According to a baseball source, Major League Baseball has dropped the 100-game suspension levied against Eliezer Alfonzo last season due to the same procedural issues that surfaced during the Ryan Braun case over the offseason.
The specific procedural issues were yet again not specifically outlined in this report, but the important aspect to note is that this was not an appeal case that Alfonzo and his team won. This suspension was not brought before an arbitrator. Instead, Major League Baseball re-examined the procedural facts of the sample collection and simply dropped the suspension.
Michael Brantley has been no better than a league-average hitter in his three-plus seasons with the Cleveland Indians. It isn’t for lack of a studious approach, though. The 24-year-old puts a lot of thought into his craft — and that should bode well for his future. As for the recent past, he’s been swinging a hot bat. Brantley went 9-for-18 over the weekend against the Red Sox, including a 4-for-5 effort on Thursday night. He later talked about the approach that he brought to each at bat.
——
On his first two at bats and doing his homework: “Josh Beckett is a great pitcher, but at the same time, I could see that he was leaving a lot of balls up and out over the plate. He was missing arm-side a little bit.
“My first at bat, I was kind of looking out over the plate. I got a fastball up and away that I was able to drive to left [for a double]. After that, I noticed that he was trying to use his breaking ball a little more. In my second at bat, he got me 0-2 and threw me a back-foot breaking ball [for a ball]. Then he tried to double up on it, because it’s one of his best out pitches. He left it over the plate and I was able to drive it to left-center for another double.
“On that second at bat, when the count got to 1-2, I was kind of sitting breaking ball. There were runners on second and third, so I knew he was going to try to strike me out. Read the rest of this entry »
The game of baseball is full of statistical oddities. In Thursday’s start against the Baltimore Orioles, Colby Lewis added to that list, allowing six runs despite striking out 12 batters and allowing five hits thanks to all five flying over the Camden Yards fences for home runs. Only two other times has a team homered in each one of at least five hits, and never before has a pitcher struck out 10 or more batters while still allowing five home runs.
As unusual as the game was, Lewis’s role as its pitcher is a perfect fit. Although he is a good pitcher overall — he owns an above average ERA- and FIP- since returning to the United States in 2010 — Lewis has been prone to the homer-fueled blowup. Lewis has now allowed multiple home runs in 15 of his 71 starts since 2010, including a four-homer game June 6th, 2011 against the Tigers. Only Bronson Arroyo, James Shields, Ervin Santana, Ted Lilly and A.J. Burnett have exceeded that total.
Lewis also has excellent strikeout stuff for a starter, with an 8.2 K/9 since 2010. He owns eight starts of at least 10 strikeouts over the past three years as well — only 11 pitchers have exceeded that total.
All of which is to say when he’s on, he can be nearly unhittable, but when he loses command inside the strike zone, things get ugly in a hurry. We saw both versions of Colby Lewis over seven-plus innings of work Thursday. When Lewis was away from the heart of the strike zone, he was golden. When he gave batters something to hit, they didn’t miss. Observe:
After allowing home runs the first three batters of the game, Lewis threw six perfect innings before Adam Jones led off the seventh with the fourth homer of the game. When he was on, Lewis was able to get whiffs on pitches out of the zone and spot the corners with near-perfect precision. And it’s not as if every pitch Lewis missed with was right over the heart of the plate — the upper-most one (hit by J.J. Hardy) certainly was, but the others were relatively near a corner and lower in the zone.
This is just how talented major league hitters are — many of them have the power to hit any pitch in the strike zone out of the ballpark at any given moment. Usually, a pitcher isn’t punished so horribly for every single mistake he makes over the course of a seven-inning start. Usually he gets a few line drive outs or a warning track fly ball at least. Not for Colby Lewis on Thursday — if the Orioles had a chance to hit it, they blasted it out, and the result is what could have been one of the best starts of Lewis’s turned into a 6-5 loss for the Rangers and just the latest in baseball’s long list of statistical weirdness.
