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

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The big league Twins have been something of a surprise in how effective their pitching has been
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I don't think that should've been too much a surprise. The rotation wasn't going to wow anybody seeing as they've stacked a bunch of #3 type starters, but they're a solid group of pros that can keep a team with an offense in games.
 
Only with benefit of 20-20 hindsight could we know exactly how different the world could be for the Angels, who traded Jean Segura (in the Zack Greinke deal) and Patrick Corbin (in the Dan Haren deal) and did not sign Matt Harvey after drafting him in 2007.
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:x
 
Heads roll for those type of blunders.

Anti-Jon Daniels. Might seem like I have a man crush always mentioning him, but I truly respect his baseball mind and strategy.
 
JumpmanFromDaBay said:
I haven't watched y'all all season Til today. What happened?
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Well, Zach Duke was starting last night so we pretty much surrendered before the game started. We have the worst team batting average, OBP, and I'm pretty sure slugging percentage in the league. Yes, lower than the damn Marlins. The pitching has been good, but not dominate like last year but I expected them to regress a little bit. Ryan Zimmerman and Adam LaRoche are the only ones who can swing the bat right now, Harper is still clearly in a lot of pain out there from crashing into that wall at Dodger Stadium. We're paying Jayson Werth to not properly take care of his body and contribute nothing, Danny Espinosa is the worst player in the major leagues, and with Harper and Werth out our outfield has produced absolutely nothing. This team really sucks right now, and they missed their chance to stay in the heat of the race when the Braves went on their losing streak and now that the Braves are heating up...it could get ugly. Mike Rizzo is an arrogant prick though and can't admit he's wrong so no moves will be made until it's too late :smh:
 
Sean Nolin: Next Blue Jays Savior?

It’s been well documented that the Toronto Blue Jays’ season hasn’t exactly gone as planned. A rash of injuries to the veteran pitching staff has created a number of holes. Those gaps have been difficult to fill with competent contributors because the organizational depth was compromised in an effort to beef up the big league product. It’s been speculated in the Toronto media that pitching prospect Sean Nolin, currently at the Double-A level, is viewed by the Jays front office as the next-in-line for a promotion, should the need arise.

Toronto has made a few moves this year that could be considered desperation moves and the promotion of Nolin may not be in the best long-term interests of the club or the young pitching prospect.

From a business standpoint, Nolin doesn’t have to be added to the 40-man roster until after the season. If he gets called up this year — prior to roster expansion on Sept. 1 — it presumably won’t be to stay so he’ll burn his first of three option years. Perhaps more importantly, the southpaw opened the year on the disabled list and has made just three starts in 2013, as well as just six starts above A-ball (including last year) for his career… Just how ready is he for The Show? I watched his second start of the year on May 12 and have some observations to share.

The Game

Nolin, 23, face the New York Yankees Double-A affiliate, which featured some talented but inexperienced young prospects. He looked a little rusty early on, which was not a surprise considering his season didn’t start until May 7. His full windup lacked fluidity in the first inning but got better as the game went on.

Early on, the left-handed pitcher struggled with his fastball command and the opposing hitters were having some really good hacks on his offerings. He was also not throwing his curveball for strikes on a consistent basis. The good news is that those issues should be correctable. At least part of the issue was due to Nolin’s mechanics. His body was drifting forward, causing his arm to drag behind him and messing with his release. It improved as the game progressed and once he stopped rushing through his delivery, although he’s a naturally-quick worker.

Nolin doesn’t do himself any favors with his delivery because he ends his follow-through in a very poor fielding position and I watched two catchable bouncers get past him. By landing in a more favorable position, he could potentially snag or knock down a lot more ground balls.

In general, his delivery suggests to me that he’ll never have better than average command. I would give his low-90s fastball a potential 50 grade and his curveball a 55-60. He didn’t use his changeup much at all in this game and I would have a tough time putting a fair grade on the offering. Based on what I saw (keeping in mind this was just his third start on the year), I would have to rate Nolin as a future No. 4 starter. He doesn’t look ready for the majors but another 10-15 minor league starts could make a world of difference.

