| 12:01 |
: We’ll get started soon! https://www.youtube.com/wat…
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| 12:02 |
How late in the week did Dave wait to ask you to do the chat today? |
| 12:02 |
: LOL we knew Jeff would be out for a while.
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| 12:02 |
Sporer! Sporer! Sporer! |
| 12:02 |
I can eat. |
| 12:02 |
: I just ate breakfast
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The Mets are about to get all six of their best starters healthy again, as Steven Matz just had his second rehab start yesterday in his return from a strained muscle in his side. It looks like they’ll return to the six-man rotation. They should. The circumstances on this particular team make the six-man rotation a perfect match.
Yes, Matt Harvey made some waves when he complained that he didn’t know what to do with his extra day off after the Mets went to the six-man rotation. Turns out, he’s not alone. And yet, his rotation mates have a lot to teach him about maintaining a schedule with an extra day of rest.
Note: San Diego prospect Travis Jankowski and Minnesota’s Max Kepler would both have likely been included within this edition of the Five, but are both ineligible — the former due to a promotion to the majors, the latter for having appeared among the top prospects on Kiley McDaniel’s recent in-season update.
The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a couple years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.
Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from the most current iteration of Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list and (b) absent from the midseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Keith Law, and John Sickels, and also (c) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing anywhere of McDaniel’s updated prospect list or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.
Jimmy Nelson has emerged as Milwaukee’s best starter thanks to a pair of tweaks. The 26-year-old righty has unleashed a spike curveball and tightened up his delivery. The results are striking. Nelson leads Brewers hurlers in punch outs, wins, and innings, and his 3.61 ERA is as solid as his 6-foot-6, 245-pound frame.
Nelson discussed his adjustments, as well as his repertoire and approach, when the Brewers visited Wrigley Field earlier this month.
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Nelson on his delivery: “Before the season, I smoothed out the rhythm and timing of my delivery, which allows me to throw with less effort and to command the ball better. It was a mechanical change. Instead of going over my head with my hands to start my delivery, now I just keep them in front and drop them down. That allows me to be more consistent and repeatable, and a lot more relaxed. Read the rest of this entry »
The video here depicts the last pitch of Wednesday night’s game between Kansas City and Cincinnati, a contest won 4-3 by the Royals. What else the video depicts is a cutter thrown by Wade Davis at 96 mph — for a swinging strike to one of the major leagues’ most talented hitters. Though the author failed to seek Votto’s opinion of the pitch, the following image might provide some insight:
This is the expression a man makes whilst another man relates an anecdote about the time he suffered some manner of testicular injury. It’s also the expression Joey Votto makes, apparently, when he’s just witnessed a pitch featuring an unusual blend of velocity and movement.
The curious reader — and even the dumb author — are both compelled to ask in such an instance: is Davis’s the fastest sort of cutter? And also: if Davis’s isn’t the fastest, then whose is?
The biggest story to come out of the Dodgers camp yesterday was the acquisition of Chase Utley from the Phillies for two minor-league prospects, Darnell Sweeney and John Richy. While Utley will no doubt provide support to a middle infield that is thinner with the injury to Howie Kendrick, there was another event going on in Oakland yesterday — a major-league baseball game, in fact — and one important part of the Dodgers pitching staff once again reminded us that it too might be in need of some help.
I refer to the current state of the Los Angeles bullpen, which has, by a multitude of measures, accounted for among the worst performances in baseball during the 2015 season. On Wednesday, the Dodgers were “swept” in a two-game series by the 53-69 Oakland A’s; this was made especially painful to players and fans alike, I can imagine, considering Clayton Kershaw started the opening game of the series.
Kershaw was able to go only seven innings during that game, exiting with the score tied, and he handed the ball over to a multitude of relievers who displayed various levels of ineffectiveness. That game resulted in a 10-inning Oakland walk-off win — with the bullpen blowing a three-run lead — while the second and final game of the series saw them unable to keep the A’s close in the final frames of another tight contest. The two-game series was probably an encapsulation of a lot of what Dodgers fans have become painfully accustomed to.
Today, we’ll highlight some numbers related to the Dodgers pen, and see what options the Dodgers might have in bolstering the current weakest part of their team.