The Peter Bourjos trade rumors have started to circulate again. The primary discussant in the linked article is the Nationals, but the Royals, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays are also mentioned. With super-prospect Mike Trout in the majors, the Angels already having something of an outfield crunch and Bourjos flat-lining on offense so far this season, there is a surface rationality to the idea of trading him. Let’s briefly look at how Bourjos might fit into the plans of the teams allegedly interested in Bourjos before turning to the question of how this makes sense (or nonsense) for the Angels.
The Angels haven’t had a glorious start to the season. The team’s starting pitching has sparkled, and the defense has been solid, but the hitting and bullpen work have left much to be desired. The former will be tested over the next two months, as starting catcher Chris Iannetta will be out with an fractured right wrist.
Josh Beckett laid an egg last night, giving up seven runs while facing only 16 batters last night, and he got booed so loudly that the word lustily doesn’t even seem to do it justice. The boos were almost certainly louder than normal due to the recent revelation that Josh Beckett went golfing after he was scratched from his last start due to a strained lat muscle. The story has become that Beckett doesn’t care, and that his struggles are simply due to an apathetic attitude that was also the cause of last year’s late season collapse.
Maybe the story should be that Josh Beckett just isn’t healthy enough to perform up to his usual standards. I know, I know, that’s not nearly as fun as assassinating someone’s character, but it’s the conclusion that best lines up with the evidence.
So here’s what we know:
1) Bryce Harper, a phenomenally talented 19 year old who also occasionally does annoying things, got plunked by Cole Hamels on May 6.
2) Cole Hamels admitted doing it on purpose, “to continue the old baseball… that old-school prestigious way of baseball.”
When seeing Colorado Rockies shortstop prospect Trevor Story in person, very little about his all-around game strikes one as sexy beyond his current triple slash line of .283/.395/.535. However, as a teenager in the South Atlantic League, Story’s numbers are on par with the best middle infield prospects in the game which has led to many questions about his ceiling and comparisons to Nolan Arenado, the current king of the Rockies prospect mountain.
FanGraphs is proud to be a sponsoring promoter of the second annual Saber Seminar, a baseball analytics conference in Boston on the first weekend in August where 100 percent of the proceeds benefit cancer research. Several FG authors – including Dark Overlord David Appelman – will be in attendance, and we encourage you to consider attending this event and helping raise money for The Jimmy Fund. For more information, please read their release below.
In his age 34 season, Cardinals shortstop Rafael Furcal is off to tremendous start. Through Wednesday’s action, Furcal is batting .361/.423/.508 with a .413 wOBA and a 168 wRC+. In 138 plate appearances, he has 44 hits, including ten doubles and two home runs. His walk rate (9.4 percent) is above his career average (9 percent) and his strikeout rate (10.1 percent) is below his career average (12.6 percent). Only Carlos Beltran has a higher wOBA and wRC+ on the Cardinals, who are 20-11 after the first thirty-one games of the season.
Fenway Park will be different tonight. To the fans, a familiar voice will be missing. To those who work at the ballpark, a friend will be mourned. Carl Beane died unexpectedly yesterday at the age of 59.
Beane was The Voice of Fenway Park. The Agawam, Massachusetts, native had been the team’s public address announcer since 2003. His deep, rich baritone was instantly recognizable to a generation of fans.
His style was straightforward, with only an occasional flourish. When “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Fenway Park” came over the loudspeakers, it was easy to imagine it being a bygone era. Befitting his workplace, Carl Beane loved tradition.
He also loved his job. To many of his friends — and he had no shortage of those — that is how he’ll be remembered. The Voice of Fenway Park didn’t come to work. He came to do something he enjoyed, and it showed. Carl Beane will be missed.
——
In the summer of 2005, I talked to Beane about his life and career for the book “Interviews from Red Sox Nation” [Maple Street Press, 2006]. As an appreciation, here are excerpts from that interview:
Will Middlebrooks is making Kevin Youkilis easy to forget. The 23-year-old top prospect has taken the world by storm as Youkilis’s injury replacement. Even in taking an 0-for-4 in Wednesday’s loss to the Royals, Middlebrooks owns a .520 wOBA on the back of four doubles and three home runs in six games. It has been an incredibly exciting debut for Boston and fans of young players in general, one that of course raises the question: what happens when Kevin Youkilis returns?
