2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

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I still think Price/Verlander/Sale/Felix are all pretty close for Cy Young. Weaver though :lol: that low ERA will win some voters, I'm sure.

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jcrasnick Jerry Crasnick
Amazingly, the #Indians (13,413) outdrew the #Orioles (12,841) Tuesday night.
32 minutes ago

:smh: :lol:
 
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Some new and exciting steps in pitcher evaluations. BTW if you guys ever wanted to know more about how these new stats are calculated, just head to fangraphs.com and go to the glossary. Extremely helpful.

Introducing Fielding Dependent Pitching.

A few minutes ago, David Appelman announced the launch of several new stats here on the site, and since they hit on a topic of frequent discussion, I wanted to go into a bit more depth on our thought process behind their creation and what we see as their role in the evaluation of pitching.

Over the years, FanGraphs hasn’t been shy about promoting the concept of DIPS, which showed that most of the variance in a pitcher’s abilities can be viewed through the prism of walks, strikeouts, and home runs. We often cite a pitcher’s FIP — Fielding Independent Pitching, if you’re into proper names – when talking about his performance, and for most Major League pitchers, FIP works really well as an evaluator of their contribution to run prevention.

However, because FIP only focuses on walks, strikeouts, and home runs, it does not include all aspects of run prevention. Specifically, it takes no stance on two aspects of the game that do have a significant impact on a pitcher’s total number of runs allowed – the results of batted balls that are not home runs and the effects of sequencing of the various events. Because the spread in talent among Major League pitchers is not as large in these areas as the spread is in the components of FIP, ignoring these two areas doesn’t have a drastic result on the evaluation of most pitchers. However, there is certainly a subset of Major League pitchers who do accumulate (or fritter away) value through their performance in these two categories.

So, today, we’re introducing a set of metrics designed to help quantify the affects of run prevention that are not so easily isolated as the result of a pitcher’s actions. Because these metrics essentially serve to capture the value that FIP does not, we’re calling the sum of these metrics Fielding Dependent Pitching.

The idea for FDP was to quantify the remaining aspects of run prevention that are not measured by walks, strikeouts, and home runs. With a FIP-based WAR, we have a metric that tells us how many wins a pitcher added through success in those three key areas. What we did not have was a metric that gave us the wins added through either hit prevention or runner stranding. With FDP, we wanted to be able to break down the remaining aspects into those two categories, so that we could identify exactly where a team’s run prevention — with a specific pitcher on the mound — was coming from.

To do that, we simply worked backwards. First, we calculated the total WAR that a pitcher would receive credit for if he was only evaluated by his runs allowed, and we assumed that he had 100 percent responsibility for every variable that influenced run scoring. That stat is now on the site, and is called “RA9-Wins”. If you do not want to consider any impact of fielding on run prevention, and solely want to evaluate a pitcher by what actually happened when he was pitching (accounting for park and league adjustments, at least), then this is the metric for you,

However, for those of you who want to look at a pitcher’s contribution to run prevention in a more detailed way, we are also adding the two components of FDP to give you a better view of just how a pitcher is going about preventing runs.

To do this, we decided to calculate the linear weight value of singles and doubles — the difference between a double and a triple is almost certainly not the result of the pitcher, and thus the value of advancing that extra base was not included — on balls in play the same way that we calculate the value of walks, strikeouts, and home runs, so that we could quantify the wins added or lost that can be credited to a pitcher’s results on balls in play. Regardless of how you want to apportion the credit for those results, it is helpful to know what the value of those turning those hits into outs (or vice versa) actually is. Just as with WAR, these numbers are park adjusted and then converted into a number of wins added. These are on the site as BIP-wins, and can be thought of as the amount of wins a pitcher saved through his hit prevention, or lack thereof in many cases.

Once we knew the win value of a pitcher’s hit prevention, the remainder of his FDP could essentially be described as runner stranding. Now, this is not one particular skill, as there are many ways to skin this cat, but represents the value added through various skills that all essentially lead to the same result – not allowing baserunners to cross home plate. Some pitchers achieve this through effective control of the running game, picking off runners and refusing to let them advance through stolen bases. Other pitchers do this by simply altering the way they pitch with men on base, increasing the amount of only-semi-harmful walks they allow in order to reduce the amount of very-harmful home runs they allow. And still others simply seem to excel (or fail) at pitching out of the stretch relative to their peers, and demonstrating significant differences in their performance with the bases empty and with men on base.

No matter how they get there, however, the result can be measured by taking the remainder of a pitcher’s FDP that is not measured by his context-neutral hit prevention. This is called LOB-wins on the site, and serves as the value of wins added through all the miscellaneous ways a pitcher can strand runners.

BIP-wins and LOB-wins can be thought of as the components of Fielding Dependent Pitching, and represent the part of keeping runs off the board that aren’t measured by FIP. By definition, the sum of a pitcher’s FIP-wins and FDP-wins will equal his RA9-wins, so you can essentially see total run prevention through this basic formula:

RA9 = FIP + BIP + LOB

So, that’s the somewhat boring explanation part of the introduction. Now, let’s get to the fun stuff and actually play with the data.

In the last 10 years, here are the top five and bottom pitchers in total FDP.

