Archive for Player Analysis

You’ve probably read countless treatises on the reasons that Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, or Justin Verlander would be more deserving of the Cy Young Award this year.

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but Rick Porcello is probably going to win the award. It’s going to upset a lot of quantitative purists that adjust for everything. Pick your favourite value-added statistic, and Rick probably doesn’t quite win it, or there is an inherent flaw where you can take something away from him on the stats that he did lead (WHIP and BB allowed). The truth is that this year’s winner will reflect quantitative and qualitative considerations.

Consistency, volume, and increasing difficulty  

He, of the never-meltdown. Rick allowed five runs once, and never failed to give his team 5.0 IP in any start this year. Not to suggest that innings-eating alone should be rewarded — Wade Miley, take a bow — but Porcello has provided a quality start in every start since June 28 (with the exception of one 4 ER, 6.2IP appearance on July 24). Tim Britton captures it well in a recent article for the Providence Journal, noting that every other candidate has been shelled a few times, and Hamels not once, not twice, but fifce! I’m sure it was nice for the boys in the dugout to know that if they played reasonably well offensively, that there was a very good chance to win every time Porcello was on the mound, and with it, a good chance that losing streaks would be rare for the team. A casual observation, much as any season-ticket holder in Boston might note, is that Porcello made one of the worst pitchers’ parks into a graveyard. 13-1, with a 2.88 ERA in Fenway, is no easy task.

With a decent start Friday night, Porcello finished with 223 IP. Both Sale and Verlander just clipped that, but Porcello finished near the highest inning total of the candidates, so workload could also be a consideration.

It also got no easier as the game wore on as he was better each time through the order: .264, .230, .195, and .121. Yes, Kluber has managed to pitch to some of the best soft contact this season, but that alone is not going to win the award, and is a fringy measure that does not have full traction from the press.

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Porcello puts in the work, keeps his head down, and would appear to be pretty humble about it. Most people didn’t even notice him over there in Boston. Porcello perhaps did not need to contend with throwback jerseys, but making confetti of your uniform isn’t the spirit of the game, and may well have left a Windy City starter as another man out this year.

Punishing wins & The Contender Effect

While it may be in vogue to punish pitchers for having good teammates, making allowance for consistency, Porcello has still won 22 games. Say what you will, but most people want a winner. A winner in a big market, with big stories, and a big slugger, are good things all-around for the league. Too often pitchers are victimized for the fielders behind them, but what is rarely addressed is that a pitcher can sometimes deploy this to his advantage, and Porcello has certainly made the best use of his team in this regard.

Frequency bias in the awarding of the AL Cy Young

Major League Baseball’s penchant for sharing has been well documented. This is well covered by a certain Managing Editor with a man who hits and walks, and who has been oft-written as being the ‘best-hitting guy’ every year, but who will likely finish second because, gosh, he’d much rather share with a friend from Boston with a winning smile. The writers association hasn’t allowed a repeat AL Cy Young winner since Pedro in the 99 & 00 seasons, and what I will call a ‘gap’ winner since 04 & 06 with Johan Santana. In both those cases, first-place votes were unanimous, and that certainly won’t be the case with this year’s crop. Kluber is ‘too soon’ (2014) and Verlander is too, well, I don’t know what, but he won it in 2011. Since Detroit failed to make the playoffs, I suppose you could pull in the Contender Effect that leaks into the psyche of proletariat, and certainly to some extent, with the voters.

Conclusion

It’s not that Porcello is so much more deserving of the award, but rather, that nobody else has distanced themselves from the pack so as to make themselves most deserving. In addition, he’s made a timely run for it against other guys who have ‘been here before’ or have given other reasons to not vote for them. He’s had some luck, but he has also shone in two of the leading controllable areas — by limiting walks (first among starters) and hits (first among starters in WHIP). There are qualitative factors that will affect the outcome and for these reasons, I think we’ll be crowning someone that has not won the award yet and that’s good for the game.

When we were growing up, my dad would sometimes refer to my sister and me as ingrates. I always had a sneaking suspicion that statement was ruthless. I was young and under the assumption that he provided us everything we needed and wanted because that was what he was designed to do. In a sense, that perception of him probably does reflect the “ungratefulness” that young children tend to posses, innocent as it may be, what with a child’s inherently feeble comprehension of interpersonal relationships. I am now the parent of a two-year-old boy and just the other night he saw a commercial for a Power Wheels Jeep Wrangler that elicited the following outburst:

“I want to go in there!”

“I want one!”

Finally he turned to peer into my eyes and, in order to accentuate the severity of his next mandate, he raised his index finger and spoke;

“Daddy, better buy me one.”

His tone became dramatically more somber than it had been for the first two exclamations, and it made me laugh the hardest. I am certain I was the narrator of many statements similar to this as a kid, but the reality is, when kids are given everything they want, it’s up to the parent to understand that if there is a perceived lack of gratitude, it is a direct byproduct of the parent’s efforts to make them happy or even to keep them alive.

Lately I’ve been thinking of how I can be really ungrateful for even truly fine baseball seasons. Even some All-Star seasons disappoint me, and I know I’m not alone. If Mike Trout was in the middle of putting up a 5-win season, we’d all be talking about what could be wrong with Mike Trout. When players set the bar so ridiculously high we tend to hold them to that standard for better or worse. As an actual example, it’s completely understandable to be disappointed by Bryce Harper’s 2016 season after last year’s masterpiece. The reality is, however, that he’s 23 and has currently produced 3.4 WAR. His baserunning and defense have been positives and he’s compiled over 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases while hitting 14 percent better than league average; that’s damn fine and yet it’s still a damn shame.

Paul Goldschmidt, meanwhile, is hitting .301/.414/.494 and has accrued 4.7 WAR and might surpass 30 SB this year. His 136 wRC+ is still great even if it’s not quite the 158 he’s put up over the last three seasons. So why do I feel the loathsome inklings of disappointment bubbling inside of me? Firstly, and admittedly shallow of me, I like my Goldschmidt with more extra-base hits. For the first time in his professional career, at any level, Goldschmidt’s ISO starts with a number under 2. It’s possible he has a nice final week and brings that number up into the .200 range, but there are still some potentially concerning blips in his batted-ball profile that could portend of further decline in production. What I’m referring to most specifically, as the title suggests, is that Paul Goldschmidt has developed a pop-up problem.

From 2011 through 2015, Goldschmidt’s cumulative IFFB% was 4.8%. This year it sits at 14%. He has 17 IFFB this year, which is the same amount he had in the three previous seasons combined. Pop-ups aren’t good as they’re essentially as productive as a strikeout. Here are the 10 players with the biggest increases in IFFB% in 2016 compared to 2015 among qualified hitters in both years.

I’m not suggesting there’s a positive correlation between popping up and performance, but it’s easy to make sense of some of the names that appear on this list. If you watched Josh Donaldson break down his swing on the MLB Network, you know that a lot of players are thinking about not hitting the ball on the ground because damage is done in the air. Did you know that DJ LeMahieu, at the time of this writing, has a higher slugging percentage than Goldschmidt? That’s bonkers. The league’s slugging percentage last year was .405, and this year it’s .418, but this group of players, minus Goldschmidt, have added, on average, 21 points to their slugging percentage, and part of that, for this group, has to be chalked up to putting more balls in the air.

