30 May 2017

Three Warm Takes

Over his career, Ben Revere has played 784 games, batted over .290 four out of six full seasons and hit 9 home runs.

J.D. Martinez has hit 8 home runs in his first 17 games of '17. He's batting under .290.

Martinez has produced almost as much offensive WAR (0.9) in those 17 games as Revere has produced since Opening Day 2014 (1.1).

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Mike Trout made all of baseball cry when he tore a ligament in his thumb this past weekend. He's going to have surgery and miss two months. 

So here's the question that will keep us interested this season: can Trout miss two full months of the season and still lead the league in WAR? The two guys closest behind him, Ervin Santana and Aaron Judge, aren't going to keep this up.

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Starting soon we will have Major League Baseball without Mike Trout or Bryce Harper. Almost makes me want to watch the Stanley Cup Finals.


28 May 2017

The Dodgers Are All About the Playoffs

The Dodgers are acting like an NBA team this year, like the Cavs or Warriors or Spurs. In the NBA, the season is long and meaningless and teams have sewn up spots halfway through the schedule. In baseball, it's not so cut and dried a) because the distribution of talent is not nearly as lopsided and b) because making the playoffs is significantly more difficult and fraught with challenges.

Still the Dodgers have won their division and secured a playoff spot each of the last four years, but they've been stymied on the way to the World Series. A big part of that has been the relative ineffectiveness of all-World starter Clayton Kershaw in the post-season. Could he just be gassed by season's end?

It may be that Dodger brass thinks so. This year, with help from the truncated 7-day and 10-day Disabled List, something new is going on with the Chavez Ravine pitching rotation. Combining a quick hook (average start - 87 pitches) with liberal use of the DL, the team is stashing pitchers between starts and employing six starting arms. Of their first 46 games, Dodgers pitchers had 34 times rested more than four days between starts.

This puts more stress on the relief corps, but again, creative use of the DL can help spell relievers while rostering their temporary replacements. There has never been, and doesn't appear to be now, much patrolling by MLB of DL use.

You might think of this as prophylactic employment of the DL. Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda and Alex Wood have had their injury issues, so limiting their usage by shuttling them back and forth is a clever way of protecting their health.

The purpose of this would seem to be keeping arms fresh for a long playoff run, which can last 21 additional games for a team that gets to the World Series. And frankly, that makes sense, because for the Dodgers, just as for the Cavs and Warriors, it's not a successful season unless they get to the championship series.

24 May 2017

Maybe the Snakes Are Better Than We Thought? Nah.

Entering 2017, one could be forgiven for looking kindly upon the chances of the team in Phoenix, anchored as it is by some real talent. Zack Greinke is a true rotation ace. Paul Goldschmidt is a quiet superstar -- maybe the best first baseman in the game. A.J. Pollack and Jake Lamb are stars and David Peralta is another good outfielder.

Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks, the measure of a team isn't its cleanup hitter or its ace, but its  #8 hitter, its fourth starter and its set-up guy. Thanks in large part to the disastrous front office tenure of Tony LaRussa and Dave Stewart, the Dbacks' cupboard is bare beyond those players named.

Coming into the season, the Dbacks were projected to field among the worst players in the game at catcher, second base, shortstop, and left field.  Add to that the worst bullpen in the Majors, and you have too much for Zack Greinke, Paul Goldschmidt, Jake Lamb and A.J. Pollack to overcome.

Well, we're 46 games into the season and Arizona has a .587 winning percentage, "on pace" for a 95-win campaign. The reason, in its entirety, is that players at the above-mentioned positions have performed better than league average. When you're expected to be the worst team in the league at your position, and instead your 12th or 13th our of 30, that's a big improvement.

And maybe the team is better than we thought they were. Maybe the kindly lookers were right about them. But probably not.

New research by Jeff Sullivan at Fangraphs shows that even though pre-season analytical projections don't have much of a track record, they are more than twice as predictive of a team's performance after Game 50 as a team's performance in the first 50 games of the season is. In other words, the first 50 games can be very deceptive and bear very little relationship to how good a team actually is.


What 's that telling us about the Diamondbacks? It's telling us to take them with a grain of salt. In fact, consider every team's start the same way. If you're a fan of the Giants, Mets and Blue Jays, that's good news. If you like the Brewers, Rockies and Twins, it's not so much.

Just remember one thing: the first 50 games do count. So if the Dbacks are 10 game over .500 and play a mere .500 the rest of the way, they will end the season at 86-76. And that could get them into the Wild Card.

23 May 2017

More Stuff About Mike Trout You're Totally Sick Of

Yeah, sorry, this is another Mike Trout episode.  Guy is so freakin' amazing, it's hard not to sing odes to him.

