Joe Maddon has managed for 14 MLB seasons, and in nine of them his team has won 90 or more games. He captured a pennant in Tampa Bay, and most notably a World Series title with the Cubs. Four of his five years in Chicago have included October baseball.

Not this year: not after a September swoon that saw the Cubs lose nine straight down the stretch. Despite having a plus-106 run differential — by comparison, the playoff-bound Brewers and Cardinals are plus-one, and plus-93, respectively — Maddon’s club is heading home after today’s game.

The bespectacled and thoughtfully-loquacious denizen of Hazelton, PA was to meet with Theo Epstein last night, and not simply for a cold frosty. Speculation has been swirling about Maddon’s future — this is the final year of his contract — and in all likelihood there was some solemnity to the Saturday evening sit-down. It will come as a surprise if we don’t soon learn that the Joe Maddon era is over in Chicago.

Earlier this week Maddon was asked about having used the word “optimistic” when addressing his tenuous-at-best situation. His response suggested something other than an expected return engagement at the Friendly Confines. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fourth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

The final weekend of the 2019 season is upon us, and while five of the divisions and all of the super-complicated tiebreaker scenarios are off the table, with three games to play, each league has multiple scenarios that could result in at least one tiebreaker game. Seven hundred or so words is worth a picture, so first, behold this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Félix Hernández didn’t always throw his signature changeup. When he was a teenager coming up through the Mariners organization, his best pitches were his electric fastball and a nasty curveball. That breaking ball has stuck with him in some form or fashion throughout his career, but his changeup was an afterthought until around 2009, the year before he won the Cy Young award. Since then, his cambio has become almost synonymous with his approach as a pitcher.

The changeup has existed in the game as long as pitchers have been trying to disrupt the timing of the opposing batter. But Félix’s changeup was unlike any that had come before. “There is no one in baseball that throws a Félix Hernández changeup — no one,” Brandon Moss told Sports Illustrated back in 2014. What made it so unique was it’s combination of high velocity and elite vertical movement. He threw it around 90 mph when almost no one else in baseball was throwing a changeup that hard. Conventional wisdom assumed that the velocity differential was the most important aspect of a good changeup. Afterall, what better way to disrupt the timing of a batter than to throw two pitches with a significant gap in speed even though they look the same out of the hand.

Based on Harry Pavlidis’s research into effective changeups, we know that a large velocity differential is beneficial for inducing swings and misses. But he also found that changeups with good separation from the fastball by movement can also be effective. Félix’s cambio had the high velocity of a fastball — and the resulting small differential — but it dropped off the table like a splitter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals haven’t simply been building a franchise since 2005, they’ve been building traditions. Traditions like the running of the presidents, or whatever #Natitude was. These days, the fans cheer “N-A-T-S, NATS, NATS, NATS!” when something good happens, which is, yes, entirely co-opted from the NFL’s New York Jets.

But the most enduring tradition of the Nationals’ brief history is what has happened after each time they’ve reached the playoffs: They lose, sometimes horribly, and always crushingly.

This year, having clinched a spot in the NL Wild Card game, the Nationals are preparing to do it again.

But this time, oh ho boy, it’ll be different.

Maybe.

Before we get to why, here’s how it’s gone down the last four times:

2012
98-64 (Best in MLB), 23.7 WAR (6th in NL), 101 wRC+ (T-3rd in NL), 194 HR (2nd in NL), 105 SB (T-5th in NL)

Top pitcher: Jordan Zimmerman (5.5 WAR)
Top position player: Bryce Harper (5.2 WAR)

When the team with the best record in baseball is up 6-0 in a deciding NLDS game 5, you’re probably okay to keep the plastic up in the clubhouse. “Not so fast,” said noted slugger Pete Kozma. Read the rest of this entry »

Wearing his emotions on his sleeve start to finish — from the moment that he walked through the bullpen door to chants of “Let’s go, Félix!” to his own tearful salute to the fans upon being pulled with one out in the sixth inning — on Thursday night at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Félix Hernández made the 418th and likely final start of his 15-year run with the Mariners. He tipped his cap to the King’s Court upon entering, fell behind early while struggling with his command and control, strutted a bit after a strikeout, exulted in Dylan Moore’s spectacular, run-saving catch to end the fifth inning, competed like hell with a tenacity that far outstripped his stuff, and then bowed to the frenzied crowd of 20,921 before exiting the field. Some 2,800 miles way in Brooklyn, watching the outing on my office TV as I pecked out an article full of objective measures regarding his place in history, I struggled to keep it together. I can only imagine how Mariners fans felt.

