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

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Nats rollin' right now...

"You already know what the business is"
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Let's see how they do this weekend vs. the Giants....
@JJs07
 Nats won 2 out of 3 games versus the Giants, thus winning the series with a blowout come from behind victory yesterday.  Looks like a good weekend to me champ.  
I didn't even know you watched baseball
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I'm versatile champ, you can never box me in
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.  I just don't post alot about baseball, but I have been with the Nats since they came to DC.  
 
 
 
 
Nats rollin' right now...

"You already know what the business is"
pimp.gif
pimp.gif

Let's see how they do this weekend vs. the Giants....
@JJs07
 Nats won 2 out of 3 games versus the Giants, thus winning the series with a blowout come from behind victory yesterday.  Looks like a good weekend to me champ.  
*tips cap*
My man, holla.  
 
J Up been on a roll lately! I was listening to a Braves podcast earlier and they posed the question "Would you keep BJ, if it meant being able to retain Justin?" I would say yeah.

Then the news came out we offered BJ for Edwin Jackson, but the Cubs turned it down. It would be trading the worst everday player for the worst starting pitcher :lol:
 
J Up been on a roll lately! I was listening to a Braves podcast earlier and they posed the question "Would you keep BJ, if it meant being able to retain Justin?" I would say yeah.

Then the news came out we offered BJ for Edwin Jackson, but the Cubs turned it down. It would be trading the worst everday player for the worst starting pitcher :lol:
Team J. Up in the house. Just scratching the surface at 27. Is he already a top-10 OF?
 
Y'all not gonna even mention the O's performance tonight ?! What a game to be at, saw a back to back to back hr and that Adam Jones grab to rob Longorias hr
 
He's up there for sure. But then again, it's rare for people to rank with defense in mind since that's apparently not a part of the game :lol:

It's definitely some mix of Trout, Stanton, McCutchen, Gordon, Gomez, Brantley, Jones, Pence, Puig, Bautista,. Upton, Gardner, Zobrist & Heyward.
 
The Tigers Aren’t Falling Apart On Their Own.

Buck Farmer, despite the name, is a real person who exists. A month ago, he was making his final start for the Single-A West Michigan Whitecaps in Clinton, Iowa, a town that has a smaller population (26,885 in 2010) than 21 of the 30 MLB teams pack into their ballparks on any given night. When he did, on July 25, the Tigers, the top of Farmer’s Detroit organization, had a 6.5-game lead in the AL Central and a 94.0% chance of winning the division, had just picked up Joakim Soria, and were about to add David Price to a rotation that was already very good.

This isn’t about Farmer, really, though he’s part of it. He’s just a pretty good entry point into how the Tigers, a team that was flying free and clear to their fourth straight division title against relatively indifferent AL Central competition, could manage to turn that lead into a 1.5-game deficit into fewer than six weeks. Those playoff odds, which seemed to make them a near-certainty to win the division, dropped all the way to 43.3% before the Royals lost last night, which, as Jeff showed yesterday, is by far the biggest downturn of any team in baseball. They wouldn’t even be in the wild card playoff at the moment, thanks to the fact that the AL West has two of the best teams in baseball and a Mariners club that has just stopped losing.

A month ago, Farmer was pitching in A-ball. A week ago, he was getting exactly one out while allowing eight runs for Toledo against a Columbus team that had someone named Giovanny Urshela hitting cleanup. Surrounding that, he’s made two major league starts for a Tigers team desperately trying to hold off one of the biggest collapses we’ve seen in years. If you want to know how the Tigers have fallen apart, that’s a great place to start.

* * *

There’s two things that go into the the downfall of the Tigers, and they’re both equally important:

1) Detroit, coasting for months after a hot start, has been hit hard by serious injuries, and
2) Kansas City has been hilariously, insanely, ludicrously hot

It takes two to tango, as they say, and for everything that’s happened, the Tigers haven’t been bad. This isn’t the Braves losing eight consecutive games to essentially hand the NL East to the Nationals even before Washington reeled off their own winning streak. Here’s the sum of the absolute catastrophe that has been the Detroit Tigers in August: 12-12. The Tigers have been so successful over the last half-decade that a month that’s merely .500 ball – in the last three seasons, they’ve had only one losing month — seems like a disaster.

Obviously, saying “in August” is a bit of an arbitrary endpoint unto itself, because Detroit did lose five of their final six games in July. If you want to say “since July 25, they’ve been a losing team,” you wouldn’t be wrong, and it’s not like they’ve had nothing to do with this. Of course, no one would have ever even noticed this had it not been for the Royals. The Dodgers, for example, are 12-11 in August, and it’s not news because the Giants haven’t taken advantage of it and the rest of the NL West is simply wretched. The Astros are 11-12, and no one cares because they’re a million games out in the AL West. Generally, a .500 month for a good team late in the season in a weak division is regarded as a speed bump to be sorted out before the playoffs, or the usual vagaries of a long season in the hottest part of the summer.

