FanGraphs Baseball

David Cone was a thinking-man’s pitcher before he became a thinking-man’s analyst. The New York Yankees’ television color man took the mound for five teams in 17 major league seasons, and he logged lots of big wins along the way. Moxie played a role. The right-hander augmented his plus stuff with the same cerebral approach he now takes to the broadcast booth.

Cone shared some of his views on pitching when the Yankees visited Fenway Park earlier this summer. As you ‘d expect, he had a lot of interesting things to offer.

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Cone on Don Mattingly going 1-for-17 against him: “I can’t really explain it, but generally speaking, my formula for getting left-handed hitters out was fastball, split. Against right-handed hitters it was fastball, slider. Maybe I threw some decent splitters to him that promoted ground balls. It’s possible that he hit some balls pretty hard at defenders, too. It was probably a combination of both. Of course, 17 at bats isn’t a very big sample, either.

“A lot of times when I was throwing a splitter to a left-handed batter, it was either-or. It was to get a swing-and-miss, or to get the hitter out front – get his timing thrown off – and induce weak contact. I’d take either one, so it was sort of the same pitch, looking for two different outcomes. Read the rest of this entry »

On August 4, the Detroit Tigers “released Dave Dombrowski from his contract,” as owner Mike Ilitch decided to promote assistant general manager Al Avila to take the team in a somewhat different direction. While Avila worked closely with Dombrowski, he did make it clear that he intended to modernize the team’s front office a bit more, promoting analyst Sam Menzin to a more prominent role and noting that they’d be expanding the department under him. Dombrowski had a successful run as the Tigers GM, but is one of the more traditional executives still running teams in this age of increasing information.

And now, two weeks later, Dombrowski has landed a new position, taking the title of president of baseball operations with the Boston Red Sox. As part of the transition, GM Ben Cherington will be leaving the organization, and Bob Nightengale reports that former Braves GM Frank Wren is the most likely candidate to replace Cherington. Wren was ousted in Atlanta in part because the team had fallen behind the curve analytically, so a Dombrowski-Wren combination would make for one of the more old-school front office tandems in baseball.

Given that the Red Sox have been among the most aggressive teams in terms of implementing analytics and using data to drive their decision making, this looks like a pretty monumental shift in organizational philosophy. Given that nearly every move Cherington and his staff made last winter has turned out as poorly as possible, it’s not a huge shock that he’s taking the fall for the team’s second consecutive losing season. But it is a bit surprising to see the team apparently change course so aggressively. Dombrowski certainly has a strong track record of building contenders, but it looks like the Red Sox may be pivoting away from data and more towards scouting in response to their recent failures.

One thing’s for sure: This weekend’s Saber Seminar — held in Boston, and with a schedule that was to include a large number of Red Sox front office officials, Cherington included — just got way more interesting.

Ben and Sam discuss the Washington Nationals’ seemingly lost season, followed by special appearances from podcast legends Ryan Webb and Matt Albers.

Episode 588
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 collapse of the Washington Nationals, their (nevertheless) optimisitc rest-of-season projections, and the most effective efforts by front offices to share analytics with players.

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 45 min play time.)

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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, say, Jacob deGrom, the sudden evolution at the major-league level is real and sustainable. In the case of the majority of these short-term success stories, the league adjusts, the pitcher is unable to, and either disappears from the major-league scene or settles into a lesser role.

This spring, Mariners right-hander Erasmo Ramirez was out of options, and was designated for assignment off of the 40-man roster. In these types of situations, a club is lucky to receive a fringe prospect in return. In this case, however, the Mariners were able to acquire the Rays’ version of Ramirez in lefty Mike Montgomery. His services were required at the major-league level shortly thereafter, and in his first seven starts, Montgomery was a revelation, posting a 1.62 ERA. In his last seven starts, however, he’s been more like the Book of Revelation, unfurling a 7.99 ERA. Which is the real Mike Montgomery, and might he still be someone the Mariners can be excited about moving forward? Is there really that a stark a difference between the Before and the After Model in this comparison test? Let’s take a look at Montgomery’s 2015 batted-ball data and make some observations.

