FanGraphs Baseball

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve discussed many of the various aspects of the emerging granular batted-ball velocity/exit angle data that is all the rage today. In the next few articles, we’re going to bring it all together, and review the best and worst contact-makers (and allowers) in both leagues in 2014. Today, we’ll cover the AL offensive contact-quality leaders and laggards. You will notice that contact quality, while extremely important, is far from the singular defining characteristic of a hitter.

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Major League Baseball seems to be in a constant public fight about its popularity and importance in society. To some it is in decline, to others it is boring, and to those who point to attendance and revenue, the sport is vibrant and successful and contradicts the nonsense of those who believe baseball is dying. The sport can always do more to keep the game entertaining, but early signs this season indicate that baseball is still relevant and popular, as both attendance and television ratings are higher — the latter despite an overall decline in cable ratings. Increased ratings mean more people are watching the games but don’t provide any more revenue for the teams. When it comes to the lucrative local television deals, ratings do not drive revenue. Local television revenue is still tied to the health of the major cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner.

Before getting to baseball’s dependence on the health of major cable companies, here is a brief look at some early season numbers. The first month of the season has seen big increases in viewership for national games on Fox Sports 1 and MLB Network, including double the amount of viewers aged 18 to 34 watching game on Fox Sports 1. The Chicago Cubs have doubled their ratings after their increased commitment in the offseason as well as the arrival of Kris Bryant. The Kansas City Royals have done the same coming off their World Series appearance. The Houston Astros have seen an increase in viewership after finally resolving their local disputes, at least as far as getting their games on all the local cable packages. The Arizona Diamondbacks have seen their highest ratings in a decade while the games of the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals, and San Diego Padres rank first in their broadcast territories among all shows. A recent article by Maury Brown at Forbes showed that baseball games beat playoff games from the NHL and NBA in many markets across the country.

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On Sunday, the Marlins fired manager Mike Redmond. It’s what teams do when they find themselves performing worse than expected, even if expectations of contention were probably less realistic than the hype would have suggested. The manager is the fall guy when things go badly, though, and things are going badly in Miami, so Redmond was shown the door. It’s how baseball works, especially baseball in Miami, and Redmond certainly knew what he was signing up for when he took the job.

On Monday, though, things took a turn away from the norm. Instead of promoting a minor league manager, or one of the team’s remaining coaches, or even turning to a former player who was being groomed as a manager-of-the-future, the Marlins just put their General Manager in charge of the clubhouse. Dan Jennings, the guy who built this roster, is now tasked with trying to turn it into a winner on the field. After years of ranting that analytical GMs were undermining the value of the manager’s role, it turns out to be an old-school scout who is going to try to run everything all at once. The irony is delicious.

But while I’m no big fan of the Marlins organization, I’m also hesitant to cast too many aspersions against this decision. The narrative is really quite easy and lends itself to scorn and ridicule, but I remain convinced that we, as outsiders, have very little to evaluate the quality of a manager even after we’ve seen them perform at the job, so when it comes to evaluating managerial prospects, I just don’t know that we can say anything with any kind of credibility.

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I scouted Vanderbilt righty Carson Fulmer (video) last Thursday and walked away from that game with more thoughts about prospect lists than about Fulmer himself.

First some background on Fulmer: he’s listed at 6’0/195, but scouts and I estimate he’s actually 5’11/205. He’s pitched at 93-95 mph with an above-average to plus curveball and above-average changeup for all three years at Vanderbilt and all the way back to his high school days, as well. His delivery in high school included a significant head whack, which is much less pronounced now, along with a more up-tempo delivery. Fulmer has never been hurt, even after shifting midseason in 2014 from the bullpen to the rotation, regularly going over 100 pitches in his starts (126 last weekend) and throwing last summer for Team USA.

While some scouts question his delivery and command, he has 132 strikeouts and 37 walks along with 61 hits allowed in 95.2 innings this year, en route to setting school records in multiple categories. He’s a physical and possibly genetic freak, as this delivery, stuff, usage and velocity would’ve broken most other pitchers already, but he’s never been hurt.

Now that you have some background on Fulmer, you’ve probably figured out that he is one of “my guys” in this draft and I’ll be writing more about him before the draft. I’m higher on him than the many in the industry and I will write an extended pre-draft scouting report/rant wondering why this is the case. For reference, here’s what I wrote about last year’s case, 35th overall pick last summer, Rockies 2B Forrest Wall.

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Last week was relatively eventful for two pending antitrust lawsuits against Major League Baseball. On Thursday, the district court issued an important decision in the Garber v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball suit challenging several of MLB’s television broadcasting practices under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Then later that same day, MLB officially asked the district court to dismiss the Miranda v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball case, a suit contending that MLB’s minor league pay practices violate federal antitrust law.

Let’s start with the Garber case. As both Wendy Thurm and I have previously discussed on several occasions, the Garber suit involves allegations that several of MLB’s television policies violate the Sherman Act. First, the plaintiffs contend that MLB and its regional sports network partners impose unreasonable blackout policies on fans, preventing individual RSNs from competing with one another in each team’s assigned geographic territory. Absent these anticompetitive restrictions, the plaintiffs allege, a Red Sox fan living in California would, for instance, have the option of subscribing to the New England Sports Network (NESN) to watch all of Boston’s game. The resulting competition would, in theory, drive down the cost of sports programming for all baseball fans.

