FanGraphs Baseball

The primary downside of the Chase Utley play over the weekend was that it happened, and that Ruben Tejada paid an unnecessary price for fielding his position. The secondary downside is that, because the play happened, it’s all anyone really wants to talk about, at least as far as that series is concerned. Which is too bad, because there’s a lot else going on, and as an example, I’d like to take a moment to discuss Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard didn’t get the Game 2 win, but for a while he did impress, and he’s just generally fun to talk about.

One thing to talk about: Syndergaard made an immediate impression. There’s evidence that pitchers throw harder in the playoffs, and Syndergaard didn’t do much to hide his own adrenaline. According to Brooks Baseball, during the year, Syndergaard’s fastball averaged 98.1 miles per hour in the first inning, and 97.7 in the second. Against the Dodgers, it averaged 100.2 in the first inning, and 99.5 in the second before settling down. Of Syndergaard’s 20 fastest pitches of the year, he threw 13 on Saturday, all in the first three frames. Syndergaard was very conspicuously feeling it, and it took the Dodgers a while to catch up.

But if it’s the velocity that brings you in, it’s the rest of Syndergaard’s repertoire that keeps you engrossed. Already, Syndergaard throws one breaking ball with a nickname. Against the Dodgers, Syndergaard featured a second breaking ball, one he hadn’t played with much before.

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Today, the Braves made an announcement, and I happen to be part of it.

Wednesday will be my last day as Lead Prospect Analyst here at FanGraphs, as I’ve accepted the position of Assistant Director of Baseball Operations with the Atlanta Braves. The staff has been great to work for, particularly the guys who decided to take a chance on me: David Appelman and Dave Cameron. They gave me all the resources I asked for and all the support I could imagine for my sometimes odd-sounding ideas.

I think we accomplished something special in setting at least a new template for covering scouting and player development, if not a new standard. My 2016, 2017 and 2018 draft rankings will come out tomorrow, and I have one more project that will be rolling out soon. I was only able to finish about half of what I had set out to accomplish here, so I’m disappointed that I left some of my ambition on the table, but the opportunity I was given for a new challenge was too great to pass up.

In my new job, I’ll be working with arguably the best group of scouts in baseball and coming aboard under new GM John Coppolella. I’ve known Coppy for a while, dating back to when he was my boss with the Yankees for my first baseball operations job, in 2005, while I was still in college. I’m all in on his vision for running a front office and also building an organization, with his fingerprints already all over the organization. John Schuerholz and John Hart are legends and they have arguably the most impressive resumes in the game; I’m thrilled to work for them. It also seemed like the office could use a guy not named John.

I’ll be brief explaining my role, as I’ll be there to learn and contribute behind men with more experience than me. In short, I’ll be doing many of the same things I did for FanGraphs: contributing to the draft and international signings, scouting the minor leagues and doing what I can to improve the big league product, all of these from both a scouting and analytics perspective. I am grateful for everything the FanGraphs family has done for me and to you guys for reading and participating in the process. I look forward to this new challenge and will do everything I can to ensure that it includes multiple World Series titles.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and for all the feedback — positive and negative — that you’ve offered me over my time here. Keep reading FanGraphs, and start watching the Braves; I’m looking forward to what both organizations do going forward.

Early in Monday’s game between the Royals and Astros, Yordano Ventura tried to come inside against Carlos Correa, and he hit him. A little less early in the same game, Ventura again tried to come inside against Correa, and this time Correa did the hitting:

This calls for the usual screenshots to highlight the event’s subtle absurdity. The moment of contact, paused:

Clearly, an inside pitch, off the plate, although the stupid camera angle messes with our perception. Thankfully, the Gameday window doesn’t operate with a senselessly off-center angle:

Now you get it. First-pitch fastball, inside, not particularly close to being a strike. And yet, a dinger! And not one of the cheap dingers. This one was clobbered, even though the pitch was more than eight inches inside from the inner edge of home plate.

It’s not the first time Correa has done this. A 2015 leaderboard of right-handed hitters who’ve homered on pitches at least a half-foot inside from the edge of the strike zone:

• Carlos Correa, 3 such home runs
• Matt Duffy, 2
• several players, 1

Correa leads baseball in this admittedly arbitrary category, and only he and Duffy have done this multiple times. Correa’s Monday home run was one of the most inside pitches hit out of the yard on the year, and while one could argue Correa would be better off taking these pitches instead of swinging, since he won’t always go deep, Correa has proven his ability to turn inside pitches around. He can, at least, do more damage on these pitches than most. It’s not an accident — he works hard on keeping his hands in, which is what lets him get out in front of these.