As of May 22, he's hitting .350/.466/.757 with 14 home runs this season. He leads the league in OBP, SLG, OPS and, well, what else you got? He's "on pace" for 57-137-.350 with 36 steals. Just another year.

You know the phenomenon that has been Eric Thames? He's put up unprecedented numbers, almost as awesome as Trout's. Trout has a higher batting average, on base average, slugging percentage, OPS, home runs, RBIs, steals and well, everything but runs scored and air time.

Trout is now the youngest player ever to 150 homers and 150 steals. Not exactly a surprise, right?

He's jumped to fourth on the Angels' home run chart -- after five and a half years.

He's got more lifetime WAR, 52, than Lou Brock, Kirby Puckett and Jim Rice. They're in the Hall of Fame, you know.

He's 9th on the active list for WAR in only his sixth full season. The next player under age 26 is Manny Machado...at 54th. Trout has three times Bryce Harper's WAR.


How Hall of Fame is Trout? He's already over the "Black Ink" measuring tool for an average Hall of Famer. Black ink measure the number of categories a player leads his league in. Trout is at 28.

He's at 98 on Bill James' Hall of Fame monitor, where 100 is the Hall standard. He has already out-earned the average HOF center fielder in peak WAR value. 

That's Trout's first 851 games. If he repeats this performance over his next 851 games, he'll have 104 WAR, more than Joe Morgan, Jimmy Foxx, Eddie Matthews, Cal Ripken and George Brett. And he'd be 30.

Life doesn't work that way, of course. Players can get hurt, exploited, diverted or old. Diving into second base ahead of a catcher's throw 30 times in a season takes its toll. So we'll see.

But we've already seen. Mike Trout is the best ever at this point. Sorry, I just had to point it out again.


22 May 2017

Baseball's Golden Age

For some reason, and unlike any other sport, baseball's fans love to denigrate the game and pine for days of yore when everything was better.



We hear constantly about how baseball is too slow, how its popularity is declining, how the umps are all inept, how the playoffs are all wrong and so on.

Although I agree that some changes could be made to goose the pace of games, in every other respect these complaints are unwarranted. More people attend a month of MLB games than the entire NFL schedule. Instant replay has demonstrated how incredibly close many calls are in all sports. Baseball's playoff format might be the best of any major American sport's given the utter ineptitude of the NBA and NHL to fashion a coherent tournament.

(At the risk of beating a long since buried and mourned horse, and of drifting off on a tangent, the NBA, after three desultory rounds of their tournament, is a month later careening to a finals match-up that any casual follower could have predicted last June. In the NHL, one of the conference finalists, the one going home today with a chance to claim a spot in the championship series, lost as many games as it won this season and qualified 16th for the playoffs.)

The Cubs and Red Sox Have Won the World Series, For Godsakes
All of which flooded into my head recently when a petitioner in a Fangraphs chat asked the writer to identify the best era in baseball history. My immediate reaction was, right now! (To his credit, the writer agreed.)


Consider the last 16 years in the Majors. Eleven different teams have won the World Series, and of the three teams that have repeated, one of them hadn't won a Series in 87 years, another in 56. Eight of the winners claimed their first ever title (Diamondbacks, White Sox, Angles) or won for the first time in 28+ years (Giants, Red Sox, Phillies, Royals and Cubs.) Compare that to the often-named Golden Age, when the hardware never moved from The Bronx. Yawn.


It's far beyond that, of course. We've never seen an era of young talent, particularly at the keystone and shortstop positions. Rougned Odor might not even qualify among the game's top 10 second baseman, except when rating right crosses. Yet he slugged 33 home runs last year. A list of the 10 best shortstops includes one player over 29 (30-year-old Brandon Crawford). And we haven't even mentioned the historic starts of Kris Bryant, Manny Machado, Bryce Harper and the greatest 25-year-old in baseball history

Exit Velocity and Launch Angles
You like the guys who bring the heat instead? Basically every 100 mph pitch ever thrown in MLB games has been recorded this decade. We know how fast pitches go because we know more about the game than we could ever have thought to ask two decades ago, thanks to Statcast and advanced baseball analytics.

The second Wild Card, the trade deadline and the concept of the total teardown have created interest in the game across America, even among fan bases rooting for teams bumbling their way to triple-digit losses. You want to get closer to the game? You can tweet to your favorite player and he might answer you. Who needs an autograph?

And don't forget the stadiums. There has never been a ballpark like PNC Park, Camden Yards or AT&T, and we still have Fenway and Wrigley. The game is 150 years old and we're seeing things we've never seen before. It's an amazing time.

