Anything can happen in baseball. The season is as long as a butterfly's entire life and then they start all over again to determine the champs. Balls take funny bounces, key ligaments incur the wrath of sliders and strokes get lost or discovered.
The game defies prediction.
And yet, there are events that can be foreseen by dropouts with bad depth perception. Here are a few that jump to mind:
1. Someone with an unimpressive resume will bash out of the gate, Adam Duvall style. Hosannas will be sung; articles will be written. And before the electrons are dry, pitchers will figure him out and he'll fade back to well-compensated oblivion.
2. Some September cellar occupant will rattle off early season wins. Try not to have an orgasm. The blooms of May are long forgotten by Labor Day.
3. Some dope with a microphone in his face and diminishing brain cells will rant against analytics, unaware that the debate is over, every team employs a gaggle of numbers crunchers, and MLB itself puts a tape measure and radar gun on every ball thrown, hit and chased. Just because a guy could snap off a curve -- or hit one -- in the 70s doesn't make him smarter than a Pet Rock. (That's White Sox resident Bozo Ken Harrelson proudly posing as avatar of this prediction.)
4, We will continue to hear about momentum, as if it's a thing in sports. Most speakers will mean that a team is playing well and has confidence, but they will invoke momentum as if it's a magic potion created with crystals and feng shui.
5. We'll see fewer infield shifts. You know why? Because those pesky advanced analytics tell us they don't generally work. (Damn those facts! Don't they know America doesn't do facts anymore?) They only make sense for a handful of players who pull everything and won't/can't adjust.
6. Mike Trout will continue his reign as best baseball player on Planet Earth, but he won't win the MVP. Voters get tired of voting for the same guys repeatedly, especially when they're as personally exciting as toast.
7. At least one MVP or Cy Young winner will rise up from the floorboards. Think R.A. Dickey, Brandon Webb, Terry Pendelton, George Bell.
8. The trend towards using relievers in more optimal ways will continue to grow. Several long relievers will pitch key innings, not mop up, and their teams will benefit from it, particularly as starter throw fewer and fewer innings.
9. People will be surprised when Stephen Strasburg goes on the DL, Pablo Sandoval earns a starting job and the weather turns hot during the summer. Either we have short memories or we're distracted by our phones.
10. Some throwaway name like Tampa Bay shortstop Brad Miller will slug 30 home runs out of nowhere this year. Oh wait, Miller did that last year. Who knew?
What will the 2017 standings look like at season's end? Probably not like the chart below. This is Fangraphs' Zips projections for each team, which has every bit as much value as every other projection system, but less than toilet paper, which has at least one other important use.
Still, it's a starting point for understanding the upcoming season.
Some items to note:
1. None of the projection systems see much in the way of division races. Zips has the Red Sox winning the AL East by 4 games, but after that there's no drama. It's got Cleveland by 8 in the Central and Houston by 10 in the West. In the NL, it projects the Nats by 8 and Cubs by 17, and the Dodgers over the Giants by 7 in the West.
2. If all goes according to form, which it literally never does, the Wild Cards are a pair of shootouts at the October corral. This chart rates the Angels Mariners, Rangers and Rays as a toss-up for the second Wild Card behind the Blue Jays. In the NL, the Giants, Mets, Cardinals and Pirates will battle for the play-in game.
3. The most volatile projections belong to the Anaheim Angels, Baltimore Orioles and St. Louis Cardinals. Zips puts the Halos at 83 wins and a Wild Card while Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA rankings have them at 77 wins and 85 losses. PECOTA doesn't believe in the Orioles either, tabbing them at 74 wins and the AL East cellar. And PECOTA is unfathomably dubious about St. Louis, forecasting just 77 wins and a finish behind Milwaukee.
So where do all those wins go in PECOTA? To the basement. Its worst team -- the Royals -- still win 71 games, more than four teams in the ZIPS projections
4. No one is much buying the Rangers, who ran away with their division last season. The advanced metrics suggested that was more a matter of serendipity than talent and regressed the Rangers to their natural ability level. A healthy Yu Darvish could mess with that.
5. The Mets' outlook is dampened severely by health concerns on the mound. They are rated as just the fourth best staff in the NL, barely ahead of Washington in fifth. But if the breaks go their way -- or actually, if there are no breaks, and pulls, tears, strains, tweaks, stiffness, contusions and syndromes are kept to a minimum -- they could be scary good at preventing runs. Of course, if the queen had testicles she'd be king.
