54 |
| Pedro Martinez | 2003 | Red Sox | 186.2 | 2.22 | 2.21 | 7.4 | 48 | 51 |
| Jake Arrieta | 2015 | Cubs | 229 | 1.77 | 2.35 | 7.3 | 45 | 60 |
| Pedro Martinez | 2002 | Red Sox | 199.1 | 2.26 | 2.24 | 7.3 | 50 | 54 |
| Randy Johnson | 1997 | Mariners | 213 | 2.28 | 2.82 | 7 | 50 | 62 |
The only pitcher with better context neutral numbers in both ERA and FIP and more innings was Dwight Gooden in his amazing 1985 season. It is easy to see why so much attention has been given to Jake Arrieta this season and in this matchup, but the Pittsburgh Pirates’s Gerrit Cole has had an excellent season of his own. Cole’s 5.4 WAR is fifth in the National and ninth in Major League Baseball. Pitchers don’t choose their opposition, leaving great matchups more to a question of chance than a complete reflection of their own skill, but the high level of both players heading into this game is something rarely seen in a game of this magnitude.
Their season ended Sunday, a week — if not a month — shorter than had been planned, and the Nationals jumped right into their off-season by firing reigning Manager of the Year Matt Williams. Williams has been a lightning rod for criticism since the Nationals started to falter in the middle of the year so it’s no surprise that he was relieved of his duties, especially since GM Mike Rizzo refused to say he’d keep Williams past the end of the season despite numerous opportunities to do so. Williams will go down as a bad manager and his tenure will be a negative on Rizzo’s resume. Still, from an outsider’s perspective, it’s difficult to know precisely how bad these situations have been.
It’s often said we like numbers here at FanGraphs — and that’s true, as far as it helps us understand the game better. But managers are one aspect of the game that have, to date, defied attempts at being quantified. Matt Williams put together a 179-145 record during his two seasons in Washington. That’s a winning percentage of .553, which comes out to a 90-win average. That’s pretty good! Matt Williams must be a good manager, then. The thing is, and you probably know this if you read FanGraphs, those are team stats, and ascribing them to one person, even if that person is ostensibly in charge of the team, is probably a mistake. There’s a lot more that goes into a winning team than the manager, a fact that was underlined today by the Nationals’ actions, and I suspect will be underlined again by Williams not being snatched up by another team any time soon.
Tonight, the Yankees take the field with their season on the line, as they host the Astros in the AL’s Wild Card game. CC Sabathia will not be with the team for the game, or any other game this postseason, because he checked into a rehab clinic for treatment related to alcohol abuse. The full statement that he released to the media.
“Today I am checking myself into an alcohol rehabilitation center to receive the professional care and assistance needed to treat my disease.
“I love baseball and I love my teammates like brothers, and I am also fully aware that I am leaving at a time when we should all be coming together for one last push toward the World Series. It hurts me deeply to do this now, but I owe it to myself and to my family to get myself right. I want to take control of my disease, and I want to be a better man, father and player.
“I want to thank the New York Yankees organization for their encouragement and understanding. Their support gives me great strength and has allowed me to move forward with this decision with a clear mind.
“As difficult as this decision is to share publicly, I don’t want to run and hide. But for now please respect my family’s need for privacy as we work through this challenge together.
“Being an adult means being accountable. Being a baseball player means that others look up to you. I want my kids — and others who may have become fans of mine over the years — to know that I am not too big of a man to ask for help. I want to hold my head up high, have a full heart and be the type of person again that I can be proud of. And that’s exactly what I am going to do.
“I am looking forward to being out on the field with my team next season playing the game that brings me so much happiness.”
For making this decision, Mr. Sabathia, I’m already proud of you.
| 11:57 |
: I’m making a few calls but will drop in at noon eastern to baseball chat with you
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| 12:04 |
Best college hitter in the 2016 draft? |
| 12:05 |
: Either Florida CF Buddy Reed or Louisville CF Corey Ray, both from Team USA this summer. Slight edge to Ray right now, but Reed has more upside and could overtake him this year. Both in the top 5-6 picks at this point for me.
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| 12:05 |
The Orioles received some grief for taking Ryan Mountcastle with their 1st round compensation pick. But he performed pretty well in his first professional experience. What is his longterm outlook? |
| 12:07 |
: I like him as a prospect, I thought he was more of a 3rd round talent, but right before the draft there was buzz of a few teams looking at him in the early to middle 2nd round, so I think Baltimore had to take him there to get him.
