Throwing a baseball 95 miles per hour just does not look natural.
In opposite corners of the country, two large-market teams have bullpen aces with tenuous holds on their closer jobs despite years of dominance. In Boston, Jonathan Papelbon might be a few more bad outings away from seeing young flamethrower Daniel Bard replace him. In Los Angeles, Jonathan Broxton has already lost the role, at least temporarily.
Papelbon first earned the job of closing games for the Red Sox in 2006. He punished hitters that year with a 0.92 ERA and 75 strikeouts against just 13 walks in 68⅓ innings. Not much changed over the next couple of seasons. He saved lots of games, struck out lots of batters, and, despite a slowly rising ERA, his supporting numbers remained top notch. According to calculations at FanGraphs, he added 8½ wins above replacement from 2006-2008, a gigantic total for a reliever and comparable to Mariano Rivera at his best.
Continue reading ‘Closers Named Jonathan’
Starlin Castro’s great game matches his great name.
Starlin Castro, just 20 years old, is having a fine season at shortstop for the Chicago Cubs. Metrics vary on his proficiency with the glove, but he has not been bad in the field. Meanwhile, he has been impressive with the bat, especially given his position and age.
A natural comparison is another 20-year-old rookie, Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves. Heyward came into spring training universally ranked with Stephen Strasburg as one of the top two prospects in baseball. Despite just three games of triple-A experience, he made the Braves’s opening day roster and proceeded to hit a home run in his first major league at bat. Castro, meanwhile, started the year in double-A. After he spent a month destroying Southern League pitching, the Cubs promoted him straight to the majors and installed him as their starting shortstop. He also proceeded to hit a home run in his first major league at bat.
Continue reading ‘Young Shortstops’
With the All-Star Break, which marks the just-past-halfway point in the season, starting tomorrow, here are some updates on some of the players and situations I addressed during the preseason and the first half.
Continue reading ‘Updates at the Break’
“You are mine now! You belong to me!”
Cliff Lee is in the middle of what may turn out to be one of the most amazing seasons in history. No, he is not as utterly dominating as Pedro Martinez was in 1999 and 2000. He is not on pace to strike out 300 or to post an ERA under two. However, the combination of power and control he has showcased so far this year is among the best we have ever seen.
Despite missing April with an injury, Lee pitched 95⅔ innings in the first half of the season. He whiffed 78 batters for a ratio of 7.3 strikeouts per nine innings, which is just a tad above average. Meanwhile, he has walked only five batters, or 0.47 per nine innings. Only once in history has a pitcher qualified for the ERA title—which requires at least 162 innings pitched—while walking less than ½ a batter per nine innings. In 2005, Carlos Silva walked nine batters in nearly 200 innings, but he did so by pitching to contact; he struck out only 71 over the course of the entire year. This season, Lee has generated plenty of strikeouts while exhibiting some of the best control for a starting pitcher in the history of the game.
Continue reading ‘Power and Control’
A batter once got a hit against him, and was then awakened from his daydream by a 100 mph fastball.
The Washington Nationals drafted one of the most hyped prospects in history last season, and proceeded to hand him the largest deal a draftee had ever received. The hype around Stephen Strasburg was so intense that it seemed inevitable that he would disappoint, at least at first. It just did not seem possible for a rookie with a couple of months of minor league experience to come in and dominate big-league hitters.
Four starts into his career, Strasburg has actually exceeded expectations. He is not only dominating hitters, he is pitching like Pedro Martinez in his prime. He struck out 14 batters in his first major league start, and he has now racked up 41 punchouts in just 25⅓ innings, for a rate of about 14½ per nine. Meanwhile, he has walked only five total batters, giving him a power-control combination that ranks with the best pitchers in the game. He has a 1.78 ERA, and batters are hitting .202 against him. And he is only 21 years old. How much better can we expect Strasburg to get?
Continue reading ‘Expectations for Strasburg’
Barton is really good at bunting. Unfortunately, he’s not quite as good at hitting home runs.
Daric Barton, first baseman for the Oakland Athletics, is currently tied for the Major League lead in sacrifice bunts. And a lot of people really do not like that.
Over at Athletics Nation, an A’s fan site, statistics-savvy contributors have been calling for manager Bob Geren’s head for months. Joe Posnanski agrees. He wrote a column the other day suggesting that, among other things, “[s]omebody tell that man to stop doing that immediately.” Matt Klassen at FanGraphs also agrees, arguing that every single one of Barton’s bunts has been a bad idea. How could the team that led baseball’s statistical revolution in the late-1990s and early-2000s be so stupid? How can Billy Beane sit back and let his manager throw away out after out by allowing Barton, a good on-base hitter, to sacrifice his plate appearances?