6. The White Sox will look to deal whoever isn't nailed down mid-season, so their numbers could suffer in the short term in order to improve quickly down the line. The projections already like the path the Braves are on.
Are you ready? Opening Day's just a couple of days away.
Rougned Odor has an extremely entertaining name. The one bequeathed to him by his father makes our noses itch. The one preceding it, bestowed upon him by (presumably) his mother, makes our brain frown.
What's more, Roogie packs a punch, as Jose Bautista's jaw can attest. So does his bat, which deposited 33 pitches over the outfield fence in 2016, his third MLB season.
Being 23 and smacking 33 homers has great value, particularly when you're a middle infielder. It's so valuable to the Texas Rangers, that they have reportedly signed him to a six-year $49.5 million contract that takes him through all three years of arbitration and a pair of free agent years. (There is also a seventh-year option.)
Odor would have been in line to make a little more than $500,000 this season before becoming eligible for arbitration after the World Series. Keeping up his current level of play, Odor could have been expected to earn about $24 million in arbitration, and then around $16-$20 million/year in free agency. Moving in early earned the Rangers a discount of $7-$15 million, which seems like a reasonable ending point that puts the major risk on the team.
But at 23, Odor may actually have peaked. The Venezuelan doubled his home run quotient despite walking a meager 19 times. His OBP hovered below .300 and his defense suggests he might be a first baseman by mid-career. For all his power and youth, Odor earned just 2 WAR in 2016, which roughly means he's an average starter at his position -- the keystone. None of these bode well for the future. Few players develop a batting eye with experience, but plenty exhibit one anomalous power season. (FWIW, the projection systems have Odor almost exactly where he was in 2016, with a handful fewer home runs and couple more walks.)
It seems like a reasonable deal for both sides, which is why it got done. Second basemen who leave the yard that often are hard to find. Batters who fan 7X as often as they walk are also hard to find -- in the Majors. We'll see which Odor lingers.
Is it too much to ask people who talk about sports for a living to know the names of colleges that field teams?
The basketball phenomenon in Spokane is Gon-zag-a, not Gon-zog-a. Did you not get the hint from their nickname? They're not the Zogs, ya know.
The Catholic school from Cincinnati is pronounced Zavier, not Ecks-avier. (By the way moms and dads, if you name your son Xavier, you've given him a name that exists, and that name is pronounced Zavier.)
The national champs in football represented Clem-son, not Clemz-on.
(The broadcast partners are always good about this, so thank you CBS, TBS and friends.)
And so on. Coastal Carolina is moving up its football program to Division 1A. So you're all going to have to learn how to say Chanticleers.
As if the NCAA basketball tournament was awaiting an opportunity to vindicate me, there was the fascinating Sweet 16 game between #1 seed Gonzaga and #4 seed West Virginia, in which the losing team held the ball too long on the last possession and paid for it with the end of their season.
Down three with 35 seconds left, the Mountaineers missed a pair of shots and retrieved the rebound each time, giving them the ball with 13 seconds left. As you can see from the video here (go to about 2:05 for the final sequence), the rebounder hands the ball to another player who immediately backs away to regroup just as the clock hits 10 seconds.
You can see from the still shot above that he doesn't begin making an effort to drive the lane or set up for a pass
or a shot until 6 seconds are left, by which time it is way too late. Gonzaga stifled his attempt to dribble and he never even got off a shot.
Think about what a disastrous possession that was. The team missed a pair of three pointers and yet still had the ball with plenty of time to even the score. Yet they wasted half the available time in a misguided attempt to run out the clock while still behind.
Eventually, some coach is going to recognize the folly of this strategy and win a Final Four or championship game. Then you will begin to see teams altering what is transparently and empirically a losing proposition.
You want to know the real March Madness? It's this: professional coaches all over the college basketball landscape, leaders and molders of young men, CEOs of their teams, the top hoops strategists in the world, can't figure out a simple concept that is literally costing wins in league tournaments -- which means teams are losing league titles, and thus NCAA appearances, because coaches and players can't figure out something that's beyond obvious to me and empirically provable.
