FanGraphs Baseball

Breaking out for three consecutive years certainly has some positive elements to it, but it also means that the first two breakouts did not completely take. After failing to make the rotation out of Spring Training, Danny Salazar might have moved himself from potential breakout star to post-hype sleeper. After his hot start, the sleeper tag has been removed, and only a potential star remains. Salazar has had periods of dominance in each of the last last three seasons, but those dominant stretches have been followed by problem periods. This is now the fourth time Salazar has been called upon to for an extended role in Cleveland’s rotation, and Salazar, helped by his previous experiences, is now pitching as well as anyone in Major League Baseball. Consider his first roughly-30 innings each time.
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At the very bottom of the 2015 standings, you’ll find two unsurprising teams tied for the worst record in baseball: the Phillies and the Brewers. The Brewers have been a disaster, already firing their manager, and the Phillies are paying the piper for years of making moves to maximize short-term returns. But do you know which team is only a half game ahead of that pair of disasters? Well, you probably do if you clicked on this post, given that I put them in the subject, but yes, it’s the Oakland A’s, who currently stand at 12-21 after getting swept in Seattle over the weekend.

The A’s were expected to take a step back this year after trading away Josh Donaldson and a bunch of his friends, but while they spent the first half of the winter getting younger, they also went out and landed Ben Zobrist, Billy Butler, and Tyler Clippard, showing that they weren’t just punting on 2015. While they churned half the roster in an effort to set themselves up better for the future, this was supposed to be a team that could at least hang around the Wild Card race and maybe make another run at a division title if things broke right. Instead, after weeks of baseball, the A’s are 8.5 games behind the Astros, and their playoff odds have shrunk from 33% on Opening Day to 15% today.

While it’s still early enough to turn things around, there is a point at which the hole gets too big to dig out of, especially because other teams will likely start calling about impending free agents like Zobrist, Clippard, and Scott Kazmir in the next month or so. If they don’t start winning pretty soon, you can bet that Billy Beane won’t hesitate to make another flurry of trades to bring in even more young talent, so the A’s clock is ticking, and it won’t be too long before they have to decide if they’re in it for 2015 or not. Despite their miserable start to the season, I wouldn’t suggest giving up on this A’s team just quite yet.

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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 AL at Tampa Bay | 19:10 ET
Sabathia (38.0 IP, 96 xFIP-) vs. Colome (10.0 IP, 46 xFIP-)
Over 16.0 innings in 2013, Tampa Bay right-hander Alex Colome produced a strikeout- and walk-rate differential of merely four points. In 23.2 innings last season, he recorded a differential of only three points. Not particularly great, either of those numbers. Over his first 10.0 innings this season, however, Colome has posted strikeout and walk rates of 26.3% an 0.0%, respectively — to which figures the application of subtraction produces a differential of exactly 26.3 points. Considerably bigger, that number. How has he facilitated that improvement? Mostly by means of chance, probably. But also by way of an increased swinging-strike rate, too, probably. Most impressive thus far has been a pitch referred to alternately as a cutter and slider.

Here’s an example of it to Mookie Betts from last week:

And to Xander Bogaerts, from that same game:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay Radio.

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As I check the latest version of the leaderboard, I see that Michael Pineda currently leads all pitchers in WAR. Granted, it’s by only a little. Granted, a chunk of that just happened Sunday. And granted, WAR is a rough tool, especially for pitchers. Lots of stuff going on there. But something we know for sure: higher-WAR pitchers are better than lower-WAR pitchers. The guys at the top of the leaderboard are better than the guys at the bottom. And Pineda’s got an extraordinary strikeout-and-walk differential. Not only is it really good; in terms of K% – BB%, Pineda has gotten better by 10 percentage points, relative to last season. Only Danny Salazar is showing a bigger step forward so far in the American League.

Whenever you see a bump in performance like that, you have to wonder what changed. The first place a lot of people look is repertoire. And looking at the repertoire has a few steps — people look for new pitches, or new movement on old pitches, or new pitch mixes, or changing velocities. Sometimes people also look for changed release points. So goes the search for improvement explanations. As for Michael Pineda? He’s not throwing anything new. He hasn’t changed his movements or his arm slot, and his pitch mix is fairly similar. His pitches aren’t going faster. The explanation here seems to be one of the most difficult to prove, but also the simplest to convey. Pineda, from the looks of things, just has better command.