It’s an understatement to say that the parting of Hernández — whose seven-year, $175 million contract has run its course — and the rebuilding Mariners is a bittersweet moment for the pitcher, the team, and their long-suffering fans, or fans of great baseball players in general. There’s certainly plenty of reason to ponder the peaks of his run and recall the good times, the hopes he represented as a teenaged arrival on a team whose championship aspirations had been so often thwarted. His dazzling combination of an electrifying, darting sinker, a knee-buckling curve, and a signature hard changeup propelled him to a Cy Young award, two ERA titles, six All-Star appearances, a perfect game, and 2,524 strikeouts. He arrived as “King Félix,” and grew into the moniker. From 2009-14, he was the best pitcher in the American League by ERA, FIP, strikeouts, and WAR.

For as cool as all of that was, the reality is that this sendoff is as much about Hernández’s decline as his stardom, and the ache and sorrow over close calls and missed opportunities that have deprived him of a chance to test his mettle in the postseason. He’s no Ernie Banks, hanging around into his 40s in a reduced role at a new position. This parting is all happening more than six months before the pitcher’s 34th birthday, an age when he should still be a productive major leaguer if not necessarily one at the pinnacle of his career. Perhaps he still can be, but his recent performance doesn’t suggest it, not with a season ERA that has almost literally tripled since 2014, when he netted his second ERA title and finished as the runner-up in the AL Cy Young voting for a second time. For the first 12 years of his career, he was clearly on a Cooperstown-bound path, but there’s little to indicate he can continue traveling that road.

The rare 21st century pitcher to debut before his 20th birthday — Dylan Bundy, Elvis Luciano, and Julio Urías are the others — Hernández got an early start towards stardom. While pitchers who debut at that tender age have a leg up when it comes to reaching the Hall of Fame just as their position-playing counterparts do, the effect is not as great. I noted in connection with Ronald Acuña Jr.’s debut last year that 25 of the 244 players who had at least one plate appearance in their age-19 seasons (10.2%) wound up in Cooperstown, about 8.7 times the overall rate (1.18%). For pitchers active in their age-19 seasons, the total is 17 (not counting Babe Ruth, who converted to position playing) out of 296 (5.7%), about 4.9 times the overall rate. It’s a reasonable assumption that the difference between the two rates owes a fair bit to some combination of injury rates and workloads as they relate to young pitchers, but that’s a question for another day. Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday evening in Flushing, Jacob deGrom put a bow on another superlative season. For seven innings, he flummoxed the Marlins, striking out seven while only allowing two hits. It wasn’t surprising, exactly — deGrom is one of the best few pitchers in baseball and the Marlins are, well, the Marlins. For once, the Mets provided deGrom with copious run support — the three they scored in the first would have been enough, but they added six more runs over the next two innings.

With 32 starts in the books, deGrom looks to have handily lapped the field in the Cy Young race. If FIP-based WAR is your preferred metric, he ranks second in the majors, behind only Gerrit Cole and half a win clear of Max Scherzer. By RA9-WAR, he’s also second in the majors, this time behind Justin Verlander, and miles ahead of NL runner up Jack Flaherty.

Craig Edwards published a Cy Young tracker last week if you’d prefer to dig even deeper into the minutiae, but deGrom was already in the lead, and his two most recent starts (14 innings, 16 strikeouts, one walk, and no runs) only widened the gap. There probably won’t be much surprise come awards season.

But while there isn’t much suspense when it comes to ranking deGrom’s preeminence in the National League this year, his two-year run has vaulted him into select historical territory. His ERA-, which controls for scoring environment, works out to 51 over the last two years, which means he allows about half as many runs as a league average pitcher.

That 51 ERA-, ludicrous as it is, can’t compete with the best seasons of all time — Pedro Martinez’s preposterous 2000 worked out to a 35 ERA- (1.74 ERA in Fenway in the heart of the steroids era, goodness gracious), and there have been 42 qualifying seasons with an ERA- of 50 or lower since 1901. Even if we limit ourselves to 1949 and beyond, there have been 24 of those seasons. There are plenty of Hall of Famers on the list, but also Kevin Brown, Dean Chance, and Trevor Bauer. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, while I was doing my usual perusal of the FanGraphs’ Season Stat Grid, I came across an interesting find. Orioles pitcher Dylan Bundy had seen the largest year-over-year decrease in home runs allowed per nine of any pitcher in baseball.

