| 1:46 |
: Will be here shortly!
|
| 1:46 |
:
|
| 3:28 |
I was 5 days old when the Jays were last in the playoffs. I don’t really remember it. |
| 3:28 |
: JOE CARTERRRRRR
|
| 3:28 |
SCORE! Bonus Eno chat. |
| 3:29 |
: Well, “bonus,” I wasn’t around earlier today…
|
Episode 602
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he discusses the National League Wild Card game and the American League Wild Card games and basically nothing else.
This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio after the jump. (Approximately 43 min play time.)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
As we saw last night the Wild Card game can be wildly unfair, like a stand-up contest between Louis CK and your dad, who we both know just isn’t that funny no matter what he claims. The baseball season lasts 162 games and then two teams are plucked essentially at random, and told, “Okay guys, you get one game. Win and you get to play a real playoff series. Lose and you’re a miserable failure. Oh, and your season is over. Have fun!” It doesn’t matter how good (or bad) those teams were or what the difference between them was. One game. Go.
Much has been said about the unfairness of this system and the valid and reasonable concerns it brings up. How can we condense 162 games to one game? How can we pretend the randomness of baseball, a randomness which is often not sorted out in 162 games, can be sorted in one single game? Wouldn’t a three game series be better, or even five games? At least that would require a better accounting of themselves by the two teams involved.
It would, but how much better? I was curious what the difference would be if Major League Baseball changed the format from a one game playoff to a three game series, so I investigated and, with help from the crack team at FanGraphs, I found an excellent article by Steve Staude written for The Hardball Times from May 30, 2014. It contains a calculator that tells us, bizarrely, exactly what we are wondering. This, you understand, never happens.
Let’s get into it! According to Staude’s piece, the home team has a 54% chance of winning the game, irrespective of anything else. For purposes of simplicity, I should also note that I’m not getting into the team’s starting pitchers or lefty-righty matchups or anything like that. Just team-created winning percentages will be used here to ensure that my head does not explode. “Here lies Matthew Kory. He tried hard math. Oops.”
Let’s think about reactions. Think about how people respond to things that don’t go their way. You learn a lot about maturity, which is a lot about emotional command. Years ago my stepdad told me he feels bad for people who are angry — anger is an ugly display, a senseless expression, the avenue of the underdeveloped. It took me a while to know what he meant. The thing about anger is how satisfying it feels in the moment. When provoked, it’s almost a craving. The thing about maturity is remembering the other moments.
Wednesday night, Sean Rodriguez’s anger was provoked. One of the enduring images from the wild-card game is Rodriguez beating the life out of a lifeless orange cooler, an act that’s previously sent Rodriguez to the hospital. To Rodriguez’s credit, he didn’t do that to another living person, not that he didn’t try. He was tossed out for throwing a punch; he subsequently threw several more. Rodriguez needed to let his anger out, the pressure having mounted, and the release was violent, paroxysmic. Rodriguez thought of nothing other than resolution through his fists.
Wednesday night, at nearly the exact same time, Jake Arrieta’s anger was provoked. That which provoked Arrieta provoked Arrieta’s teammates, and it was Arrieta’s teammates who provoked Sean Rodriguez. Unlike Rodriguez, Arrieta remained an active player in the game. And very much unlike Rodriguez, Arrieta channeled his anger into something non-violent and constructive. The night saw Arrieta demonstrate his superiority in more than one way.
Ben and Sam review the wild-card games and discuss the Rangers-Blue Jays and Astros-Royals Division Series.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Location: Jupiter, FL
Description:
At TrackMan Baseball we measure stuff – the speed, spin and movement of pitched and hit baseballs.
We do this using proprietary 3D Doppler radar hardware and software. The majority of Major League teams use our products and services for player development and evaluation. We also work with collegiate, Japanese and Korean teams, premier amateur baseball organizations, broadcasters and equipment manufacturers.
Our business is growing fast. By the start of next season we will have a network of radars installed in more than 100 stadiums on three continents, and dozens of remote systems traveling the US.