Jordan Walden has a jump step in his delivery. Jordan Walden has control problems. Does one cause the other?
He’s not the only one who has this tendency. Ask around and you might hear about Javy Guerra and Trevor Cahill. With the sample so small, does it mean much? What about other unrepeatable deliveries, like the ones from Chicago relievers Rafael Dolis and Carlos Marmol? Is there something different about the jump-step that sets it apart from other difficult deliveries?
After suffering through an abysmal 2011 season, White Sox designated hitter Adam Dunn is off to a fantastic start this year.
Last season, the 31-year-old Dunn put up a career-low .266 weighted on-base average (wOBA), or 59 wRC+, in nearly 500 plate appearances. His on-base percentage — which normally was a strength for the slugger — was .292, or 62 points below his previous career low when he was 23. Most disturbing was the sudden disappearance of his power. Dunn has always been a high-strikeout, high-walk, high-slugging player. But last year, Dunn posted an isolated power of only .118. To put that into perspective, consider this: Dunn’s ISO was only two points higher than Nyjer Morgan’s (.116). Dunn also saw his HR/FB ratio drop to 9.6% in a hitter- and home-run-friendly park. His previous career-low was 17.8%, all the way back in 2002.
But now? Well, we’re seeing the old Adam Dunn. Through May 7, he has managed a .394 wOBA, which is fueled by a .364 OBP, .321 ISO and a 28.1% HR/FB. And both the ISO and HR/FB numbers are better than his career highs. The obvious question is whether these numbers are sustainable. Given how quickly outcomes like BB% and HR/FB stabilize, there’s a good chance that Dunn’s end-of-season numbers could be similar to what they are today. The question I have is what is Dunn doing differently? To get a better handle on this, I took a look at Dunn’s performance on specific pitches in different locations.
Don Mattingly asked him to bunt, which, if successful, would have put runners at second and third with one out, bringing A.J. Ellis to the plate with first base open. With the pitcher’s spot coming up behind Ellis, an intentional walk would have been an obvious call, and the Dodgers would then have had the bases loaded with one out and Bobby Abreu pinch-hitting. A few years ago, that might have been a really nice situation. Now, though, Abreu is about a league average hitter, and hitters perform worse in pinch-hitting situations than in other situations. Abreu is also a guy who hits the ball on the ground more than most hitters, and he’s a good candidate to hit into a double play in that situation. Had Abreu only made one out and not ended the inning, the Dodgers would then have had Dee Gordon and his .266 wOBA at the plate. Essentially, Don Mattingly was willing to give up an out for the chance to have a pinch-hitting Bobby Abreu and a bad-hitting Dee Gordon try to put runs on the board.
However, Uribe laid down a lousy bunt, and Buster Posey turned it into a 2-5-3 double play. Ellis then flew out to end the inning, and the rally ended up without even turning the line-up over, much less getting any runs across.
Right-hander Ryan Vogelsong proved to be one of the feel-good stories of the year in 2011.
The 34-year-old owned an unsightly career 5.86 ERA through 315 major-league innings with the San Francisco Giants and Pittsburgh Pirates coming into the 2011 season. He then seemingly flipped a switch and handcuffed the league with a 2.71 ERA and 3.67 FIP over 179.2 innings for the Giants and became a key part of their starting rotation.
That success has trickled into the 2012 season. Vogelsong tossed 7.1 innings against the Dodgers on Tuesday evening, surrendering only one run on eight scattered hits and one strikeout. That lowered his season ERA to 2.94 and his FIP to 3.51, both of which are better than average in the National League thus far in 2012.
Moving forward, though, this rags-to-riches story has some significant hurdles to overcome.
Jerry Blevins took the mound with a plan. The lefty reliever entered the game with runners on first and second and none out, his team trailing by two runs. Possessing neither overpowering stuff nor a high ground-ball rate, he was going to rely on scouting reports and location to get out of the inning. Seven pitches later, he did just that.