This was particularly interesting for a plethora of reasons, none less important than the fact that we’re currently witnessing baseball in its most homer-happy era ever. We all know this, Rob Manfred knows this, and the Orioles certainly know this, having set the record for most home runs allowed in a single season all the way back on August 22. Thus, there is a certain irony here; of all teams, the Orioles currently employ the pitcher who has witnessed the largest year-over-year decrease in home runs per nine.

Bundy’s career has followed an interesting arc. He was the fourth pick of the 2011 draft, with a four-seam fastball that touched 100 mph. He made his major league debut the following year, becoming the first Oriole to debut before his 20th birthday since Mike Adamson in 1967. Bundy only pitched 1.2 scoreless innings, all out of relief, but the excitement in Baltimore for their top pitching prospect was understandably palpable.

Tommy John surgery ended Bundy’s 2013 before it began, and in the process of rehab, he had to be shut down indefinitely due to shoulder issues. Long story short, Bundy didn’t return to the majors until 2016, making his season debut on April 7, a grand total of 1,290 days after his last major league outing.

Bundy is now concluding his third full season in Baltimore’s rotation, and though 2019 did not produce his best results, he certainly wasn’t bad. Over 161.2 innings, Bundy posted a 4.79 ERA, a 4.74 FIP, and 2.5 WAR. But, as noted above, he also posted the largest year-over-year decrease in home runs per nine. Here are the leaders in that statistic: Read the rest of this entry »

Last Night, Félix Hernández made his final start as a Seattle Mariner, and baseball is a little different for me now. Dimmer, further away. It has been on the road to different for a while, I suppose; it is not an original idea to note how one’s hobby becoming one’s job alters our relationship to our devotions, nor is it novel for a baseball fan or writer to have a guy. You know, your guy? The one who, among all the others, rendered the sport in its most vivid colors, made your appetite for it insatiable, transformed you into a lifer. Your guy. You love your guy! My guy is gone now; I wonder if I’ll ever have another.

To expect that his last outing would mirror his halcyon days would have been to miss the point. Félix is altered, worn. He threw 106 pitches; at times he labored. When the time came, he wept, and the tears marked a father’s face, a man’s; and he had been so young when we came to know him. He added three strikeouts to his career total, which now stands at 2,524, but there were three runs, too. He pitched into the sixth; he never saw October. He may yet pitch again, decamping to some other city after having stayed all of these years, but it won’t be the same. He isn’t their guy. How could he be? He’s ours.

…

It’s such a funny thing, fandom. It houses within it theft; we make symbols of human beings, transfigure persons so as to serve the function of a satisfyingly smooth stone we transfer from pants pocket to pants pocket. We carry them around with our memories and sadness, spirit them into our bits of kindness paid and received. The special ones, the ones who stick with us, who become our guys, are both magical and not so dissimilar from the restaurant where we paused and realized we were in love, or the couch where we sat and learned that our grandma was sick, the familiar street corner in our hometown where we first thought, I need to go away for a while, and go see things. They become guideposts, markers in our memories for both what they are on the field, and who we were.

To imbue these strangers with so much is a bit silly, and I wonder if it isn’t also a bit rude. I have to imagine that franchise cornerstones know that fans will come to adore and scorn them, but Félix never asked to mean this to me; to be burdened with these expectations. He doesn’t know my name, but I call him by his first, casual. Familiar. He never meant to be a lesson; in patience; in greatness; in decline; in things left undone. In still being young; in being finished. To make of these guys what we do, to make them our guys, is to see them at once as they are and as we are. True to themselves but also infected with our own picayune trials.

When Félix debuted, I was distant; from Detroit, where he recorded his first four strikeouts, from home, where the faithful watched and waited for his promise to be fulfilled, from baseball, difficult as it was to make time for amidst school and laundry and finding my way. I grew up a baseball fan, and still observed its rituals, but the sport was now rendered in unfamiliar hues. Not the cool blues and greens I knew, but in a vibrant Phillies red, and later, as I navigated the post-college world of full-time work and financial crisis, a stately pinstripe, a garish Queens orange. Seattle baseball was a long ways off, removed from the normal evening hours it had once occupied, and relegated to a twilight time.