For the Tigers, it’s a bigger deal because of the Royals, who have ripped off the kind of streak that really can’t be predicted. If it isn’t Erik Kratz hitting two homers in relief of Salvador Perez, it’s Billy Butler suddenly remembering how to hit (five of his nine homers have come in the last 30 days). This is a team that still has little power and a near-pathological aversion to walks; it’s a team that has four members of their regular lineup (Perez, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar, Omar Infante) putting up sub-80 wRC+ marks over the last month, and yet the team is still winning. Maybe it’s the absolutely phenomenal outfield defense — your position on the Alex Gordon WAR controversy aside, he’s obviously outstanding, and so are Lorenzo Cain and Jarrod Dyson — or a bullpen where Wade Davis, Kelvin Herrera and Greg Holland have combined to allow two earned runs in the last month, or the emergence of Danny Duffy. There are certainly reasons that this team is playing well.

Even so, even the most optimistic Royals fan couldn’t expect this team to continue winning at a .741 clip, as they’ve done for the last month, all season long, because while it obviously takes some excellent play to go on a run like they’ve had, it also takes some luck, whether it’s balls bouncing your way or some favorable sequencing. When the Dodgers went on that 42-8 run last year, it’s partially because they had Yasiel Puig, Hanley Ramirez, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and friends all playing well at the same time, and partially because every last thing seemed to go right. It was fun, and it all counted in the standings, but it couldn’t last. The same thing will happen to the Royals.

The question, then, is to what extent. We can see that by BaseRuns — an attempt to remove sequencing and context from performance — the Royals have been playing wildly over their head, to the point that by all rights, they should be a below-.500 team:

2014 Year to Date 2014 PythagenPat 2014 BaseRuns
Team G W L W% RDif RS/G RA/G W L W% +/- W L W% +/- RDif RS/G RA/G
Tigers 129 70 59 0.543 30 4.66 4.43 68 61 0.524 2 69 60 0.538 1 48 4.69 4.32
Royals 130 72 58 0.554 28 4.12 3.91 68 62 0.524 4 63 67 0.486 9 -16 3.93 4.06
They aren’t a .500 team, of course, and those wins still count. All that really matters is the number on the left, the one that says the Royals are inexplicably 14 games over .500. Still, at the risk of sounding the “they peaked too early!” cry, they’ll slide back. They simply have to, and that’s the in for the Tigers to get back into the race.

But even if and when they do, there’s still serious issues in Detroit. After peaking at 16 games over .500 on July 12, they’re 17-22 since, and it’s not hard to see why. Though Price has been outstanding in his four starts with the team, and Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello have been great, the rotation has been torn apart to the point that they’ve had to resort to starts from Farmer, Robbie Ray, and — once in July – Drew VerHagen. Kyle Lobstein may make his first major league start later this week. Anibal Sanchez has missed several weeks with a pectoral injury, though he may return this weekend; Justin Verlander has been both awful and injured, though he’s back in the rotation. What was to be an indomitable strength has had 40 percent of it held together by spit and duct tape for most of the month.

It goes on. Soria made only six poor outings before landing on the disabled list with an oblique injury; with Bruce Rondon missing the entire season and Joe Nathan being a massive disappointment, the team has had to dig up retread Jim Johnson out of desperation, and are currently trying to get Chad Qualls on waivers. They never did fix the shortstop issue, and the loss of Austin Jackson in the Price deal hurt the lineup. And then, of course, there’s Miguel Cabrera. It says a lot about Cabrera, I think, that he’s hitting .308/.375/.501 (139 wRC+) and it’s his second-worst offensive output since 2005. Cabrera, hobbled by offseason core surgery and now a sore ankle, has homered only once in the last month, and didn’t play on Sunday. He’s still better than an overwhelming majority of major league hitters; he’s just not giving Detroit as much as they expected to get from him in the past.

The Tigers will get Soria and Sanchez back in the next week, they still have Victor Martinez and J.D. Martinez (!) playing at a high level, and the Royals won’t keep playing quite this way. Perhaps we’re already seeing it happen; after losing to Texas on Sunday and having James Shields lit up by the Yankees last night, Kansas City has lost two in a row for the first time since July 27 and 29. What seems like a terrible collapse by Detroit has been as much due to the unbelievable run by Kansas City as it does to what’s happened to the Tigers.

