FanGraphs Baseball

Official word is in: Chase Utley has been given a two-game suspension for this.

Many league suspensions get appealed, though, and Utley’s case is no different, with Utley’s argument being that there isn’t much of a precedent for this at all. He wouldn’t have known he could get suspended for an aggressive takeout slide at second. A week and a half ago, this happened in Texas, and there wasn’t any discipline:

Unlike Utley’s slide, that one took place over the base, but it was also horribly late, with the runner coming down on the infielder’s shin. As the slide completed, the runner was several feet beyond the bag. But there wasn’t a major injury, and later on Rougned Odor apologized to Johnny Giavotella. It was one of those “just playing the game” things, and this isn’t meant to single out Odor. It seems like slides like this happen on a daily basis.

So, for Utley, it’s about the lack of precedent. He did something a lot of players would do, and he’s facing discipline in large part because the other guy happened to get injured. From the league’s standpoint, though, you have to start somewhere, if you want to eliminate this play. Someone has to be the first to get penalized, unless you want to wait to do anything until the playoffs are over. And I imagine they didn’t want to risk another injury. They wanted to make a statement, and this was an opportunity.

So! A poll, for you.

As most baseball fans are by now aware, Chase Utley was suspended for two games on Sunday evening by Major League Baseball. The suspension relates to Utley’s controversial takeout slide of Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada in Game 2 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night.

Utley’s agent, Joel Wolfe, quickly announced that Utley would be appealing the suspension, as is his right under MLB’s collective bargaining agreement:

“A two-game suspension for a legal baseball play is outrageous and completely unacceptable. Chase did what all players are taught to do in this situation – break up the double play. We routinely see plays at second base similar to this one that have not resulted in suspensions.

Chase feels terrible about Ruben Tejada’s injury and everyone who knows him knows that he would never intentionally hurt anybody. We will be appealing this suspension immediately.”

By appealing the suspension, Utley has temporarily delayed the imposition of his punishment, meaning that he remains eligible to play for the Dodgers until MLB holds a hearing on the matter and issues a final decision. However, with Utley conveniently already in New York City (the designated site of most appeals of this nature), MLB is reportedly planning hear Utley’s appeal today so that the matter can be resolved ahead of tonight’s Game 3 at Citi Field. Whether the appeal will actually go forward today or not, however, remains uncertain, as the Major League Baseball Players Association is reportedly pressing for more time to prepare Utley’s defense.

Given the unprecedented nature of Utley’s suspension, a number of commentators have already predicted that the punishment will either be reduced or entirely overturned. And while such an outcome is certainly possible, and perhaps even likely, it is not entirely inconceivable that the league will uphold Utley’s suspension.

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Unless you’re Cardinals fan, or you happened to watch a lot of Cardinals games this year, you’ve probably given very little thought to Tommy Pham. It’s very possible that you’d never even heard of him before this year’s playoffs. Heck, it’s even possible you’re still not even sure who he is or where he came from. But the 27-year-old rookie played a big role in Friday night’s game, when he blasted a pinch-hit homer off of Jon Lester in the 8th inning. His homer added an important insurance run for the Cards, extending their lead from one run to two. Check it out.

Hitting a homer isn’t a particularly rare occurrence for Pham, at least not lately. He hit five of them in his 173 big league trips to the plate this year, which helped propel him to a .268/.347/.477 batting line. His home-run total placed him third among Cardinals rookies, trailing only Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty. But unlike his rookie teammates, Pham missed the cut for just about every organizational prospect list — both this season and in every prior season.

His absence from these lists had almost everything to do with his age. Pham turned 27 back in March, making him significantly older than your average rookie. But while 27-year-old impact rookies are few and far between, Pham’s success hasn’t exactly come out of the woodwork. He hit .320/.391/.487 in 603 Triple-A plate appearances between this year and last, which was good for a 132 wRC+. To put that in context, Pham was essentially the Lucas Duda of Triple-A before the Cardinals gave him a call.

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That’s it. That’s the whole thing. There are contact sports out there. A whole lot of contact sports. Baseball is not and never has been among them.

Sometimes, players do come into contact with one another. Sometimes, they do so violently, and sometimes, when they do so violently, they’re even on opposing teams. It’s not that the players are forbidden to touch, and it’s not like there’s anything you can do to totally eliminate all collisions. But baseball, at its core, isn’t a contact sport. It’s a bat-and-ball sport, part catch and part golf. Baseball should be played in the spirit in which it was intended.

