Sunday Notes: A New Red Dabbles in Data, and a New Ray Likes the Simple Life

What kind of pitcher did the Reds get when they acquired Lucas Sims in the deadline deal that sent Adam Duvall to the Braves? By and large, they got a former first-rounder who has had spotty results in his smattering of big-league outings, yet little left to prove at the minor-league level. Blessed with plus stuff, he remains a tantalizing young talent.

The 24-year-old is getting smarter about his craft. Aware that he should “always be looking for that next step to stay ahead of the curve,” Sims has begun dabbling in analytics. He’s not diving in head first, but his toes are definitely in the water.

“I’ve recently gotten into it, but not to the point where I’m getting overwhelmed with it,” Sims explained earlier this summer. “I’m taking a couple of things here and there, basically whatever resonates with me. I’ve started getting into the spin-rate stuff, and which types of pitches are most effective in certain situations.”

The young right-hander had a colorful answer when asked if his four-seam spin rate is above-average.

“Yeah, but I don’t know exactly what it is,” Sims admitted. “I saw that it was green, and he said green is good.”

The ‘he’ in question was Alex Tamin — “one of our analytics guys” — whose official title with the Braves is director of major league operations. Color-coded assessments weren’t all that Tamin passed along. Sims has also begun “looking into effective spin, and trying to make sure I get true spin.”

Just how much further he dives in with his new team remains a question.

“You don’t want to end up getting paralysis by analysis,” Sims told me. “I don’t want it all in front of my face at the same time — I’m not trying to learn a million things at once — but I’m definitely looking forward to getting into it a little more. If something is going to make me better, I’m all for it.”

Sims made his first appearance as a member of the Reds organization last night. Pitching for Triple-A Louisville, he allowed one run over five innings, walking none and punching out six.

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What style of hitter did the Rays get when they acquired Austin Meadows in the deadline deal that sent Chris Archer to the Pirates? By and large, they got a potential middle-of-the-order bat, albeit not one with a power hitter’s profile. And he’s certainly not a three-true-outcomes guy. The 23-year-old outfielder believes in putting the ball in play, ideally on a line.

“My approach is to be aggressive in the zone,” said Meadows, who was hitting a solid .292/.327/.468 at the time of the trade. “In the first at bat of a game you need to get an idea of how your timing is, and how your swing feels — there’s a lot that goes into it — but for me it’s about moving my bat through the zone on pitches that I can hit. I need an aggressive mindset. I can’t be passive up there.”

His aggressive mindset doesn’t include trying to drive balls out of the ballpark. He said as much when I talked to him in spring training of last year, and not much has changed.

“I’ll always believe in swinging down on the baseball and creating backspin,” said Meadows. “If I do that and hit the ball well, it can go out. I’m not trying to hit the ball out. I know that other guys are — other guys are believers in it — but personally, I try to swing through the ball and hit hard line drives. If it goes out, it goes out.”

Meadows does possess some pop. His gap-to-gap approach has produced five long balls in 165 big-league plate appearances, so it’s not as though he’s Frank Taveras or Jason Tyner. Launch angle is simply not his cup of tea. Nor is compromising what comes naturally.

“I’ve always been the hitter that has good hands and keeps things simple,’ stated the 2013 first-round pick. “I think simplicity keeps you in this game for a long time. Simplicity in anything will last you a long time in life.”

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Joe Musgrove doesn’t feel that pitching in Pittsburgh is much different than pitching in Houston. Not when it comes to what he’s doing on the mound. The Pirates are “big on fastball usage and throwing the fastball inside,” and that’s always been part of his attack plan. And while new team is less bullish on high heat, they haven’t asked him to move downstairs.

“There isn’t as much analytics stuff on this end as there was with the Astros,” Musgrove shared with me in late June. “But they’re starting to trend that way, and we’ve talked more and more about using fastballs up in the zone. That’s something I learned in Houston, and it’s something I’ll continue to do.”

As you might expect, the 25-year-old right-hander enjoyed his conversations with Astros pitching guru Brent Strom.

“We talked analytics stuff a lot,” said Musgrove, who came to Pittsburgh in last winter’s Gerrit Cole deal. “We talked tunneling, and how the fastball up in the zone provides you that much more protection for the stuff you’re spinning down over the plate. If you emulate those two off that same high-fastball line, one is going to continue riding out and the other is going to break off it. It’s about disguising your pitches.”

Opposing hitters are seeing something new from the former first-round pick (The Blue Jays drafted Musgrove in 2011, and shipped him to Houston a year later). A pitch he threw sparingly in recent seasons is now a primary weapon.

“I’m playing my cutter off my four-seam,” explained Musgrove, who has been utilizing the offering nearly 20% of the time. “Not necessarily my four-seam up in the zone, but my four-seam in and my four-seam away. It’s a pitch that I can match off the pitch I’m throwing for strikes. Four-seams to both sides of the plate is where I’m trying to live, and once I’ve established those, I can throw my cutter in to a lefty and have it break off the plate. I can also front door righties with it. It’s become a really good pitch for me.”

He’s been effective when healthy. Between trips to the disabled list, Musgrove has a 3.63 ERA and a 3.84 FIP in 11 starts for the Neal Huntington-run club.