Other Players of Note:

As of May 19, outfielder Kevin Pillar had the second highest batting average (.341) in the Double-A Eastern League behind Washington’s Anthony Rendon. He also had 10 more hits than the next closest hitter (61 vs 51). In this game, the outfield prospect showed a wide, well-balanced stance. He also utilized a level, line-drive swing with quick hands. His 2013 numbers are definitely not a fluke, and his swing is geared to making contacting with gap power. His overall tool set – including speed and defense – is average and he looks like a future big league fourth outfielder who could probably be even more if he had more natural talent in center field.

I was interested to see how two Yankees prospects — Tyler Austin and Slade Heathcott — handled Double-A, but came away underwhelmed with both outfielders. The players lacked energy — especially the latter prospect, which was shocking considering his reputation for being a hard-nosed player. Both young hitters struggled with breaking balls. Heathcott swung through a hanging curveball with a full count, while Austin took an average breaker for strike three. Finally, I saw Nolin’s mound opponent, Jose Ramirez. I won’t go into detail, as our own J.D. Sussman will be penning a detailed looked at him later this week, but I was impressed with the young pitcher. He made a veteran-heavy Double-A lineup look limp.


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A New Low for Miguel Cabrera.

Sunday night, the Rangers hosted the Tigers in a matchup between two of the American League’s better teams. You’d think the big story would be that the Rangers rallied from a deficit to beat the Tigers 11-8. But then, it’s May, and the Rangers are going to win a lot, and the Tigers are going to lose a lot (albeit, presumably, a smaller lot than the first lot). Sure seems to me the big story is that Miguel Cabrera clubbed three dingers. That sort of game for Cabrera shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s a bigger surprise than the Rangers beating the Tigers. Cabrera’s individual effort has people re-analyzing his game, in the exact same way everyone did last November.

And Cabrera didn’t just club three ordinary dingers. According to the ESPN Home Run Tracker, there were 22 homers on Sunday. The longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The second-longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The third-longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The fourth-longest wasn’t hit by Miguel Cabrera, but now you’re being greedy. All of the homers were similar, and all of the homers were significantly different.


Cabrera homered in the third off Derek Holland, he homered in the fifth off Holland again, and he homered in the eighth off Tanner Scheppers. The balls wound up in similar places — the first went to the right side of center field, the second went to just about dead center field, and the third went to the left side of center field. But then, the first was hit off a changeup out over the plate:

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The third was hit off a two-strike fastball inside, off the plate:

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That’s Cabrera pulling his hands in to knock a 97 mile-per-hour inside fastball more than 420 feet. I don’t think there’s anyone in baseball better at turning unusually inside pitches into dingers than Miguel Cabrera. The second homer was also hit off an inside fastball, over the edge and thrown by a lefty. Let’s touch on something before we get to that.

A lot of players hit home runs. Some players hit a lot of similar home runs. Some players hit a variety of home runs, and I think implied by the latter is greater ability on the hitter’s part. One chart I’ll never be able to forget is Jose Lopez‘s dinger chart from 2009:

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All of Jose Lopez’s homers were the same. Now, he is bad. Lopez wasn’t a one-trick pony, but he was exploitable, and he’s since been exploited. Now here’s Miguel Cabrera’s homer chart for 2013 to date:


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All fields, varying lengths. What’s evident is that Cabrera has a more disciplined approach and a more complete swing that covers the entire zone. Just by looking at these images, you’d come away thinking that there’s maybe one or two pitches that Lopez could’ve hit out. You’d also come away thinking that Cabrera is a constant threat, which he is. Miguel Cabrera finds a way to hit the baseball out of the yard, no matter what’s pitched or by whom.