You're Living In It
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but baseball has not only never been better, it's never been close. The best era for baseball -- it's today.

And the best news is, it's fixing to be tomorrow too.

19 May 2017

My Favorite Player This Year is J.D. Martinez

Tigers outfielder J.D. Martinez is pummeling the ball like no one else and he's somehow flying under the radar.

We're now in game number 40-something and Martinez has walked 4.5 times as often as he's struck out. He's batting .500 and nearly two-thirds of his hits have been home runs.

That gives him an OPS of 2.118. Babe Ruth's best was 1.379.

Why is no one paying attention?

Is it because he's not in the NY or LA markets?

Is it because of his team's mediocrity?

Is it discrimination against Latinos?

Is it because he's played in six games?

Maybe that's it. 25 plate appearances.

Gotcha.

16 May 2017

What Eric Thames Figured Out



 You might be surprised to know that Eric Thames isn't any better at slugging than he was when he began his career.

It's true. Thames arrived in the Big Leagues in 2011 with plenty of power. The muscular 210-pounder slammed 30 home runs in his only full Minor League season at Double-A and went yard 12 times in half a season at the Big League level the following year.

Sometimes it's what you don't do that makes you better. Thames figured out in Korea that he had to stop diving after pitches out of the zone. Korean hurlers don't throw as fast, so they have to use location to get batters out. Once Thames learned patience overseas he began swatting like no others.

Thames's primary improvement from his pre-Korea days is his ability to scoff at the bad stuff and wait for a pitch he could drive. Thames has the 11th best rate of laying off pitches outside the strike zone -- known as O-swing rate -- at 20.8%. That compares to 36.8% in 2011 before he headed east.

It's more testament to the fact that the biggest, strongest and most athletic ball players are not necessarily the best hitters. Combine athletic ability with focus, maturity and patience and you get a star from material that yielded marginal Major Leaguer on talent alone.

14 May 2017

I Want My Team to Trade for Matt Harvey Right Now

Matt Harvey is a mess. You may have noticed. The Dark Knight appears to have struck midnight and turned into a pumpkin. So, of course, I want him for my team.

Following stellar freshman and sophomore half-seasons for the Mets, a visit to Dr. Andrews in 2015 and then a bounce-back junior year, Harvey stood at 25-18, 2.53 with 449 strikeouts and just 94 walks in 427 innings heading into last season. He lived off 98 mph heat, two wicked secondary pitches, and praise from hitters and former pitchers alike. His future seemed assured

But the unsettling stirrings were already there, even beyond the serious health issue. Harvey and his agent, Darth Vader Scott Boras, had complained about overuse heading into the playoffs after his TJ surgery, a complaint they later backed down from. Then 2016 turned into a disaster, with his fastball cooling to 92-93, his ERA ballooning to 4.86 and an eventual diagnosis of Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.

Get Rid of the Bum
Coming into 2017, no one knew what to expect. With less heat, Harvey could no longer simply overpower hitters. Questions remained about whether he could retire batters with a different pitching style than the fastball-first repertoire that got him there. And then last weekend, when Harvey got sauced and missed a game, then feigned self-righteousness and threatened to appeal the resulting suspension. He eventually backed down and acknowledged his immaturity.

Met fans would like to be rid of Matt Harvey, but the team labors in the real world. In that place, Harvey's value is at its lowest point, given his lack of performance, character and health. Although he has regained some of his high heat, the early results this season, following last year's travails, suggest this knight will never regain his armor.

So what is Matt Harvey at this point? Tantalizing potential and nothing more.

The problem for Met brass is this: every other team knows all this, decreasing Harvey's trade value to near-nothing With team control ending after next season, even a mediocre Harvey will soon get much more expensive. If Sandy Alderson wants to rid the franchise of a perceived cancer, he has no choice but to trade him for an empty gesture.

Give Me A Shot at the Knight
The Mets really have no choice but to hang onto Harvey and see what he can offer. Even if he's not the Cy Young candidate he appeared on his way to becoming, league-average starters have tremendous value, particularly to a team with Wild Card aspirations and a disintegrating rotation. But if they decide to dump him, I want my team to snag him.

The reason is that it won't take much to secure this lottery ticket with a chance of hitting. Maybe the payoff won't be the mega jackpot, but with so little invested, even a small payoff is a positive development. Matt Harvey has already been successful in the Majors, which puts him ahead of any  prospect my team would have to relinquish.


12 May 2017

The False Testimony of Derek Jeter

Oh how we have missed Derek Jeter. We've managed to survive two years and 35 games without him, (Thank God for the Cubs!) during which time the official sculptor of the New York Yankees has been busy carving his likeness onto a plaque for unveiling this weekend.