What I’m hoping to highlight is that what is even more troublesome for Goldschmidt is that he is the only player in this top 10 who had an increase in their IFFB% while also seeing his fly-ball rate and hard-hit rate drop.

So I have what could be an insultingly obvious hypothesis: since Goldschmidt has long been a quality opposite-field hitter, I am theorizing that pitchers are exploiting him with more fastballs up and in where he can’t quite get his hands extended. A cursory glance at his heat map vs. fastballs in 2015 and 2016 reveals a minor shift in approach by the league.

 

Besides the obvious, which is that pitchers are avoiding the zone even more than they had before, we can see just a bit more red in the specific zone I was referring to. It’s not so glaring or even enough information to make any conclusions, so let’s see if that area is where pitchers are getting Goldy to pop up. On the year, per Brooks Baseball, he has 22 pop-ups, 19 from fastballs and three from offspeed pitches. The 17 that are classified as IFFB by FanGraphs are plotted in the graph below.

*the two pitches towards the outside corner (for Goldschmidt) are sliders.

However, it’s not as if pitchers have previously avoided throwing Goldschmidt up and in; it just appears, despite his overall swing rate being at a career-low 39%, he’s upped his swing rate against fastballs by over five percentage points in that specific area just above 3.5 ft. And that area has the largest concentration of his pop-ups.  Looking at the entire area middle/up/and in to Goldschmidt, he has increased his swing rate from 57.2% in 2015 to 60.7% in 2016 while staying away from lower pitches in general. It’s a philosophy that is being echoed throughout baseball right now, and it is not at all a bad plan, but it has caused him, either deliberately or due the effect of swinging at these pitches more often, to go to the opposite field this season less than he ever has. This also is not necessarily a negative shift in regards to a batted-ball profile, but from 2013 – 2015 Goldschmidt was the fifth-most productive hitter in baseball going the other way, and in 2016 he’s 33rd. That represents a drop in wRC+ from 204 to 158, and from a .729 SLG (.329 ISO) to a .647 SLG (.255 ISO). I’ve long since regarded Goldschmidt to be in the same tier of hitters as Trout, Votto, Cabrera, and pre-2016 McCutchen, and it would be a shame for him to move away from a facet of his game that enables him to produce at that elite level.

At the end of this season I don’t think I’ll actually be all that worried about Goldschmidt; I can reconcile a 136 wRC+, even if it would feel a little disappointing. I wrote about Paul Goldschmidt last year and I wasn’t worried then, either. But I do think if I’m going to take a 136 wRC+ for granted I should place that appreciation toward the catalyst for this change in Goldschmidt’s performance, and a lot of that credit has to go to the pitchers who have induced 17 IFFB from a player who only averaged 5.7 over the last three seasons.

Now I know that setting up a pitch has so much more to do with an entire at-bat, game, or even season than the pitch that was thrown immediately before it, but for this exercise I want to look at the pitch that caused Goldschmidt to pop up and how it relates to the pitch thrown immediately before it. It’s crude and does not tell the whole story, but it still shows a definite approach — and, for all intents and purposes, it’s probably a decent representation of a general tactic used across the league for inducing pop-ups. I found all the data I needed using PITCHf/x at Brooks Baseball and I recorded the velocity, horizontal movement, vertical movement, horizontal location, and vertical location of each pitch Goldschmidt popped out on as well as the same data set for each set-up pitch if there was one (which would be in any situation where Goldschmidt did not pop up on the first pitch of an-bat). Below you’ll find a plot that shows the average location and characteristics of each pitch.

And here is that data in a table represented as the average difference between the two plot points.

Doesn’t it make you feel warm when something fits into the shape you had pegged it to be? That’s just really simple and makes a hell of a lot of sense. Or maybe I feel warm for taking something that was disappointing and turning it into something I can really appreciate.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Power Wheels Jeep Wrangler to buy.

Todd Frazier has 38 home runs this year. That’s probably a strange way to start off a post about Juan Uribe but hang with me.

Todd Frazier has 38 home runs this year. Todd Frazier also has a wRC+ of 100 this year. That is a pretty remarkable combination. According to wRC+ Frazier has been exactly an average hitter this year despite the fact that he is currently 8th in all of baseball in home runs. This interesting and seemingly unlikely union piqued my curiosity and sent me down a statistical rabbit hole in search of home runs and terrible wRC+’s. At the bottom of that rabbit hole is where I ran into Juan Uribe.

Juan Uribe has not played an MLB game since July 30th. In that game he went 0-for-3 and he was released by Cleveland a few days later on August 6th. This probably wasn’t a surprise to most people as A) Most people probably would be more surprised to learn he was still in the league to begin with, and B) he was running a 54 wRC+ over 259 PA with Cleveland this year.

But I’m not here to argue that someone should give Uribe a job because his current talent level deserves one (although you probably could; he was nearly a 2-WAR player as recently as last year). I’m here to argue for someone to give him a job because Juan Uribe is on the cusp of history. Juan Uribe has 199 career home runs.

You might think that 200 career home runs isn’t that much of a milestone and it’s only because humans love round numbers that we even recognize it as a milestone. And you would be absolutely correct in saying that. But much like Todd Frazier’s 38 home runs this year, Juan Uribe’s 200 career home runs would be fairly unique. In fact they would be entirely unlike anyone before him because Juan Uribe would be the worst hitter to ever hit 200 home runs.

That is the board of directors of the Terrible 200 Club (patent pending) and as you can see Juan Uribe is poised to unseat Tony “why the hell am I standing sideways at the plate” Batista as CEO with one more measly home run, and by a pretty decent margin. Obviously though his bid is now under threat because he is 37 years old, has been without a team for over a month now and was absolutely awful when he did have a team. It is entirely possible, maybe even likely, that he never hits another MLB home run. And it’s not like there is another current player who is a slam dunk to make a run at Batista if Uribe never steps into the batter’s box again:

–Brandon Phillips will get to 200 but he is sneaky old. He turned 35 in June, so while he is nowhere near what he was earlier in his career it seems unlikely that he plays long enough to see his career wRC+ fall below 90.

–AJ Pierzynksi is all but done at this point. At 39 years old and nearly a win below replacement level this year it’s probably more likely that the ghost of Clete Boyer gets signed and hits 38 home runs to get to 200 as it is Pierzynski hits 12 more in his career.

-Which bring us to James Jerry Hardy. Hardy seemed to be doing his best to crater his wRC+, posting a dreadful 50 last year, but he has rebounded (relatively speaking) to post a 93 so far this year. One has to wonder if he can even get to 200 home runs (he still needs 16 more to get there and he has hit only 26 over his past 1404 PAs), and secondly, if he does, will he post a wRC+ low enough to “best” Batista? You could probably argue that any version of Hardy that is good enough to get to 200 homers is probably also good enough to not decimate his career wRC+.

