Episode 184Managing editor Dave Cameron makes his weekly appearance. Topics discussed: how Josh Hamilton's offensive approach sort of does -- but also totally doesn't -- resemble Delmon Young's; this week's iteration of SI.com's Power Rankings and the challenges of assessing team defense; and the Tampa Bay Rays' sabermetric broadcast from Sunday. Don't hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter. You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things. Audio after the jump. (Approximately 34 min. play time.) Read the rest of this entry » One of the more confounding parts of baseball, and surely if you're a baseball player, is the disappearance of what appeared to be an entirely reliable skill set for extended periods of time. Some of it can be explained away by statistical measures while others are attempted to be explained away by a narrative. But frequently, it's hard to unearth a tidy explanation. And that's simultaneously frustrating and rather fascinating. I was scanning the leader board recently, looking at strikeout and walk rates for hitters and those who have seen notable changes this year. For curiosity's sake, here's what caught my eye after a cursory glance: Read the rest of this entry »The Detroit Tigers are in third place in the American League Central at 20-21. They're not where they -- and many of us -- expected them to be at this part of the season. Yes, the starting rotation's been inconsistent, other than the supremely good and consistent Justin Verlander. The bullpen has sprung a few leaks, and leads the American League in losses with eight. But it's the offense that's been the most disappointing. Through 41 games, the Tigers have scored 180 runs, just the seventh-most in the American League. The Rangers have scored 236. Even with Evan Longoria sidelined, the Rays are ahead of the Tigers with 184 runs. The Yankees, who haven't had a hit with a runner in scoring position in two weeks (or so it seems), have scored 189. Read the rest of this entry »Nolan Arenado, 3B, Colorado Rockies Current Level: AA 2012 Top 15 Prospects Ranking: 1stCurrent Value: Star-in-the-Making It's not even June but the Rockies are fading fast from the playoff picture. The hot corner has been a gaping hole and the organization's top prospect just happens to be a third baseman. Unfortunately, Arenado is not exactly forcing the club's hand to promote him. He's currently hitting .303 in double-A but his OPS is just .788 as he's not exactly getting on-base at a huge rate and he's just hitting for OK power. Never one to take a huge number of walks, his rate is down to just 5.6 BB% this year after topping out at 8.1% in 2011. His strikeout rate is still good at 14.0 K% but it's up to the highest mark of his career and 5% higher than last season. Arenado, 21, has 13 doubles but just three home runs after slugging 20 last year; his power, as witnessed by his ISO rate, has dipped each of the past few seasons from .212 to .190 to .137. After a breakout 2011 season in the California League and then an even better performance in the Arizona Fall League (.388/.423/.636 in 121 AB), the organization was probably hoping for a little bit more from Arenado and it looks like he won't be ready before 2013. Read the rest of this entry » Last night, Josh Hamilton and his teammates went up against Felix Hernandez in Seattle. Hamilton came to bat four times, seeing 13 pitches in the process. He swung at eight of them. Here are the pitch locations for when Josh Hamilton decided to swing the bat last night:  One of those eight pitches is within the box that PITCHF/x defines as the strike zone, and two others are close enough that they fall well within the margin for error, and very well might have been called strikes had he not swung at them. The other five, though? There's a slider up and way off the plate outside, two change-ups down off the plate outside, a change-up in the dirt, and a slider at his ankles. Now, here are the pitches that Hamilton let pass.  One curveball on the outer half that was taken for a called strike, and then four pitches that weren't particularly close that Hamilton wisely let go by, all of which were called balls. Between these two graphs, you can see the 13 pitches that Felix Hernandez threw Josh Hamilton last night. Two of them are within the strike zone. Two of them are close to the strike zone. Josh Hamilton saw four pitches worth swinging at last night. He swung eight times. This is Josh Hamilton. Read the rest of this entry »Mets first baseman Ike Davis has seen the number of fastballs thrown to him drop significantly since his rookie season in 2010. In that year, 57% of the pitches thrown to Davis were some type of fastball. So far in 2012? Only 51%. There have been only 30 seasons between 2007 and 2011 where a hitter with more than 100 plate appearances saw a lower percentage of fastballs in a season than Ike this year — and only five where a player accumulated more than 500 plate appearances. Clearly pitchers are adjusting to Davis, altering their approach based upon Davis' perceived offensive strengths and weaknesses. This got me thinking about the extent to which major league pitchers adjust to hitters from year to year. Was this change significant, or more common based on the normal adjustments hitters can expect to see from year to year. As a first cut, I decided to look at changes in the pitch types that batters faced in consecutive years. Throwing hitters a different mix of pitches (i.e. fastballs, curveballs, sliders, etc.) is just one way the league can adjust. Pitchers can alter location, sequence and speed. However, the data was more readily available for pitch types, so the choice was made to focus there first. Read the rest of this entry »The injuries keep coming for the Boston Red Sox. The most recent victim is off-season acquisition Cody Ross, who is out indefinitely with a fractured bone in his foot. With Ross now on the disabled list, all three of the Red Sox projected starters in the outfield are currently injured. While the Red Sox have struggled this season, they are only 6.5 games out of first place. But the injuries will make it difficult to close the gap. Read the rest of this entry »Brendan Ryan is the best defensive shortstop in baseball, despite what Gold Glove voters want you to believe. The slick-fielding Mariner is annually snubbed, but he boasts the highest UZR at his position during the past three-plus seasons. The Fielding Bible panelists have noticed. They awarded him their own Gold Gloves in 2010 and 2011. Most Seattle fans have, as well, although they probably wouldn’t mind a little more offense. Doing