With six head-to-head games remaining, this race may just come down to which Royals team and which Tigers team shows up. If it’s the ones we’ve been seeing for the last month, Detroit is in trouble. Fortunately for them, it’s hard to see exactly that still happening by the time they next get together on September 8.

Beltre, V-Mart, and “Batting Your Age”.

There is a thing in golf called “shooting your age.” Basically, it’s a measure of how sharp a player’s game is even as they get older. The way golf is structured, this doesn’t even come into affect until a player’s 60s or 70s. Tiger Woods has yet to shoot his age, because it’s impossible to shoot a 38 on a par-72 course. But it’s a fun way to talk about older players, and to give golfers hope for their futures.

This whole idea led me to wonder if we could apply it to baseball. Obviously, to truly bat one’s age would be a bad thing. Batting average doesn’t really play well with this idea. Neither does wOBA or ISO, for that matter. So, I took a different route. I decided to use wRC+, and then just knock 100 points off. This, of course, gives us a number based around how much better a player batted than league average. Plus, it gives a much nicer number to compare with an age of a player.

I then searched our database to find any batter aged 35 or older (just to find the older guys) that hit his age or higher better than league average (min. 300 PA). Without any further constraints, 234 batters made the cut. I won’t post the whole list here, but you can follow this link if you’re interested.

Here are the players who accomplished this since 2009.

Name Age wRC+ Season
Victor Martinez 36 153.697 2014
Adrian Beltre 35 139.895 2014
David Ortiz 38 151.966 2013
Marlon Byrd 36 136.534 2013
David Ortiz 37 169.798 2012
Paul Konerko 35 139.472 2011
Lance Berkman 35 163.168 2011
David Ortiz 36 154.479 2011
Manny Ramirez 38 140.24 2010
Jim Thome 40 177.155 2010
Manny Ramirez 37 147.333 2009
If you look at the big list, you’ll notice a number of players who did such things in the early 2000s, though we’re not going to speculate why right now. But as we get closer to present, we see a lot of David Ortiz and a little bit of Manny, but overall not a whole lot of players have done this in the past five years. This year, only two players made the cut — Victor Martinez and Adrian Beltre.

This tells us two things; that accomplishing this feat is very difficult, and that Beltre and Martinez are having monster seasons. In our current age of mega-long deals, seeing just how hard it is to be a highly-contributing player at an advanced age (for baseball, at least) is a bit sobering. Not many players can reach this plateau. Miguel Cabrera, who is signed through his age-40 season, would seem like a pretty good candidate for this list when that time comes. But he’s 31, and is currently only hitting 39% better than league average. Yes, his injuries are playing a part in that, but that’s kind of the point.

It’s easy to think that a player like Cabrera or Mike Trout or Andrew McCutchen can make this list when they hit 35 years old, easier than me assuming I can play scratch golf in my 70s. But the players on this list — or, perhaps more telling, the players NOT on this list — show that only the very talented and very lucky stick around long enough to bat their age.

MLBAM Chief Says Local Broadcasts May Be Available On Mobile.

Major League Baseball Advanced Media CEO Bob Bowman told the Associated Press this week that some baseball fans may be able to stream local broadcasts to their desktops and mobile devices by as early as next season. The changes would apply only to fans who already subscribe to the regional sports network that broadcasts their team’s games. For example, a San Francisco Giants fan who already pays for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area through her cable or satellite company would be able to stream Giants games when she is the CSN Bay Area viewing area, but not at home with access to her TV. Right now, she can only access Giants games on CSN Bay Area through MLB.tv and only when she is not in Northern California.

Whether this local streaming would be available through an RSN-linked app or through MLB.tv is still to be determined, according to Bowman. It’s also possible that MLBAM will work out deals with some RSNs and not others. Bowman told AP that the issues are complicated.

“If they were easy to resolve, then somebody would have done it, and if it didn’t matter, then it would have been resolved,” Bowman said. “In the end, we all want the same thing regardless of which side of the table you’re on. We all want somebody to be able to turn on a laptop or turn on a phone and see a live game in-market.”

Fans will be able to test the streaming option during this year’s postseason games, as those games will be available on mobile devices to fans who subscribe to ESPN, TBS and Fox, the three networks who hold baseball’s postseason broadcast rights.

Making local broadcasts available online and through mobile devices is a good first step in attracting younger fans who have grown up with access to a variety of entertainment options in the palm of their hands. But it is only a first step, as the new streaming plan will be linked to an increasingly expensive cable or satellite bill. Fans who’ve cut the cord — or never subscribed in the first place — will still face blackouts of their local team on their desktops and mobile devices.