The easiest solution is for some intrepid and/or awful team to just give Uribe a spot so that he can chase history with each swing. Atlanta, Arizona, Minnesota, what have you guys got to lose? Would a Kickstarter or GoFundMe to pay some of his salary help? It would just be such a shame for the baseball public to be denied a potentially marvelous thing when it’s so close to realization. Like teasing a dog by pretending to throw a ball or every season after the first one of Homeland.

Somewhere Tony Batista is sitting in a recliner, probably in some crazy way that no one else sits in recliners because he is Tony Batista, just waiting for the news that Uribe has been picked up by someone so he can hand the crown to the new king of the Terrible 200 (patent pending). He just needs a little help. Let’s make this happen, MLB.

*College stats taken from thebaseballcube.com, minor-league stats taken from fangraphs.com and MLBfarm.com

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Last week, Baseball America released their Arizona Fall League (AFL) rosters. For those not familiar with the AFL, read more here. In short: each August, all 30 MLB clubs select six players from their minor-league rosters to participate in the fall league. While the minor-league playoffs wrap up toward the end of September, the AFL serves as a domestic developmental league starting in October.

The AFL is prestigious, bringing together some of the top minor-league talent each year. Aside from well-known names, organizations tend to also invite rising prospects who have flown under the radar. Although these NL Central prospects have gotten little public hype, their recent numbers have impressed enough to earn an invite to the AFL, making them intriguing names to watch in the coming months.

Barrett Astin – RHP 6’1” 200, Blue Wahoos (Reds AA), Age: 24 (Video)

Astin had a strong 2012 season as a closer during his sophomore year at the University of Arkansas, helping a well-staffed Razorback team to the College World Series. However, he started all five of his appearances in the Cape Cod league that off-season, where he posted an underwhelming 6.23 K/9 and 2.91 BB/9 through 21.2 IP. He went back to college to find himself in the rotation for the majority of the year, though scouts questioned his durability as a starter as he continued to struggle to go deep into games, going more than 6 IP in only one start. He was signed in the 3^rd round in the 2013 draft at slot value by the Brewers, soon being dealt to the Reds for Jonathan Broxton a year later.

Despite being omitted from MLB.com’s top 30 Reds prospects this season, the Reds chose to send Astin to the AFL after having an impressive season in AA alternating between the bullpen and the rotation. In 103.1 IP, he posted an 8.39 K/9 (his career high) with a 2.18 BB/9 and a strong 65.02 GB%, numbers that would play well at hitter-friendly Great American Ball Park.  His ERA sits at 2.26, which is best in the Southern League and roughly 40% better than the league’s average ERA. His low BABIP (.246) and high LOB% (78.9%) may lead to some regression when it comes to run prevention, but FIP still has him pegged at an above average 3.37. His 11 starts have yielded similar peripherals to his numbers from out of the bullpen. However he still showed durability issues, only averaging 5.1 IP/GS this year.

The question is the same now as it was the day he was drafted: can he stay a starter? Considering the Reds have Homer Bailey, Anthony DeSclafani, and possibly Cody Reed solidified in the rotation with prospects Amir Garrett and Robert Stephenson expecting to be in the rotation as well, my guess is that Astin’s ticket to the big leagues will be as part of the relief corps for the Reds. His inability to show consistent stamina and his better numbers against righties than lefties (all 8 HR allowed this year have been off of lefties) all indicate he is better suited as a bullpen option. Considering the Reds’ well documented bullpen problems this year, Astin could have his MLB debut with a rebuilding Reds team sometime next year if all goes well. His AFL stint should give a good indication on which direction he is trending heading into his 25^th birthday.

James Farris – RHP 6’2” 210, Smokies (Cubs AA), Age: 24 (Video)

Another participant in the 2012 College World Series, Farris started and pitched seven innings in Arizona’s World Series-clinching win. He was drafted in the 15^th round by the Astros after a below-average junior campaign, only to return to Arizona for his senior year. He was drafted in the 9^th round by the Cubs at the end of the his last and best year playing in the Pac-12.

Baseball America’s draft-day scouting report notes that Farris does not have overpowering stuff and transformed into a smart, command-oriented pitcher over the course of his four seasons with the Wildcats (subscription required). His best pitch is his changeup, with a 85-89 mph fastball, which he mixes speeds to add cut to, and a below-average curveball to round out his arsenal. His lack of an average third pitch gave the Cubs reason to put him in the bullpen, where he has spent all 127 innings in the minors thus far, and is part of the reason he is not a top-30 prospect in a highly talented Cubs farm system according to MLB.com.

The Cubs’ decision to put Farris in late-inning situations out of the bullpen has paid dividends thus far. In his minor-league career, he holds a 2.91 ERA with a 10.70 K/9 to a 2.69 BB/9, despite only holding a 6.95 K/9 throughout his four years starting at Arizona. He has an average ground-ball rate and the ability to suppress power (as he also did in college), only yielding 2 HR in his professional career thus far. Because of his high strikeout rate and low HR/FB%, ERA estimators have been lower than his ERA.

Farris’ performance thus far has been a pleasant surprise considering the bargain the senior signed for only $3,000. The question surrounding Farris is whether or not he can sustain the numbers he has put up to this point in his career. His sample size has been relatively small, so tracking Farris’ outings in the AFL should shed more light onto the legitimacy what he has done the past couple years. With key pieces Aroldis Chapman, Pedro Strop, Trevor Cahill, and Travis Wood all free agents to be, there could be some room for Farris sometime next year depending on how the Cubs’ off-season and spring training play out.

Corey Littrell – LHP 6’3” 185, Redbirds (Cardinals AA), Age: 24 (Video)

Littrell was drafted out of high school in the 43^rd round by the Nationals, but was too committed to the University of Kentucky to sign. After starting for the Cats for three years, he was drafted in the 5^th round by the Red Sox for near slot value in 2013. He was traded the next year to the Cardinals in the deal that brought Joe Kelly and Allen Craig to Boston in exchange for John Lackey, Littrell and $1.75MM in cash.

A lanky pitcher who lost 10 pounds since draft day according to the Memphis Redbirds official roster, Corey has a similar frame to his father and grandfather, who both played professional baseball as well. According to MLB.com, Littrell is the 29^th-best prospect in the Cardinals organization. He throws a fastball that sits 88-90 that plays as average because of above-average command down in the zone. He also has three other average offerings: a changeup, a curveball and a cutter with slider-like action. He was a starter until this year, where he has come out of the bullpen in 52/53 appearances between AA Springfield and AAA Memphis.

After a quick and effective stint in AA to start off his 2016 campaign, Littrell struggled with control in AAA with a hefty 5.08 BB/9 paired with a slightly above-average 8.59 K/9 in 51.1 IP. One positive note for Littrell is that he has done well controlling balls in play since his switch to the bullpen. His 2016 ground-ball rate is up to an above-average 51.5%, which is a career high. His run prevention, however, has been subpar due to his high walk rate, yielding a 4.56 ERA and 5.01 FIP in Springfield.

