During spring training I was watching the Mariners, harassing Jesus Montero falling down while fielding and in awe of Robinson Cano’s crazy cool nonchalance, when it occurred to me that most of these guys were maybe not great people. To which those watching with me said, in other words, duh. Baseball players were my childhood heroes, and while there are players like Sam Fuld respected for how they think about the game, I think most baseball fans, including myself, generally grow to favor a player for their athletic performance, or how they wear their hat.

The Mariners players are probably just fine human beings, don’t get me wrong, but are they kind of people that I could be friends with? How does Justin Smoak treat his wife? How does Dustin Ackley vote? What’s the deal with Cano’s child support issues? What do these guys, making at least the major league minimum half-million dollars, think about Seattle’s rise in minimum wage? Brandon Maurer looks like might be a fan of legalized marijuana…what does Jack Z’s drafted core of white dudes from Florida and the Carolinas think about gay marriage?

That said, it’s clearly unfair to judge baseball players on their beliefs. Carl Everett doesn’t believe in dinosaurs. So what?

The internet has been abuzz with the tragedy and ongoing protests in Ferguson for a while now, and this puts the St. Louis Cardinals in an tricky position. People have strong, vitriolic and polarized responses to the Ferguson protests, and the Cardinals clearly wanted to remain as neutral as possible without leaving the issue unaddressed. Here is the team’s official statement:

“Ladies and gentlemen, for over a century Cardinals baseball has been an integral part of the fabric of St. Louis — bringing us together as a community and enriching our lives in so many important ways. St. Louis is good community with good people who care about one another, our neighborhoods and our city. In recent days we have all been heartbroken by a series of violent events that do not reflect who we are as a people. We ask that you join us tonight in taking a stand against violence as we unite as one community.”

Here’s what Mike Matheny had to say:

“It’s a sad situation. It’s a tough situation for our city. Hopefully, all the voices that are trying to get this resolved get it resolved quick…This is a great city with a lot of great people and we’d just like to all see this get resolved.”

At face value these comments seem admirable, nonpolitical. That said both, Matheny and the Cardinals also seem to be wishing this all away. Perhaps when Matheny wants everything “resolved,” he is quietly suggesting police reforms. Perhaps when the Cardinals refer to “violence,” they refer to all of the original shooting, looting, and police response to protesting. But, as I read those statements, the team and Matheny just want things to get back to normal.

St. Louis prides itself on being the both the kind of city those statements describe, and a baseball town, averaging both the second-highest attendance and second-best TV ratings this year. Not only has the status quo has been great to the Cardinals organization and great for baseball fans, but also it would a big stretch to lay any blame on a baseball team for underlying racial issues in a given city.

But. That the Cards broke camp as one of three clubs with no African-American players is almost certainly not because of any malignant franchise philosophy rather than because MLB has seen a huge decline in African-American ballplayers. In the 1970s, baseball was 27% African-American, now it’s 8.5%. It should be noted that the Cardinals are known for drafting college players, and that may have an impact on the racial chemistry of their teams but the Cardinals draft the way they do for strategic reasons, and they’ve obviously been really successful.

What the Cardinals do demonstrate is the whiteness of baseball. Baseball has increasingly become a game of privilege. The decline in African-American players has in some part influenced by the expense of baseball equipment compared to other sports while income and wealth inequality has grown since the 1970s and the gap between African-Americans and Caucasians is wider than it’s ever been before. Many, including myself, treat baseball as an escape and an entertainment, and as an entertainment I don’t think baseball’s demographics demonstrates an issue itself so much as it demonstrates privilege, and white privilege, in general — it’s a privilege to be entertained.

Do our entertainers have to be good people? No. They have to be entertaining.

That said, many rappers have been vocal in their support of the Ferguson protesters (while others have not). That a rapper might be more articulate than a baseball player, or manager, shouldn’t be any surprise in that rappers make their living with language. I don’t expect Robinson Cano or Matt Adams to have a stance or statement about Ferguson, and it shouldn’t be expected of them.

The Cardinals, though, probably felt they had to make a statement, and they did. To attempt neutrality on a subject like Ferguson is tough, as it’s such a polarizing subject, and neutrality here is akin to apathy. What the Cardinals want is a move back to status quo, for financial reasons or otherwise, and as a baseball organization in a billion-dollar industry they shouldn’t be expected to want anything else.

Before Ferguson politicized the idea of St. Louis, the Cardinals were already busy making themselves look bad.

Mike Matheny, All-Star Game manager, started Adam Wainwright over Clayton Kershaw. He used two Cardinals relievers as well, so, in total, Cardinals pitchers had one-third of the innings in a loss that he probably thinks counts. Wainwright went on to admit to ‘grooving one’ to Derek Jeter and the Cardinals, in general, looked terrible.