We are looking for a TrackMan Data & Operations Intern to be our hands and eyes on the ground in Jupiter, Fla. By this we mean the D&O Intern will be out in the field focused primarily on operating the TrackMan system and ensuring data quality measures are effectively in place at the point of capture. As part of the unique partnership between Perfect Game and TrackMan, you will be an integral piece of ensuring the added TrackMan value to players, coaches, college teams, and Major League teams. The specific focus for this position is the WWBA World Championship that runs from Oct. 22-26.
Responsibilities:
Qualifications:
Compensation:
This position is compensated.
To Apply:
Please email TrackMan.
It isn’t important that the author of this post found the relevant video footage only because he’d just performed an internet search for his own name. Nor is it necessary for anyone to know that the same author needed more than 20 minutes to render that very brief footage into the two even brief clips one finds here. What’s essential is that the footage itself depicts giant Cubs batter Kyle Schwarber performing Midwestern Justice on a golf ball in a manner not unlike the sort he performed on a Gerrit Cole pitch last night in the Wild Card game. Further research suggests that, like that home run, the field of play was unable to contain Schwarber’s considerable power.
The video description in full:
Published on Oct 7, 2015
Cubs Kyle Schwarber hits a drive Tin Cup Style over the green at Shaker Run Golf Course in Cincinnati. 370yds
One might wonder: does Schwarber’ success on the course prompt him to flip clubs like he does bats?
As the video below confirms, it does.
Few teams have had the opportunity to evaluate Jake DeVries, but industry folks who are familiar with the Air Force junior left-hander tell me why Four Corners scouts will want to put eyes on him next spring in advance of the 2016 draft.
Indeed, when you pitch for a small-conference school that produces few pro players and competes for regional attention with the Pac-12, you don’t always have the luxury of waiting for the scouts to come to you. And when that small-conference school is the United States Air Force Academy, you have obligations that supersede baseball and make exposure to professional teams more difficult to come by.
Such are the circumstances for DeVries, who thusly took it upon himself this summer to go where the scouts would be. So he packed his bags after his sophomore season ended and headed for the Cape Cod League to join the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox. He made three appearances in June, but was then shipped to the Middle East for a multi-week training assignment. Though the audition was brief, it was long enough to showcase the pitching tools that make him a high follow and a possible top-three rounds target.
The book on the 2015 season is still being written, but when it is finished, at least a chapter or two will need to be devoted to Statcast. This year will likely go down as the one in which granular batted-ball data went mainstream. More data has been made public, and discussion of exit velocity, launch angle and even route efficiency has permeated the airwaves of even the most old-school broadcasts. All of the numbers, in and of themselves, mean very little. Only with the addition of context can they become meaningful.
A couple months ago in these pages, I detailed some of the limitations of the newly publicly available data. Today, let’s update those findings with an examination of the year-end data.
It’s tough to get an athlete to say much of substance in a postgame press conference. Without the benefit of a personal, one-on-one setting, and without much time for the player to gather his thoughts and reflect on his personal performance, more often than not a reporter simply could pick the cliché responses they’re most likely to hear out of a hat and arrive at a close approximation of the real thing. I’ve found this to be especially true of a starting pitcher who’s just suffered a loss.
“[Insert pitcher name here], what was giving you trouble tonight?”
“Mostly fastball command. Just wasn’t locating my fastball.”
It’s a boring answer, one that a beat writer hears something like 100 times over the course of a typical season, but it’s also an answer with which it’s usually hard to argue after a starting pitcher struggles through a start. If you really had to boil down the art and science of pitching to a one, most important thing, you might pick fastball command. Pitchers throw their fastball more than any other pitch, by far, and without fastball command, a pitcher will almost always end his night with a high number in the walks or hits column of the box score.
If there’s something you know about Gerrit Cole, it’s that he’s one of the very best pitchers in baseball, largely because he has an amazing fastball. By average velocity, it’s the third-hardest heater in the league. By PITCHf/x run values, it was the second-most valuable fastball in the league. Cole complements that fastball with a great slider and a good changeup, but he largely lives, and subsequently dies, by the fastball.
In Wednesday’s 4-0 Wild Card loss to the Cubs, it was the latter.