Since the Cardinals bullpen has been average to date according to WAR and the majority of the relievers are controlled through next year, there may not be a spot for Littrell to begin the Cardinals’ 2017 season unless he impresses from here on out. However, if he can regain the control in the AFL that he had before his promotion to AAA and keep it through the beginning of next year, he could become an option for the Cardinals sometime next season.

We are reaching the end of the 2016 fantasy-baseball season, which means two things: 1) It’s time to look ahead to next season a bit, and 2) the sample sizes on many metrics are either stabilized or right around the corner from stabilizing.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few of players who are sure to be trendy draft picks in 2017, and see what their potential downfalls might be. This is not to say to avoid these players, but rather to spot a potential weakness so that if you do draft this player, and they start to struggle you can maybe know why, and see if it is a recurring issue, instead of just a bit of bad luck. Let’s meet our contestants:

Rougned Odor

In many ways Rougned Odor has had his coming-out party this season. He has hit 31 home runs through 135 games, adding in 12 steals, to go along with a .282 batting average, and strong production (85 runs and RBI each). He’s been the fifth-best second baseman by the ESPN player rater, and that’s with two players (Daniel Murphy and Jean Segura) with multiple positions above him in the ranks. He even got famous on the national scene with his punch heard round the hot-take tables in May.

However, when looking at his plate discipline, it has somehow got even worse than it was last year. His walk rate has dropped to 3.0 percent (17 walks all season!), while his strikeout rate has climbed above 20 percent (20.9, to be exact). His swing rate on pitches outside the zone is seventh in all of baseball, while his contact on those pitches outside the zone isn’t even in the top 80. That’s a dangerous duo. Talented players who hit the ball as hard as Odor can sustain success while flailing that much for a little while, but in the long haul, it almost always burns you. Odor could certainly make strides to improve his discipline, but coming off the season he is having, why is he going to try to change anything? He may well need a rough season, or at least rough couple of months, to admit he needs to fix the holes in his swing, and you don’t want to deal with that when he does.

Jon Lester

With a record of 16-4 and a 2.51 ERA, Lester is having arguably the best season of his career. He’s a candidate for the Cy Young, and currently trails only Noah Syndergaard and teammate, Kyle Hendricks, in the race for the lowest ERA in all of baseball. There are plenty of signs for regression, though.

For starters, Lester is 32, and while left-handed pitchers seem to age like a fine wine sometimes, that’s only because we forget about the guys who crash and burn and are out of the league by 34. Now Lester is showing no real signs of aging, but he also has signs of regression elsewhere.

His left-on-base rate is currently leading all qualified pitchers, at 85.5 percent. That’s more than 10 percent higher than his career rate, and by far the highest percent of his career. That’s especially amazing considering Lester can’t even throw to first base, meaning runners should be moving around the bases faster on him if anything. He is also one of the FIP-ERA leaders, thanks to a well below-average opponent BABIP (.257).

There’s also the fact that, while not by a huge margin, Lester’s strikeout rate has also dropped this season, while the rest of the league is striking out more batters than ever. If you’re already going to get some regression in terms of ERA and wins, you best not be losing strikeouts, as well.

I don’t think Lester is going to fall off a cliff, but I also don’t think he’ll be repeating his 2016 performance next year.

Michael Fulmer

We’ll start with the most obvious candidate for overdrafting. Fulmer will be a 23-year-old, (likely) coming off an American League Rookie of the Year Award, and pitching for a strong Tigers team. He may well win the AL ERA crown, and will easily have a winning record. Heck, he’s got an outside shot at a Cy Young in what has been a weak year for AL pitchers.

That being said, there are some definite weak spots in his profile, the most obvious being his FIP-ERA. If one were to simply go to the FIP-ERA leaderboard — a good spot to at least start to find potential regression candidates — Fulmer’s name is sitting there in fourth, trailing only Kyle Hendricks (borderline historic ERA), Brandon Finnegan (a guy who would have certainly made this list if he were famous enough), and Ian Kennedy (a professor at Hogwarts in the baseball offseason).

It’s more than just the FIP with Fulmer, though. His left-on-base rate is over 80 percent (81.3, to be exact), and his opponent BABIP is just .251. He allows over 30 percent hard-hit rate and his line-drive rate allowed is nearly 20 percent, which while not terrible, do not portend a Cy Young winner.

With Fulmer, it’s more an accumulation of slights rather than one big one, combined with the fact that he will be an extremely trendy pick. There’s no reason to believe he won’t finish the year 13-8 with a 3.35 ERA and 140 strikeouts, but you’ll have to pay for much better stats than that to land him.

Ryan Braun

Like all of the players on this list, Braun is having one of his best seasons in 2016, which is saying something for the six-time All-Star. Braun is hitting .310 with 27 home runs, both of which are his highest since 2012. He has also stolen 14 bases, and only been caught three times, impressive for a 32-year-old.

But it’s not Braun’s age that is troubling (although it is obviously worth remembering come draft day); it’s his ground-ball rate. Braun is seventh in all of baseball in ground-ball rate, surrounded by names like Jonathan Villar and Cesar Hernandez. He has hit ground balls on 55.6 percent of the balls he has put in play in 2016, and has only hit fly balls on 25.4 percent. Because of that, it’s hard to imagine his home-run totals staying as high as they are right now in 2017.

Braun is currently sporting a HR/FB rate of 28.4 percent, highest in the major leagues. Ask Jose Abreu owners what it is like to own the reigning HR/FB rate champion. Here’s how the last four HR/FB rate champions fared the next season:

2012 Adam Dunn – 41 HRs; 2013 Adam Dunn – 34 HRs

2013 Chris Davis – 53 HRs; 2014 Chris Davis – 26 HRs

2014 Jose Abreu – 36 HRs; 2015 Jose Abreu – 30 HRs

2015 Nelson Cruz 44 HRs; 2016 Nelson Cruz 35 HRs (with 18 games to go)

Only Chris Davis fell off the earth, but none of the four went up. If you’re buying on Braun’s power, you’re basically buying at its highest point, which is never a good idea. Especially with a 32-year-old.

Jose Fernandez

Yes, we are getting a little bit into “snake eating his own tail,” by turning advanced metrics against Jose Fernandez, after spending all of the first couple months using the advanced numbers to show a turnaround was imminent, but it was foolish to ignore Fernandez’s biggest weakness: his line-drive rate allowed.

Opponents are hitting line drives off Fernandez 29.3 percent of the time in 2016, by far the highest percent among qualified pitchers, and a rate that tops even Freddie Freeman, the 2016 league-leader in line-drive rate.

Part of that can be explained by the fact that Fernandez throws so hard, that of course the ball is going to come out faster — that’s just physics. It also isn’t as big a deal to allow such a high line-drive rate, when you also have, by far, the highest strikeout rate in the big leagues this season (34.9 percent). It doesn’t matter how hard you hit it, if you simply can’t hit it.