Johan Santana: +11.4 wins
Tim Hudson: +10.9 wins
Ryan Franklin: +10.4 wins
Matt Cain: +9.2 wins
Jered Weaver: +9.2 wins

Derek Lowe: -10.0 wins
Mark Hendrickson: -8.5 wins
Ricky Nolasco: -8.3 wins
Jeremy Bonderman: -8.2 wins
Sidney Ponson: -7.1 wins

These names are probably familiar to you if you’ve had any kind of discussion about the validity of FIP in the last few years. The four big names in the top five are the most often cited as pitchers who FIP underrates, and FDP shows just how large the gap is between their FIP-wins and their RA9-wins. Meanwhile, the guys on the bottom of the list are notorious underachievers, each of whom has been derided for failing to live up to their expected potential. As you can see, FDP returns the results you might expect if you were to look at the biggest FIP outliers of the last decade.

However, this is also an example of why breaking FDP down into BIP-wins and LOB-wins is useful, as we can present this same list, just showing where those wins added or lost came from.

Pitcher BIP-wins LOB-wins
Johan Santana 10.7 0.7
Tim Hudson 8.3 2.6
Ryan Franklin 5.0 5.4
Matt Cain 11.1 (1.9)
Jered Weaver 7.5 1.6

Santana and Cain’s extra value has all come entirely through hit prevention. Santana’s stranded just about as many runners as you’d expect from a low-FIP/low-BABIP pitcher, while Cain has actually stranded fewer runners than you’d expect based on his context-neutral stats. Hudson and Weaver both accumulated value in both areas, but got the majority of their value through hit prevention, while Franklin actually got more of his value through runner stranding, though his RA9 is also significant impacted by hit prevention.

And now for the laggards:

Pitcher BIP-wins LOB-wins
Derek Lowe (4.9) (5.2)
Mark Hendrickson (4.6) (3.9)
Ricky Nolasco (4.1) (4.2)
Jeremy Bonderman (3.1) (5.0)
Sidney Ponosn (6.9) (0.2)

Here, we see a more even split, with all five pitchers being negative in both areas. However, my suspicion is that being bad at both hit prevention and runner stranding is necessary to show up on an FDP leaderboard, because pitchers who truly awful at one or the other are likely weeded out before they ever make the Major Leagues, or at least spend significant time pitching for a big league club. That’s why the tails are higher at the positive end of the spectrum, as those pitchers success is keeping them in the big leagues longer and giving them more opportunities, while those who fail spectacularly at one of the two aspects of FDP simply don’t last long enough to show up on a list of most value lost over a ten year period.

Things get more fun if we look at even larger periods of time, however. If we expand the filters to cover the last 50 years, we find examples of guys where FDP tells quite an interesting story. For instance, Jim Palmer — with his career 2.86 ERA and 3.50 FIP — accumulated an incredible +27.8 wins through hit prevention and +15.5 wins through runner stranding. His +43.2 FDP-wins are, by far, the most of any pitcher in the modern era. Perhaps the most recent example of a similar type of pitcher is Tom Glavine, and he’s at +26.1 FDP-wins. Palmer is the biggest FIP outlier in the part of baseball history that at least resembles the game that is played today.

However, he’s not the leader in either BIP-wins or LOB-wins over the last 50 years. The pitcher who got the most value from hit prevention? Charlie Hough, which shouldn’t be surprising given the research that has been done on knuckleballers as the strongest exception to the DIPS theory.

Perhaps most interestingly, however, is the career of Nolan Ryan, who demonstrates how the two aspects of FDP don’t really go hand-in-hand in many cases. Ryan posted a career FIP- of 84 and a .265 BABIP, which should have resulted in dominating results that made him among the best run preventers in baseball. It didn’t, though, because Nolan Ryan was atrocious at stranding runners (relative to his own established levels, anyway), posting -30.1 LOB-wins over his career. Certainly, that is inflated to some degree simply through longevity, but there is no mistaking the fact that Ryan consistently posted higher ERAs than FIPs, even though his BABIP was also below average.

While Ryan is strange in the magnitude of his inability to prevent runners from scoring, he is representative of the lack of correlation between the two components of FDP. The correlation of BIP-wins and LOB-wins (scaled to IP, so as to account for differences in innings pitched) for all pitchers with at least 50 IP in 2012 is -0.008. In other words, there is no correlation. Of the top 10 pitchers in BIP-wins this year, only three (Jason Vargas, Kyle Lohse, and Ryan Dempster) also have positive LOB-wins. Clayton Kershaw is essentially acting as the current-day Nolan Ryan, and has been so ineffective stranding runners that it nearly cancels out all the value added through hit prevention, so that his FIP and ERA nearly match despite the fact that he has a .256 BABIP.

This lack of correlation holds up over longer periods of time, too, so this isn’t a sample size issue. The components of FDP are measuring two things that are quite different, and very few pitchers stray from the norm in both. In fact, those longer periods of time actually show just how effective FIP is as a measurement of pitching skill. In looking at all 3,951 pitchers who have thrown at least 100 innings in the majors since 1963, the correlation between the FIP-based WAR and RA9-wins is .96. For most pitchers with long careers, a WAR based on FIP and a WAR based on runs allowed is going to bring you to the same conclusion.

However, most pitchers is not all pitchers, and for pitchers like Jim Palmer — or, nowadays, pitchers like Jered Weaver, Tim Hudson, and Matt Cain — FDP helps us put a number on the mental adjustment we’ve been making to help compensate for the fact that FIP does not measure a part of run prevention that they have contributed to in a meaningful way.