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If you watch Sergio Romo hold a ball even for just a minute, it’s obvious how he found the grip for his unique slider. Just like every other part of the Giants’ reliever, his fingers can’t stop moving. He’s constantly fidgeting, so he can’t remember the exact moment he settled on his particular finger placement. He continues that fidgeting when it comes to his craft, really.

To Romo, the slider isn’t maybe as legendary as it sounds when you talk about it as his No-Dot Slider with capital letters. “It’s just different. I don’t really see it as ‘good’ or ‘special,'” he told me. But there was one compliment that meant something to the pitcher at one point.

More than 2000 sliders ago, Romo was a good middle reliever for the Giants as they headed to the World Series. There, he faced Bengie Molina, who had just been traded from the Giants to the Rangers. After the Giants won, Molina gave the reliever “the greatest compliment.” The catcher told Romo that “catching it and seeing it in the box were two completely different things,” and that “if I don’t have confidence in my stuff, I’m a waste of talent.”

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This past weekend’s four-game series in San Francisco between the Giants and Washington Nationals may be remembered as an important point in the playoff race for the teams fighting for the NL East crown. By getting swept for their sixth consecutive loss, the Nationals now find themselves reeling, four and a half games behind the Mets. Victims of their own sweep at the hands of the Pirates, New York can now look forward to better times, as they play no other NL teams with a winning percentage over .500 for the remainder of the season.

The Mets currently have an almost 70% chance of winning the division per our playoff odds; we predicted them to have a 7% chance at the beginning of the year. Crazy things happen during baseball seasons, and projections are made with the information on hand at the time — teams over or underperform; players get traded; young stars get called up early. The Mets now find themselves in a position that was viewed as extremely unlikely at the beginning of the race, and for the first time in what seems like a long time, they’re now favorites.

Adding to the unlikeliness is the fact that New York’s offense has been powered in large part by a resurgent former 40 home run threat who now finds himself toward the later stages of his career. Quite simply, Curtis Granderson is having a great season, and he’s turning back the clock in some rare ways by doing so.

We know who Granderson was during his prime: an elite power-hitting outfielder with great speed on the base paths. An injury-marred 2013 season with the Yankees seemed to mark a steep downturn, as he was able to perform just 7% better than league average on offense during his first season with the Mets in 2014. Though passable, it probably wasn’t the kind of production New York had in mind when they agreed to terms on his four-year, $60 million deal in the winter of 2013.

This year, however, we’re seeing glimmers of the Granderson of old. Already matching his 20 home run output from last year, the left-hander’s overall offensive performance is at its highest level since 2011: he’s now performed 22% better than the league average offensive player, good for the 17th-best offensive outfielder in the major leagues as measured by wRC+.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

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Hitting a home run in Major League Baseball requires a considerable amount strength. It’s probably fair to presume, however that, having previously hit 53 of them in a single season, Chris Davis is in the upper reaches of physical strength among MLB players. Of Davis’ 190 career home runs, likely none has displayed that strength more clearly than the one he hit this weekend to beat Oakland — even though that homer failed to travel even 400 feet. 

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth on Saturday, Chris Davis came to the plate with no runners on against switch-pitching Pat Venditte. A 69 mph slider headed to the plate low and away out of the strike zone. Chris Davis did not appear to get a good swing on the ball:

Yet, somehow, the ball ended up here:

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
deGrom (146.2 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Gausman (60.1 IP, 103 xFIP-)
Were the velocity aging curve for pitchers not merely a line on a graph but rather the topographic profile of a road in your local municipality, public-works officials would erect a sign at the beginning of it alerting motorists to the steep grade which lay ahead. Indeed, science reveals that pitchers lose, on average, about 0.3 mph per year of fastball velocity. What Mets right-hander Jacob deGrom has done instead, however, is to steadily gain fastball velocity since his major-league debut last May. After sitting at roughly 93.0 mph over his first handful of starts in 2014, deGrom has now produced an average fastball velocity of 95.0 mph or greater in 11 of his most recent 14 appearances. This open disregard for the natural limits of human anatomy is the precise sort of behavior which, were deGrom not a Dutch-American person but rather a character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, would provoke the considerable anger of the Olympic gods — and the sort of robust vengeance of which those same gods are capable.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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