However, that line-drive rate certainly helps to explain the fact that opponents have a BABIP of .341 off Fernandez this year, a figure that would seem due for some regression in favor of Fernandez if we missed looking at the full picture. Some 2017 drafters may see Fernandez’s .341 BABIP and his 2.27 FIP and assume that his 2017 ERA will drop into the low 2.00s. If Fernandez keeps allowing line drives at the rate he has this season, there’s no reason to think his ERA will drop at all. Now drafting a player with an ERA of 3.00 and the best strikeout rate in baseball is still never a bad idea, but if batters start to elevate their swings against Fernandez, while maintaining that same hard contact, Jose could see his home-run rate jump up quite a bit, even when pitching in pitcher-friendly Marlins Park.

Fernandez allowed just as high a line-drive rate in his 11 starts in 2015, and while some of it may still be noise, it is something to keep an eye on. Especially if you have Fernandez in a long-term keeper league, and he eventually makes a move to somewhere like Fenway where the stadium might be a lot less forgiving than in Miami.

I watch a lot of baseball. I get to see a lot of players. Some of them will go on to have productive major-league careers, but most will not. The point of this article is to look at some of those who may, at the the very least, reach the show.

This report comes after observing two NY-Penn League (low-A) series in late August/early Sept. and includes players from the Oakland Athletics, Boston Red Sox, and Houston Astros organizations.

I will introduce each player as follows:

Name, Position, Organization, Organizational Prospect Rank, Age

Dakota Chalmers, RHP, Oakland Athletics, Rank: 9, Age: 19

Chalmers was drafted out of a Georgia high school in 2015. He’s a four-pitch pitcher– fastball, changeup, curveball, slider. Though, there’s only a 2-3 mph difference between his slider and curveball and not much of a visible difference. His fastball sat 91-93 when I saw him last week; I’ve seen him as high as 93-95. He has a high-effort delivery and control remains his biggest issue, which I’d say is a pretty good place to be as a 19-year-old. His fastball and curveball/slider look above-average, while his changeup shows potential but still is inconsistent in terms of location. I imagine he didn’t have to throw it that often in high-school competition last year.

Logan Shore, RHP, Oakland Athletics, Rank: 12, Age: 21

Shore’s strength is his command. His fastball sits 90-92 and he also throws a changeup (his best pitch) and slider. He pounds the zone and shows the ability to throw any pitch for a strike in any count. He made one (big) mistake during his last outing – an opposite-field three-run home run– but otherwise was solid. His slider remains his weakest pitch, but when it’s on (and it mostly is) he sees a lot of quick and easy outs. I would imagine he won’t add much velocity in the future as he’s already filled out, but can still see him being an effective pitcher nonetheless.

C.J. Chatham, SS, Boston Red Sox, Rank: 15, Age: 21

Interestingly, Chatham is a tall (6’4) shortstop whose biggest strength is his defense. Many at his size project better as third basemen, but it looks like Chatham has the ability to stay at short. He uses his long frame well to cover ground and also shows good arm strength. At the plate, the first thing that stood out was his aggressiveness as he swung at seven of nine first pitches. He also showed some line-drive power, hitting two doubles (one over the center fielder’s head and one down the left-field line) in the two games I saw.

Bobby Dalbec, 3B, Boston Red Sox, Rank: 21, Age: 21

This guy hits the ball really really hard. I saw him in eight at-bats – three strikeouts and five very well-hit balls. Even his outs were hit hard. He looks like an all-or-nothing type hitter. Lots of doubles and home runs but a lot of strikeouts. A former pitcher in college, Dalbec definitely has the arm to remain at third base. His range looked good too — he made one nice play to his right, a charging backhand near third base while having to throw across his body to get the out.

Ronnie Dawson, OF, Houston Astros, Rank: 18, Age: 21

Another all-or-nothing-type hitter, Dawson was drafted in the second round of the 2016 draft out of Ohio State. He looks like he could have been a running back at OSU too — standing 6’2 and 225 lbs. His power and bat speed definitely show – he smoked a line-drive double down the right-field line when I saw him. But so do the swings and misses – he struck out in his other three at-bats. Defensively, Dawson projects more as left fielder as his arm and speed aren’t two of his better tools. From the eye test, Dawson reminds me of the Indians’ Carlos Santana, except Santana strikes out a lot less (14% compared to Dawson’s 24%).

[This analysis is also featured in our emerging blog www.theimperfectgame.com]

With less than one month to go, the American League MVP race is very close. While usually nothing is set on stone in early September, during the last few years the AL MVP has been a two-man race (Mike Trout with either Josh Donaldson or Miguel Cabrera). This year, however, features five remarkable candidates: Mookie Betts, David Ortiz, Jose Altuve, Mike Trout and Josh Donaldson. Yes, I expect a few other to grab a few top-five votes (e.g. Cano, Cabrera, Lindor and Machado) but I don’t anticipate the award to fall outside those five players.

Let’s look at the classic, old-school numbers first, which not only are sometimes referenced in casual conversations at local bars and pubs but also frequently (and occasionally unfortunately) followed by voters. I’ve plotted R, RBI, HR, OBP, SLG and SB as percentiles of the entire population. Let’s take a quick look.

If you like well-rounded players, probably this year you’re excited with Altuve, Trout and Betts, who dominate across the board. In an era where stolen bases keep declining, 20+ SB will get you to the 90th percentile. On the other hand, if you’re into true sluggers, then the show Ortiz has put this season should be one to remember. However, then again, these metrics paint only part of the picture — they don’t take into account when or where each event happened nor they include defense or base running on its most complete form.

Let’s take a deeper look at WAR and a quick indicator for each batting, fielding and base-running performance.

Obviously when we move away from batting, David Ortiz loses ground — he only contributes in one aspect of the game, and while he has been outstanding in the batter’s box, likely it will not be enough for him to win. When we adjust by park and league, we realize the Trout – Betts race for the best OF is not as close as I initially thought. Trout has quietly put a(nother) great season on an awful team (again) — he’s already at 8.1 WAR and a 175 wRC+, with both easily leading the league. His defense is slightly below average at best but he compensates by running extremely well. Altuve and Donaldson have had similar seasons offensively. However, Altuve is having a down season in both defense and base-running (remarkably low on Ultimate Base Running (UBR), which measures how frequently and effectively a runner takes an extra base via running). Betts drives his value largely from his defense, where he’s settled in nicely as one of the best OF this year.

One of the metrics I tend to assess when I look at awards is how performance was spread the entire season. I want an MVP to be someone that I rely throughout the year, not only during a hot stretch. Additionally, having a big month can really uplift the numbers and build up a misleading argument in favor of someone. Let’s understand how wRC+ is split by month.

This picture to me is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, part of the argument on Betts’ candidacy is that he’s getting better, and delivering when it matters the most — in the middle of a pennant race. After a below-average March/April, Betts has been a beast since July, when Ortiz cooled off a bit. Now, then again, Mike Trout has also followed an upward-trending curve — peaking at 206 in August — and his lowest point is at 144, which is the highest of all lowest points in the sample. From my perspective, if everything else is equal, I’d rather have a Trout-esque curve than Donaldson’s one, who has the highest single-month wRC+ (213 in June) but also with the largest swing (118 difference between May and June). And then you have remarkably constant Altuve — with the narrowest gap between highest and lowest points throughout the season and at least 140 wRC+ in any given month.