Through adding FDP-wins (and its components, BIP-wins and LOB-wins) and RA-9 wins to the site, we hope that we’re now presenting a more comprehensive picture of how runs are saved when a pitcher is on the mound. It is still definitively true that runs are mostly saved by limiting walks and home runs and keeping batters from making contact, but FDP fills in the gap between FIP and runs allowed, and gives us a clearer picture of the impact of various performances in the things that aren’t captured in FIP.

In a subsequent post — this one is already over 2,100 words, straining the limits of the word introduction — that will be up in a few hours, we’ll discuss the role that FDP will play in our pitcher WAR and how we hope the addition of these new metrics will help us better reflect the value that different types of pitchers produce. I’m also hosting my regularly scheduled noon chat today, and will make it FDP-centric, answering as many questions about these stats as you guys are interested in asking.

For now, though, we hope you enjoy the new tools that are now available, and enjoy perusing the leaderboards and learning new and interesting things that you may not have known before, like how Nolan Ryan was a really good pitcher, but could have been so much better had he performed well with men on base.


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New Pitcher Value Stats.

The Value (WAR) section for pitchers has been updated to help further break out a pitcher’s value. These stats are now available in the leaderboards and player pages.

We’ve added the following stats:

RA9-Wins – Wins above replacement calculated with RA9. This is both park adjusted and league adjusted.

BIP-Wins – Wins above average based on BABIP. This is both park and league adjusted.

LOB-Wins – Sequencing (and miscellaneous) wins above average calculated as RA9-Wins – WAR – BIP-Wins.

FDP-Wins (Fielder Dependent Wins) – This is the full difference between RA9Wins and WAR, or BIPWins + LOBWins.

WAR – Wins Above Replacement remains unchanged.

Dave Cameron will have two posts with more details about these new stats at 9:00am and 11:00am and will be answering questions during his 12:00pm chat.

The full formula for BIP-Wins is:

((((H-HR)*(w1B * p1B + w2B * pxBH) ) / (TBF – HR – BB – HBP – SO)) – lgwBABIP) * (TBF – HR – BB – HBP – SO) / PF / RtW

p1B = percentage of singles that are not home runs
pxBH = percentage of doubles and triples that are not home runs
w1B = linear weight value of a single
w2B = linear weight value of a double
RtW = runs to wins converter
PF = park factor
lgwBABIP = league average: ((H-HR)*(w1B * p1B + w2B * pxBH)) / (TBF – HR – BB – HBP – SO)


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Erik Bedard Walks the Plank.

Erik Bedard is exactly the sort of pitcher a team signs to a one-year contract, and last December, the Pirates signed Bedard to a one-year contract worth $4.5 million. At the time, I’m guessing the Pirates figured they probably wouldn’t still have Bedard come September. He’d be an interesting wild card for a Pirates team with an outside shot, but more likely he’d either get hurt or traded to a contender. You don’t sign Erik Bedard because you’re making big plans around Erik Bedard.

The calendar is just about to turn, and, sure enough, the Pirates no longer have Erik Bedard. Viewed that way, this has played out about as expected. But Bedard isn’t known to be hurt, nor has he been traded away to a contender. Rather, the Pirates simply released Bedard outright, citing inconsistency and under-performance. The thinking with Bedard has long been that he’ll be effective as long as he’s healthy. He’s been healthy, and lately, he’s been ineffective.


Here’s what Clint Hurdle had to say on the matter:

At the end of the day, the inconsistency wasn’t getting us where we wanted to go.

A very simple summation of the problems, but then, “at the end of the day” implies that a very simple summation is going to follow. What the Pirates say publicly isn’t necessarily how the Pirates feel in private, so this Bedard decision could have more layers to it than phyllo dough, but we’re here to tackle only what’s known, and what’s known is that Bedard has generated poor results and just got dropped by a team in contention.

Anything written about Bedard will mention his hot start and subsequent slump. Bedard’s started 24 games this season, and we can very conveniently split them into two groups of 12. Through Bedard’s first dozen starts, he posted a 3.59 ERA with a 4-6 record. A pitcher’s won/loss record just got cited on FanGraphs. Over Bedard’s last dozen starts, he posted a 6.43 ERA with a 3-8 record. Bedard leads the major leagues in losses, which has been partly his fault, and that surely hasn’t helped his perception at all.

So, all right, what we’re interested in now are two things. First, there’s the matter of what Erik Bedard is, and whether he’s really been pitching poorly. Secondly, there’s the matter of who’s going to take his place in the Pirates’ rotation, since the Pirates are still thinking about the playoffs. The Pirates must feel confidently about what they’ve done, since this move could have significant consequences.

Let’s look at those two groups of a dozen starts, shall we?

BEDARD Strike% Contact% FIP GB% K% BB% HR/FB%
First 12 63% 81% 3.52 42% 23% 10% 8%
Next 12 64% 81% 4.61 44% 20% 11% 14%

Without question, Bedard has been pitching worse. But it probably doesn’t surprise you that he hasn’t been pitching as poorly as his elevated ERA would suggest, and just about all of this can be explained by that last column on the far right. Bedard’s shown no drop-off in strikes, contact, or grounders. But where he allowed five dingers the first dozen times out, he’s allowed nine dingers over the last dozen times out. Dingers are runs, and runs are bad, for pitchers.