You ever wonder why players don’t wear pads? I mean, catchers wear pads, almost from head to toe, but that’s because they’re getting shot at by a cannon 130 times a game. Batters wear helmets because sometimes the cannon has a calibration error or an attitude. Defenders wear gloves because sometimes the cannonballs come in hot. Defenders wear cups for basically the same reason. But there isn’t anything else. No other helmets, no other chest protectors, no other shin guards. It’s not because ballplayers are tough guys, impervious to pain. It’s because ballplayers aren’t supposed to run into one another, and when they do, it’s either a freak accident, or something that hasn’t yet been sufficiently codified.

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The Cubs are a confident team. They should be. Despite a lack of experience at several key positions, Joe Maddon’s squad finished with the third-best record in baseball. Last night, they evened up the NLDS at one game apiece by besting the Cardinals.

When did the youthful squad realize they weren’t simply talented, but also capable of seriously contending for a post-season berth, and perhaps even a World Series title? It depends on who you ask.

Maddon suggests it was in early August, when his team won a key series at home against the Giants. The handful of players I queried on Tuesday offered somewhat different answers.

“It kind of kicked in early in the season,” said Chris Denorfia. “I think after we got that first month under our belt, we just started coming to the ballpark expecting to win. We never really had a long losing streak.” Read the rest of this entry »

When Bartolo Colon jogged in from the bullpen to replace Noah Syndergaard, we thought we were going to be talking about the wisdom of using a pitch-to-contact starter in relief when a strikeout was the preferred outcome. But then Howie Kendrick hit a line drive up the middle, which Daniel Murphy fielded and flipped to shortstop Ruben Tejada in an effort to turn an inning-ending double play. And then this happened.

There’s no real way to describe this play in any other way than this: Chase Utley, realizing his role shifted from baserunner to defender, barreled into Ruben Tejada with the intention of preventing him from throwing the ball to first base. To do this, Utley waited until the last possible moment to slide, not even attempting to touch the base as his body upended Tejada, whose legs were taken out from under him and then landed violently on the ground. The impact forced Tejada to be removed from the game.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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The Rangers won on Friday in no small part because of Rougned Odor’s baserunning after he got to first. But no less impressive was Delino DeShields‘ baserunning on his way to first. In the 14th inning, this happened, immediately following the single that made the difference in the game. So while it turned out this RBI was unnecessary, it might’ve also been the single most incredible display of raw skill in the contest:

For some context, here’s a table, copied from this website. Rating times from home to first base:

Alternatively or additionally, from an old article by Jon Heyman:

Consider that on a swing a 4.0 time for a right-handed hitter and 3.9 for a left-handed hitter is considered an “8” on the 2-8 scout’s scale, or all-time great.

From contact, going frame by frame, I have the baseball arriving at first base in about 3.8 seconds. Fast enough to retire practically anyone and end the inning. But instead, DeShields seems rather easily safe. Because I have him getting from home to first — starting at contact — in about 3.7 seconds. Which would be three-tenths of a second faster than an 80-grade runner. It’s the same as the difference between an elite runner and an average one.

In some ways, footspeed is the most overrated skill in baseball. But sometimes, it really is enough to create something out of what ought to be nothing. Delino DeShields isn’t impossible to throw out, but you couldn’t blame Troy Tulowitzki if he’s feeling that way. Normal athletes don’t move that fast. Conventionally elite ones don’t either.

The second game of the Texas-Toronto ALDS ended in a memorable fashion, the Rangers surviving a razor-thin review of a potential third out to score two in the 14th and hold off the Blue Jays. This ended up obscuring the memorable way it began, with a top of the first replete with odd incidents. Had it not begun in this memorable way, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have ended as memorably, so let’s look at all the weird stuff that happened.
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In the latest example of how playoff baseball is less predictable than a deer by a roadway, the Rangers just won two games in Toronto, with Ross Ohlendorf slamming the door, and with Rougned Odor’s baserunning arguably occupying center stage. In a game that sent 109 men to the plate, it wouldn’t be fair to suggest it all came down to one or two events, but there’s one event and one event only that’ll be dominating the conversation until Game 3. If you watched, you know what it is. If you didn’t watch, you probably still know what it is, because umpiring controversies have a way of getting around.

With two down in the top of the 14th, Odor slapped an infield single. That put the go-ahead run on first base, and then Odor advanced to second on a subsequent single. Odor actually rounded second aggressively, thinking about getting to third, but then he decided to return. Yet, cleverly, Jose Bautista threw behind him. There was a tag attempt, and, immediately, the play became everything.

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