Now, most of what we have shown up to now is context-neutral. An argument could be made that every single game is worth the same, regardless of whether it’s in April or July — what’s really important is to deliver in key, high-leverage situations. There is where true MVPs show their full potential to influence a team and define its fate. As they say, a home run against a non-contender team when you are losing by five runs is not as valuable as a game-winning double against our wild-card-rival’s closer in the 9th inning. I’ll admit neither OPS in high-leverage situation or Win Probability Added (WPA) is the perfect metric to evaluate this, but they provide a very good proxy to how well they have fared in tough, game-changing situations. If you are not familiar with WPA, please click here.

Again we see the usual suspect — Mike ‘King’ Trout — leading not only this graph but the MLB with his 5.66 WPA, closely followed by Josh Donaldson, and they’re the only two players from this sample to have a higher OPS in high-leverage situations than in low-leverage ones. Interestingly, Boston’s Betts and Ortiz’s OPS go down 9% and 15% respectively when the stakes are high. I definitely don’t want to say that Altuve’s 0.841 OPS in high leverage is bad, but I certainly want to recognize Donaldson’s and Trout’s clutchier performance.

Another way of looking at the MVP is to ask yourself: Where would that team be if that player wouldn’t have been part of it? While in essence it is impossible to know for sure the answer, a nice proxy is to measure what percentage of position-player WAR is that player responsible for, i.e. what percentage share does this player represent.

Well, this is another way to see Mike Trout’s leadership on the field. Almost half of the Angels’ WAR have Trout’s name attached to it, which is amazing. (For reference, the leaders in this table are Khris Davis and Marcus Semien with 122% (2.2 WAR each out of 1.6 Athletics total WAR). Now, Donaldson and Altuve have, too, a remarkable 33% and 35% of their total, but probably Betts falls short again with his 23%.

At the end, when all is said and done, it looks like numbers indicate it should go down to a Donaldson vs. Trout race, just as it was in 2015. Ortiz has had an amazing season but his base-running and defense (or lack thereof) limit his overall impact on his team. Betts is definitely an exciting, five-tool player, but his performance hasn’t been as good as Donaldson’s or as consistent as Trout’s. Additionally, Boston’s talent-loaded team reduces his value (this is the opposite of the Trout-Angels argument – how valuable can you be when your team would perform well, even if you’re not there?). His future is extremely bright though. Finally you have Altuve, who may have a legitimate case but falls (a bit) short on overall performance to Donaldson and Trout. Houston has under-performed and arguably that’s a worse outcome than Trout’s, because we knew the Angels were going to be bad, but we thought the Astros would be better.

Last year, Donaldson built his case with a magnificent August, when he posted a 1.132 OPS and Toronto got to first place in the AL East. This year it was Trout who had a torrid August, but the Angels are not in the wild card race. It surely seems to me as if we are measuring the MVP as a team award. Though I understand the rationale of having an MVP on a winning team, there is more to it. If I had a vote, and still being a few games away from the end of the season, I’d support Trout in his quest for his second MVP (as of today), but it looks like momentum and narrative are gaining traction around Donaldson — who has posted much better numbers than in his MVP season — Altuve — who brings new blood to the MVP discussion and might get an extra push if Houston makes it to the playoffs — and Betts — who is clearly the face of Boston’s extremely talented young generation. They, though, despite great Septembers, will post worse numbers than Trout. Yes, the Angels are a bad team — but to what extend is that Trout’s fault? What else could he have done? When did ‘valuable’ translate into ‘winning by himself beyond reasonable expectations’? When did we change this award to ‘best player on the best team’? In 2012 it was Cabrera’s Triple Crown and in 2015 it was Donaldson’s ‘ability’ to get Toronto to the postseason for the first time in many years. In 2016, Trout has been comprehensively better, avoided any deep slumps during the season, and performed very well under pressure and shown that you can put counting stats up on a bad team. We are running out of excuses this year.

I’m working under the hypothesis that you can use launch angle on balls hit to the outfield to determine an outfielder’s relative strength.

The more I look at the data, the more convinced I’m becoming.

So I downloaded the 2015 and 2016 KC Royals Statcast data to see if I could compare their major outfielders’ performance year to year and see a couple things. What I’ve done is bucket hits to the OF by launch angle (in two-degree increments) and calculate a percentage of that contact resulting in a HIT or an OUT. Simple as that. So what I’m comparing between years is:

1) Are the hit likelihood percentages for each angle by OF reasonably projectable year to year
2) Does improvement in my angle metric result in improvement in other defense metrics

First let’s look at Jarrod Dyson. He’s one of the best outfielders in MLB. He recorded, per FanGraphs, 11 DRS in 2015 and to date has 18 DRS in 2016. His 2015 UZR/150 was 18.4 and in 2016 to date it’s 28.7. So both of the “new-traditional” type defense stats are saying, he’s not only good but he’s getting better in 2016 versus 2015. What does my angular stat suggest?

The red points are for ’16 Dyson while the blue is ’15. The left linear regression equation (with the .837 R2) is 2015 while the right (R2 .7796) is 2016. This shows Dyson as a similar player year to year, but likely a bit better. On the higher-angle fly balls, it does appear that Dyson has done a better job this year tracking them down; however, it also appears that in 2015 he did a bit better catching some of the lower-angled fly balls. So it’s not entirely clear, from this graph, why Dyson is per DRS and UZR having such a better defensive year. To have something like this happen, it could indicate that maybe Dyson is starting to play deeper than before. This would limit the likelihood of him catching the low-angled line drives to the OF, but help track down more true fly balls. I’d certainly be interested to see if Dyson is actually doing that very thing this year.

When it comes to projecting year to year, the R2 for Dyson’s ’15 to ’16 hit likelihood % was: 0.532. In real life this is a pretty strong correlation, so I’d say it’s a reasonable estimator.

How about we look at KC OF defensive darling Alex Gordon:

Again the red points are for ’16 Gordon while the blue is ’15. The left linear regression equation (with the .939R2) is 2015 while the right (R2 .8424) is 2016. It jumps right out to you how much smoother Gordon’s regressions are than Dyson’s. Maybe experience leads to that, who knows. So the 2016 regression line (the dashed one) shows that contact to him in the OF is a bit more likely to land for a hit now in 2016 than it was in 2015. This would suggest that Alex Gordon is having a worse year defensively in ’16 than ’15.

How do DRS and UZR/150 compare? Well, Alex has a DRS of 3 in 2016 and had a DRS of 7 in 2015. So he does seem to be trending a bit lower, though not too much. And he has a UZR/150 in 2016 of 9.9 whereas that was 10.5 in 2015. So in this case it all sort of agrees. Gordon seems to be a step or two slower (age and injuries easily could account for that) and as a result his defense has stepped backward a bit. Interestingly he’s still doing about the same job on balls that are high-likelihood hits — the more difficult plays. It’s really at the end of the spectrum where the balls are unlikely to be hits anyway that Alex seems to be struggling. So maybe the “skills” are still there, but the athleticism has just faded a bit and he can’t run down those long fly balls anymore. This is sort of the opposite of Dyson. Maybe Gordon is in fact playing too shallow, cheating to ensure his reputation for robbing sure hits stays intact while losing a bit of overall range, creating a situation where some balls land that probably should have been outs.