Back to that second home run. Here’s a video highlight. Here’s a .gif:

You can tell, even without thinking about it, that this is a real line drive. This ball got out of the yard in a hurry, and according to the ESPN Home Run Tracker again, it’s the second-fastest homer off the bat of the season, at 117.6 miles per hour. The ball was gone in just under 3.7 seconds. For the sake of confusing reference, let’s cut off this Mark Trumbo homer from earlier in the year at just under 3.7 seconds:

Among the Tracker’s other measurements are elevation angle and apex. The former measures the angle above horizontal at which a homer left the bat. The latter measures the highest point, in feet, of a homer’s path. The two are closely related, and here’s a graph of the 2013 data so far:

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That guy all the way to the left is Miguel Cabrera’s second home run on Sunday. It’s estimated to have gotten 47 feet above the surface of the field. And it’s estimated to have left the bat with an elevation angle of 15.9 degrees. That’s the lowest angle of the year.

And that’s tied for the lowest angle for any standard home run since at least 2006, which is as far back as the Tracker data extends. In 2008, it’s alleged that Corey Hart also hit a homer with the same elevation angle, but video confirmation isn’t available that I can find. The only homers with lower elevation angles have been inside-the-parkers. And for whatever it’s worth, Cabrera’s missile left the bat a little faster than Hart’s, according to the numbers. In a sense, Sunday night Miguel Cabrera drilled the ultimate line drive.

Buster Olney pointed out on Twitter that Derek Holland briefly reacted as if he thought the ball was coming back at him. Here’s what he means:

You can see Holland flinch before he turns around to watch the rest of the ball’s flight. He tries to get his hands in front of his face before he realizes the ball has long since passed by. As a former pitcher who has been drilled in the head by a comebacker, I feel like I can speak with some authority on this. It can be terrifying. The instinct is to flinch, when the batter makes contact and the ball is coming back up the middle. The ball doesn’t even have to come that close — the contact just needs to be solid, and it needs to look like it could be in the vicinity right off the bat. A ball hit to either side, or a fly, or a grounder — those don’t make a guy flinch. But any liner can be a momentary nightmare. Cabrera hit a ball close enough to Holland to make him ever-so-briefly afraid. It ended up a home run. Holland didn’t quite understand:

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I don’t know who could understand, to be honest. Those hits aren’t supposed to be home runs. They’re supposed to be singles or doubles or line-outs. The only explanation is that Miguel Cabrera can do things that other hitters just can’t, or don’t. The quality of his contact is such that normal rules don’t apply.

Think back to how all three of Cabrera’s homers wound up in similar places. They were all hit to center, one off an inside fastball from a righty, one off a less-inside fastball from a lefty, and one off a changeup over the plate from a lefty. That says everything you need to know about Cabrera’s timing and his ability to square the baseball up when it’s anywhere hittable. There will be times that a pitcher makes Miguel Cabrera look bad, and each of those times is incredible.

Miguel Cabrera is a mediocre runner who bats from the right side and who has a .347 career BABIP. This year it’s up to .400, to go neatly with his 200 wRC+. Cabrera is capable of making a lot of contact, and on contact he’s capable of doing some extraordinary things. This was readily on display Sunday night, when Cabrera made a meaningful baseball game feel somewhat irrelevant. Against Derek Holland, Cabrera reached a new low, all in the process of exploring new heights.


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Edward Mujica: The Other One Pitch Closer.

Mariano Rivera is the best relief pitcher of all time, and his 20 year run of greatness has mostly been fueled by throwing one pitch. The dominance of Rivera’s cut fastball has been well documented, and you likely know that when the Yankees have the lead in the 9th inning, opponents are going to see cutter after cutter after cutter.

But, now, over in St. Louis, Rivera has an odd imitator of sorts. No, the Cardinals closer is not a cutter specialist; he doesn’t even throw one. Instead, Edward Mujica — the team’s emergency fill-in closer with Jason Motte on the shelf — is closing out games using an endless supply of change-ups.

