The Pittsburgh Pirates fired John Russell following the 2010 season and replaced him with Clint Hurdle. It’s hard to argue with the results. The perennial also-rans went on to become one of the best teams in the National League.

Hurdle deserves the praise he’s received. Given a second opportunity to manage — Colorado had canned him in 2009 — he’s made shrewd in-game moves and overseen a cohesive clubhouse. Along the way, he has adroitly balanced his old-school instincts with the data-driven philosophy of the front office.

Could the Pirates have turned the corner had they not made the change? It’s not implausible. In many respects, Russell and Hurdle are the same type of manager. According to Pirates GM Neal Huntington, there are “similarities in their foundations,” and he described Russell as “a quality person (with a) willingness to embrace different schools of thought.”

He sees differences as well. In Huntington’s opinion, their “execution of the role” isn’t the same, and Hurdle represented “a different voice with a different approach and skill set.”

Russell — now the bench coach in Baltimore, under Buck Showalter — agrees that a different voice can be needed. That doesn’t mean he feels it’s always necessary. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Trumbo is all about distance. The middle-of-the-order Oriole (and erstwhile Angel, D-Back and Mariner) has averaged 29 home runs in his four uninterrupted seasons. Many have been bombs. He has a 475-footer to his credit and 17 of last year’s 22 blasts carried 400 feet or more. His three this year have gone 412, 415 and 428, respectively.

One thing he’s not is a high-on-base guy. A notorious free-swinger, Trumbo has a career 6.5% walk rate and a .302 OBP to go with his .258 batting average and .460 slugging percentage. It’s not that he wouldn’t like to reach base at a healthier clip. His skill set is simply that of a slugger.

Trumbo — hitting .389/.421/.667 on the young season— talked about his game when Baltimore visited Fenway Park earlier this week.

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Trumbo on maturing as a hitter: “I’d like to think I’ve gotten better in a lot of areas. I’ve had one injury-plagued year (2014) — I played half a season — but I was still on pace to drive in over 100 runs. But as far as managing the count and picking spots — being an overall smarter hitter — I’m more advanced than I was my first two or three years in Anaheim.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Gelles was recently given a new title. The Baltimore Orioles’ Director of Analytics since April 2014, she is now the Director of Analytics and Major League Contracts. Based on her career track, don’t be surprised if she one day becomes a general manager.

In 2010, Gelles graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College with a degree in Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought. Along the way, she interned for the Pirates in their baseball operations department. Upon leaving school, she worked for Major League Baseball’s Labor Relations Department. After that, she served a year-long internship with the Orioles before being hired full time when Dan Duquette became team president in November 2011.

She began making her mark even before Duquette arrived. While still an intern, Gelles “identified an area of need in the organization, and started to build out our first internal database.”

Think about that for a moment. One year out of college, an intern initiated one of the most-meaningful advancements in team history. Read the rest of this entry »

Barry Bonds being hired as the new hitting coach in Miami evokes memories of Ted Williams managing the Washington Senators (who became the Texas Rangers by the end of his tenure). The self-proclaimed “Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived” wasn’t nearly as accomplished in the dugout as he was in the batter’s box. In four seasons (1969-1972) Williams’ teams went a cumulative 273-364.

The comparison is apples-to-oranges — hitting coach and manager are two different animals — but parallels exist. The Senators were a woebegone franchise, and in many respects, the Marlins are the modern day Senators.

And then there are the protagonists.

Along with Babe Ruth, Bonds and Williams are the most prolific hitters in baseball history. They have also been famously irascible, particularly with the media. Bonds will presumably shelve his surliness — it won’t fly in his new role, not in today’s game — but a bigger obstacle looms.

As a manager, Williams had trouble reconciling himself to the fact that his hitters were so imperfect. Why did they all too often struggle to understand facets of the craft that came naturally to him? Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Grimm wasn’t credited with a save when the Cubs vanquished the Cardinals on Tuesday. That doesn’t make his contribution any less important. Fourth-inning runs count just as much as late-inning runs, and St. Louis was poised to erase an early 4-2 deficit.

Grimm entered the game after starter Jason Hammel – shaky through three frames – issued a lead-off walk. He promptly induced a chopper, but third baseman Kris Bryant, in his effort to turn two, bobbled the ball. All hands were safe. Through no fault of his own, and with apprehension gripping Wrigley Field, Grimm was in a pickle.

The righty was more than ready. Grimm initially warmed in the second, and he got hot again in the third. When he finally strolled to the mound in the fourth inning, Joe Maddon handed him the ball and said, “Hey, man. Be you. Do your thing.” Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Janish is your classic good-glove, no-hit infielder. In parts of seven seasons with the Reds, Braves, and currently the Baltimore Orioles, the 32-year-old defensive whiz has slashed .215/.282/.289. Outside of 2010, when he had a .723 OPS and hit five of his seven career home runs, in 200 at bats, Janish has been a non-entity at the dish.