After the All-Star Game, the Cardinals announcers played off Matheny’s move as rewarding his guys, and said it’s what All-Star managers usually do. In a more recent game they described Kolten Wong as the clear front-runner for NL Rookie of the Year, despite his having about one-third the WAR of Billy Hamilton at the time. Hamilton has a skillset easily appreciated by traditional measures, so while his UZR has certainly inflated his WAR, it’s also tough to look past a .270 batting average and 40+ stolen bases.

The Cardinals organization seems to like to toot their own horn. On the one hand, what team doesn’t? On the other hand, Matheny and the announcers both have demonstrated an inability to act with fairness and understanding when ‘their own guys’ are involved. So who are the Cardinals’ guys in Ferguson? They’d tell you it’s not any group or side, but the language of their statements suggests they’re certainly not with the protesters.

In 2001, in the midst of their 116-win season, the Mariners asked the city of Seattle to shut up the iconic trains whistles in broadcastable earshot of Safeco Field. Their reasoning, as offered to the city:

“[To] ensure that Seattle and Safeco Field are shown in the best possible light — something we are sure you will agree is important given the less than favorable opinion many people have of Seattle in the wake of the WTO and the Mardi Gras riots.”

The Mardi Gras riots mentioned were racially charged and resulted in 70 injuries and one death. Neither event is looked back on rosily. But in 2001 the Mariners, and in 2014 the Cardinals, missed the point.

Bill James defined sabermetrics “as the search for objective knowledge about baseball” and FanGraphs is an extension of that search. Matheny wanting Ferguson to be “resolved” is a little different than wanting a pitcher to resolve an issue in his mechanics. Objectively there is something wrong happening when people protest. Protesters feel there a problem or inequality, and whether they are justified may be subjective opinion but in this case someone died needlessly. Wanting that to go away isn’t going to fix anything. Objectively there are still a lot of things wrong with our country, and baseball isn’t one of them, but MLB shouldn’t position itself in the way of progress either. This is the sport that Jackie Robinson played, after all. Baseball can make a difference.

As you’ve probably heard by now, the Baltimore Orioles have made a habit of outperforming their run differential these last three years. In 2012, they finished the year 93-69, but their +7 run differential suggested they didn’t play much better than a .500 team. This year, they’re at it again. They currently sit atop the American League East with a 73-52 record, but their peripheral stats suggest they’ve lucked into a few wins along the way.

This has inevitably led to some disagreement over the true talent of recent Orioles teams. On the one hand, it’s been well established that things like BaseRuns and Pythagorean records do a pretty good job of predicting a team’s win-loss record. But at the same time, Buck Showalter’s Orioles have been pulling this off for a while now. Even if you understand and accept the concept of random variation, its a little hard to believe that the Orioles’ run has been entirely due to luck.

Jeff Sullivan recently penned a convincing article, dispelling the myth that clutch teams remain clutch over an extended period of time. He compared teams’ first-half clutch scores to their second-half scores, finding no correlation between the two, concluding that “team clutch” is not a repeatable skill.

Sullivan’s argument is pretty persuasive, but Major League teams today are sort of like like a Ship of Theseus: They experience lots of turnover over the course of a year, and come September, many look completely different than they did on opening day. Perhaps a comparison of half-seasons might not be picking up on the “magic” that often exists for only part of a year, when a team had the right combination of players on its roster.

To test whether this might be the case, I looked at month-to-month correlations for all consecutive months from 2009 to 2013. I also broke things up by hitting clutch and pitching clutch to see if there might be a phenomenon that exists on only one side of the ball.

There isn’t much going on here, as all three trend lines are pretty darn close to flat. But we do see a slight upward slope to the trend line for pitchers. Its not enough to be statistically significant (P-Value=.27), but maybe it could be picking up on something. For instance, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that some managers might be better than others at deploying relievers in situations where they’re likely to succeed. The 2012 Orioles’ bullpen, after all, was more clutch than average in all six months of the season. So maybe their success had something to do with the way Buck Showalter managed his bullpen? Let’s see if we see anything more definitive by breaking up the correlations up by starters and relievers.

Nada. Both rotation and pitching clutch show no signs of correlation, which implies that the hint of a relationship for month-to-month pitching clutch was purely statistical noise. Pretty much any way you slice it, there’s just no evidence suggesting that team clutch is in any way a repeatable skill, even over very short periods of time. Some teams — like the Orioles — do manage to string together consecutive months of clutch performance. But the overall lack of correlation between consecutive months shows that a team’s clutch performance is about as random as a coin flip. If you flip a coin enough times, you’ll eventually get 10 heads in a row. By that same logic, you’re bound to find a stretch as extreme as the Orioles’ if you string together enough three-year stretches.

All statistics courtesy of FanGraphs and their infinitely useful splits data.

I’ll try to avoid covering too much of the same ground covered right here on Wednesday, but talk about why the Yoenis Cespedes trade will still probably help Oakland this season.  The A’s are generally considered a pretty smart front office, and I think they saw a problem that needed fixing.  I also think that their offense is worse without Cespedes, so we will have to get to that too.