So the tributes will flow and the accolades will fill the air. To the sold-out crowd's delight, Jeter's spirit magic will enter The Stadium as they retire his number 2 and his aura will ascend to heaven. Already, sports shows that treat baseball like gum on their sneaker bottom have dedicated segments to his monumental character and leadership. 

He Should Be President
Yes, the same America that smiled upon the character and leadership of Donald Trump is transfixed by those attributes in Derek Jeter. But I'm sure that will not give the crowd, or the mesmerized sports media, a moment's pause. 

Just to be clear, I don't doubt that Jeter is a great guy with strong character and outstanding leadership skills. It's just that he has become the vessel into which we have poured all our appreciation for leadership in sports. There were literally dozens of athletes who shared these characteristics during Jeter's career -- maybe more. He's the only one we celebrated at all, much less continuously at full voice for 20 years.

The Perstistence of an Overblown Narrative
I want to relate a story that the fine baseball writer Buster Olney is telling this week as testimony to Jeter's great character.  Olney remembers a game in 1998 in which a popup fell between fielders, prompting pitcher David Wells to react with frustration. Olney received word that young Jeter had chewed out Wells in the clubhouse, demanding that he show his teammates respect. Olney asked Jeter about it and Jeter denied it vociferously. Within a minute Olney discovered that in fact it was quite the tongue-lashing. 

Olney tells this story as an encomium to Jeter's great character -- that he would take the initiative to set the tone for his team, but then reject efforts to bestow credit upon him. Fine, spin it that way if you like. What I heard was that Jeter lied to Olney's face. Imagine the umbrage Olney would have taken had any other ballplayer lied so blatantly to him.

In fact, what happened there is just confirmation bias piling up more evidence for the narrative that has engulfed the sporting public. Imagine all the alternative scenarios and ask yourself if Olney would have drawn any different conclusion:

1. Jeter deflects question saying what happens in the clubhouse stays among the players.
Conclusion: Jeter is a great team leader who refuses to take credit.

2. Jeter refuses to talk about it.
Conclusion: Jeter is a great team leader who refuses to take credit.

3. Jeter admits there was a discussion but plays it down.
 Conclusion: Jeter is a great team leader who is reluctant to take credit.

4. Jeter defends his actions and says in no uncertain terms that the team won't tolerate disrespect.
Conclusion: Jeter is a great team leader who is setting the tone for a championship team.
 
You see, there is no scenario in which Olney doesn't retell this story as a tribute to Jeter. In fact, Jeter chose the least magnanimous option -- lying through his teeth. But when the narrative of Jeter as the Mother Teresa of horsehide has as much momentum as it has had for years, it's very difficult to avoid getting caught up in it.

But I've managed.

04 May 2017

From Superstar to Bench Warmer: Andrew McCutchen's Demise

Remember Dale Murphy, the Braves' star center fielder who stood atop the baseball mountain from 1982 to 1987? He hit 45% better than average, smashed 36 homers a year, won five Gold Gloves and two MVPs, and was headed to Cooperstown.

Then, at age 32, he turned into a pumpkin. In his last six seasons, he hit just .234/.307/.396 with just 88 homers. He stole the same number of bases in those six seasons as he had in '87 alone (16) but was caught four more times (10). He moved to right field as his glove got ragged and he never sniffed the Hall.

The same thing appears to have happened to Andrew McCutchen, except in a much shorter period of time. Year before last, he was a certified superstar, a five-tool highlight reel and a perennial top 5 MVP candidate. He hit .313/.404/.523 for the four years corresponding with his age 25-28 seasons, while commanding center field and delivering 26 WAR. He won the MVP in 2013 and was even better in '14. The woebegone Pirates made the playoffs.

McCutchen wasn't the same last year, at age 29, and the whispers began. His fielding was, by all accounts, no longer tolerable in center. His hitting waned to .259/.336/.430, below average for an outfielder. And the Bucs stayed home in October.

Most confoundingly, there didn't seem to be any underlying injury to blame for the slippage. Pitchers just seemed to be able to get him out. Or maybe he was just hiding something.

So 2017 has bloomed with Cutch in right field. His fielding has ticked up so far. And his hitting has ticked further down. Now it's early, but there's no sign of the guy who, just two years ago, finished fifth in MVP balloting. He's hitting .235/.321/.435, almost all of it against lefties.

So now the talk has begun: is Cutch a platoon player? Is he a fourth outfielder? Was that it? He's 30 years old!

It's only early May and McCutchen might bounce back to his old form. But every day he's just ordinary is another piece of data suggesting that's what he now is. It's a mighty, and mighty quick, fall for a guy who was the face of the game just yesterday.