Moreover, the exclusive broadcast territories would remain intact. So baseball fans in Iowa, for example — who are within the “exclusive” broadcast territory of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals and Milwaukee Brewers but are not offered any of those team’s RSNs by their cable or satellite operator — wouldn’t see any relief from the changes Bowman hopes to roll out.

MLBAM’s effort to expand streaming options for fans comes as the league and its RSN partners continue to battle against charges that the exclusive broadcast territories violates federal antitrust law. A federal judge in New York recently ruled that MLB and the RSNs must face trial on the antitrust claims.

The Dramatic Changes in Baseball’s Post-Deadline Landscape.

You know where this is going already, but, right before July’s non-waiver trade deadline, the A’s made a splash in adding Jon Lester, and the Tigers made a splash in adding David Price. The intentions were obvious: Oakland and Detroit were loading up for an extended playoff run. The two teams had the appearance of being the two best teams in the league, and so they shuffled some parts around to focus more on the short-term. It wasn’t a question of whether the teams would make the playoffs; it was a question of how far they would go.

And, yeah. So, not too long ago, we finally rolled out historical playoff odds. That is, all season long we’ve had playoff odds as of the moment, but now you can go back to any date you like to see where things stood then. I think it’s worth a look now at how things have changed since the last day of July. The month of August isn’t over, but it’s almost there, and already we’ve seen some significant shifts. How has the baseball landscape changed since the passing of the non-deadline deadline?

Here’s a table showing four numbers for every team. In the case of some teams, all the numbers are the same, in that they’re 0%. Shown are not the current playoff odds; shown are the changes in odds in four different categories since the end of action on July 31. These are all changes in terms of percentage points, not actual percent. The table should be sortable unless I get something super wrong, which happens more frequently than you notice!

Team Division Odds WC Odds Playoff Odds DS Odds
Angels 17% -17% 0% 6%
Astros 0% 0% 0% 0%
Athletics -18% 18% -1% -10%
Blue Jays -35% -20% -56% -44%
Braves -19% -1% -20% -20%
Brewers 14% 12% 26% 19%
Cardinals 9% 12% 21% 16%
Cubs 0% 0% 0% 0%
Diamondbacks 0% 0% 0% 0%
Dodgers 2% -1% 1% 2%
Giants -2% -2% -5% -2%
Indians -1% -5% -6% -3%
Mariners 2% 27% 29% 16%
Marlins -1% 0% -1% -1%
Mets -1% -2% -2% -1%
Nationals 21% -12% 9% 14%
Orioles 36% -17% 19% 28%
Padres 0% 0% 0% 0%
Phillies 0% 0% 0% 0%
Pirates -19% 1% -18% -19%
Rangers 0% 0% 0% 0%
Rays -2% -4% -6% -4%
Red Sox 0% 0% 0% 0%
Reds -3% -7% -11% -7%
Rockies 0% 0% 0% 0%
Royals 49% 7% 55% 52%
Tigers -48% 18% -30% -39%
Twins 0% 0% 0% 0%
White Sox 0% -1% -1% -1%
Yankees 2% -6% -4% -1%
First you see the gain or loss in odds of winning the division. Then there’s the same for the wild card, and for the playoffs, and for making it past the one-game playoff. Some people prefer to focus on overall playoff odds, while others like to look at the odds of actually playing a real October series. I think it’s unquestionable that participating in the wild-card playoff is something bigger than a regular-season game; I think it’s also unquestionable that participating in the wild-card playoff is no one’s primary goal coming into the year.

There has been no bigger upward mover than the Royals. That much you could’ve guessed, as the team’s gone 17-5 in the month. The Royals’ playoff odds are up 55 percentage points, and their odds of making it to the ALDS are up 52 percentage points, because most of the gain has come in likelihood of winning the division. It took a while, but our odds finally like the Royals more than the Tigers through the remainder, and remember that it was the Tigers who made the huge splash. I don’t mean to make too much of what’s basically anecdotal evidence, but while the Royals have spent a couple weeks with Josh Willingham, their big move before was exchanging Danny Valencia for Erik Kratz. The Royals kept their team more or less intact, and they’ve surged past the Tigers.

The Royals, of course, have mathematically benefited mostly at the Tigers’ expense. Their playoff odds are down 30 percentage points, and their ALDS odds are down 39 percentage points. While the Tigers haven’t been dreadful, going an even 12-12, they’ve lost considerable ground in the division and in the wild-card hunt, and right now they’re playing without Anibal Sanchez. One point to remember is that, by swapping Drew Smyly and Austin Jackson for Price, the Tigers made more of a marginal upgrade than a massive improvement, but the lesson here is mostly about sample sizes and randomness. And Joakim Soria, who the Tigers added with a week to spare? He went on the DL after allowing six runs in six appearances. He’d allowed 12 runs in 35 appearances with Texas.