Is there anything there? Maybe Bedard’s getting tired? If Bedard’s feeling fatigued, it’s not readily evident in the PITCHf/x. His pitch velocities have remained more or less unchanged, and while Bedard’s lost some mustard from a year ago, that was missing in the early part of this season, when he was having more success, so it doesn’t seem like the thing to blame.

Working against Bedard is that he isn’t a pitcher who can just be evaluated by rates. Rates deliberately ignore counting stats like plate appearances and innings, and Bedard isn’t a guy who works deep. Just five times has he reached 100 pitches, and just once has he exceeded 110. Each plate appearance of Bedard’s is a chore. When Erik Bedard is starting, you know that someone else is going to finish, and you know that other guys are probably going to pitch before the finisher.

So Bedard’s gotten worse from last season, and in-game stamina isn’t one of his strengths. Of late, he’s been allowing too many runs. But there’s compelling reason to believe that Bedard wouldn’t keep on allowing so many runs, and it’s not like he’s lost the ability to dominate. Four outings ago, he was outstanding. Two outings before that, he was outstanding. Overall, Bedard’s got a lower FIP than Mark Buehrle and a lower xFIP than Tim Hudson, and the overall numbers are meaningful.

Now we have to think about how the Pirates intend to replace Bedard going forward. After all, these moves don’t happen in isolation. Might the Pirates have a real talent up their sleeve? That depends on your talent evaluation of Kevin Correia. In truth, the Pirates are still working out how this is going to go behind their front four, but the obvious choices seem to be Correia and Jeff Locke. The in-contention Pirates have given up on Erik Bedard in favor of Kevin Correia or Jeff Locke.

Correia is as known as anybody. If it’s consistency that Clint Hurdle and the Pirates are worried about, then Kevin Correia can very consistently be himself. He’s a low-strikeout, low-walk, decent-groundball starting pitcher with a career ERA, FIP, and xFIP in the mid-4s. It’s not out of the question that Correia could generate Bedard-like results while generating other, very un-Bedard-like results. You might end up with the same innings and runs, but the feeling might be different watching Correia than it would be with Bedard.

And Locke’s a lefty who’s been perfectly serviceable with triple-A Indianapolis. He’s got three pitches, none of which are explosive or unhittable, but he’s building a minor-league track record of encouraging ratios and he has the sort of polish that could allow for a pretty smooth transition. There are worse starting pitchers than Jeff Locke in the major leagues right now, for as much or as little as that means.

You hear that the Pirates released Erik Bedard and you raise your eyebrows. You associate Bedard with a lot of talent in your head, and a lot of that talent’s still in there, even after all the injuries. Bedard’s 2012 season numbers are just fine for a back-of-the-rotation starting pitcher, even with the limited stamina. Where this starts to make a little more sense is in considering what Bedard has done lately, and in considering that he hasn’t reached 130 innings since 2007. The Pirates strongly believe that the struggling Erik Bedard they saw lately was more like the real Erik Bedard than the effective Erik Bedard they saw early on. If that’s true, then Correia or Locke should do just fine as replacements, as Bedard wasn’t going to be much help. But if that isn’t true, and if this is simpler than it seems, then the Pirates just cut ties with a high-strikeout starter because he fell into a slump of results.

The Pirates have no choice but to move forward and hope they made the right call. And Bedard has no choice but to move forward and hope that they didn’t. Now Erik Bedard is out there, available and ready for another roll of the dice.


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Orioles Throw Spaghetti, End Up With Randy Wolf.

While the Orioles bullpen has continued to keep them in the playoff race, the Orioles rotation has been a bit of a patchwork job all year long, and so today, they’ve reportedly signed a new patch named Randy Wolf.

While you can perhaps make a case for a change-of-scenery helping give players a fresh start, it’s hard to imagine Wolf is going to be anything besides a bad pitcher in the AL East, however. Here are Wolf’s numbers relative to league average from each of the last three seasons.

2010: 105 ERA-/122 FIP-/118 xFIP-
2011: 98 ERA-/113 FIP-/116 xFIP-
2012: 145 ERA-/122 FIP-/113 xFIP-

As is often the case, Wolf’s results have jummped around a bit despite his overall profile not changing much, as his walk rate, strikeout rate, and groundball rate are all pretty close to his career norms this year. However, after a couple of years of outperforming his peripherals due to hits on balls in play and runner stranding, he’s now gone the other way this year, getting victimized by those two variables.

For his career, Wolf has been slightly above average in both hit prevention and runner stranding, so there’s more reason to believe that he has (or had) some ability to outperform his FIP. However, that ability simply moved him from being meh to being okay, and at age 35, he seems to be closer to the meh end of the spectrum. His decline in strikeout rate tells a lot of the story.

The Orioles aren’t exactly flush with pitching depth, and since the Brewers released him, the Orioles are only responsible for the pro-rated league minimum for the remainder of the year. Giving Wolf a roster spot in September in the hopes that he finds some of his previous ball in play voodoo isn’t a terrible gamble for roughly $80,000, but Wolf’s performance trends and the move to the AL East suggest this probably isn’t going to work very well.