Relatedly, the Garber plaintiffs also accuse MLB of violating antitrust law by selling only league-wide, pay-per-view subscription packages (MLB Extra Innings and MLB.tv), rather than allowing individual teams to offer their own competing out-of-market plans. This restriction on competition also allegedly increases the cost that out-of-market fans pay to watch baseball.

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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
Los Angeles NL at San Francisco | 22:15 ET
Frias (18.2 IP, 83 xFIP-) vs. Hudson (45.1 IP, 102 xFIP-)
In the foreword to his anthology of fantastic literature Black Water, editor Alberto Manguel suggests that the definitive and also most appealing characteristic of that genre is its capacity for surprise — the capacity for surprise one finds, for example, in I. A. Ireland’s Climax for a Ghost Story, which brief story not only appears in Manguel’s anthology but also right here in its entirety:

“How eerie!” said the girl, advancing cautiously. “–And what a heavy door!” She touched it as she spoke and it suddenly swung to with a click.

“Good Lord!” said the man. “I don’t believe there’s a handle inside. Why, you’ve locked us both in!”

“Not both of us. Only one of us,” said the girl, and before his eyes she passed straight through the door, and vanished.

Ireland’s brief work not only illustrates the best of fantastic literature, but also serves as a means by which to better understand Dodgers right-hander Carlos Frias. Because Frias is the man in the story, is why. But in addition to the man, he’s also the girl. And in addition to those two, he’s also — and this is most unnerving — he’s also the door.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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A few weeks ago, the Padres promoted one of their best remaining prospects, Austin Hedges, to join the Major League club to serve as Derek Norris‘ backup. It was a bit of an odd move, given that Hedges might have just been figuring out how to hit professional pitching, but the Padres wanted to upgrade their roster and saw more short-term value in having Hedges catch a couple of times per week in the big leagues.

Well, apparently, the Washington Nationals are going to try a similar trick, as Ken Rosenthal reports that the team is promoting infield prospect Wilmer Difo, with outfielder Jayson Werth potentially heading to the DL.

Sources: #Nationals expected to promote IF Wilmer Difo. Werth a candidate for DL.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 19, 2015

Difo spent all of last year in low-A ball, started this year in high-A, and was promoted to Double-A a few weeks ago. He’s consistently hit well, showing both contact and some power, but he has a grand total of 33 games above low-A ball in his career — even though he just turned 23 — so to say it’s been a quick rise would be an understatement. But now the question is what the Nationals are going to do with him?

Shortstop is blocked by Ian Desmond, who while struggling at the moment remains one of the best players at the position in the game. Yunel Escobar has hit well while playing both second and third base, but has primarily settled in at third in Anthony Rendon’s absence, leaving second base to Danny Espinosa, who is also hitting far better this year than he has in prior years. Neither Escobar nor Espinosa need replacing, so Difo is apparently coming up to serve as a utility infielder until Rendon returns, at which point the team won’t even need him in that role.

Difo is an interesting player, and could potentially be a starter for the Nationals as soon as next year, but he doesn’t have a clear role on the 2015 Nationals, and having him sit on the bench in the big leagues isn’t going to help speed up his development. I’m not entirely sure why promoting a prospect to sit on the bench is becoming a trend, but it probably shouldn’t be. In the end, this likely won’t matter much at all, but it’s a little weird to see another prospect promoted at a time when the big league team doesn’t need him to actually play.

Monday afternoon, I participated in an Orioles-centric podcast, where one of the things I was supposed to talk about was Manny Machado. I wrote about Machado a couple of weeks ago, and more specifically, I wrote about him suddenly exercising a lot more patience at the plate. From what we understand about plate-discipline statistics, they find themselves pretty fast. It’s unusual when they move around, so Machado’s change was unusual and worth some attention. He seems to be doing the thing we all want prospects to do, but that they only infrequently pull off.

In advance of the podcast, I thought it would be smart to do a little Orioles research. I know some things about them, but I do not know everything about them, since I’m supposed to keep aware of 30 teams until the passing of the deadline renders a few of them irrelevant. Nobody wants to sound unprepared. I checked in on Machado, to make sure things were still keeping up. I checked in on Steve Pearce, out of offensive and defensive curiosity. And it was while scrolling through pages I noticed something about Adam Jones. Machado, as noted, is showing some weird changes in his plate discipline. Jones is, too, in a different way.

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Like most teams, the Tampa Bay Rays utilize PITCHf/x data. Stan Boroski, the club’s bullpen coach, looks at it every morning and, along with pitching coach Jim Hickey, uses the findings as an assessment tool. From time to time, what he sees elicits a call to action regarding a member of the pitching staff..

Boroski, currently in his sixth season with the Rays, and fourth in his current job, discussed Tampa Bay’s use of PITCHf/x on a recent visit to Fenway Park.

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Stan Boroski: “I look at everybody who pitched the night before and go to Jim with what I saw. If everything is within normal parameters, it’s usually just ‘So and so was good last night.’ Nothing is specifically dealt with unless something comes up that needs to be addressed.

“I usually don’t go to Kevin (Cash) unless it’s going to prompt doing something different with a pitcher, something he might need to change. That’s a pitching thing and something we normally don’t need to bother him with. But Kevin understands exactly what’s going on with our PITCHf/x stuff. It’s part of the process of how we evaluate, how we attack, and how we build our pitching. Being the manager, he’s obviously involved in all of that, and being a former catcher, he understands it very well. We’re always on the same page when we talk about it. Read the rest of this entry »