I saw this crop up in Siena's MAAC championship loss to Iona and Kansas State's Big 12 semi-final loss to West Virginia. In Siena's case, the punishment is the league title and the NCAA bid. In K-State's case, as a team squarely on the at-large bubble, it might or might not have cost them a place in the dance.
The Football Parallel
Before delving into this discernible, indisputable, self-evident strategic error, I want to take a trip back to review its football analog. Remember the days when teams ahead late in games rushed three defensive lineman and played their linebackers and corners way off the line to prevent the deep ball from beating them? Remember what an abject failure that strategy was, as trailing teams regularly marched down the field with short passes and scored tying and winning touchdowns? Remember how you howled at the TV when your team attempted this clearly ineffective strategy? It eventually became so obvious that "prevent defenses" were preventing teams from winning that they finally -- finally! -- abandoned the practice.
That's what's going on for me in basketball. I yell at the television every year around this time while enjoying conference tournament action. Why is it so plain to me but apparently beyond the perception of highly-compensated head coaches?
What's the Problem?
The issue is this: teams with the final shot in a game -- in the first half too -- regularly run the clock down way too far before pressing the action for the last shot. They fear leaving time on the clock for the other team to respond, but that's irrelevant unless they score first.
Generally, teams dribble the clock down to about 8 seconds before beginning their play, an amount of time that is clearly insufficient. It leaves enough time for a rush to the basket and a shot -- nothing more. Invariably, a defender intercepts the attempt, leaving the offense without any real second option. Time after time you'll see the result is a bad shot that doesn't go in.
Teams need to start their rush with at least 12 seconds on the clock. This gives them time to go to a second option or get an offensive rebound and make a pass before another shot. If the play materializes quickly and they score in only a few seconds, the other team still only has 8 or 9 seconds to rush up the court and make a shot. In any case, that has to be a secondary consideration.
Score first; defend second.
How It Plays Out
In Siena's and Kansas State's case, they made this mistake while behind. That's nuts! They needed to maximize their own ability to score, not worry about their opponent's possession.
So here's what happened: The point guard for the Saints, who were down two at the time, was stymied on his attempt to drive the lane, so he did the only thing available to him -- chucking up a 30-footer. Clang.
The Wildcats fared even worse. In a tight defensive struggle with the Mountaineers, Coach Bruce Weber allowed his team to dribble the clock down to 10 seconds before calling a time out. That left them about eight seconds to organize a play against a stout defense that easily cut off an attempted drive, resulting in a weak, off-balance shot as time expired.
The success rate on running the clock down below 10 is, in my viewing experience, about 8%. But no one seems to have learned the lesson. So it's going to happen again in another league tournament game. And then again in an NCAA tournament game. And then again. And again. What is going on with college basketball coaches?
It has probably always been evident to you that for every physical action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You realized it in some vague way you couldn't articulate long before you ever heard of Newton's Third Law. You knew that if someone threw a dodge ball at your head in school gym, the ball and the melon each bounce in opposite directions.
You probably had some unformed understanding of gravity too, since everything you threw in the air mysteriously came down.
The same kind of old discovery becoming new is happening today with a small number of batters in baseball. It's been fueled by Statcast measurements of launch angles but it goes back to the days of Babe Ruth.
What J.D. Martinez Figured Out
Let's look at the career of J.D. Martinez to see what the revolution is. In his first three seasons as an Astro, Martinez followed the counsel of all the hitting gurus and attempted to put a level swing on the ball. If he blasted a liner up the middle, that was considered perfect contact.
Employing that philosophy, Martinez compiled a .251/.300/.387 line, roughly 12% below average -- for an outfielder, about replacement level. It began to occur to him that perfecting his swing was getting singles.
The he started noticing teammate Jason Castro, who in 2013 increased his OPS 100 points -- almost all of it in slugging percentage -- by swinging upward. The wheels began to turn. He started watching the swings of the best hitters in baseball. They all sported similar uppercut swings. It's something Babe Ruth introduced to the game in the 1920s and has been employed by every Hall of Fame home run hitter since. But it's always been seen as the province only of sluggers, not of ordinary hitters.
Well, what made those hitters sluggers?
Martinez spent that off-season with a hitting instructor whose motto was "ground balls suck." In fact, ground balls are somewhat more likely to result in hits, but obviously never home runs, and rarely doubles or triples. The OPS on fly balls is much higher.