The worst loser in August has been the Blue Jays. Compared to the Tigers, they’ve lost almost twice the playoff odds, although their ALDS odds have gotten only a little worse, relatively speaking, because a lot of the Blue Jays’ hope was wrapped up in the wild card. Toronto’s gone 6-14 since deadline day and because of their collapse, fans have wondered whether the front office made a grave error in standing pat. The reality is that there’s no way to know; Oakland and Detroit have been inconsistent, too, and there was little chance of the Jays being able to nab a rotation ace from a division rival. As things stood, the Jays were right in the thick of the race for the division; as things stand, they’re on the periphery of relevance. They’re now only two games closer to the wild-card lead than the Rays.

There’s an interesting contrast between the Orioles and the Mariners. In August, Baltimore’s gone 13-8, while Seattle’s gone 15-6. Baltimore’s playoff odds are up 19 percentage points, and Seattle’s are up 29. However, Baltimore’s ALDS odds are up 28 percentage points, and Seattle’s are up 16. The Orioles have shifted wild-card odds to division odds. The Mariners, meanwhile, remain an extreme long shot to win the AL West, so you almost have to cut their gains in half if you’re thinking in terms of their playing a series. The Mariners have done well to catch fire in a difficult divisional environment. The Orioles have done better to catch fire in a more forgiving divisional environment.

If you look in the National League, the winners have been the Brewers, Cardinals, and Nationals. Neither the Brewers nor the Cardinals have separated themselves from one another, but they have both pulled away from the Pirates and the Reds, leading to similar mathematical gains. The Nationals, meanwhile, have hardly ever lost, so they stand now with almost 100% odds of making the playoffs, and almost 100% odds of making the NLDS. Granted, less than a month ago, the Tigers seemed like almost a sure thing. That’s the big hope for the Braves. But the odds are, by definition or tautology, the likelihood. The East, for all intents and purposes, has been decided.

So the Braves have lost almost all their divisional hopes. The Pirates have been similarly shattered, going 10-12 despite out-scoring their opponents. The Pirates still project as a quality team, but this speaks to the daunting significance of a five-game divisional gap in the last week of August. The Pirates weren’t planning on losing Andrew McCutchen, but that’s not the only reason the odds have declined.

You have to look a little closer to get a sense of what’s happened in the AL West. The Angels’ playoff odds are basically unchanged. The Athletics’ playoff odds are basically unchanged. But Anaheim’s ALDS odds are up six percentage points, and Oakland’s are down ten. Though the A’s added Lester while the Angels lost Garrett Richards, the Angels also gained three games on the A’s in the month, so now the Angels are the slight divisional favorites. Say what you want about the significance of major midseason trades, but so far this stretch run hasn’t been defined by the moves made at the end of July. The Angels did their own tweaking, but they did nothing on the level of Billy Beane.

Detroit’s moves and Oakland’s moves were made with an eye toward strengthening for the playoffs. Detroit’s still a good bet to get there, while Oakland’s a virtual lock. But in three or four weeks, a lot has changed, much of it unpredictable, and suddenly the Royals look strong having done almost nothing at all, and the A’s face stiff challenges from two different divisional rivals. Decisions were made in July based on the circumstances in July. The circumstances in August are very much different. No books have been closed yet, but baseball has this habit of zigging and zagging. It would be frustrating if it weren’t so damned beautiful.

Joe Maddon’s Bunting Identity Crisis.

Two facts, with which you as a FanGraphs reader are likely familiar:

The Tampa Bay Rays are among the most sabermetrically-inclined organizations in major league baseball.
Sabermetrically-inclined folk generally are against the decision to sacrifice bunt.
One more fact, with which you are less likely to be familiar:

The Tampa Bay Rays have attempted 58 non-pitcher sacrifice bunts this season, by far the highest mark in the major leagues. No other team has even 50.

So that’s weird. Since he began leading the Rays in 2006, Joe Maddon has been known as one of the more progressive MLB managers. He does funky things with his lineup. He’s batted the pitcher eighth. He made heavy use of the defensive shift before it was cool. If there was a manager to be considered the posterchild of what a future MLB manager might look like, it has been Joe Maddon.

He’s even spoke out publicly against sac bunting in the past:

“For that group of people out there that want guys to bunt all the time, you don’t know the outcome when you choose to do that,” Maddon said, of choosing not to bunt with two runners on base and no outs in the ninth inning, and again following a leadoff double in the 10th. “I think the bunt is an overrated play.”