The main source of confusion in this trade stemmed from the fact that the pitching staff seemed to be a strength.  So why would a team trade away one of their middle of the order bats to bolster an already solid part of their team?  The answer is that the team wants to win in the playoffs, and the horses of the rotation for the first half were not going to continue their success.

Jesse Chavez had posted a 3.14 ERA prior to the All-Star break, and since then it has been 4.37 with most of that has been from the bullpen.  Cracks in his performance were showing in June and he was failing to get deep into games, so there was no way they were going to count on him as an option in the postseason.

Drew Pomeranz was showing some signs of being an option before he got hurt, but the injury cut short his opportunity and made him too big of a question mark to count on.

The most important guy in the equation was Sonny Gray.  He has been very good so far this year, but he is heading into uncharted territory fast and it is starting to show.  Last year Gray threw 182.3 innings between triple-A and the majors.  He is now at 162.7 with more than a month before the playoffs even start.  He was still going strong in July, but his velocity had peaked in late May and early June and has slowly been coming down ever since.  They were right not to trust him if August is any indication.  Since the trade Gray has posted a 4.94 ERA, his K-rate is down, and players are hitting him harder.

That all leaves Scott Kazmir and two players that had already been acquired in Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel.  Hammel has been bad since the trade with only one start where he made it 6 innings.  Honestly Samardzija’s been pretty bad as well, but prior to the Cespedes trade he had put together a couple good and a couple mediocre starts.  If your only two guys you trust going into October are Samardzija and Kazmir, things are probably not feeling very good.

All of this lead to Jon Lester who so far has been everything they want him to be except that the team has struggled during the time since his arrival.  The hitting collapsed with Coco Crisp, Jed Lowrie, Brandon Moss, and Derek Norris being especially bad.  Steven Vogt also came back to Earth a bit, and the Jonny Gomes/Sam Fuld replacement for Cespedes has under-performed so far.

The solid 3-4-5 of Cespedes, Josh Donaldson, and Brandon Moss lost a piece, and they don’t really have a great option to plug into the 5 hole consistently.  Josh Reddick has come on recently to help in a somewhat depleted offense, but they are keeping him at the bottom of the order since he has been anything but trustworthy over the past couple seasons.

This has hurt the offense for sure and simple confidence intervals of before and after the trade show a significant drop in output.  At the same time I assume they saw this coming to some extent.  Guys like Norris and Vogt were playing way over their heads and were likely to regress some.  Only the weird collapse of half the offense at one time has made it look as bad as it is.  It is unlikely that this rough stretch will be sustained.  It also didn’t help that the Royals, Rays, Braves, and Mets were all on the schedule and are above-average run-prevention teams.

If I were the A’s I would still be happy about this trade.  Lester, Samardzija, and Kazmir is a much better way to head into the post season.  Catching the Angels just became more likely due to the unfortunate loss of Garrett Richards too.  Billy Beane has been to the playoffs, and almost certainly will be again this season.  He wants to win in the playoffs, and this pitching staff gives him a good opportunity to do so.

I was listening to the Jonah Keri Podcast on Grantland recently, and he had Phillies beat writer Matt Gelb on the show. Gelb talked about all the sad things that Phillies fans are already tired of discussing, but he did make a statement that I found particularly poignant. He described Ben Revere’s season as something to the effect of “the emptiest batting average ever.” By empty, he means that while Revere is hitting above .300, an impressive feat in this offense-starved MLB landscape, he does so with almost no walks or extra-base hits. His value at the plate is almost entirely in the form of singles. This comment got me thinking: just how empty is his batting average?

As of this writing, Revere is hitting .314 with a .331 on-base percentage and a .371 slugging percentage. For comparison, the average player has a substantially worse batting average (think .240) but with a similar OBP and a substantially better SLG. To illustrate with normal stats, Revere has 27 total doubles, triples, homers, and walks this year. So far in 2014, there are 42 players with at least 27 doubles, 8 players with at least 27 homers, and 144 players with at least 27 walks.

But how rare is it to have this single-happy nature with such a high average? To look for players to compare to Revere historically, I looked for other player seasons since 2000 which had enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title with a batting average at least as high as Revere’s but a walk rate and isolated slugging (slugging minus batting average) below his.

But there weren’t any, so I extended the search back to 1980.

Still nobody. 1960?

Nothing.

1900?

Zilch.

Now, to be fair, Ben Revere himself hasn’t completed a full season, so let’s use a more relaxed criterion of 400 plate appearances (Revere has 459).

OK, you get it.

In fact, since 1900 (it’s not worth going earlier because seasons were much shorter then), the only player with at least 400 plate appearances that had as high of a batting average with as little other hitting value is … Ben Revere. That’s it.

I’m not really sure that there’s much to be done with this information, but it’s a pretty shocking finding. As a member of a roster that’s overpaid and underperforming across the board, Revere’s limited skillset has been overshadowed by his more compensated counterparts. However, I was fascinated to discover that on a team that has had plenty of notable failings, Revere has had perhaps the most “unique” and “special” stats of any of them, as long as you’re not taking annual salary into account.