Technically, Mujica’s off-speed pitch is categorized as a split-finger fastball, but there’s really not much of a practical difference between a hard change-up and a splitter. They aren’t all gripped the same way in the pitcher’s hand, but in terms of describing pitch movement, splitters and power change-ups are basically interchangeable. And Mujica is thriving by leaning very heavily on his split/change.

Here’s Mujica’s pitch selection by year since 2007, per PITCHf/x:




Season Fastball Slider Curve Split/Change
2007 68% 3% 18% 11%
2008 65% 2% 10% 21%
2009 63% 13% 4% 19%
2010 51% 8% 0% 41%
2011 49% 8% 0% 41%
2012 44% 10% 0% 45%
2013 34% 0% 0% 66%

Mujica used to be a guy who pounded the strike zone with fastballs, kind of a reliever version of Bartolo Colon. He didn’t miss many bats and was an extreme flyball pitcher, which is not a good combination if you’re trying to keep runs off the board. So, in 2010, Mujica basically ditched his breaking ball and started leaning much more heavily on his split/change, throwing it 40% of the time, and it led to a spike in both K% and GB%. With the new approach, he went on a nice little run as a quality reliever.

When Motte got hurt, though, Mujica was thrust into the ninth inning for the Cardinals, and his solution was to just throw his best pitch as often as possible. For the season, he’s up to 65% off-speed pitches, and of late, he’s been even more extreme, throwing it 71% of the time in May, including a couple of outings where it was the only pitch he threw. Here’s his PITCHF/x plot from his outing on May 17th against the Brewers:


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Mujica threw 13 pitches, all of them split/changes, all of them middle away. He used one pitch in one half of the strike zone, and he retired the side in order. And this is basically what Mujica does every game now. Here’s a couple of heat maps of the locations of Mujica’s 2013 split-changes, both to lefties and righties.


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He doesn’t have Rivera’s ridiculous pinpoint command, so there are a few pitches spread around the zone, but you can see where he prefers to throw his off-speed stuff: down and away, and preferably more down than away. Mujica just pounds the bottom of the strike zone with a pitch that tumbles towards a hitter’s ankle, making it a pitch that is almost impossible to hit with any authority when it is well located, but he throws it for strikes often enough that hitter’s still have to chase it.

In May alone, opposing hitters have chased 54 of the 81 (67%) split/change’s Mujica has thrown, and they aren’t exactly hitting it well when they do chase; he’s gotten 20 foul balls, 15 swinging strikes and 10 ground balls on those 54 swings. Despite there being no real surprise as to what is coming or where it’s going, opposing hitters have been completely unable to do anything against Mujica’s off-speed offering. For the year, opponents are now hitting .136/.149/.242 against him, good for a .170 wOBA, and it’s not like he’s just feasting on right-handers hitters, as his wOBA platoon split is just .162/.180.

With a low-90s fastball and a track record as a journeyman middle reliever, he might not profile as a typical closer, and it might be natural to expect that fireballing youngster Trevor Rosenthal will eventually usurp the role from Mujica in the second half. However, Mujica’s ability to just pound off-speed pitches at the bottom of the strike zone — knowing that Yadier Molina can corral anything that bounces — has made him a surprisingly dominant reliever so far, and there’s no real reason to expect him to stop pitching well.

Ever since Mujica adopted the split-change as his out-pitch, he’s been a quality relief arm. Now that he’s featuring it on nearly every pitch, he’s looking basically unhittable. Game theory suggests that a pitcher needs to mix up his offerings to keep hitters guessing, but there’s not much evidence that opposing batters can hit Mujica’s split/change even if they go up looking for it. He might not be a conventional relief ace, but Mujica’s command of one really terrific pitch has turned him into one of the better relievers in the National League.


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What Cole Hamels Is Doing Differently.