It’s basically the cheapest possible solution on the market, but in this case, the Orioles probably will get what they paid for.


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As I've said before, only when a star gets hurt does this come up...

MLB must eliminate danger at the dish.

After enough hitters were nailed in the head during the first century of baseball, the batters started wearing helmets, because everybody realized that getting drilled by pitches is not a good way to stay on the field and get paid.

In the name of safety, most outfield walls have been padded. Nets have been placed in front of dugouts to protect bystanders from foul balls. Base coaches started wearing protection after the death of Mike Coolbaugh. Rules on how baserunners can slide into second and third base have been enforced to protect the fielders. Pitchers are having their innings and pitch counts limited to improve their chances for long-term health and productivity.

And inevitably, there will be rules made to reduce collisions between baserunners and catchers, because it's a senseless outlier in baseball's risk/reward equation. Until then, however, the play will stupidly be allowed to go on, perhaps until someone gets seriously hurt -- an ignominy that Yadier Molina narrowly avoided Tuesday night while trying to save one essentially meaningless run in one game in the midst of career that should encompass thousands of runs and games.



On Tuesday night in Colorado, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp ran full speed into the fence in left-center field -- like a NASCAR driver hitting a wall flush -- nose-first, with almost all of the impact of the collision dissipating through Kemp's body. He was taken for further examination on his jaw.



Kemp undoubtedly was saved from some impact of the play by the padding on the wall, and the Dodgers will go to him and remind him that it makes no sense for a player in whom they have $160 million invested to mash head-on into fences. He is their most valuable player, maybe the best player in the National League, and an important asset to Major League Baseball.

The same conversation should be had with Molina, who is arguably the Cardinals' most important player and maybe the best defensive catcher of his generation. In the spring, St. Louis signed Molina to a $75 million deal, for all that he does in running and leading the pitching staff, for all of his improvement as a hitter. The St. Louis Cardinals chose to build around Molina.



But on a Tuesday night in August, Molina was at home plate prepared to take a throw from right field and then block home plate, with the Pirates' Josh Harrison barreling down the third base line. Because within most organizations, this is what catchers are expected to do. The Oakland Athletics have told their catchers to not do this, and similarly, the San Francisco Giants have instructed Buster Posey to stay out of harm's way, after his left ankle was shattered last year on a collision at the plate.



But generally, catchers are treated something like crash-test dummies without regard to their physical well-being and their long-term ability to earn money. In essence, they are told: Plant yourself in front of that small piece of earth and get blasted by that 200-pound athlete running full speed with a 30-yard head start.



Never mind that hitters now wear helmets, and outfielders are instructed to avoid fences, and young pitchers are shut down to save their arms. The Old School still believes catchers should place themselves to a physical jeopardy that nobody else on the field is subjected. The tools of ignorance, for sure.



Last year, Harrison was involved in a similar play at home plate. He was running home and had the same choice that a lot of runners have -- slide into a catcher wearing a full set of gear or attempt to run over the catcher. Harrison opted to slide, and he got buried and got hurt.



When a baserunner slides into a fully armored catcher, it's a complete mismatch; they will tell you that it's a great way to get injured.



So through the years, a lot of baserunners have gotten more aggressive, and they have a similar motive as the catchers. Just as the catcher wants to block the plate to cut off a run, the baserunner's mindset is to score -- and when the catcher stands in front of home plate, there are really only two options for a runner, who must make his decision in a split second. This time, Harrison decided to blast the catcher, in an attempt to jar the ball loose, and when Molina turned with his head down, focused on the ball, and lowered his body slightly to naturally brace himself for a collision, his head and neck were vulnerable.

From Rob Biertempfel's story:



"When I was about (30 feet) from the plate, I saw him slide his feet back," Harrison said. "The whole plate was blocked; there was no way to slide around him. My only chance was to go through him."


Trying to dislodge the ball, Harrison ran into Molina at full speed. As he turned his body slightly, Harrison's left arm came up and slammed into Molina's jaw. Molina, who outweighs Harrison by 35 pounds, hung onto the ball for the out.


"I really don't like being involved in those plays, because (catchers) are the ones with all the padding," Harrison said.


For a moment, neither player moved. Harrison eventually got to his feet and went to the dugout. Molina stayed on his knees and was attended to by Cardinals manager Mike Matheny and a trainer.


"I never saw (Harrison) coming," Molina said. "I was concentrating on catching the ball. Hopefully, it was a clean play. I haven't seen a replay, so I'll have to wait and see."


Molina was helped off the field, and not surprisingly, the Cardinals were upset at seeing a team leader injured; two at-bats later, Jake Westbrook threw a fastball at Harrison's legs. Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Rod Barajas appeared to scream profanities at the St. Louis dugout, yelling that it was a clean play, and Chris Carpenter yelled back.



Here's the problem: Barajas is right. Within the current rules, the play was absolutely acceptable. Molina chose to block the plate, and Harrison opted to run him over. For one run in one game in the middle of a long season, a game that ended with a final score of 9-0. But even if the play had come in the bottom of the ninth inning and was to decide the outcome, it still would've made no sense.



During the last decade, the National Football League changed rules to protect players who are prone to be in a defenseless position -- quarterbacks, receivers, etc. -- and as Giants manager and former catcher Bruce Bochy said last year after Posey was hurt, there is no athlete put in a more defenseless position than catchers. Harrison had run full-speed in a straight line, unimpeded, before driving his shoulder into the head of Molina, who, because he was trying to field the ball, had no true sense of where the runner was.