Like most glove-men of his ilk, Janish hit well enough in the minors to reach the big leagues. His bat hasn’t translated to the highest level, but success is often a byproduct of extended opportunities, of which he’s received a paucity. It’s a chicken-and-egg dynamic: you need to hit to stay in the lineup, but you need to stay in the lineup to hit.

That isn’t to say Janish would be a productive hitter if given a chance to play every day. He might not even be a league-average hitter. Janish realizes that. Even so, he can’t help but wonder if he maybe could have been more than he is: a vacuum cleaner bouncing between Triple-A and a big-league bench, essentially because he’s failed to flourish in 1.234 sporatic MLB plate appearances.

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Janish on getting labeled: “It’s been tough for me. From an early stage in my career, I was labeled as somebody who could play very well defensively, and if I could do X amount offensively, I could play in the big leagues. I kind of took that mindset, and it probably hurt me. I was a victim of circumstances in that respect. Read the rest of this entry »

Logan Forsythe isn’t sure he can explain his breakout. At least not definitively. The Tampa Bay infielder points to consistency, but that’s more byproduct than causation. He indirectly cites BABiP – “I’ve had some balls fall this year” – but it’s not as though his .323 mark is outlandish.

Opportunity might be a bigger factor. His high-water mark for seasonal plate appearances had been 350 – with the Padres in 2012 – and he’s already come to the dish 606 times. He’s taking advantage of the increased playing time. A .235/.343/.303 hitter coming into the campaign, Forsythe is slashing .282/.359/.446, and his 17 home runs are nearly double his career total. He’s been worth 4.1 WAR.

The 28-year-old second baseman was fielding a familiar question when I inquired as to why he’s having a good year. He’s been asked that a lot – not a bad problem to have – and his response suggests it’s largely the regular reps.

“The biggest thing is being consistent,” Forsythe told me. “That’s the recurring word I keep using. I expected to be that super-utility type again, but we had a few guys go down with injuries. That sucked, but it did give me an opportunity. I’ve had stints in my career where I’ve taken a simpler approach – I’ve just stayed in a routine – and the consistency of my play took over. This year reminds me of when I was playing every day in the minor leagues.”

It’s hard to say whether the Rays expected this type of production when they acquired Forsythe from San Diego in a seven-player deal prior to last season. His versatility was his calling card, but he possessed other qualities as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Heaney was pitching in the Arizona Fall League when I first talked to him. A member of the Marlins organization at the time, he was 17 months removed from being drafted ninth overall out of Oklahoma State. This was in 2012, and Heaney had a clean delivery and a bright future.

He still has a bright future, although it’s now with the Angels. Anaheim acquired the 24-year-old southpaw from Miami, via the Dodgers, last winter. As for his delivery, it’s back after a brief hiatus.

“I went through a little funk last year,” Heaney told me earlier this month. “It’s hard to say exactly when it happened, but I developed some mechanical issues. It was also gradual, so I didn’t even feel it. I wasn’t pitching as well as I could, and I wasn’t sure why.”

Film from his time in the Fall League provided the answer. Read the rest of this entry »

More than 700 baseball purists gathered in downtown Chicago over the past four days for the national SABR convention. Snapshots of presentations I attended comprise much of this week’s column.

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Among the notable presentations at SABR 45 was David Smith’s “Home Team Scoring Advantage in the First Inning Largely Due to Time and Travel.” According to Smith, home teams win approximately 54% of the time, and 58% of that advantage comes in first inning scoring. Historically, more runs are scored in the bottom of the first inning than are scored by either team in any other inning.

The longer the visiting team hits in the top of first, the more scoring there is in the bottom of the first. The primary determinant is time. Unlike the home team’s starter, the visiting team’s starter doesn’t know exactly when he will begin pitching. Based on Smith’s research, the longer the visiting starter waits to throw his first pitch, the bigger his statistical disadvantage. Read the rest of this entry »

The MLB Network’s Brian Kenny wants to “Kill the Win.” As a FanGraphs reader, you’re certainly familiar with – and quite possibly supportive of – his stance. The stat is often misleading, and slowly but surely it’s becoming less of a barometer when assessing an individual pitcher’s performance. But should the win be “killed”? I recently posed that question to nine pitchers, two pitching coaches and a pitcher-turned-broadcaster. Here are their responses:

Chris Archer, Rays: “I don’t know if it should be killed. The emphasis behind it isn’t as great as people make it out to be. I think true baseball gurus, and players and management, know. It’s how a lot of fans may judge someone, but we know there’s not so much behind the importance of (an individual pitcher’s) win.”

Craig Breslow, Red Sox: “I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Unless we’re going to kill every single statistic, then we should spare the win. I don’t think you can make a good argument for killing a statistic for not telling the whole story. You just to have to explain it doesn’t give a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of a pitcher.” Read the rest of this entry »