I don’t remember when I first read one more article at Lookout Landing than my lunch break comfortably fit; I don’t know that the first time was that remarkable. It was probably some dumb thing that Jeff wrote, to fill all the dumb, meaningless days when the Mariners still, somehow, had to play baseball. But soon, it was a place I toggled to without thinking, the destination of idle wanderings between meetings and during conference calls. I couldn’t watch Félix at home — home was so far, and not where I lived anymore — but I would watch him in the Bronx, trudge to 161st Street armed with my fellow expats and homemade K cards and a sense that this was time well spent even when it was dumb; even though it was meaningless. Because Félix made it mean something.

The day the Mariners announced Félix’s extension, I remember turning to my coworkers, many of whom were Yankees fans smugly convinced that our King was soon to establish a new court out East, and saying with all the defiance I could muster: Félix is ours, and you can’t have him. Later that evening, I spoke with the professor who would become my graduate school advisor. Félix had declared his home, and I was about to declare what I thought was mine. Félix was to me a connection to both to where I’d been and where I might go, a reminder of what I liked and who I wanted to be at a time when I was struggling to know myself, caught in a job that so often took me into the twilight hours where Félix would wait. To appreciate him for staying was to christen this place, my place, worthy of staying in, and more importantly, of getting back to. But it was more than that. It meant more than that.

Perhaps then it is less a theft and more a drawing of loans one can never fully repay. I cheered for Félix, sure, was one of his court, but I didn’t inspire him to a career. I loved to watch him play, celebrated his day, christened him My Guy, but the people he loves he came to know through other means. And yet Félix is why I am here; the stirring his pitches caused, a warmth that radiated into the tips of my fingers and into the space behind my eyes when that cambio flew shifted things around. The desire to know more, to understand the how of this man, even as he, with tears and yelps and a commitment to stay traced over too many innings, articulated his why, made up a pledge to write things down so as to pick them apart. I sought rigor to explain why he meant so much and how good he was; I embraced whimsy to do justice to all he made me feel. I wrote and wrote until all I wanted to do was write more, and then finally, I got to. And the road to being here is why I’ve collected the people I have, friends I love, and can’t imagine my life without, all new lines of credit, charged against this man. My guy.

…

My guy is gone, bound for other places, returned to a life peopled with his people, rather than one serving as a marker for mine, folks who I don’t know and in whose story I play no part, even as so many of those in whose lives I am firmly planted are there because of the years, and turns, and miseries he spent in this place that for so long, I couldn’t get back to. This guy, whose permission to mean all this I was never able to ask for but who has given me so much, by deciding to stay. He is gone, but the memory of him — perfect, resplendent, royal, wrecked, but importantly ours — will persist. Baseball is a little different now; my life unrecognizable. I am here now. The debt remains, and I can’t imagine I’ll ever be able to pay it back.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s mental preparations for Félix Hernández’s probable last start as a Mariner, the dubious appeal of playing spoiler, the biggest hits of the season according to Championship Win Probability Added, Rowdy Tellez delivering on a promised home run, what Meg loves about baseball, both hosts’ experiences in the Arizona Fall League, Mike Minor, Ronald Guzmán, and the intentionally dropped popup heard round the world, how to judge the quality of a regular season, and how the 2019 regular season stacks up.

Audio intro: Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Minor Thing"
Audio outro: James Taylor, "Let it Fall Down"

Link to Tellez story
Link to biggest cWPA plays of the 2019 regular season
Link to all-time top postseason cWPA plays
Link to video of Hal Smith home run
Link to Ben on Amaya at Scout School
Link to Levi on Minor
Link to MLB.com on Minor
Link to Rob Arthur on parity and attendance
Link to Manfred on the ball
Link to Meg on Félix
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Episode 871

Managing editor of The Hardball Times Rachael McDaniel joins the program to discuss some recent THT highlights, the end of Félix Hernández’s career in Seattle, and what delights and dismays us about postseason baseball.

You’ll find Rachael’s recent piece on Félix here.

Miriam Zuo on the Houston Astros after Hurrican Harvey.

Allison McCague on using the language of commodities to refer to players.

Zachary Hayes on Justin Verlander’s left on base ability.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 43 min play time.)

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