Correa just batted a third time while I was writing this. The first two times, Ventura tried to work him in. The third time, Ventura tried to work him away. Correa slashed a tie-breaking double down the line in right field. He’s good at that too.

And I thought I was done writing about prospect debuts for the year. With Ruben Tejada out of commission following his controversial rendezvous with Chase Utley, the Mets added 24-year-old Matt Reynolds to their NLDS roster for tonight’s game. Tonight marks Reynolds’ first time on a big league roster, so assuming he gets into a game this October, he’ll accomplish the rare feat of making his big league debut in the playoffs.

As you can probably imagine, this doesn’t happen all that often. Reynolds would be only the second player in modern history to break into the big leagues during the postseason. The most recent case was Mark Kiger, who debuted as a defensive replacement for Oakland in the 2006 ALCS. The only other case that I’m aware of happened in 1885, when some guy named Bug Holliday did it. There was also Chet Trail, who was on the Yankees 1964 World Series roster as a “bonus baby” due to a technicality, but never got into a game. So, yeah, this is an oddity.

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Ben and Sam banter about TBS baseball broadcasts, then discuss the Chase Utley slide in Game 2 of the Dodgers-Mets NLDS.

The first inning has just ended between Kansas City and Houston at the latter’s home field (box). Starters Yordano Ventura and Lance McCullers have already touched 97 and 96 mph, respectively, with their fastballs according to MLB.com’s Gameday data. Nor would it be particularly surprising for either starter to continue sitting at those velocities: among all the possible starting-pitcher matchups in these divisional series, the two involved in this game are likely to record the highest average combined velocity between any two starters.

Regard, by way of illustration, the following table, which features the top-10 average fastball velocities recorded by pitchers on postseason teams. Note that velocity figures are those produced by relevant pitcher in starting capacity alone. FB% denotes fastball frequency.

Average Fastball Velocity, Possible LDS Starters

	Name	Team	IP	FB%	FBv
1	Noah Syndergaard	Mets	150.0	61.7%	97.1
2	Yordano Ventura	Royals	163.1	57.6%	96.3
3	Matt Harvey	Mets	189.1	60.9%	95.9
4	Carlos Martinez*	Cardinals	174.2	56.9%	95.3
5	Jacob deGrom	Mets	191.0	61.8%	95.0
6	Jake Arrieta	Cubs	229.0	50.7%	94.6
7	Lance McCullers	Astros	125.2	53.8%	94.5
	Vincent Velasquez*	Astros	38.0	67.6%	94.5
9	Aaron Sanchez*	Blue Jays	66.0	76.5%	94.4
10	Steven Matz	Mets	35.2	68.4%	94.3
	Carlos Frias*	Dodgers	71.1	56.3%	94.3

*Omitted from LDS rotation/roster.

Had St. Louis right-hander Carlos Martinez not been shut down due to a shoulder strain, a hypothetical encounter between he and Jake Arrieta would have possibly produced a greater combined velocity. In his absence, however, McCullers and Ventura are likely to receive the distinction.

The scientific method begins by asking a question. Ask a question, do some research, and form a hypothesis. Once you’ve got your hypothesis, it’s time to do a little testing. Or, to employ a more lively word, experimenting. Once the test, ahem, experiment is underway, data is collected and analyzed, leading to new questions, new hypotheses and new experiments.

Over in Toronto, a season’s worth of question-asking, researching, hypothesizing, experimenting, analyzing, refining and retesting has been taking place, slowly building up to a grand experiment that will take place on the national stage when the Blue Jays have no room left for error with everything on the line. More likely than not, the experiment will go over just fine and Toronto’s hypothesis will be confirmed. Even if the experiment doesn’t go over fine, the hypothesis could hold water. There still exists the chance, though, that the test tubes suddenly begin to boil over, sending the experiment awry and the laboratory into a frenzy with no time left for reevaluating and retesting.
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Last night, the Blue Jays beat the Rangers 5-1 to extend the ALCS to a fourth game, keeping their season alive for at least one more day. But while the final score wasn’t particularly close, the Blue Jays did feel a bit of pressure in the seventh inning, when Marco Estrada gave up back to back singles with just one out and Rougned Odor coming to the plate. Odor didn’t represent the tying run, but the Jfays have seen him do enough damage to know that he was one swing away from making the game extremely tense again, and so, John Gibbons began to warm David Price in the bullpen. Without Brett Cecil, the team’s bullpen is thin on quality left-handers, and Gibbons wanted his ace to be prepared to put out a fire if need be.