Chicks don't dig the ground ball. Neither do front offices.
So Martinez rebuilt his swing, and the next season in Detroit, looking for pitches he lift, he more than doubled his extra base output. In his three seasons as a Tiger, he's become a star, triple-slashing .299/.357/.540. That's a 210-point rocket launch in OPS, and it earned Martinez an All-Star nod, some MVP votes, 13 wins against replacement and $11,750,000 in his last season of arbitration eligibility. If he hits like that again this year he'll be looking at $100 million.
Where Statcast Comes In
It might have escaped notice, except MLB now measures launch angle and exit velocity of every ball hit. And when you look at the numbers it's pretty obvious, so obvious that pitchers are now throwing, ironically, more pitches up in the zone to Martinez. It's hard to golf a chest-high fastball.
It's a secret that's been hiding in plain sight for a century but it may be enjoying a renewed heyday. Word is that some teams are introducing their players to a more angled swing path. We'll see: maybe it's just an isolated thing; after all, Castro's performance plummeted after the 2013 season. But for a handful of guys like Martinez, hitting the ball in the air has been the path to success.
Spring Training brings questions about the upcoming baseball season. According to the projections, the division races will have less intrigue than a four-pitch intentional walk; the Wild Cards are a tossup. We'll see...
Q. Who is going to challenge the Indians this year?
A. Andrew Jackson? I don't see anyone in the AL Central giving them much of a tussle, though, of course, you never know. The White Sox are rebuilding and the Twins are not yet rebuilt. The Royals are degrading and the Tigers would have sold off if they could get something for their expensive old stars. I suppose KC could put things together and make a respectable showing, but I don't see anyone challenging the Indians for first place.
Q. Which team that looks bad going into the season would you be least surprised to see contend?
A. The Diamondbacks have so many good pieces and now have a front office that could pass a competency test. With the return of A.J. Pollack and an unexpected arm or two they could enter the Wild Card mix.
On the other side, the Tigers still have some big bats and Justin Verlander. Wouldn't that be rich if Detroit got its World Champs as soon as Mike Illitch finally dies?
Q. Now that we have so much more information, is there anything more definitive we can say about clutch hitting?
A. The same thing discerning people were saying before: psychology matters in baseball, as in all aspects of life, but you would be surprised how rare true "clutch" performance really is. The vast majority of "clutch" plays are just good plays that happened to come at opportune times. All the statistical evidence, and now all the atomically-measured Statcast data, demonstrates that more and more clearly.
Q. Eric Thames was a washout in the Majors and then went to Korea and became Babe Ruth. What are his prospects now that he's back in MLB?
A. Everyone is very curious to see. Experience tells us that guys who go elsewhere and figure it out (e.g., Cecil Fielder, Ryan Vogelsong) return having figured it out, just as guys in the Majors who suddenly figure it out (e.g., David Ortiz, Jose Bautista) do. The problem with Thames is that his window is narrow because he's 30 and he really can't play the field. It wouldn't surprise me if he puts together two or three power-hitting seasons before tailing off and losing any value.
Q. Whither Rick Porciello, who won 22 games for Boston last year?
A. If he's a viable #3 for 30 starts this season the Sox should be grateful. He's not repeating last year.
Q. How damaging is the David Price injury?
A. Well, that depends on how damaging it is. If he's cooked, that brings Boston back to the AL East pack. If his first start is delayed and he has to monitor innings, that will be fine. Teams have to assume they won't get a full season out of any starter. On average, a team uses eight starting pitchers.
Q. Are we in another golden age of shortstops?
A. No question. Manny Machado, Xander Bogarts, Addison Russell, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, Andrelton Simmons, Javier Baez, Trea Turner, Francisco Lindor, Dansby Swanson, etc. And second base is brimming as well.
Q. Are the Mets crazy for sitting Conforto in favor of Jay Bruce?
A. Insane. But these things have a way of working themselves out.
Q. I hear there is a new Statcast wins against replacement measure. What's that all about?
A. Not yet, but MLB's Statcast does provide a computational version of what the A's were doing in the 90s by charting batted balls.
Here's how it works: if a batter hits a screaming liner in the gap and the center fielder snags it, the pitcher records and out and the batter absorbs a futile at bat. Statcast can tell us that 75% of the time that would have been a double, and charges the pitcher with 3/4 of a double and credits the batter with the same. So instead of measuring the results of plays it measures what "should have" happened.