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Among all the barely read posts published by the author at this site, one of the most barely read ever was this past Thursday’s effort dedicated to the Mexican League, in which post I endeavored to identify the five players within that circuit whose combination of age and performance most recommended them to a place (hypothetically, at least) within affiliated baseball.

The purpose of this current dispatch is not to comment once again upon the virtues of that Thursday post, nor to bemoan its lack of audience. Rather, it’s to (first) show and (then also) tell the reader why Mexican baseball oughtn’t be ignored.

With regard to the allure of that league, here’s a visual argument very decidedly on its behalf (from here):

And here’s a brief explanation of that visual argument: it’s an excerpt from the box score from today’s game between Mexico City and Tijuana. Specifically, it’s the part of that box score which documents Tijuana’s pitchers. What one notes is that those pitchers were Jose Contreras (formerly of the White Sox and Yankees) and Dennys Reyes (formerly of an extra-large major-league uniform). “Importer/Exporter of the Marvelous,” it reads on each of their business cards. And how do I know this? Because of Mexican baseball, is how.

QED.

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
Minnesota at Cleveland | 13:10 ET
May (26.0 IP, 95 xFIP-) vs. Salazar (26.0 IP, 55 xFIP-)
Today’s actual and official most highly rated game is the one featuring the Dodgers at the Rockies at 4:10pm — which is to say, the one featuring the perpetually effective Clayton Kershaw versus the curiously effective Jorge de la Rosa. That particular encounter, however, was also yesterday’s most highly rated game before inclement weather cancelled it. The virtues of the Dodgers-Rockies contest are enumerated in only slighter greater depth here. With regard to this game between Minnesota and Cleveland, its most notable quality is how it provides the opportunity to observe Cleveland right-hander Danny Salazar. Were pitcher NERD figures not capped at 10, Salazar would receive a score of 15. He’s produced an expected FIP more than two standard deviations better than the average starter; a swinging-strike rate almost exactly three standard deviations better. Plus he throws harder than nearly everyone else.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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Last week’s column mentioned that Reggie Cleveland was the last native of Saskatchewan to win a big league game prior to Andrew Albers doing so two years ago. The 1981 decision wasn’t his most-notable feat. On September 25, 1977, he allowed 18 hits in a complete-game win.

Pitching for the Red Sox, the right-hander allowed 15 singles, a pair of doubles, and a home run as Boston cruised to a 12-5 victory at Tiger Stadium. He struck out one and didn’t issue a free pass.

Earlier this week, I asked Cleveland about the game. The first thing he did was laugh.

“You have to be pretty good to give up 18 hits and still be in the game,” Cleveland told me with a smile. “That’s a major league record.”

It actually isn’t a record, at least not if you include extra-inning games. In 1932, Eddie Rommel of the Philadelphia Athletics allowed 29 hits – and 14 runs! — over 17 frames in a win over the Indians. What Cleveland did is still remarkable, and I asked him how it came to be. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Colorado | 20:10 ET
Kershaw (38.2 IP, 50 xFIP-) vs. de la Rosa (12.0 IP, 66 xFIP-)
One benefit of this game to America and the Americans who live within it, is that it provides an opportunity to watch Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw. Insofar as Kershaw’s arm and body will submit eventually to the deleterious effects of age, only a finite number of such opportunities exist. This represents one of them. Otherwise, here’s another compelling feature of this contest — namely, that it allows everyone to learn more about this current, not entirely recognizable version of Jorge de la Rosa. Because, some facts about his (very brief) 2015 season thus far… One: he’s recorded an average fastball velocity of 93.8 mph, higher than at any other point in his career. Two: he’s produced a 16% swinging-strike rate, higher by six points than his career average. Three: he’s allowed runs (regard this number: 9.00 ERA) with considerably more frequency that his defense-independent numbers (regard these numbers: 2.58 FIP, 2.51 xFIP) would suggest.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: No Comment.

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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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