When it comes to projecting year to year, the R2 for Gordon’15 to ’16 hit likelihood % was: 0.778. This is excellent and I think it is clearly visible from the chart just how projectable year to year this would be.

What about All-Star and defensive stalwart Lorenzo Cain?

Again the red points are for ’16 Cain while the blue is ’15. The left linear regression equation (with the .8876 R2) is 2015 while the right (R2 .9073) is 2016. Well this is interesting — it’s just as though you shifted the line up ever so slightly. A 2016 higher trendline would indicate that contact to the outfield around Lorenzo would be more likely than last year to result in a base hit. This would indicate he too has backslid some from his 2015 self. So what do UZR and DRS say? DRS in 2016 is 11 whereas it was 18 in 2015. But UZR/150 is currently 15.4 in 2016 and it was only 14.1 in 2015. So there is a bit of confusion as to Cain’s 2016 performance, relative to ’15. Clearly he is still an excellent outfielder by all measures, but I would lean toward him trending in the negative direction in ’16 and moving forward.

Given the two linear regressions and data sets, you’d have to believe you could use this data to project very accurately the future year. And you’d be right. Cain’s year-to-year R2 checks in at 0.955.

Well what about newcomer Paulo Orlando? he already seems to be living up to the newfound tradition of excellent KC outfield defense:

Paulo Orlando is sort of the exact reverse of Cain. His trend has basically just taken an entire step down. This means balls are less likely to be hits now than before. So do UZR and DRS agree with Orlando taking what appears to be a reasonable step forward? Surprisingly no. DRS from ’15 to ’16 has jumped from 8 to 12, but Orlando has played a lot more innings which more or less would explain that growth. And his UZR/150 went from 14.0 in 2015 to 8.7 now in 2016. So these metrics both seem to think Orlando is the same if not a little worse than in ’15.

Projecting using Orlando’s earlier year is, like with Cain, excellent. There is an R2 of .90 between the two data sets.

So for my questions:

1) Are the hit-likelihood percentages projectable year to year? This seems to be a resounding yes, at least in the case of KC Royals. The R2 was always greater than 0.5 with two instances of the four being over 0.9! I’m starting to believe this really could mean something in regards to defense evaluation.
2) How does my angle measure compare to UZR/DRS? There do seem to be some differences; however, this is basically the norm in the “new” defense evaluations. No universal system has been developed and there are plenty of cases where UZR and DRS themselves have disagreements.

I do think in the end this has some merit and I will be looking further into it. I also think similar work can be done with regards to hit speed, as I already alluded to in my earlier article:

http://www.fangraphs.com/community/using-statcast-to-substitute-the-kc-outfield-for-detroits/

I think it’s important to view both the angle and hit speed as two pieces and going forward that’s something I’m hoping to include for these players.

It didn’t take long for Ken Giles to make a name for himself, despite coming up as “just” a set-up man on a relatively bad Philadelphia Phillies team. In his debut season in 2014, Giles struck out 64 batters in 45.2 innings and posted a minuscule 1.18 ERA and 1.34 FIP as a 23-year old. Last year, Giles followed up his stellar freshman season with an equally impressive sophomore campaign, fanning 87 batters in 70.0 innings of work, notching a 1.80 ERA and 2.13 FIP. After a trade-deadline deal sent incumbent closer Jonathan Papelbon to the Washington Nationals, Giles officially took over the closer role in Philadelphia and finished the year with 15 saves, all coming after July 28.

After those two fantastic seasons in the back end of Philadelphia’s bullpen, the rebuilding Phillies decided that their young relief ace was more valuable to them as a trade chip than a current player, and on December 12, 2015 Giles was traded (along with a low-level prospect) to the Houston Astros for a quintet of players, including former No. 1 overall draft pick Mark Appel and young right-hander Vince Velasquez.

Giles’ role with his new club was not immediately obvious, but many speculated he would be the team’s closer heading into spring training. The club, however, kept quiet on the matter, further fueling public debate over Giles’ best fit on the team. On April 4, Astros manager AJ Hinch announced that club veteran Luke Gregerson would begin the season as the team’s closer. This displeased some — despite Gregerson’s success within the role in 2015 — due to the seemingly steep price the club paid to acquire Giles.

Hinch’s decision was validated almost immediately, as Giles’ season began about as poorly as one could’ve imagined. In 115.2 innings pitched between 2014 and 2015 in Philadelphia, Giles allowed just three home runs — a number he matched in less than four innings with the Astros, as he allowed longballs in three of his first four outings with Houston. Through April, Giles had allowed 10 earned runs in 10 innings. However, his peripheral numbers were not awful, as he struck out 14 batters and walked just four, giving him an xFIP of 3.23 despite the 6.75 FIP and 9.00 ERA. Giles’ HR/FB rate was an astounding 40 percent, compared to the league average of 11.8 percent over the season’s first month.

May was a slight improvement for Giles, as he went the entire month without allowing a home run and continued to strike out batters at a good rate. Over 11.1 innings, he fanned 14 batters and walked five while allowing five earned runs. For the month, he accumulated a 3.97 ERA, 2.00 FIP, and 3.93 xFIP. At the end of May, Giles had pitched 21.1 innings with a 28:9 K:BB ratio, and had a 6.33 ERA, 4.23 FIP, and 3.60 xFIP. Perhaps the most troubling statistic, however, was Giles’ ground-ball rate, which sat at just 31.1 percent after his first two months. Over his first two seasons, Giles’ ground ball rate was much higher, at 44.6 percent. Giles’ strand rate was also nearly 78 percent in his time with Philadelphia, but stood at just 66.9 percent over April and May of 2016.

While May was an improvement over April, Giles was still not nearly as effective as he was in his stint with the Phillies. June was a bigger step in the right direction, though, and Giles once again brought down his monthly ERA to 2.31. He allowed three earned runs in 11.2 innings of work, striking out 14 and walking just two. That month, his FIP and xFIP were both around 2.50 and his strand rate and ground-ball rate increased to 88.2 and 38.7 percent respectively.

July went even better than Giles could’ve hoped, as he allowed just three hits and no runs over 8.2 innings, striking out an astounding 18 batters while walking just two. Once again, his strand rate and ground-ball rate increased, posting 100 percent and 45.5 percent marks, respectively. For the month, his FIP was actually negative, at -0.31. August has gone well for Giles, too, as he’s struck out 21 batters against two walks in 10.2 innings (through 8/30). The long ball has hurt him a bit — solo homers accounting for two of the three earned runs allowed in the month — but his ERA for the month sits at 2.53 ERA, and he owns a 2.49 FIP. His strand rate in August sits at 88.2 percent, and his ground-ball rate has gone up again to 52.4 percent. On August 7, Giles even had a game in which he struck out six batters in just 1.2 innings.