his best Ray Oyler impersonation, Ryan is currently hitting just .165/.288/.248. ------ David Laurila: Why are you a good defensive shortstop? Brendan Ryan: I take a lot of pride on the defensive side. Even going back to high school, it is something that has come a little bit easier to me. I also came up in the Cardinals system and worked with Jose Oquendo. He really helped me simplify my footwork, and everything else. We spent hours and hours and hours working together. Beyond that, you have to throw in instincts, you have to throw in positioning -- all of that stuff. It’s kind of a hard question to answer. DL: The Fielding Bible rates you as the top defensive shortstop in baseball. Does that make up for not winning a Gold Glove? BR: It’s definitely been a little bit frustrating. Read the rest of this entry »It's been a strange season for Detroit Tigers stater Max Scherzer and its only the third week of May. Well, maybe strange is too strong of a word. Perhaps interesting is a better choice. And it certainly has been interesting. Scherzer's first start of the season, on April 8 against the Boston Red Sox, ended after only 2 2/3 innings. The righty gave up seven runs on eight hits and two walks and was pulled before the end of the third inning. Of his 80 pitches, there were 51 strikes -- 16 called strikes and four swing-throughs. The other 31 strikes were either hits or foul balls. Velocity didn't appear to be an issue. His fastball averaged 93.5 mph, his two-seamer averaged 94.6, his slider averaged 86.6 and his change-up averaged 85.1 -- all faster speeds than he recorded on average in 2011. But he threw too many pitches over the heart of the plate, resulting in hits and runs. Read the rest of this entry »Yesterday, the transformation from setup man to closer came full circle for Aroldis Chapman, as he protected a three-run lead for the Reds in earning his second career save. With the move, Sean Marshall has been consigned back to his former role of setup man. Marshall’s early failures however, don’t mean that he doesn’t have closer’s stuff.
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In the great American tradition of "belaboring the point," the author presents here another installment in an ongoing consideration of baseball's various radio and television broadcasts -- a project, it should be said, that has been greatly aided by the efforts of our readership. Against all odds, this post actually does add something to the conversation. In fact, it might be the most important addition, in that it comes closest to answering a question entirely relevant to consumers of over-the-air baseball -- especially the sort who read FanGraphs. On both the PC* and PlayStation 3 (and perhaps some other) versions of MLB.TV, it's possible to select an audio feed to accompany the video of a selected game. The question that has often occured to the author -- and very likely to many readers, as well -- is, "Which audio feed is likely to best complement the video of this game?" Or, alternatively: "Which audio feed won't compel me to perform acts of violence against my person?" *Provided the NexDef plug-in -- the efficacy of which is a different conversation -- is installed.Read the rest of this entry »During the first month of the season, you seemingly couldn't watch a game without seeing a pitcher throwing at reduced velocity to what he'd shown in the past. Between Tim Lincecum, CC Sabathia, Felix Hernandez, Justin Masterson, and Roy Halladay, MLB had a long and distinguished list of starters who weren't throwing as hard as they had in prior years. However, April is known for the lowest temperatures of the season, and colder weather is historically associated with lower pitch speeds, so there were reasons to think that many of these pitchers would find their fastballs again as we got closer to summer. And, as expected, many of the reduced velocity guys in April have been throwing harder in the first three weeks of May. Because we're still called FanGraphs, let's illustrate these gains with graphs. Read the rest of this entry »The St. Louis Cardinals' playoff hunt took a huge hit with the loss of veteran first baseman Lance Berkman to a possible torn ACL. The injury could end his 2012 season - and possibly his career. Most clubs would be left scrambling for a veteran trade replacement - especially after also losing a perennial all-star like Albert Pujols in the off-season - but the Cardinals have one of the Top 3 first base prospects in the game. Along with the Cubs' Anthony Rizzo and Houston's Jonathan Singleton, triple-A first baseman Matt Adams has the potential to be an impact bat at the big league level. Prior to the season I ranked Adams as the organization's eighth-best prospect in the system but left him off the Top 100 prospects list. Read the rest of this entry »When Lance Berkman had to be helped off the field on Saturday, he feared his knee issue was serious. Today's MRI will give an official confirmation, but early word is that he's suffered a torn ACL and is done for the season. His comments about that possibility yesterday indicated that this might be a career ending injury for Berkman: "If I've re-torn my ACL or something like that, I'd certainly get it fixed but you don't know how psychologically you're going to come back from something like that," Berkman said. "I'm not talking from the standpoint of being scared of hurting it again. I'm talking about doing everything it takes to come back and play again at an elite level. I think that's a legitimate question I'm going to have to answer if, in fact, it turns out to be something more serious than we hope that it is. If this really is the end for Berkman, then the next question about his career becomes whether or not he accomplished enough to be worthy of induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Read the rest of this entry »When pressed to name the top offensive catchers in the league, names such as Mike Napoli, Miguel Montero, Brian McCann, Yadier Molina, Carlos Santana, and Alex Avila immediately come to mind. That is only natural, as all six of those players were in the top ten amongst catchers for wOBA last season (min. 100 PA). In addition, young, up-and-coming catchers, such as Matt Wieters and Buster Posey, also likely make the list for many people. This season, however, none of those catchers listed above lead the league in production at the plate. Surprising names have risen to the top of the rankings through the first month and a half of the season. In fact, none of the top four catchers in wOBA this season (min. 100 PA) had a wOBA above .350 in 2011. Read the rest of this entry » |