Blevins, who has appeared in 161 games over six seasons with the Oakland A’s, broke down this particular performance, pitch by pitch.
Through all the tirades and tantrums that marred his eventual exit from Chicago, it can be easy to forget Carlos Zambrano is just 30 years old. This season, Zambrano is showing the world that he just might have something left in the tank. Through 41 innings, Zambrano is the proud owner of a 1.98 ERA. Despite his effectiveness, he wasn’t rewarded with his first victory of the season until Monday night, when he twirled his best start of the season, a complete game, nine-strikeout shutout of the Astros in Houston. In many ways, Zambrano is looking like the pitcher who shined with the Cubs throughout the last decade.
Even before Billy Beane and Scott Hatteberg and Moneyball, the Oakland A’s were a team that took a lot of walks. Over the 50 years of the Expansion Era (1961-2011), the A’s ended the season with a walk rate below the league average only eight times. Of those eight seasons, in only one did the A’s have a walk rate more than one percentage point lower than the league average. In 1978, the league average walk rate was 8.5 percent and the A’s walk rate was 7.3 percent.
On the flip side, Oakland has three of the top fifteen walk-rate seasons in the last fifty years. The 1999 A’s share the record with the 2000 Mariners for highest team walk rate in the Expansion Era at 12 percent. The 2000 A’s came in at 11.7 percent and the 1992 A’s at 11.3 percent. The league average in those seasons was 8.5 percent (1992), 9.5 percent (1999) and 9.6 percent (2000).
After Monday’s action, the A’s team walk rate is 7.9 percent, below the league average of 8.3 percent. That fact isn’t particularly interesting. But the way the A’s get to their 7.9 percent team walk rate is.
The A’s have three players in the top thirty in walk rate for batters with more than 50 plate appearances so far this season. Seth Smith leads the team with a 17.6 percent walk rate (15 in 67 plate appearances), followed by Jonny Gomes at 14.5 percent (9 in 51 plate appearances) and Daric Barton at 13.4 percent (9 in 57 plate appearances). The Indians also have three players in the top 30 (Carlos Santana, Travis Hafner and Shelley Duncan). No team has more than three players in the top 30. Ten teams have no players in the top 30.
The player with the lowest current walk rate in the majors for hitters with more than 50 plate appearances also plays for the A’s. Catcher Kurt Suzuki has one walk in 98 plate appearances, giving him a walk rate of 1 percent. Teammates Josh Reddick and Cliff Pennington also make the top 50 in lowest current walk rate. Reddick is at 4.1 percent (five walks in 121 plate appearances) and Pennington is at 4.4 (5 walks in 114 plate appearances).
If Smith, Gomes and Barton continue on their path and Suzuki, Reddick and Pennington continue on theirs, the A’s could match some interesting records for teams in the Expansion Era.
Since 1961 (and not counting the strike years of 1981 and 1994), only one team has had three players draw 20 walks or less in a season, among players qualifying for the batting title. On the 2007 Seattle Mariners, Jose Lopez drew only twenty walks, while Yuniesky Betancourt and Kenji Johjima drew fifteen each.
Only eight other teams over the last fifty years had two players end the season with twenty or fewer walks among players qualifying for the batting title (again, not counting the strike years).
The 1977 Cardinals were one of those teams. Ken Reitz drew nineteen walks that season. Garry Templeton drew only fifteen. But that Cardinals team also boasted two players who ended the season with more than 75 walks. Keith Hernandez and Ted Simmons each drew 79 walks. The 1977 Cardinals are the only team in the Expansion Era to have two players with twenty or fewer walks and two players with 75 or more walks in the same season.
Will the A’s match the 2007 Mariners for most qualifying players with twenty or fewer walks in a season? Will they match the 1977 Cardinals with two qualifying players with twenty walks or fewer and two players with 75 walks or more in the same season? Will they match both Expansion Era records?
We’ll have to watch and be patient. As patient as Seth Smith, Jonny Gomes and Daric Barton.
11
Post Count:777