If you disregard his sub-par defense (especially compared to what you would expect from a guy with his speed), Revere really isn’t a terrible offensive player. If you took away all of his steals and instead turned that many singles into doubles, he’d have a slugging percentage around the league average. The problem is, a single followed by a steal isn’t as valuable as a double because it doesn’t advance runners on base, so his value would really be something less than that of a player with league-average slugging. Even if he posts a batting average way above the mean in any given season, he never walks or gets extra-base hits, so he has to sustain that mark against all kinds of luck and defensive factors in order to give the Phillies even passable offensive value. It’s a game that the Phillies seem interested in playing, and it’s defensible because of his obviously high average and stolen base totals, but I’m just not sure if they’re going to win that way.

Take a turn around Twitter or any major baseball news source and you’ll hear a familiar echo about the former best team in baseball; the offense hasn’t been the same since the deadline.  When the A’s traded away Yoenis Cespedes for Jon Lester, the impact to the lineup was noticeable.  They wagered they could get the same level of production out of some combination of Jonny Gomes, Stephen Vogt, and Sam Fuld.  In the first half of the season, the A’s were a top-six team in wOBA, OBP,and wRC+ all while being second to last in BABIP.  It’s safe to say they were rolling. Now they aren’t.  Since the deadline, the A’s have become a bottom-third team in all the aforementioned stats.  It’s easy to look at these stats and say that Cespedes was clearly the catalyst of something in the offense.

While much has been written about the rumors of Oakland emphasizing clubhouse chemistry the last couple years, Cespedes has never really been written as one of the chief leaders in that category.  We typically hear names like Coco Crisp, Scott Sizemore, the aforementioned Jonny Gomes, and Sean Doolittle mentioned there.  Cespedes by all accounts was just a crazy athletic guy who didn’t really cause any trouble, but wasn’t exactly a team leader.  Yet the fact remains: the A’s have refused to hit since the deadline. Sure, 17 games isn’t a gigantic sample size, but it’s pretty reasonable when evaluating team performance.  Baseball Prospectus just three years ago theorized that a reasonable prediction could be made of a team’s overall season after fifteen games,  so we’ve got something substantial to work with.  Is there another pattern, though?  Let’s take a look at the team’s month by month performance.

We see a steady decline here in the A’s performance, not a sudden jump.  The A’s started off really hot, leading the league in most offensive categories in April.  A notable decline can even be seen in May, as the A’s began their meteoric rise to the top, though they held steady in the top three in most categories.  In June, the team dipped even further, down to a mark that was only slightly above average.  They looked to be leveling off there to a rather league-average team in July, which wasn’t encouraging, but maybe suggested a possible rise back up to looking like a playoff team. In August, though, the wheels have come off.  The A’s have dipped below league average in most categories, and their win totals have suffered as well.  Can we blame all of this on Cespedes?  Let’s take a look at some wOBA numbers for chief contributors to the Oakland offense:

It’s a bit cluttered, but the dark blue line in the middle labeled wOBA is the team as a whole; see the steady decline as we’ve noted.  In April, we see all of these guys hovering between a .300 wOBA and somewhere above .420.  Nearly all of them are now either .300 or far below it; the one exception being Josh Donaldson, who has picked it up again since a dismal June.  Even Cespedes, having been traded to the Red Sox, is having an unremarkable August since performing poorly in July.  Let’s take a look at a wRC+ graph, with some of the members removed for clarity:

Here we see six players who routinely batted in the top five in the batting order having horrible Augusts.  Stephen Vogt and Brandon Moss, two lefty platoon bats being pressed into full-time duty in the outfield lately, lead this group with a 91 wRC+, which is below the average line.  John Jaso, Coco Crisp, and Derek Norris have been downright horrible, with wRC+’s in the barely digestible territory. So yes, the A’s have been bad since Cespedes has left the team.  It’s clearly not just the loss of his bat; the vast majority of the team, outside of Josh Donaldson and the surprisingly resurgent Eric Sogard and Josh Reddick, have been really, really bad.

So if the whole team is flailing, perhaps Cespedes was more of a sparkplug than we previously had attributed?  More importantly, did Billy Beane fail to see a trend here?  The A’s were trending downwards in hitting as demonstrated, so why the need for pitching?  Well, the A’s were unfortunately not exactly trending very well in pitching either.  They were third in pitcher WAR through April, but then plummeted to 19th in May, and further dipped to 21st in June before rising a bit to 17th in July. The A’s were a decidedly middle of the road team when it came to pitcher WAR, and FIP seems to agree, ranking them about the same spot everywhere.