We have two statistics here, created in 2010, called Shutdowns and Meltdowns. They’re a way of measuring a given amount of win probability added or subtracted (.06 or 6% WPA, to be exact) during a relief pitcher’s performance, and they help outline the struggles we’re talking about. First, let’s take a look at the 10 bullpens in baseball that have the most Meltdowns, i.e. occasions on which a relief pitcher lowered his team’s chances of winning by at least 6%:
After 13 productive years in a Phillies uniform, Chase Utley is headed to Los Angeles, where he’ll help solidify the Dodgers’ second-base situation. In exchange for Utley’s services, the Dodgers sent a couple of minor leaguers to the Phillies: utility player Darnell Sweeney and right-handed pitcher John Richy. Here’s my statistical breakdown of these two prospects.
Darnell Sweeney, 2.3 WAR
Sweeney, 24, has spent the 2015 season at a Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he’s hit .271/.332/.409 in 116 games. He also runs very well, as evidenced by his 32 steals this year. Aside from the steals, though, Sweeney has been an average Triple-A hitter across the board. He’s seen action at second base, third base, shortstop, left field and center field in the minor leagues.
Every year, a number of starting pitchers seemingly come out of nowhere to become significant contributors at the major-league level. Sometimes, like in the case of Jacob deGrom, the sudden evolution is real and sustainable. In the case of the majority of short-term success stories, the league adjusts, the pitcher can’t respond to those adjustments, and he disappears from the major-league scene or he settles into a lesser role.
Earlier this week, we took a look at one such pitcher who got off to a fabulous start this season before crashing to earth: the Seattle Mariners’ Mike Montgomery. Today, we’ll take a look at the player dealt to the Rays by the Mariners for Montgomery at the end of the past spring training, right-hander Erasmo Ramirez. The 25-year-old was pummeled beyond recognition in his first two outings as a Ray, but has quietly fashioned a very nice season in Tampa, with a 10-4, 3.57, traditional line at present. Have the Rays uncovered a low-cost, high-performance starting pitcher, as they have so many times in the past? Or is it a matter of time until he starts being pounded on pitches in the fat part of the zone, as he did for much of his tenure in Seattle? Let’s take a look at Ramirez’ 2015 batted-ball data and make some observations.
The Los Angeles Dodgers made another move after a very active trading deadline, trading for life-long Philadelphia Phillies’ player and icon Chase Utley. The Dodgers, attempting to hold off the San Francisco Giants for a division title are currently two games ahead of the Giants, but are also one game behind the Chicago Cubs in the wild-card standings, making the division title potentially the only real avenue to make the playoffs. The Phillies will reportedly pay $4 million of the $6 million that Utley is owed for the rest of the season and in return receive minor leaguers Darnell Sweeney and right-hander John Richy. While the players the Phillies receive are not non-prospects — each appeared in Kiley McDaniel’s Dodgers write-up this past spring — for this season, the trade is centered on Utley’s potential contribution to the Dodgers.
For the Phillies, this trade is another in a series of transactions which represents a move away from their World Series’ runs at the end of last decade and toward rebuilding. For the Dodgers, in a tight playoff race where any additional help could mean the difference between the playoffs and going home despite a $300+ million outlay in salaries, the move for Chase Utley is no guarantee of success, but the possibility, especially when Utley had been rumored to go to the Giants, likely makes the move worth the effort. Read the rest of this entry »
For patient sluggers, strikeouts are a necessary byproduct of an approach designed to draw walks and hit home runs. We are well past the point of ridiculing strikeouts as bad when there are tangible trade-offs in on-base percentage and slugging. Those trade-offs are generally good for the player, but for players like Chris Carter this season, the three-true-outcome approach can go very wrong if the power drops or if the (relatively few) balls in play are not falling. For Chris Carter, a drop in both power and BABIP has resulted in a below replacement-level season despite leading the the league in Three True Outcomes.
Trying to get walks and home runs is generally a good strategy for hitters. Adding strikeouts to the mix is fine as evidenced by the leaders in Three True Outcome percentage (HR+K+BB/PA) below: Read the rest of this entry »