It's an exciting play to watch for a lot of fans. But it's a really, really dumb play that baseball needs to evolve beyond.

Molina is listed as day-to-day, as Rick Hummel writes.

After Kemp went down, the Dodgers fell hard, as Chris Capuano got hit around by the Colorado Rockies. The Dodgers have now dropped three straight games.

Pedro Alvarez put on a big-time show of power, hitting two monster home runs, including the longest homer ever hit by a Pirate at PNC Park.


Elsewhere


• The Orioles' success is amazing and crazy and ridiculous all at once, and on Tuesday, they beat Chris Sale, who lasted only four innings. Chris Tillman, who simplified his delivery, shut down the Chicago White Sox.

It's now at the point where it would be a surprise if the Orioles don't recall Dylan Bundy to help down the stretch, writes Dan Connolly.

But the fans are not coming out to Camden Yards, and Peter Schmuck wonders why.

It's pretty simple: During a period of 14 seasons, the Orioles' organization changed the habits of a rabid fan base and gave them reason to find alternatives. That won't change overnight -- something that the Houston Astros should understand.

• Houston lost again and is 40-89.

• The Giants pulled out a comeback win, and along the way Pablo Sandoval assisted Brandon Crawford on the coolest catch of the year (if not necessarily the best); John Shea has more.

• Kris Medlen is on a serious roll: His scoreless streak has reached 28 1/3 innings after his latest outing.



From ESPN Stats and Info, how he won:



A) Medlen threw 24 changeups, 19 for strikes. The Padres missed on eight of 16 swings against Medlen's changeup and struck out four times on it. Twenty of Medlen's 24 changeups (83 percent) were down in the zone or below it.
B) Fifty-four percent of Medlen's fastballs were in the lower third of the zone or below, his highest percentage in a start in his career. The Padres struck out four times against Medlen's fastball.
C) Medlen went to eight two-ball counts but threw only one pitch all night out of a three-ball count. Twenty-one of his 22 pitches in two-ball counts were strikes.

• It has not been a good week for AL Cy Young candidates. Sale was hit hard by the Orioles, and Justin Verlander was slammed by the Kansas City Royals. Verlander's ERA fell from 2.50 to 2.80, as Lynn Henning writes.

Felix Hernandez is threatening to run away and hide with this Cy Young Award, writes Geoff Baker.

• Joey Votto played five innings.

• Today, my own unofficial NL Cy Young ballot would be: 1. Johnny Cueto, who is 17-6 after his latest victory. 2. Craig Kimbrel. 3. Aroldis Chapman.

Moves, deals and decisions


1. The Dodgers continue to look hard for pitching at a time when Daisuke Matsuzaka and Shaun Marcum have become part of the waiver wire.



2. The Pirates cut Erik Bedard and will go with internal options.



3. Ken Kendrick thinks the Arizona Diamondbacks made the right moves.



4. Dylan Axelrod, added to the White Sox rotation, is looking for a repeat performance, as Mark Gonzales writes.



5. The Chicago Cubs finalized their deal with Starlin Castro.



6. Terry Ryan appears committed to leading the Minnesota Twins out of the mess they are in, writes Jim Souhan.



7. Roy Oswalt became one of many players who have cleared waivers; it's not clear why anyone would want to trade for him at this point.



By The Numbers
From ESPN Stats and Info



4: 1-0 losses for the Rays this month, the most by a team in a calendar month since the 1969 Astros, also in August.
8: Earned runs allowed by Justin Verlander, matching a career high.
9: Hits allowed by Stephen Strasburg Tuesday, all against his fastball.
17: Consecutive starts by Kris Medlen won by the Braves from 2010-2012, the longest streak since the 2005 Cardinals won 17 straight Chris Carpenter starts.

Dings and dents


1. Bruce Chen suffered an ankle injury.



2. Some Indians are coming back from surgery.



3. A.J. Griffin will be back soon, as mentioned within this Susan Slusser notebook. The Oakland Athletics have a surplus of starters, and Oakland's intention is to mix and match its starting pitchers, according to the various strengths and weaknesses of the team they are playing.



4. Troy Tulowitzki's return to the big leagues is in a holding pattern.



5. Jose Bautista is going to have surgery.



6. This is not a surprise: Franklin Morales is hurt.



7. Matt Joyce felt a grabbing pain in his forearm.



AL West notes


• The Athletics' pitching domination continues.



• The Seattle Mariners continue to climb toward .500, as old friend Pat Borzi writes.



• The Los Angeles Angels rallied for a badly needed victory, and Mike Trout piled up more numbers.



• Ron Washington was really happy with the work of Yu Darvish.



AL Central notes


• The Indians were shut out again.



• The Twins were punchless against the Mariners.



AL East notes


• The New York Yankees won with small ball. Right now, every victory for the Yankees seems like it buys time, as the team waits for the reinforcements to arrive. Andy Pettitte is making progress, as Roger Rubin writes. Alex Rodriguez took batting practice.



• The Tampa Bay Rays were shut down; that's four straight losses for Tampa Bay, as Marc Topkin writes.



• Alfredo Aceves melted down again.