So why make the trade?  If anything, this trade has only served to confuse fans.  What do we make of a team with three above-average catchers who all tank right after a trade for a top-flight starting pitcher?  While all the fans are clamoring for Jimmy Rollins to come and help the middle infield, we’ve got Eric Sogard being one of the few bright spots in the offense, and nobody seems to care. All we know is that the A’s are in trouble.  Whether it’s because Cespedes was the glue or because the A’s are peaking at the wrong time, they’re all of a sudden facing down the dire straits of a one-game coin flip at the end of the season, despite being the most aggressive pursuer at the trade deadline. The A’s can cling to a few bastions of hope; maybe their BABIP dropping all the way to .260 in August shows that they’re just a bit unlucky.  It’s either that or face the fact that sometimes the best-laid plans of mice and men fail, and pray that Jason Hammel doesn’t have to start the Wild Card game.

San Francisco Giants backup catcher Hector Sanchez is a ball magnet.

Every single time he plays — and this is no exaggeration — he takes a savage beating behind home plate. Foul tips rock his hockey-style catcher’s mask at least three or four times a game. He also takes baseballs to the shoulders, fingers, feet and groin like you would not believe.

So to no one’s surprise, Sanchez finds himself on the disabled list with a concussion. And the Giants are taking their time bringing him back, as the team is all too familiar with concussions caused by multiple blows to the head (Mike Matheny’s playing career came to a screeching halt because of multiple concussions sustained when he strapped on the tools of ignorance for San Francisco back in 2006).

While it may seem cruel to add insult to injury, now is the perfect time for the Giants to part ways with Sanchez.

The trouble is that Sanchez’s bat is a ball magnet, too — and not in the good, solid contact kind of way. He simply can’t stop swinging at pitches in or out of the strike zone.

Simply put, Sanchez is not a good baseball player, while his replacement, Andrew Susac, is.

Sanchez has been one of the worst players in MLB this season. Take a look at how he’s fared in some key statistical categories, along with how those stats rank among fellow National Leaguers with a minimum of 170 plate appearances:

This chart essentially shows that Giants fans have selected an appropriate nickname for Sanchez. They call him “Hack-tor”.

Susac, on the other hand, is known for his plate discipline. He’s never had a BB% lower than 12.9% in four minor league seasons (Sanchez’s career BB% is 4.0%). Susac’s slash line for AAA-Fresno this season was .268/.379/.451. Hopefully he never goes back.

In 26 plate appearances for the Giants this season, Susac has a .250 average and a .308 OBP. He’s swung at just 22% of pitches outside of the strike zone (compared to 47.1% for Sanchez) and he’s struck out only 19% of the time (31% for Sanchez). Perhaps most importantly, Susac has already been worth 0.1 WAR, meaning he’s added value to the team even though he’s played in only parts of 10 baseball games. Comparatively, Sanchez has been worth -0.2 WAR in 66 games, meaning that even an average minor league replacement player would have been more valuable.

And Susac is an average replacement-level catcher at worst. In fact, it’s hard to argue that he is that bad. So there’s essentially no question that Susac is superior to Sanchez.

In a baseball era where it is increasingly accepted and known that getting on base — not making outs — is the most important baseball skill, Sanchez has proven himself to be a free-swinging out machine.

That’s why the era of Susac ought to be upon us. What’s more, backup catcher is an especially interesting position on this Giants team.

There is increasing sentiment within the organization that Buster Posey needs to be moved out from behind the dish. He’s arguably their most valuable offensive player, but as a catcher, he requires frequent days off, and the physical demands of catching already seem to be wearing Posey down.

Offensive skills deteriorate faster for catchers than for non-catchers, so as Posey ages and navigates the seven remaining years of his 9-year, $163 million contract, the Giants are absolutely right to seriously consider moving Posey to a less demanding and offensively-crippling position.

Third baseman Pablo Sandoval will be a free agent after this season, and if he walks away, it will create a glaring hole at third base — a hole that could be filled by Posey. Posey played all over the diamond in college, including shortstop and pitcher, so it’s at least possible that he could man the hot corner next year and beyond. If Posey moves to third base, Brandon Belt could stay at first and Susac could settle in as the everyday catcher.

But if the Giants re-sign Sandoval, there could be a logjam if the Giants indeed have intentions of getting Posey out of the squat.

Belt has good speed (he has 23 steals in 409 MLB games and he’s only 26 years old), so it’s possible he could play a decent left field, allowing Posey to play first base and Sandoval to stay at third. This is not ideal, and I understand that it’s possible Belt will not be a good defensive outfielder (but hey, he can’t be worse than Michael Morse, can he?).

Even if Posey remains behind the plate, he gets a lot of rest (as most catchers do), so it’s important to have a good backup catcher if at all possible. That’s why it’s time for the offensively skilled Susac to leapfrog the offensively challenged Sanchez on the organizational depth chart.

Sorry Sanchez, but Susac is the catcher of the future. It’s time to let him play.

A fair amount has been written about both Chris Davis of the Baltimore Orioles and his season. Put simply, Davis has been a train wreck combined with a tire fire. He was the third-best hitter in all of baseball last year, which is shocking for me to even write considering how bad he is right now. This is just a snapshot of his numbers between 2013 and 2014.