Since the beginning of June, Giles’ numbers are eye-popping, especially when compared to his numbers through May:

Giles is a pitcher who relies heavily on his “stuff” to get outs. He throws just two pitches — fastball and slider — so getting hitters to guess on a wide variety of pitches isn’t his game. However, both his fastball and slider are excellent offerings, which gives him the ability to succeed despite a limited arsenal. When working with just two pitches, location is important to keep hitters off-balance. In the first two months of the season, Giles’ location was his issue — the velocity and movement on both pitches has been comparable throughout the season — as you can see from the heat maps of his pitches through May:

Fastball:

Slider:

The fastball seemed to be erratic, with no one area particularly heavily-worked compared to others. The highest-concentrated area was inside to right-handers, which is an area that allows batters to hit to the pull field, where the most damage is done. His slider was also left close to the zone most of the time, which limited his ability to generate swings and misses on the pitch. Since the beginning of June, however, Giles has improved his command considerably, as evidenced by the second set of heat maps from June-August:

Fastball:

Slider:

Giles’ fastball is more consistently located closer to the middle of the zone and towards the lower half, which not only allows him to force batters to swing at the pitch but keeps them from turning on balls and doing damage to the pull field. His slider heat map is almost identical to the one from April and May, but shifted lower by almost a foot. Instead of working from the middle of the zone to the bottom, he’s now working the slider from the bottom of the zone to down below the knees. This has given Giles the ability to not only get more whiffs on balls out of the zone, but to generate more ground balls with the pitch. The fact that the fastball and slider locations are more similar also likely gives Giles an advantage, as he can play the slider off of the fastball or vise versa.

Giles has also — perhaps even more importantly — changed his usage patterns since the end of May. He’s not only used the slider much more, and more effectively, but he’s also changed when he uses the slider, particularly to right-handed hitters. Compare Giles’ usage charts from the first and second “halves” of his season:

April-May:

June-August:

As you can see, Giles has begun to pitch to right-handed batters the same way he has pitched to left-handers this year. All season, Giles has used his fastball heavily to begin at-bats against lefties, and even more so when behind in the count. However, to righties — the majority of the batters he’s faced — he’d more or less mixed the two pitches equally in all situations. Yet, since the start of June, Giles has leaned more towards using the slider when ahead of righties and with two strikes. The adjustment has worked to perfection, as Giles has allowed just a .083 batting average and .167 slugging percentage to righties on the slider since June 1.

Thanks to both of the major adjustments he’s made, Ken Giles has been able to reclaim what looked in May to be a down year. Due to other struggles in the Houston bullpen, he’s even taken over the closer role, recording saves in four of his last five appearances. With the Astros desperately needing to make a push for the playoffs in the season’s final month — they enter play on August 30 two games behind Baltimore for the second American League Wild Card spot — Giles is the type of power reliever that could help the team’s playoff chances immensely down the stretch. If Giles could be the difference between winning and losing just a game or two in September, he could be the difference between the Astros making and missing the playoffs. With the way he’s been performing lately, there’s no reason to doubt that he will be a dominant closer down the stretch for Houston.

As a former prospect struggling to find his footing in the majors, Dan Straily wasn’t given an extended look in a big-league rotation after 2013. He bounced around from the A’s to the Cubs to the Astros. Now he’s on the rebuilding Reds. With the Reds, he has finally gotten another shot. The Reds were looking for someone with any kind of upside to fill the hole in their rotation. Straily fit the bill. 154 innings later, Straily is running an insanely low .239 BABIP, the third-lowest among qualified starting pitchers. That has helped him to a solid 3.92 ERA, which was at 3.50 before a recent blowup against the Angels. Before then, however, he had managed 10 starts in a row without allowing more than three runs. Can Straily keep running a BABIP this low? Let’s find out.

The first thing that sticks out to me about Straily is that he’s an extreme fly-ball pitcher. He has the third-lowest groundball percentage and the eighth-highest fly-ball percentage among qualified starters. He also has allowed the 11th-highest average launch angle on batted balls out of the 92 pitchers who have thrown at least 2000 pitches this year. Ground balls go for hits far more often than do fly balls (although fly balls go for extra-base hits far more often), so that explains part of why Straily has such a low BABIP.

If you’re like me, you would have thought that since Straily gets a lot of fly balls, maybe he gets a lot of popups. That would certainly help him keep a low BABIP, as popups almost never go for hits. Although Straily’s fastball has good rise (he’s tied for 27th out of the 78 qualified starters who throw four-seamers), he doesn’t actually generate many popups. In fact, his IFFB% of 7.9% this year puts him firmly below the league average of 9.7%. While his career IFFB% is at 11.8%, that doesn’t help explain why he’s run such a low BABIP this year specifically. Let’s look elsewhere.

Does he do a good job of limiting quality contact? He has allowed the 39th-highest exit velocity out of the 92 pitchers who have thrown at least 2000 pitches this year. That’s below average. He’s also below average in terms of hard-hit rate: he has the 30th-highest out of the 81 qualified pitchers. Worse, he’s tied for the seventh-lowest soft-hit rate. His line-drive rate is worse than average, the 32nd-worst out of 81. These are some troubling signs.

On the other hand, there is some good news. Straily has a nasty changeup. Observe:

Of the 73 qualified pitchers who throw a changeup, Straily’s is tied for the sixth-most drop. That’s not surprising, especially when you consider this: there are 133 pitchers who have thrown at least 150 changeups this year, and Straily’s has the fifth-lowest average spin rate. A low spin rate allows gravity to do its job and make that sucker drop right off the table.

Straily has a nice slider, too. It’s a frisbee, with solid horizontal movement and decent drop, without sacrificing too much velocity. Observe:

I don’t think that Straily will maintain a .239 BABIP. Although his extreme fly-ball tendencies seemingly make it easier for him to maintain a lower BABIP, he doesn’t do enough things right otherwise. He allows too much quality contact. On the other hand, he has three solid pitches, which are also his three most-used pitches (his sinker and curve aren’t great, and he uses them accordingly). His four-seamer has good rise, and, despite mediocre velocity, that can work. Just look at what Marco Estrada is doing with a four-seamer that has good rise and averages a mere 88 MPH.

Straily’s change and slider have above-average swinging-strike rates, at 15.8% and 14.5%, respectively. The change and slider even have average groundball rates (44.9% and 46.7%). They both have lofty O-Swing percentages as well, which leads me to believe their swinging-strike rates are for real (45.5% and 38.8%). My advice for Straily would be to stop pitching to contact. He seems to be pitching to contact because his Zone% this year is at 46.9%, the highest of his career. That mark ties him for 20th-highest among the 81 qualified starters. It is far above the league average of 44.8%. So, he should stop pitching to contact because 1) he has strikeout potential and it would be worth trying to tap into it and 2) his luck with BABIP will probably run out soon.

Data from FanGraphs and Baseball Savant. Gifs courtesy of Bleacher Report and MLB.com.

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