Aaron Loup got Odor to ground out to short, and then Mark Lowe came in and struck out Robinson Chirinos, so Price ended up not pitching in last night’s game. But if Loup had failed to retire Odor, Price was apparently the man Gibbons was going to to turn to, even with three straight right-handed hitters due up. Per Arden Zwelling from Sportsnet:

Here are the situations that would have led to the 30-year-old Cy Young winner making his first relief appearance since 2010, according to the man himself:

In the bottom of the seventh inning, if Aaron Loup had not retired Rougned Odor, Price would have come in to face Robinson Chirinos and any subsequent batters in the inning.

In the bottom of the eighth, if Hanser Alberto and Delino DeShields reached base against Aaron Sanchez, Price would have come in to face Shin-Soo Choo, Prince Fielder and Mitch Moreland.

In the bottom of the ninth, if Roberto Osuna had gotten into any kind of trouble, Price would have come in to save or lose the game.

Price stayed hot throughout all three of those innings but said after the game he doesn’t think that will affect his ability to pitch in Monday’s Game 4 or a potential fifth game back in Toronto. He was slated to throw a short side session Monday night regardless, and if the series does go five games, he’ll more than likely get that Wednesday start at Rogers Centre.

The Blue Jays can’t lose again in this series, and putting your ace on the mound to stave off elimination is a perfectly natural reaction. Tonight, though, I’d suggest that Gibbons should resist the urge, and give David Price the night off.

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On Friday night, we witnessed a matchup of starting pitchers in the Dodgers vs. Mets series that only comes along a few times every generation. Clayton Kershaw — in the middle of a career that is already alongside some of the great starting pitchers in history — went head to head versus Jacob deGrom, a leading National League Cy Young Award candidate and ace of the Mets staff.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised about the combined numbers the two starters produced: 13.2 IP, 9 H, 5 BB, 3 ER (two of which scored after Kershaw was replaced), and a staggering 24 strikeouts. The tally of strikeouts, for those who weren’t watching, was historic: Friday night marked the first game in postseason history that two starters each had at least 11 strikeouts. And, while Kershaw was very good, deGrom was better, going a full seven innings while allowing only six base runners, no runs, and 13 Ks. “Better” is in fact a serious understatement, as deGrom scythed through one of the best offenses in baseball in what was one of the most dominant postseason debuts in recent history.

Earlier this season, when Pedro Martinez was about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, I wondered: what current starting pitcher possesses the same arsenal of pitches (by velocity) as vintage Pedro? While many commenters simply wrote “no one” in response to the article (an understandable response, given Martinez’ dominance), the answer was actually deGrom: possessing a fastball, changeup, and curveball that clocked in at almost identical speeds to 1999 Martinez.

We don’t have any data on how Martinez’ pitches moved, so comparing the all-important “nastiness” factor between Pedro and deGrom is impossible. However, the conclusion is there: deGrom has the stuff to compare to Martinez, and that simple fact is remarkable. This section toward the end of that piece comparing the two pitchers sums up both the limitations and excitement of the exercise:

“There is more to pitching than velocity, and Martinez’ acumen in terms of pitch sequencing and knowledge of hitters was one of the biggest reasons why he was so incredibly successful. deGrom might not have the other intangible skills (yet) that the newest Hall of Fame member possessed at his peak, but we can all agree: 1999 Pedro velocity is a pretty great starting point.”

Jacob deGrom isn’t Pedro Martinez. Basically no one can make that claim, and deGrom has a long, long way to go before their careers can be compared. However, for a few brief hours on Friday night, deGrom was almost as dominant as peak Martinez, and he was dominant in very similar ways. The similarities between the two were already there, and in many ways, they were cemented in the first game of the NLDS. Let’s dive into deGrom’s start to explain further.

First, there was the electric fastball, which compares very well to Pedro’s. Sitting at an average of 97 mph, he quickly established the pitch on Friday, throwing 85% fastballs in the first inning alone. From then on, he relied on the fastball in all situations and counts as his main pitch, only deviating from that plan to mix in first-pitch sliders to 44% of the right-handed hitters he faced. In fact, most of the “trouble” he got into on Friday night was against righties, so he pitched backwards to those hitters later in the game, relying on offspeed pitches early in counts to keep them off-balance.

In the first few innings, he relentlessly went after righties early in the count with fastballs before getting weak contact or whiffs with sliders, as he did to A.J. Ellis in the second inning:

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

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