Cole Hamels has not looked like himself this year. After ERAs of 3.06, 2.79, and 3.05 from 2010 through 2012, Hamels now has a 4.61 ERA nine starts into this season. By itself, that doesn’t mean he’s doing anything wrong. Pitchers are vulnerable to random fluctuations and luck in nine — or even in 30 — starts. For example, take the Hamels from 2009: After the left-hander finished 2008 with a 3.09 ERA and a World Series MVP trophy, expectations were high for the next season. But Hamels fell by the wayside and posted a 4.32 ERA, even though his walk, strikeout, and ground ball numbers were all in the normal range for him.

His DIPS numbers suggested that there wasn’t anything really wrong with Hamels then, and that with a little bit of patience, he would go back to dominating hitters as he had previously. In 2010, that suggestion came to fruition, and Hamels went right back to being one of the game’s premier left-handed starters.

Fast forward to 2013, and Hamels ERA is up once again. However, this time, something does look different. Look at his walk rate, his strikeout rate, his SIERA and his ERA in the past six years:

Year K% BB% SIERA ERA
2008 21.4 5.8 3.64 3.09
2009 20.6 5.3 3.66 4.32
2010 24.7 7.1 3.26 3.06
2011 22.8 5.2 3.03 2.79
2012 24.9 6.0 3.22 3.05
2013 19.5 10.0 4.35 4.61

Unlike in 2009, the spike in ERA is matched by his peripherals— his SIERA is similar to his ERA. The reason is simple — he’s walking a lot more batters and striking out fewer of them. That can be a change in talent level, and it may actually be. But it could also be that he or hitters have changed in some way, and that a game theoretic approach might be better. In other words, it could be that he — or the hitters he faces — have adjusted their strategy and he needs to evolve.

The first thing I always check to determine whether a pitcher’s talent level has changed (or if he’s hurt, etc.) is his velocity. That has been shown time and again to be a somehow underrated aspect of pitching skill. As shown on the table below, that’s not the problem at all — not on any of his pitches.

Year Fastball Velo Changeup Velo Cutter Velo Curveball Velo
2010 91.7 82.1 88.5 76.4
2011 91.2 83.4 88.5 76.2
2012 90.9 83.9 88.1 75.7
2013 91.3 83.3 87.9 75.4

The velocities are similar year to year. But what about movement?

Year Fastball x-Mov Changeup x-mov Cutter x-mov Curveball x-mov
2010 3.9 7.8 -0.8 -1.6
2011 4.0 8.4 -0.7 -1.4
2012 4.8 8.5 -0.7 -1.8
2013 4.8 8.4 -0.1 -1.7
Year Fastball z-Mov Changeup z-mov Cutter z-mov Curveball z-mov
2010 11.5 6.7 7.0 -3.2
2011 10.9 6.0 7.2 -3.5
2012 10.8 6.7 7.2 -4.2
2013 11.5 6.9 7.4 -3.8

That has not changed, either. So it looks like each of Hamels’ individual pitches is about the same. And what about the performances on those pitches? A common approach is to look at the run values on each pitch (normalized on a per-100-pitch basis), and you can start to see where Hamels is begins to see his results differ:

Year vFA/C vCH/C vFC/C vCU/C
2010 0.53 0.77 -0.49 0.27
2011 0.05 3.73 2.27 -0.27
2012 0.38 1.04 -0.32 1.63
2013 -2.01 2.81 -1.53 1.86

This makes it look like the main drop in performance has come on Hamels’ fastballs. But as I explained in my research on game theory and pitch selection, these numbers are misleading because they don’t consider the actual count in which the pitches were thrown.

Unsurprisingly, Hamels tends to throws fastballs when he’s behind the count so all this is tells us is he’s walking more people — which we knew already. Instead, we need to look at things more deeply. Ideally, I would have had performance per plate appearance by pitch thrown in each count. Still, without that data, I was able to detect a likely issue.