Projectable frame, above average raw power, average to slightly above runner, makes a lot of contact, has had some trouble getting to the power in games but he’s still just 18. Most scouts say LF fit, but BAL thinks he can play 3B. Fringy arm and just okay feet/hands. |
| 12:08 |
Hi Kiley, have you written any in depth pitcher scouting articles? Specifically what you look for in throwing mechanics? |
The 2015 season has been chock-full of high-profile rookie debuts. From Kris Bryant to Corey Seager to Noah Syndergaard, I’ve certainly had no shortage of players to write about. But the most impressive rookie campaign — at least on a per-game basis — might very well belong to Carlos Correa, who’s developing into a superstar right before our eyes. Although he’s completed just his age-20 season, Correa’s been one of the best better hitters in the game since the Astros called him up on June 8th. His 133 wRC+ was the 28th best among hitters with at least 400 plate appearances this year, and second best among rookies, trailing only Kris Bryant. By the barometer of WAR per 150 games, Correa ranked 21st in baseball with mark of 5.2.
You probably didn’t need me to tell you that Carlos Correa’s been really good. This isn’t exactly news. So rather than dwelling on how good Correa is now, I want to consider what his impressive rookie campaign means for his short- and long-term future.
The postseason kicks off tonight with the American League Wild Card game starting at 8 pm eastern time. Tomorrow night, we get the NL Wild Card game — in what might be the most fascinating single MLB game I can remember in some time — and then the ALDS starts on Thursdday, with the NLDS starting Friday and bringing us our first four-games-in-a-row day.
To celebrate the launch of the postseason, we’re going to live blog every single game between now and Friday night. I’m going to be hosting (along with Sean Dolinar) the AL Wild Card game tonight — and imploring both managers to go to the bullpen after every pitch, probably — while Jeff (and maybe Carson…) will be here for the NL Wild Card game tomorrow night. We’ll then have coverage of both games on Thursday and all four on Friday as well.
If you haven’t been part of a postseason live blog before, they’re a blast. Plan on hanging out with us as we watch some October baseball, no spreadsheets required.
After the conclusion of yet another great regular season of baseball, we can now start in on the exciting year in review retrospectives. The stats are in, the playoffs are scheduled, and we can look back on the totality of 2015’s regular season with a full sample of what worked and what didn’t for players and teams. The first day after the end of the season can be disappointing for fans who don’t get to root for their favorite club during October, but it’s also our first chance to draw that all-important end line that frames this year along with all the others that have come before it.
The same goes for evaluating managers. We have an idea of the managers who have done a good job; many of them still have games to play. We also have an idea of those who haven’t done a good job — even up to the point of knowing who has a chance of being fired. The drawback, unfortunately, is that we still don’t have a great way of truly evaluating managers, and so we look to the small amount of data that we do have when we try to gauge their performance. Dave Cameron talked about this in the context of filling out his NL Manager of the Year ballot last year — here’s a paragraph from that piece relevant to what we’re discussing today:
“Evaluating player performance is tricky enough even with all the amount of information we have about their performance; with managers, we’re basically just guessing. We can speculate about things that we think matter, but we don’t really have much objective data to support these thoughts.”
Dave’s right — we have very little data, and the data that we do have isn’t terribly useful for evaluation. That being said, there is one newer area of data with respect to managers that I find interesting, and it lends itself to not only understanding an aspect of performance, but also — in this year’s case — serves as a window into the operating style of particular managers.
That data is the result of the fairly new system of manager replay review, and this season of baseball has produced some very interesting results. We already had a post earlier in the season on manager challenges, looking specifically at Kevin Cash, and his rather “unique” style of challenging (not waiting for any sort of video consultation from his coaches/advisors before popping out of the dugout to signal for an official review). That post theorized on a way to rank managers on their challenge ability; this post will go a step further in refining an attempt to do that.
I have a great deal of interest in the Mariners having hired Jerry Dipoto, so once they made it official, I set about reading as much as I could about what he’d done and what he intended to do. As part of that research, I re-visited an old article at ESPN written by Sam Miller, talking about the Angels’ attempts to improve their whole player-development system. The article was more about Scott Servais than Dipoto, and Servais might not come to work with Dipoto in Seattle, but the article is just good regardless of what it might or might not mean for the Mariners going forward, and some of the way through I found the following pair of lines:
The Angels’ PD staff — half of it hired or in new positions since Servais took over — has become used to seeing its unconventional ideas tested. In the Dominican Republic, the Angels started measuring time of possession.
Time of possession is a familiar statistic to fans of other sports. It’s very much unfamiliar to fans of baseball, because baseball is the sport that doesn’t even keep time, so it’s not something you hear about. But, reading that section was all I needed. It put the idea in my head, and there was no getting it out without writing this post. Because of that excerpt, I’ve calculated time of possession for the regular season just gone. One thing’s for sure: you can’t say I didn’t do this.