NL West notes


• The San Diego Padres had no answers against Kris Medlen, and their winning streak ended.



• Arizona is evaporating in the last weeks of the season: That's five straight losses and counting.



• The Rockies have picked themselves off the mat in recent weeks, with a lot of help from Wilin Rosario.



NL Central notes


• Darwin Barney tied a record.



• The Milwaukee Brewers flexed their muscles and continue to crawl toward .500.



From Elias Sports Bureau: Ryan Braun hit his 25th double Tuesday. He's had 25-plus doubles in each of his six MLB seasons. The list of players in history who have had at least 25 homers and 25 doubles in each of their first six MLB seasons: Braun, Mark Teixeira, Albert Pujols, Frank Robinson, Joe DiMaggio.

NL East notes


• The Nationals' losing streak has reached five; Stephen Strasburg was shelled.



• For one night, the New York Mets erupted, as Andrew Keh writes.

• The Philadelphia Phillies lost, but they've been playing well, writes Ryan Lawrence.

• The Marlins teed off.

FDP and Pitcher WAR.

This morning, we rolled out several new pitching metrics, and I outlined their uses in an overly long introductory post. If you haven’t read those posts, go do so now, as they essentially set the table for this post.

As we noted this morning, our goal in introducing Fielding Dependent Pitching is to help quantify some of the missing aspects of run prevention that are not captured in Fielding Independent Pitching. However, you also have undoubtedly noted that we have not changed how we are calculating pitcher WAR, and FDP is not included in those calculations.

I promise that this is not because we are stubborn and refuse to admit that pitchers have some control over hits on balls in play. In actuality, the decision to leave FDP out of pitcher WAR for now was actually a difficult one, and was not our original intention when we developed FDP. The genesis of creating metrics to measure the wins added on balls in play and runner stranding was an effort to improve the way we calculate WAR, and we planned on modifying WAR to account for both FIP and FDP. Trust me, we don’t like some of the weird-looking results that a FIP-based pitcher WAR produces any more than you do.

However, when it came to actually modifying the formula, we came to the same crossroads that caused us to choose a FIP-based WAR when we created our initial implementation several years ago, and that was a trade-off between being more comprehensive at the cost of making an arbitrary decision about the level of defensive support a pitcher received. For whatever flaws FIP-based WAR has, it is strikingly good at being transparent in exactly what it is measuring and not measuring, and making no claims beyond what it knows it can support with data. Because walks, strikeouts, and home runs only really involve two parties — or three, if you count the umpire — it is easy to assign full responsibility for the outcome of these events to the pitcher. FIP knows what each of these events are worth, and judges a pitcher solely on the things that we can say were the direct result of their actions.

When you introduce balls in play into the equation, those blacks and whites become very gray. How much of a pitcher’s BABIP is he responsible for, and how much is the result of his defenders? We honestly don’t know.

And so, in not knowing, any decision we made now to add some portion of FDP into pitcher WAR would have required an arbitrary decision. In reality, the things that make up FDP are messy, acting more like football or basketball plays with multiple variables interacting together, and much less like the kinds of baseball plays that make it fairly easy to say “this guy did that, and he deserves this much credit for it.” Even if we decided that a pitcher should get half credit for his BABIP — my initial position, in the interest of full disclosure — what do we do with strand rates that are highly affected by BABIP distributions?

For instance, let’s look at Jordan Zimmermann‘s line this season. His 2.63 ERA is nearly a full run better than his 3.43 FIP, and while his .280 BABIP is a little below the league average, only +0.6 wins of his FDP come from BIP-wins. Most of the difference between his ERA and his FIP have come from runner stranding.

Bases Empty: .280/.324/.420, .323 wOBA
Men On Base: .192/.240/.305, .241 wOBA
RISP: .154/.201/.225, .180 wOBA

If those splits were the result of a drastic improvement in his FIP, we would probably want to give Zimmerman nearly all of the credit for his LOB-wins. After all, pitching better with men on base is clearly more valuable than melting down and letting everyone score, and a pitcher should be rewarded for his ability to buckle down under pressure.

However, we can’t say that the results are completely due to Zimmerman buckling down in those situations.

Bases Empty: 3.59 FIP, .330 BABIP
Men On Base: 3.27 FIP, .215 BABIP
RISP: 2.61 FIP, .185 BABIP

Yes, he’s pitched better with men on base, but his rate of hits on balls in play is the primary driving force behind his strand rate. What amount of credit should Zimmerman get for these results? Should he get more or less credit than Johnny Cueto, who has also posted an extremely high strand rate, but has done it without significant BABIP splits?

I think we could probably all come up with a number that we could justify for each pitcher, and maybe all those numbers would even be pretty similar, but I have yet to see a methodology that would make that pick anything other than arbitrary. Our strong hope is that a methodology will be discovered soon, and advances in our understanding of how to split credit between pitchers and fielders will give us a systematic way to incorporate some percentage of FDP into pitcher WAR.

What that percentage should be, I don’t think we really know yet, and rather than impose our best guess onto the calculations and hope that we’re in the ballpark of reality, we’ve decided to keep WAR transparent about what it is and is not measuring, and display all of the various components of FDP so that you can can make whatever adjustments you feel are warranted. Essentially, we have decided that it is better to provide you with as much information as possible in a way that is free of our personal opinions on what percentage of hit prevention is pitching or fielding.