So everything is worse, which — not surprisingly — leads to a worse season. While he’s still hitting for great power, it’s nothing close to what he was hitting in 2013. It would be pretty easy to look at his BABIP, which often is an indicator of how lucky a hitter is, and say Davis has just been tremendously unlucky this year, and was super lucky last year.

And you wouldn’t be wrong, necessarily. He has been unlucky this year. But his career BABIP is .323, which isn’t too far off from the .336 he posted last year. So I guess a positive here is that if the season were, I don’t know, 250 games instead of 162, Davis would probably stop being so unlucky and get closer to normal. Unfortunately it’s not 250 games, so he might not turn it around so quickly.

When hitters have a major breakout year like Davis did in 2013, it maybe shouldn’t be too surprising if they drop back a little in the following season. It often is a surprise, but pitchers scout those hitters a little harder, coaching staffs focus on them more, and so on and so on. So naturally, if a pitcher realizes a hitter totally crushes sliders and fastballs, that pitcher — if he’s not a dummy — will likely throw fewer sliders and fastballs, or at least fewer of those that are hittable.

Using pitch values from FanGraphs, we can see that, last season, Davis was that guy who crushed fastballs and sliders (and changeups, too).

So Davis was better than most at hitting fastballs in 2013, and he was even better at hitting sliders and changeups. This year, though, he can’t seem to hit any of those three kinds of pitches as well, and he pretty much can’t hit a curveball or changeup at all.

Would you like to guess what non-fastball pitches he’s been getting more? Did you guess curveballs and changeups?  If you did, congratulations! You’re correct! Pitchers have adjusted to Davis hitting fastballs and sliders, and they’ve started to give him more curveballs and changeups, which, again, he can’t seem to hit this year. So part of Davis’ problem could simply be that he’s being pitched to differently.

And it’s not only that different kinds of pitches are coming to Davis. Pitchers are throwing low and away more often, and it’s hurting his numbers. Below is what I’m going to call an animation showing where pitches are coming to Davis. It’s from the catcher’s point of view, and it reads like a heatmap; white is neutral, red means more pitches are coming in that location and blue means fewer pitches are coming in that location.

So it’s pretty clear that 2014 pitchers are focusing on Davis low and away, which is a good idea since Davis is having trouble hitting those pitches, as shown in this second animation, or whatever it is.

So pitchers are coming at him differently, and he’s hitting differently. In 2013, Davis could basically hit anything in the strike zone and even a little bit below the zone. This year, he seemingly can’t hit the ball unless it’s low in the zone, and even then it’s a little shaky.

He’s also changed his approach a little bit. While Davis is chasing fewer pitches out of the zone, he’s also swinging less in general, even at strikes, and that’s a trend that’s been going on since 2012. And not swinging at strikes isn’t always a bad thing; Joey Votto swings less than almost anyone, and he’s a pretty good hitter. What’s a little troubling is that Davis is making less contact when he does swing, and that’s also a trend two years in the making. Of course, when a guy is hitting .286 and blasting 53 home runs, who cares if he’s making less contact? But when those 53 dingers turn into 21 and that .286 average drops below .200, we can start to be concerned.

So it’s all kind of going against Davis right now. He’s trying to be more patient, but pitchers are recognizing that and throwing him more strikes. And when he gets behind in the count, it makes things a little more difficult. Plus those mean old pitchers are throwing him pitches he doesn’t hit so well. It’s been an off year for Davis, and he’s still hitting for really good power. Not as much as 2013, but still a lot. If he can do that, and maybe turn things on for the last 35 or so games and into the playoffs, his team could make some kind of run. Maybe not a great run, but some kind of run.

I know that I’m not alone in saying that one of my favorite parts about baseball is the projection of young players. In fact, I’d probably even say that I enjoy dreaming on what young players could be even more than I enjoy players for what they actually are. It’s one of the reasons I follow the Cubs and Twins (get well soon, Byron) farm systems as closely as I do the A’s and Dodgers big-league clubs. Obviously, it’s especially exciting when a group of young prospects on the same team all come up and meet expectations, as rare as that may be. To take it one step further, it’s just the best when all of that talent is concentrated in one positional group (pitchers, infielders, outfielders). So in an effort to combine my love of projection with what is currently happening on the field, I’m going to take a look at a couple of the most exciting young units in baseball.

Here are the top ten outfields as currently ranked by fWAR:

Of the top ten, only two teams are currently starting an outfield where all three players are 28 years old or younger. Now, it would be pretty funny if I said they were the Orioles and Blue Jays just to make you angry, but since you’re a person who ostensibly reads titles before you read articles, you know that these two teams are the Pittsburgh Pirates and Miami Marlins. Spoiler revealed.

Anyways, both young outfields are clearly extraordinarily talented. Each unit has an excellent case as the most promising outfield for the next five or ten years. That said, it’ll almost surely be a young outfield that exceeds them, because if baseball does nothing else, it destroys our expectations each and every season.