Let’s take an extra step and look at the walks and strikeouts by pitch type:

Year FB K% FB BB% CH K% CH BB% FC K% FC BB% CU K% CU BB%
2010 19.3 8.1 34.8 5.7 29.3 2.4 25.5 0.0
2011 13.8 6.5 35.1 4.4 19.1 2.6 44.8 0.0
2012 14.6 6.8 36.9 5.2 13.0 5.2 47.0 0.0
2013 11.5 12.3 35.6 11.9 13.9 0.0 37.5 0.0

This makes it look like he’s walking more batters on his changeup and fastball, but is he actually throwing them for fewer strikes?

Year Fastball Strike% Changeup Strike% Cutter Strike% Curveball Strike%
2010 67.0 70.8 62.8 52.8
2011 65.7 72.0 66.8 50.5
2012 66.5 72.2 62.3 53.7
2013 64.3 62.6 65.4 55.9

Look where the biggest dropoff happens: changeup strike percent is way down. If you look at a few other peripherals, it’s clear the issue is he’s throwing fewer pitches in the zone. Although he’s striking out fewer hitters, it doesn’t seem to be associated with a major change in contact percent:

Year Zone% O-Contact% Z-Contact% O-Swing% Z-Swing%
2010 50.8 55.1 83.8 30.9 64.2
2011 52.1 56.7 84.4 31.4 61.5
2012 48.4 58.0 82.4 34.3 64.9
2013 46.4 58.7 85.8 33.8 64.3

Since we know he’s throwing fewer pitches in the zone this year — and that’s leading to the change in his walks and his strikeouts — we can now break that down further by pitch type:

Year Fastball Zone% Changeup Zone% Cutter Zone% Curveball Zone%
2010 56.0 44.1 46.2 40.8
2011 58.0 45.6 54.7 35.9
2012 54.8 42.0 45.3 36.7
2013 54.6 30.6 50.9 35.6

The obvious difference seems to be showing up on change-ups. Is that because of some difference in contact rate or swing rate?

Year Changeup Swing% Changeup Contact% Changeup O-Swing% Changeup O-Contact% Changeup Z-Swing% Changeup Z-Contact
2010 58.5 53.3 49.1 38.7 69.1 66.3
2011 58.8 54.0 48.6 39.7 71.0 65.6
2012 60.1 54.3 48.5 40.2 76.0 66.8
2013 53.2 50.4 46.0 42.7 69.4 62.0

Hitters seem to be responding rather similarly to Hamels’ changeups when they are in the strike zone, as in previous years. Hitters are also responding to Hamels’ changeups when they’re out of the strike zone. It’s just that he is throwing it out of the zone more. This puts him further behind in the count, and allows hitters to be more selective and draw walks, all while driving down Hamels’ strikeout rate.

This leaves open the question of whether Hamels can actually change that and throw more changeups for strikes. It may be that his talent has deteriorated such that he can’t locate his changeup as well, but more likely, this is a temporary issue. Hamels knows that falling behind hitters isn’t working, and his track record suggests that he is capable of throwing the pitch for strikes. If he can get back to throwing the change-up in the zone with more frequency, hitters will chase more often when he buries it out of the zone, and he should get back to being the dominating left-hander he’s been for most of his career.


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What makes you think that? Or is it just a hunch?

He's actually looked worse the last week or so (besides the HR last night). Looks like he's been studying Josh Hamilton out there :lol: Just giving ABs away.


What's the over/under on the beginning of the annual Indians collapse? July?
 
Lol, in Tito we trust. A playoff appearance would surpass all my Spring Training expectations.

Just a hunch. The whispers surrounding Mattingly's job security. Tragedy in his hometown of Oklahoma. Could rally a hot bat. Perhaps wishful thinking on my part.

I do feel Kemp's bat correlates with Dre's success at the plate.

Josh takes at-bats off. No secret. Nolan's problem with him last season.
 
I wouldn't trade much for Garza, but Theo will fleece another club.

Rizzo and Starlin a stellar rebuild. Samardzija.
 
Bryce Harper seeing visions of himself smacking into the wall again as he went back on that one. He flinched so bad and was so far away from the wall. :lol:

Tie ballgame. :pimp:

Now watch him hit a jack here.
 
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