Our decision to leave FDP out of WAR means that it is not comprehensive in measuring all aspects of run prevention, but we think it is better — for now — to leave it based solely on FIP until more research produces a consensus, systematic way to reward pitchers for some aspect of FDP that does not require us to simply pick an arbitrary number and force it upon you. And, hopefully, by displaying all these components separately, we’re providing tools that could be useful in researching the various aspects of run prevention, and may even aid in the creation of a logical way to give pitcher’s credit for some portion their FDP in WAR.

Our hope is that pitcher WAR will not always face these same hurdles, but we feel like it is better to be up front about what kinds of compromises would have to be made in order to attempt to be more thorough than it is to simply force decisions that couldn’t be defended on an empirical level. For now, I’d encourage you to look at pitcher WAR as a baseline for what we know a pitcher was responsible for, and then make your own decisions about how much you want to adjust for each aspect of FDP. Personally, I’m likely to give more credit to LOB-wins than BIP-wins, but I don’t believe I have enough data to defend a challenge of that opinion. So, for now, WAR is still based on FIP, but we’ve attempted to give you the tools to make rational adjustments where you see fit.

If you want to simply evaluate a pitcher on his runs allowed, you can now do that on FanGraphs. If you want to blend FIP and Runs Allowed evenly, simply cut FDP by half and add it to his current WAR. If you want to give more credit for runner stranding and less for hit prevention, you now have a better starting place than you did yesterday. Our hope is that these tools empower you to be more comprehensive in your own evaluation of a pitcher, however you deem it best to do that.


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Nationals went on a 5 game skid early before they went on a mean winning streak, how they react this month down the stretch will prove if they are contenders or pretenders. The Pirates have faded, but the Orioles keep finding ways to win close ball games.

The O's have something like a -50 run differential and still have a winning record. They are great in one run games.
 
Nationals went on a 5 game skid early before they went on a mean winning streak, how they react this month down the stretch will prove if they are contenders or pretenders. The Pirates have faded, but the Orioles keep finding ways to win close ball games.

The O's have something like a -50 run differential and still have a winning record. They are great in one run games.

Jim Johnson has been money.
 
Something like 57-0 when leading after 7 I read.

Yeah man, it's absurd. I think having a good quality Coach in baseball goes a long way. Buck did his thing in Arizona and he has been huge here in Baltimore.


I don't think people realize how awful the O's have been the last 15 years.....only team more pathetic in that time frame has been the Royals pretty much.
 
Votto to return on Saturday.
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Dusty better make sure that Frazier is still playing daily.
 
BP will go back to lead off, put Frazier in right, Bruce in center, sit Stubbs... and continue to spell Rolen with Frazier?

I think what Frazier has done in Votto's absence will possibly help in the ROY voting... maybe wishful thinking, tho.

tired of people ripping Dusty's lineups on twitter... best record in baseball and the team has played even better without the one of the best players in the game... gimme a break. he should be up there for COY. Madson going down seems like a blessing in disguise at this point.
 
Yea he's still horrific when it comes to lineups :lol: he keeps the low on base guys at the top of the lineup and will still keep Votto and Bruce separate which never made any sense sticking Phillips or Rolen at clean up. All of the **** Dusty gets his whole managing career is pretty much on point IMO.

IMO it's pretty simple, Rolen's gotta stay on the bench except the days Frazier spells someone on the OF. But then again, that's why you have Heisey.
 
if i had to gripe about it, you're right, it would be not having Votto and Bruce back to back... given that Votto has hit over .300 off lefties for his career, and I believe Bruce has more home runs off lefties than anyone since he's been in the league (don't quote me on that.) but other than that, what more do people want? :lol:

Dusty's track record in September is tremendous and players love him. I'm one of those who thinks the lineup is one of the most overrated aspects of a manager anyways. we end the season with 3 at home vs. Pitt and 3 in STL. need to put them away in the next few weeks.

Bruce is an above average outfielder... while Stubbs is great in center, what else you gonna do? i hate him.
 
I know the winner of the wild card game gets to play the first two games at home. Does that also go for the team with the 3rd best record among division winners?

Friday October 5, 2012
All times Eastern. Subject to change.

Away Home Time (ET) Away Probable Home Probable MLB.TV Tickets
AL Wild Card AL Wild Card TBD TBD TBD Buy
NL Wild Card NL Wild Card TBD TBD TBD Buy

Saturday October 6, 2012
All times Eastern. Subject to change.

Away Home Time (ET) Away Probable Home Probable MLB.TV Tickets
AL Division winner #2 AL Division winner #3 TBD TBD TBD Buy
NL Division winner #2 NL Division winner #3 TBD TBD TBD Buy

Sunday October 7, 2012
All times Eastern. Subject to change.

Away Home Time (ET) Away Probable Home Probable MLB.TV Tickets
AL Division winner #1 AL Wild Card TBD TBD TBD Buy
AL Division winner #2 AL Division winner #3 TBD TBD TBD Buy
NL Division winner #1 NL Wild Card TBD TBD TBD Buy
NL Division winner #2 NL Division winner #3 TBD TBD TBD Buy
 
Not sure if I like the one game wild card playoff or not, concept is cool....but if the loser of that game is the higher seeded wild card, I can see their fans getting heated.
 
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