But focusing on the task at hand, the two outfields are very similar if you look at them in a certain arbitrary way. They each feature one superstar (Andrew McCutchen and Giancarlo Stanton), a strikeout-prone “tools” guy (Starling Marte and Marcell Ozuna) and a skinny corner guy with all-star potential (Gregory Polanco and Christian Yelich). Now, those descriptions don’t really matter, but they’re interesting nonetheless. What does matter, however, is performance on the field.

The Pirates outfield has probably been the more hyped unit so far, and I think the majority of people would choose them to be better going forward as well. Their core three is currently the more productive, and they blow away the Marlins in production over the next four years, using the Oliver projection system.

If the projections turn out to be correct, the Pirates outfield is going to be, on average, 4.8 wins per season more valuable than the Marlins. But I have a couple of issues with these projections.

First, wow do they hate Marcell Ozuna. This is somewhat understandable considering Ozuna never was that highly regarded as a prospect, and some people thought that the Marlins were making a mistake by promoting him to the big leagues so quickly last year. But as he’s shown since his call-up, Ozuna is actually pretty valuable. In only 70 games in 2013, he was worth 1.6 fWAR. In 2014, he’s been hitting for power and been worth nearly 2 wins with a month and a half left to go in the season. He’s not a perfect player (28.7 K%), but I think it’s fair to say that he’s not the borderline replacement-level guy that he is projected to be right now.

My second issue is that I just can’t get comfortable projecting Gregory Polanco as a 5 fWAR player just yet. He’s obviously a top prospect holding his own in the majors, but five-win players are really good. Only 19 position players were more valuable in 2013 than the 5.2 fWAR that Polanco is currently projected to reach by 2018. I certainly won’t be shocked if he reaches that level, but man, as fun as prospects are, sometimes they bust for no apparent reason. I’ll need to see a full productive season before I feel good about calling him a future MVP vote-getter.

Unfortunately for the Pirates’ case in this argument, the outfield fWAR top ten that I posted at the beginning of the article largely reflects the contributions of a player whom I have not mentioned thus far: Josh Harrison. At just 27 years old himself, Harrison has continued to be productive after what most assumed was just a hot couple of months. However, with Polanco now in the majors, it looks as though Harrison will be playing in the Pirates infield over the coming years, assuming all of the outfielders are able to retain their health. So it will likely be up to Polanco to replicate Harrison’s 2014 numbers (144 wRC+) going forward, a tall task even for someone as talented as he. Combine that with the possibility that Andrew McCutchen begins to decline upon hitting 30 in a couple years, and the Pirates outfield may not look quite as pretty as it does on paper at the moment (though it’ll still probably be really good).

Now, rather than continue to list reasons why you shouldn’t choose the Pirates, let’s talk about one final reason why you should choose the Marlins in our completely meaningless debate. Talent aside, the Marlins’ greatest advantage over the Pirates is their youth. Stanton is actually the oldest of Miami’s outfielders at the decrepit age of 24, while Ozuna and Yelich are 23 and 22, respectively. As a group, they certainly have the longest way to go to reach their ceiling, but they also have the most time to get there. And if you’re like me, you may be inclined to be on upside.

When choosing between these two outfields, there’s really no wrong option, as cliche as that may sound. They each have a combination of current production and future projection that we simply don’t see very often. Personally, despite all of the reasons I listed against them, I’m still inclined to go with Pittsburgh, but the choice is harder now than it was when I began this post. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. We’ll be able to sit back and enjoy both units, hopefully for the next decade or so.

This article was originally posted on gappower.wordpress.com, a site you’ve definitely never been to. I’ve checked. You can also find me on Twitter, at least occasionally. 

I recently set out on a quest to determine the best way to evaluate relief pitchers in order to find the most valuable relievers this season. That led down a number of different paths of research that all centered around two main ideas. The key to success in relief pitchers is their ability to pitch out of jams and to pitch in big situation, which in a sense go hand in hand. Since the introduction of the save as a stat teams have began using their best reliever only in the ninth inning when they have a lead of 3 runs or less.   However, this is not always the most important part of the game and often times the most important innings are the 7^th and 8^th.

So in order to truly determine the best reliever a good place to start is looking at the importance of the innings that each pitcher has thrown. This is where leverage index comes in. The higher the LI the more important the inning. This is a combination of score, situation, and place in the order.

The other key to relievers’ success is their ability to work out of jams. Often times a relief pitcher is brought in to the game with runners in scoring position. This is why ERA is not a good indicator of the success a reliever because it does not factor in the inherited runners that scored on that reliever. This is where RE24 can be of extreme help. RE24 is a counting statistic that uses a run expectancy table to show how many runs better than average a pitcher is based solely on game situation. This means than a pitcher will be penalized for allowing an inherited runner to score. However, since this is a counting statistic by dividing it by innings pitched it can be turned into a rate statistic, which allows more equal comparison between pitchers.