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As was noted in the introduction to Thursday’s “Manager’s Perspective” interview with Gabe Kapler, the first-year skipper had a lot of brickbats thrown his way when the Phillies got off to a rocky start. I asked him if the criticism was warranted.

“Anything that feels like a change, or foreign, can feel threatening at times,” responded Kapler, whose moves aren’t always of the paint-by-numbers variety. “I understand that. By way of example, removing a starting pitcher from a game — a pitcher who was in control of the game, and had pitches to work with — was probably unusual for opening day. I understood why it felt foreign to people.”

Four months into his tenure, the manager of the first-place club remains comfortable in his convictions. At the same time, he’s more empathetic.

“I think that what I’ve done is become much more aware of, and sensitive to, the strategic decisions that might make people feel uncomfortable,” shared Kapler, who was referring primarily to his players. “I’ve weighted those emotions more heavily than I thought I would.”

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Carlos Zambrano went 8 for 18 against Chris Carpenter.

Jim Kaat went 7 for 10 against Bob Locker.

Steve Carlton went 4 for 9 against Bob Gibson.

Blue Moon Odom went 4 for 5 against Mickey Lolich.

Mike Hampton went 4 for 4 against Fernando Valenzuela.

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Aaron Boone was asked yesterday if there is sense of urgency given that his team had lost three in a row and was 7.5 games in back of the Red Sox the AL East standings. He agreed that there is, then proceeded to offer a bit of perspective.

“We’re in the midst of having a really strong season,” Boone told reporters prior to yesterday’s fourth-straight defeat. “The unfortunate part for us right now is that we’re looking up at the standings, at a team that’s having an amazing season. So it’s a little different storyline. Right?”

The story that’s unfolding is one for the ages. At 78-34, the Red sOX are on pace to win 114 games, which would be the most in franchise history. That distinction is currently held by the 1912 club, which went 105-47 (a .691 winning percentage) with a pair of ties. This year’s team boasts a stupendous .696 winning percentage.

The Yankees, meanwhile, are 68-41 and have the third-best record in baseball. This despite playing just .500 ball over the past month. Boone also addressed those win-one-lose-one doldrums.

“The reality is, teams that go on to win 100 games — a pretty good feat in our sport — are going to have stretches over the course of the season where it’s a little pedestrian,” reasoned the rookie skipper. “You’re going to have weeks where you play .500. I don’t want us to accept that. It’s not good enough — we understand that — but it allows you to have a little bit of perspective on things. We’re having a damn good season.”

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Saberseminar is taking place this weekend on the campus of Boston University, with its usual array of fantastic presenters. Brian Bannister is one of them and yesterday he shared an interesting tidbit on the relationship between arm action and spin efficiency.

“A lot of guys grow up throwing a football around, and you see this subtle impact from that in the way their arm works,” the Red Sox vice president of pitching development told a captivated audience. “You see the way they rotate, the way their elbow-shoulder relationship works. It’s why you see a lot of pitchers fall into the same kind of range from a spin-efficiency perspective. That’s because there’s this bias from throwing a football.

“Most pitchers, if you give them a football, will throw a really nice spiral. It’s because there’s this harmony between throwing a football and the way they throw a baseball. You see this impact in how throwing a football might be good for throwing a slider, but it’s not as effective for throwing a quality fastball. It’s funny. We get some pitchers with really good fastball quality and they actually struggle to throw footballs, because their arm works in a different way.”

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Jessica Mendoza also spoke at saberseminar, and she had a little fun at the expense of the New York Mets when asked if Jacob deGrom is deserving of this year’s NL Cy Young Award.

“Max Scherzer is someone hard to not think about,” expressed the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball analyst. “He was in the MVP conversation for awhile. That’s how ridiculously well he was pitching. I think Jacob deGrom gets a bonus because his team doesn’t hit. The Mets never score when he pitches… It’s not fair. And they never play defense behind him. When Jacob deGrom is on the mound, the Mets are like, ‘Oh, he’s here. We’ll just not play.’ So I think you should give him bonus points for the Cy Young. He’s on the Mets.”

Her humor was cloaked in truth. Six times this season deGrom has gone at least seven innings while allowing one-or-fewer runs without earning a win, and the most runs he’s allowed in any his seven losses is three.

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NEWSY STUFF

The Detroit Tigers and the West Michigan Whitecaps have agreed to a two-year extension of their player development contract. The deal runs through the 2022 season. The Midwest League club has been a Tigers affiliate since 1997.

The Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) World Series gets underway tomorrow at Target Field, in Minneapolis. Twenty-four teams, from 19 cities within the United States, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, and Uganda, will compete for titles.

The Society for American Baseball Research has announced that the 10th annual SABR Arizona Fall League Experience will he held from Thursday, November 1 to Saturday, November 3, 2018, in Phoenix, Arizona. Details can be found here.

Minnesota claimed righty reliever Oliver Drake off waivers from Toronto on Friday. Last night he became the first player in history to see action for five different MLB teams in the same season.