Joe Maddon thinks the bunt is an overrated play, yet here we are in the year 2014 and the Rays have bunted more than anyone. Well, attempted to bunt more than anyone. And therein lies the issue with Maddon’s bunting habits this season.

League-wide, the use of sacrifice bunts are trending downwards.

700


This makes sense. As more data suggests sacrifice bunting is generally bad, managers will slowly but surely catch on and begin picking their spots wisely. That leads to this:

700


It seems that MLB managers are picking smarter times to use the sacrifice bunt. League-wide WPA on sac bunts is positive for first time in 10 years and probably longer, though I did not have the patience to continue my research, nor the wherewithal to devise a more efficient method than the one I was employing.

So that’s how the league is adapting with regards to sacrifice bunts. Doing it less often, but doing it more efficiently. Let’s get back to Joe Maddon’s Rays.

As previously stated, the Rays have attempted to bunt more than anyone, with 58 non-pitcher attempts. But they’re not in first in completed sacrifices. Just 35 of those 58 attempts have turned into “successful” sacrifice bunts. I put successful in quotes because we know that, more often than not, a sacrifice bunt even when executed does more harm than good. Despite all of their bunting efforts this season, the Rays sacrifice bunts have amassed a negative WPA. That is to say, all the free outs they’ve given away haven’t really improved their win expectancy at all. It’s hurt them, if anything. To compound the issue, let’s go back to that 35-of-58 number.

35-of-58 yields a 60% success rate. That’s bad. The league average success rate for a sacrifice bunt is 71%. Only five teams have lower success rates on bunts than the Rays this year. All of those teams have attempted at least 11 fewer sac bunts than Tampa. Brandon Guyer is the biggest offender. His 12 sacrifice bunt attempts are second on the team, yet he has only successfully laid down five for a 42% success rate. Desmond Jennings is 9-for-13. Jose Molina is 4-for-6. Yunel Escobar, Kevin Kiermaier and Sean Rodriguez are all 3-for-5. There isn’t a single Rays player who has attempted more than two sacrifice bunts this season that has actually got them down at a league-average rate.

We’re going to get slightly off topic here for a second, but something else caught my eye while doing this research. Two paragraphs above, I presented the fact that the Rays, despite having attempted more sac bunts than anyone, have not executed more sac bunts than anyone. Instead, that title goes to Terry Francona’s Indians, with a league-leading 38 successful sacrifice bunts. The Indians, like the Rays, are known as one of the most progressive organizations in baseball and Francona has a reputation as a progressive manager from his time with the Theo Epstein-led Red Sox who didn’t bunt at all. From 2004-2011, when Francona was at the helm in Boston, the Red Sox bunted just 176 times, 33 fewer than the next-lowest team.

Part of that stems from the fact that the Red Sox had one of the best lineups in baseball during that stretch with a 110 wRC+ and therefore didn’t need to rely on small ball strategy to push runners across the board. Then again, both the Indians (104 wRC+) and Rays (102 wRC+) have top-1o offenses in baseball this season which begs the question of why Joe Maddon and Terry Francona have suddenly fallen in love with the sacrifice bunt?

The Indians have at least bunted well, which is more than the Rays can say, with an 82% success rate that is topped only by the Rangers’ 86%. But all those “successful” sacrifice bunts haven’t yielded a positive WPA for the Indians, either.

To be honest, I really can’t think of a good explanation as to why Maddon and Francona have fallen in love with the sacrifice bunt this year. Both have proven to be anti-bunt in the past and have strong lineups, yet rely on the bunt more than any other manager in baseball seemingly to a fault.

Just for fun, since we’re talking about the Rays and the Indians, what do the bunting habits of the Moneyball A’s look like? Fewest in the league, with just 12. Part of that is due in part to their league-worst 44% success rate, but they’ve also attempted just 24, the sixth-fewest in the MLB.

Three of the teams in the MLB most generally perceived as “progressive” have had unique seasons with regards to the sac bunt this year. The Indians have laid down more sac bunts than any team in baseball, which would appear to be bad on the surface, but at least they’ve been among the most efficient at getting them down. The Athletics have chosen not to sac bunt at all, but part of that is because they’ve just been terrible at it. Then there’s the Rays, who have combined the worst of both worlds, being both terrible at bunting while also attempting them more than anyone. Maybe Joe Maddon should listen to his own advice and concede that the bunt is overrated.

The Second Wildcard Spot and the Unquantifiable Element.