Since RE24 does not factor in the importance of the situation in the context of the game combining it with LI is a good determination of the value of the individual relievers. So in an attempt to determine this year’s best reliever I used this simple formula:

Reliever Rating (RR)=(RE24/IP)*LI

According to this stat the better the pitcher the higher the number and the worse the lower the number. A rating close to 0 indicates an average pitcher as a RE24 of 0 means the pitcher performed exactly as expected in the given situations. The worst ratings are the negative numbers meaning that pitcher was below average.

Here are the top 10 relievers according to RR thus far in 2014.

This list includes several big-name closers and several setup men. Looking at the value of these pitchers using this formula shows how not all inning pitched are equal. This is not a valuation of the true talent of the pitchers but what it does is create an even way of looking at the importance of each pitcher to their team. Not surprisingly, there are several closers among the leaders as due to the late game innings they pitch and the fact that they typically pitch in close games their leverage indexes are high. Yet for pitchers like Darren O’Day his high ranking is due to his very high RE24 total. This is due to O’Day’s ability to strand runners so far this season (96% LOB%). For a comparison, since 2000, the best single season total belongs to Jonathon Papelbon in 2006 with a RR of .95.

This can also be used to look at the worst relievers thus far this season.

Many of these names are not surprising as players like Nathan, Frieri, and Johnson failed miserably in their different stints as closers thus far this season. Many of these pitchers have very low RE24’s which supports their low ranking but pitchers like Steve Cishek (15^th worst) who have been slightly below average (-3.18 RE24) are punished for struggling in high-leverage situations (2.11 LI).

Just two starts into his Triple-A career, it’s clear why the Blue Jays gave Daniel Norris a $2M signing bonus when they drafted him in the second round of the 2011 draft out of Science Hill High School in Tennessee.

Further, Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos has hinted that Norris might be in the process of being prepared for a September call-up to join the bullpen, a strategy they recently employed with Aaron Sanchez, the club’s other top pitching prospect.

After struggling with command issues and forearm stiffness in 2013, Norris has worked with coaches in order to make tweaks in his motion to find more consistency with his mechanics and release point. Whereas the 6’2”, 180 pound lefty used to throw across his body, he now employs a high ¾’s release point, and the change has worked wonders.

At High-A Dunedin this season, Norris posted a 10.31 K/9 while limiting the number of free passes to just 2.44 per nine innings. In 66.1 innings, Norris didn’t allow a single home run while posting a FIP of 1.72.

In his eight starts with Double-A New Hampshire, Norris struggled a bit with his command, posting a 4.29 BB/9. But he did strike out more batters (12.36 K/9), and the Blue Jays decided he was ready for Triple-A.

Through two starts with the Buffalo Bisons, Norris has looked like a frontline starter. In 11.2 IP, he has struck out 23 batters while walking only one. He’s yielded just five hits and one run. His first Triple-A start was against a Durham lineup that featured Wil Myers, Nick Franklin, Wilson Betemit and Mike Fontenot. Norris had no problem, striking out 10 batters (including Myers) in 6 innings, walking just one while allowing two hits and zero runs.

Norris works with a full arsenal of pitches. His fastball sits at 93 mph and can touch 96 with good, late movement. His high release point allows him to pound the lower half of the strike zone, as his 43.3 career GB% indicates. He has enough velocity to pitch up in the zone when he wants to, and hitters at all levels of the minor leagues have consistently swung through the pitch.

He also works with a slider, which ranges from 83-87 mph while exhibiting sharp, late downward bite and sometimes some slurvy action. He uses the pitch as much against right-handed batters as he does against lefties, and hitters from both sides of the plate swing through it with frequency.

Norris’ biggest improvement this season has been the movement on his curve. While in the past the pitch showed a higher velocity and sweeping movement, he now throws it 72-81 mph with 11-7 break. He will often freeze hitters, especially lefties, when dropping the pitch into the strike zone with an effortless motion.

The changeup has also made improvements, although it still needs a little work if Norris is going to reach his potential as a No. 2 starter. He doesn’t throw it very often, and many times he misses too far down in the zone. When he throws it right, it exhibits late sinking movement, and hitters get out front and swing over the top.

Norris’ downfall could be his command, which sometimes disappears on him in the middle of starts. But he’s still just 21 and three years out of high school, and he’s made significant strides over the past year. As he climbs the ladder and eventually reaches the major leagues, where he will receive premium coaching, the likelihood of him finding consistent mechanics and maintaining them for seven innings at a time certainly increases.

I like Norris as a No. 2, mostly due to his impressive arsenal of average-to-above-average pitches and ability to retire both left- and right-handed batters consistently. Over 241.1 career innings in the minor leagues, Norris has posted a near identical FIP (3.04, 3.03) against lefties and righties, respectively. As long as he continues to control his mechanics and becomes more confident with the changeup, there’s no reason Norris can’t be a successful member of a fearsome Blue Jays rotation in 2015.