As Tom Tango explains, it is not so simple. Tango makes two points: 1) Barton may have a chance to reach base when he bunts; and 2) all the bunting may force infielders to play in, giving him more hitting room and making him more successful when he does choose to swing.
Continue reading ‘Bunt it Like Barton’
Someone tell Maddux that pitching is better now than a decade ago.
After Armando Galarraga’s performance Wednesday, articles started to pop up questioning whether three perfect games in 25 days meant that pitching had risen to dominance in Major League Baseball. While it certainly is possible that pitchers are better now than they ever have been, those suggesting that the numbers or specific performances from the first third of the season have a larger meaning are using flawed logic to make their case. For a look at one aspect of this argument, let’s explore the claim that there have been an abnormal number of dominant performances so far this season.
First, three perfect games did not occur in a 25 day span, because Armando Galarraga did not throw a perfect game. In order to make 27 straight outs, a pitcher must get very lucky in a multitude of ways. In a game against the Padres last season, Jonathan Sanchez was just about perfect, retiring every batter he faced except for Chase Headley who reached on an error by the third baseman. Sanchez did everything right, and a little bit of bad luck turned his perfect game into a mere no-hitter. An analogous situation happened with Galarraga. He did everything right, but some bad luck took his perfect game away. Just as the error behind Sanchez prevented a perfect game 13 days before Mark Buerhle’s for the White Sox, a blown call for Galarraga prevented a third perfect game in 25 days this season.
Continue reading ‘Is Pitching More Dominant?’
They traded the best pitcher in the game and suddenly they’re good. Baseball is weird.
Two months of baseball are in the books, and there are some real surprises in the standings, particularly in the American League East and the National League.
Everyone knew that Tampa Bay had a good team before the season started, but at 35-18, with two and a half games of space between themselves and the Yankees, they have exceeded expectations. The Toronto Blue Jays have obliterated expectations for their club, winning 31 of their first 54 games and keeping pace with the Red Sox. Boston struggled greatly in April, but turned things around in May, and even die-hard fans probably are not surprised that they sit two and a half games behind the Yankees. The real shock is that they are in fourth place in the division. Apart from the East standings, there are not many real surprises in the rest of the AL, with the possible exception of Seattle. The Mariners added some really nice players this offseason—particularly Cliff Lee, Chone Figgins, and Milton Bradley—and were a popular pick to compete for the West this season. They have sputtered to a 20-31 record and are probably out of contention.
Continue reading ‘Surprises in the Standings’
Sweeney has “warning track power,” but he looks good doing it.
The Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, who play just a few miles from each other on opposite sides of the San Francisco Bay, have very similar players manning right field. Ryan Sweeney of the A’s and Nate Schierholtz of the Giants are young, tall, rangy outfielders who hit from the left side. Both are quite good at making contact, and both have the range to handle center field, though only Sweeney has played the position in the majors. Both look the part of the big, power-hitting, major league corner outfielder. However, neither actually hits for much power.
A big part of the reason these players lack power is that the balls they hit in the air do not travel very far. Baseball Reference provides batting splits by hit trajectory. I compiled the MLB-wide numbers from 2008 through 2010, the years in which Sweeney and Schierholtz have had most of their appearances. During that period, 8.9 percent of fly balls and 2.2 percent of line drives went over the fence for home runs. Those are averages for all players, and are modest compared to the rates of true power hitters. Ryan Howard, for example, has had more than 27 percent of his fly balls carry out of the park.
Continue reading ‘Powering Up in the Bay’
Silva has never been big on strikeouts, but he was effective for the Twins.
The Chicago Cubs and Seattle Mariners swapped bad contracts back in December, when the Cubs sent left fielder Milton Bradley to the Mariners in exchange for starter Carlos Silva. At the time, the general consensus was that while the Cubs had to deal Bradley, the Mariners won big by dumping Silva on them. Here, after a quarter of a season, is a look at how the two sides have fared thus far.
The Cubs signed Bradley to three years and $30 million after his great 2008 season in Texas. Chicago was Bradley’s eighth team, and he had demonstrated a tendency to make things difficult for his employers. Bradley was not bad, but not great, on the field in 2009. Off-field problems were what made it impossible for the team to keep him. For the Mariners and Silva, the problems were based on performance. They had signed him away from the Twins for four years and $48 million prior to the 2008 season. His first season with Seattle, despite looking bad on the surface (4-15 record, 6.46 ERA), was in line with his performance in previous years. He was injured and ineffective in his second year, allowing 29 runs in 30⅓ innings and walking more batters than he struck out. The following table compares his career rates before and after Seattle signed him.
Continue reading ‘Silva and Bradley’
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