Not long ago, it looked like the As were running away with the 2014 American League West. Things have changed. After Sunday night’s game, the Angels are in first place by one game and the As are the first wildcard team at the moment. Whichever team ends up winning the division, barring a shocking twist, the other team will be a very tough matchup for the second wildcard team.

The prospect of facing such a particularly tough opponent in the wildcard game might lead some to think that the second wildcard spot is not all that valuable this season. Not only is the opponent likely to be very good (arguably better than the other division winners), but they will be playing at home. The second wildcard gives a team a chance at advancing, but it does not look like a very good chance. This is probably true most seasons, but it seems particularly clear this year.

Taking that all into account, the question arises as to how much value teams should place on that second wildcard spot. Sure, any team would take that spot over not making the playoffs, but should it really alter a team’s plans with regard to the future budget, trading away prospects, or making other “win now” moves? Is this something that can be quantified?

The wildcard game is often called the “coin flip game” for good reason. No matter what the matchup is, the nature of randomness over a single game (not as if five or seven games is a big sample, either) makes it a virtual, uh, coin flip.

Of course, it is not really a 50-50 proposition. The better team can be expected to win. It might be tough sometimes figuring out which team is more talented, but we have tools that can help us get a pretty good idea more often than not. The current season’s record is not a very good way to go about it. However, at issue here is not specific projections, but a general point about what it means to make the wildcard game. Taking examples from teams that might be in the wildcard game this season, we have a pretty good idea that Oakland (.589 winning percentage so far this season) is better than Seattle (.550).

For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that Oakland and Seattle are true talent .589 and .550 teams, respectively.The Log5 method is a commonly accepted way of figuring out what a team’s chances to win. Because the point of this post is not precision and I like simplicity, let’s use the straight-line simpliciation of log5 as formulated by Tom Tippett, where Team A’s chance of beating Team B are:

.500 + (Team A Winning Percentage) – (Team B Winning Percentage)

Using Seattle (.550) as Team A and Oakland (.589) as Team B, this gives Seattle a .461 winning percentage. That is not great. If one wanted to give it an optimistic slant, one could note that it .46 rounds up to .5. Coin flip game!

There is another factor, though — not only does the second wildcard get a tough opponent this season, but the game will be played in the first wildcard’s home park. Without getting into all the discussions regarding home field advantage, let’s just stipulate that the home team wins 54 percent of the time (see Jeff Sullivan’s discussion from last season).

Taking that into account, the Mariners’ chances would be:

.460 + .550 – .489 = .421

There goes rounding up to .500! A .421 team over 162 games would be a 68-94 team, no one’s idea of a good record.

But again, lousy teams beat good teams all the time. Indeed, last year’s Mariners, who finished the season with a .438 winning percentage, actually won their regular season series against the .593 As, 11-8 (.579). A four-in-10 chance is not quite a coin flip, but it is not a one-in-10 chance, either.

Still, this is not a “just go for it” speech or an existential reflection on the difference between four and one. We pretty much already know that a .550 team on the road against a .589 team is at a real disadvantage, the calculations just throw it into relief. The question was whether or not it was worth it for a team to make plans around making the second wildcard spot. Put another way: how do we judge a team’s attempt to contend if their likely destination is a one-game playoff on the road against a quite superior team?

One could look and check not only the odds of winning the playoffs, but the chances of getting to successive rounds. Projections already do that, of course. A broader approach might use social scientific data to see how much more fan interest would be generated for the team given even a one game playoff loss (and, naturally, how much more interest there might be if the team advances). This fan interest would, presumably, lead to more money for the team, which could be used to fund future payrolls. One can imagine other ways to calculate the value of going for the second wildcard spot based on probabilities and benefits.

These factors are relevant. The point is not to dismiss numbers or the business end of baseball. But I am reminded of a post I was writing years ago when I was first blogging. It was about a great player who was on a big contract. My initial conclusion was that despite the player’s greatness, his trade value was extremely limited because of that contact. When discussing my idea with Dave Cameron, he suggested that I should mitigate my conclusion. Even though the contract and the player’s projected value meant that he offered little direct surplus value, the player was so good that he could help a contender win championships in the right situation. And that is the point — to win games. If the point was simply to accrue surplus value, “every team should try to be the Marlins,” as Dave put it (not an exact quote, but that was the gist).

Of course, teams should try to accrue surplus value when they can. Getting the most talent for the money is a good way to go about winning games. But surplus value is not an end in itself. While no one denies that profession baseball is a business and very few expect teams and owners to take foolish losses, but the point is to win.