Over the course of a season, luck, the effects of defense and park effects are stripped out of a player's performance, not just on average but specific to him. Additionally, the same calculations will apply to their defense, which would be an immense upgrade, compared to the squooshy defense metrics we have now. Eventually this could be a major upgrade.
Q. Why doesn't anyone give the Yankees any love.
A. They are reserving it for the next decade, when the Bombers will be a force. For now, they're short on rotation arms.
Q. Did you see that Bud Selig said in an interview that Marvin Miller should be in the Hall of Fame?
A. And he said that Donald Trump is a dope. Tell me something that's not obvious.
Q. But Selig never endorsed Miller for the HOF before.
A. It would be unseemly for the Commissioner to do that. But Bud's just an ordinary citizen now. And it's not like he's sticking his neck out: Marvin Miller is one of the five most influential people in baseball history.
Q. What do you see for Jason Heyward this year?
A. If we knew the answers to questions like that baseball wouldn't be as much fun. That said, it's hard to believe Heyward won't hit for both a higher average and more power than he did last year.
Q. If the Braves are faltering by the trade deadline, will they unload all those free agent pickups they signed?
A. If they're faltering, it's unlikely the free agent pickups are performing all that well. What are they going to get for a mediocre 42-year-old pitcher on a one-year deal?
Q. Who is this year's surprise breakout?
A. If I told you that, it wouldn't be a surprise.
Keep those cards and letters coming!
When Theo Epstein took over the Chicago Cubs the bare cupboard allowed him an opportunity to reconfigure the franchise to his liking. Epstein decided to rebuild with hitting and defense, and pick up arms wherever he could. The Cubs drafted everyday players, developed everyday players, hunted internationally for everyday players, and when the time was right, went fishing for pitchers in free agency, low-cost trades and the like.
When you build behind pitching, you're building on a foundation of uncertainly, like a house built on sand. Scouts and seamheads know there's only a little hyperbole in the bromide abbreviated as TINSTAAPP -- there is no such thing as a pitching prospect. Banking millions of dollars and a pennant on arms, shoulders, elbows and other appendages withstanding the blunt force trauma of snapping off sliders and cranking up fastballs 90 times a game is a fool's errand.
Ladies and gentleman, I give you the 2017 New York Mets.
Not so much by design as by happenstance, the studs holding up the walls in Queens are all of the hurling variety. Thor, the Dark Knight, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, Robert Gsellman and Zack Wheeler have all demonstrated ace or near-ace ability, and present as a group the most formidable five starters since at least the '90s Braves.
At the same time, only one star player graces the everyday lineup, Yo, and there are even questions about him. Baseball Prospectus's projection system has the Mets winning the division with the second best run prevention in the league, but also below average offense.
If Terry Collins can coax 130 starts out of his impossible sextet, the hitting might not matter. With continued dominance and newfound health 90 feet from the plate, the Mets could rout the division and claim the NL's best record. That is the formula that drove them to the pennant in 2015, though with a somewhat different crew.
It Isn't Gonna Be That Way
Ah, to dream. Gsellman owns all of eight starts in the Major Leagues. Matz shut it down in mid-August last season. Wheeler's a wreck after post-TJ surgery complications and Harvey looks more like the rabbit than the Knight. That doesn't even account for the prospect of injury every time a previously healthy pitcher like Syndergaard takes the mound.
The betting line on starts by the top six starters is probably in the 110-120 area and betting the over seems foolhardy. The team showed last year they could sneak into the playoffs without the staff intact, but one-and-done isn't any pennant contender's idea of success. Besides, what if the mound arms implode? It could get uglier than a Twitter war with Charles Barkley. The franchise has some good options in a pinch, but not #2-starter types for extended periods.
Fangraphs' projection system says the Mets' pitching staff (including relievers) will produce roughly twice as much WAR as the everyday players. That assumes a full season (143 starts) from the front line. A couple of injuries could easily cost 10 wins of value.
Every team has best and worst case scenarios but the standard deviations on this team are the largest. It wouldn't be shocking for them to knock on the door of 100 wins -- or 84 losses. There really isn't any other team you could say that about at season's start.