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The Reds received some bad news on Friday when it was learned that Hunter Greene has a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his rocket of a right arm. The 18-year-old right-hander (he turns 19 tomorrow) will be out for the rest of the season.

Greene had been progressing well in his first full professional season. Pitching for high-A Dayton, the second overall pick in last years’s draft had been focusing primarily on his curveball and his slider, which he had been doing without any notable alterations to either. When I asked him about the two offerings at the Futures Game, he shared that “The Reds haven’t really changed anything since I’ve gotten here. They’ve let me continue to keep the same grips, and everything else, for my offspeed as well as my fastball.”

The fastball is, of course, electric. Greene has a comfortable relationship with triple digits, which is a big reason Cincinnati selected him second overall in last year’s draft. Mastering his off-speed pitches would put him into elite territory.

“I need to perform well in A ball to get to the next level, but perfecting what I have — my secondary pitches and my fastball — is obviously important. It’s not just about getting these guys out right now, it’s about the future. The ultimate goal is to get to the big leagues, so I have to pitch for the future and try to get better every day.”

The Reds hope that future doesn’t include Tommy John surgery.

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The Tampa Bay Rays recently acquired Jalen Beeks from the Red Sox in exchange for Nathan Eovaldi, and while I haven’t spoken to the 24-year-old lefty since the start of the season, I did catch up with him over the winter. Our conversation revolved around his cutter, which he feels makes his other pitches better. He added it to his repertoire last season, and features it prominently in his four-pitch mix.

Beeks had 117 strikeouts in 87-and-a-third Triple-A innings this season, but punch outs aren’t his objective.

“You just throw the ball where you want it and see what happens,” said Beeks. “That’s really all you can do. Chris Sale doesn’t go in and say, ‘I’m going to strike out 20.’ He says, ‘I’m going to hit my spot as many times as I can.’ I don’t really care if strikeouts come or not. If you have a 0.00 ERA and no strikeouts, you’re doing OK.”

The youngster was credited with his first big league W on Thursday when he worked five innings in Tampa Bay’s 4-2 win over the Angels. Beeks allowed a pair of hits, one free pass, and fanned four.

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This week’s nod to an MLB player’s efforts to improve the lives of others goes to Neil Walker. The veteran infielder is with the New York Yankees now, but his charitable efforts are focused primarily in his hometown of Pittsburgh, where he played from 2009-2015.

“I’m the vice president of a group called Clint Play Ball Fund,” Walker told me. “It’s run out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and also Charleston, South Carolina. We do a lot of work with Big Brothers and Big Sisters in underprivileged areas of both places. We provide equipment, and upgrades to ball fields in areas that need it. We’ve been doing this for about three years now.”

Walker explained that the Clint Play Ball Fund is named for Clint Seymour, a close friend who passed away in 2014 at age 27. The two had played baseball together growing up, and Seymour later went on to play at Eastern Kentucky University.

“We devote time and energy to helping in a lot of different ways,” said Walker. “We go to underprivileged areas and promote the game of baseball. More than that, we provide resources that they need.”

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

Did Billy Pierce have a better case for the Hall of Fame than Jack Morris? John Grochowski looked into that question at The Chicago Sun Times.

Over at The Denver Post, Mark Kiszla opined that the Rockies have a chance to win the World Series thanks to championship-quality pitching.

Khris Davis is coming up clutch, and Susan Slusser explained the how and why at The San Francisco Chronicle.

At ESPN, Bradford Doolittle asked if position-less baseball is MLB’s next big thing.

Jackie Bradley Jr. sat down with The Athletic’s Chad Jennings and watched videos of his 10 best catches. The Red Sox centerfielder then ranked them, and they’re shown here with his descriptions.

RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Chicago Cubs hitters have the highest BABiP (.318) in either league. New York Mets hitters have the lowest BABiP (.272) in either league.

Oakland A’s pitchers have the lowest BABiP-against (.274) in either league. Baltimore Orioles pitchers have the highest BABiP-against (.318) in either league.

The 1987 World Series champion Minnesota Twins went 29-52 in road games during the regular season. They went 2-4 in road games during the postseason.

Chief Wilson hit 36 triples for the 1912 Pittsburgh Pirates. Yes, that is the single-season record.

On this date in 1921, Pittsburgh’s KDKA became the first radio station to broadcast a major league baseball game. Harold Arlin handled the play-by-play as the Pirates beat the Phillies 8-5 at Forbes Field.

On this date in 1975, the first eight Phillies batters who came to the plate stroked hits against Chicago Cubs pitchers (the first out was then recorded on a sacrifice bunt). Philadelphia finished the inning with 10 runs and went on to win 13-5.

On July 31, 1954 Milwaukee Braves first baseman Joe Adcock went 5 for 5 with four home runs and a double in a game against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Paul Dicken’s MLB career consisted of 13 plate appearances with the Cleveland Indians in the 1964 and 1966 seasons. All came as a pinch-hitter, and Dicken failed to reach base in any of them.

The Alou brothers — Felipe, Jesus, and Matty — combined for 5,094 hits. Felipe’s son, Moises Alou, had 2,134 hits. That’s a family total of 7,228.

Billy Bean and Billy Beane both played for the 1988 Detroit Tigers.