Most of us probably think that in the context of major league baseball, “winning” finally means winning championships. We do not expect teams to go “all in” in an effort to win 73 games instead of 68. But if winning the World Series is the point, then there is a difference in kind between, for example, winning 87 games and not making the playoffs and winning 89, going on the road to the West Coast and at least having a shot.

Does this justify doing anything and everything, trading away key future prospects for a one-year shot and/or giving foolish contracts based on a chance to get into the playoffs, wherein the team will have a small chance to advance at all, much less get to and win the World Series? Obviously, it does not justify doing just anything for some small shot. Various factors, present and future, should be taken into account. Data must be sifted and choices must be made based on data and projections that are known to be fallible.

But without sentimentality, if we accept that the point of (even?) professional baseball is to try and win, then deciding at what point it is worth it to go for it, even if “it” is the second wild card spot, cannot just be boiled down to an algorithm. Perhaps that line should be a 55 percent chance to have a 42 percent chance to win the wildcard game. Maybe the line should be drawn at a 35 percent chance to make it. This is not to say that the line is drawn in an arbitrary faction. But whatever calculations inform the decision, an unquantifiable element is present.

IS A GOOD FRAMER ALSO A GOOD BLOCKER (AND VICE VERSA)?

Recently, we've spent a lot of time thinking about a catcher's ability to frame or receive the pitch in order to get more strike calls. However, that isn't the only job of a backstop -- blocking pitches in the dirt is a far more visible skill to most. Does being good at one affect your ability to be good at the other?

Listen to the skills that different catchers have listed as important to framing a pitch so that the umpire might best call it a strike:

"The less movement you have, the more likely he'™s going to call it a strike." -- Jonathan Lucroy.

"Get good at sticking it." -- Lucroy

"The emphasis is shifting to being as quiet as you can about receiving the ball and giving the umpire the best view of the pitch that you can."€ -- Jason Castro

"That'€™s part of what I'€™ve integrated into my catching this year is thinking about the angles in which I set up." -- Castro

"Give the lowest target possible." -- Hank Conger

"My stance is narrower." -- Conger

"I usually ask the umpire if I should get lower." -- Travis d'Arnaud

Now listen to the skills involved in blocking a pitch:

"You want to absorb it. You want to suck it in. You want to be relaxed. You don'€™t want to be stiff."€ -- Lucroy

"Square it up and keep it in front of you. Get your shoulder on top of it." -- Conger

"Just try to catch it instead of sticking it." -- d'Arnaud

"Your glove is supposed to stay between your legs, covering the six hole. You never want to use your glove, I would get in trouble for, because I was a glove-y kind of guy." -- Mike Newman

"Let the air out of your body as much as you can, so you deflate the ball." -- Newman

"Get as wide as possible with your elbows and shoulders." -- Newman

You can see that the skills are different. To frame a pitch, you want to be calm, small, and low while you stick the ball in your glove with a stiff wrist. To block a pitch, you want to be big, relaxed, and on top of the ball as you stop it with your body.

Take a look at the list of the top framers last year, according to StatCorner:

Fantastic framers:


Name Extra Calls/G RAA
Jonathan Lucroy 1.85 29.7
Chris Stewart 1.71 21.7
Yadier Molina 1.26 19.2
Jose Molina 1.73 18.6
Hank Conger 2.12 18.1
Russell Martin 1.14 17.0
Yan Gomes 1.49 15.2
J.P. Arencibia 0.92 14.9
Buster Posey 0.76 11.3
Yasmani Grandal 2.93 10.1
And now look at the list of the best blockers last year, on FanGraphs and based on the research by Bojan Koprivica:

Best blockers
Name RPP
Yadier Molina 5.9
Russell Martin 4.5
Jonathan Lucroy 4.3
Nick Hundley 3.5
Matt Wieters 3.1
Welington Castillo 3.1
Jarrod Saltalamacchia 2.8
Salvador Perez 2.6
Buster Posey 2.5
John Buck 2.0

Four guys in common, which isn't enough to make any sort of conclusions.

Let's take these two metrics and try to correlate them. Looks like framing (RAA) and blocking (RPP) are positively correlated (p-value
 
Team J. Up in the house. Just scratching the surface at 27. Is he already a top-10 OF?
Outfielders I would rather have than him (in no specific order):

Jose Bautista

Mike Trout

Andrew McCutchen

Giancarlo Stanton

Adam Jones

Carlos Gomez

Yasiel Puig

Jacoby Ellsbury

I would have Upton in the top 10.  However, your idea that he is "just scratching the surface" is not something I can get behind.  I think what you are seeing now is his peak....which is not a bad thing at all.  I think 2011 will be his best season when all is said and done.
 
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