I wondered how the power revolution changes the impact of power on winning. Does the abundance of HR mean that HRs are less valuable? Or are they even more necessary?

For that I compared 2017 and 2008. 2008 is kind of an arbitrary cutoff; I used it because it was 10 seasons ago and not a completely different game.

In 2008 the top-10 HR-hitting teams averaged 86 wins, and in 2017 just 82 wins. Also in the top 10 in HRs in 2008, three teams had losing seasons, and in 2017 it was a whopping five teams. So it seems being a top-HR team helps less.

However, when looking at the bottom 10 HR-hitting teams, it is 74 wins for both years. Three teams of the bottom 10 in HRs had winning seasons in 2008 versus just two in 2017. So it didn’t become easier to succeed as a no-power team.

The league also got closer together in HRs. In 2008 the bottom-10 average was 127, and it as 1.6 times as much for the top 10 (197). In 2017 it was 172 for the bottom and just 1.3 times as much for the top (230).

Of course park factors and year-to-year variations play a role, but last season Colorado wasn’t even in the top 10 for example.

So it seems power is at least as much needed to win as it used to be, but it isn’t really much of a difference maker anymore, it is more a baseline needed to win. But teams like the Rays and A’s who hit tons of homers in a pitcher’s park show that you can’t really build around power as a main skill; you need to make sure you don’t suck at power, but since you can’t really separate anymore with power, you need other primary skills.

I would probably say make sure to be in the top third in power, but once you are there, don’t sacrifice other stuff to get even more power.

That is especially true for defense. The A’s led the league in average launch angle and were fourth in HRs. Since they were only seven HR behind the Yankees and four behind the Astros in a vastly less hitter-friendly park, we can probably say they were the top HR-hitting team.

They tried to sell out for power and it clearly wasn’t enough to make up for historically bad defense and other flaws.

So teams definitely shouldn’t sacrifice in other regards; there is enough power around to not put bad defenders or super low OBPs in the field to get more power.

Power is as important as it ever, was but it is not possible to dominate with it anymore like the 1927 Yankees did. Now it is now one necessary skill of many and well-roundedness is the name of the game in 2017. Same can be said for contact-hitting. People said after 2015 that contact was the future. However, low-power slap hitting didn’t prove to be successful, but with power now available so easy, teams now might be able to cut back on the Ks a little without sacrificing power like the Astros did, because super high Ks can suppress on-base percentage when it doesn’t come with Adam Dunn-like walks.

Last month, the sabermetrics community descended into complete and utter anarchy over the latest and greatest debate on WAR. Industry heavyweights like Bill James, Tom Tango, and our own Dave Cameron all weighed in on the merits of baseball’s premier metric. After the dust settled, Sam Miller published an article on ESPN igniting a different sort of debate on WAR.

Miller’s piece noted that aside from the possible flaws behind WAR itself, each corner of the internet is calculating it a different way. For pitching specifically, FanGraphs (fWAR), Baseball Reference (rWAR), and Baseball Prospectus (WARP) all publish measures of WAR that oftentimes have significant disagreements. But that’s by design.

These three metrics were brilliantly characterized by Miller as so:

• rWAR – “What Happened WAR”
• fWAR – “What Should Have Happened WAR”
• WARP – “What Should Have Should Have Happened WAR”

The rest of the piece is outstanding, and comes highly recommended by this author. In the aftermath, though, Tom Tango of MLB Advanced Media responded with the following challenge:

For you aspiring saberists: take the 10 pitchers that fWAR and rWAR most disagree with in year T, and tell us how they did in year T+1. Do that for say the last 5 years. Repeat the exercise with fWAR, WARP, then with rWAR, WARP. Report your findings. https://t.co/BjtbBRYhMd

— Tangotiger 🍁 (@tangotiger) November 28, 2017

Given that I humbly consider myself to be an aspiring saberist, I took that challenge. Well, I first took the challenge of college final exams, but then the pitching WAR challenge!

The dataset from which I worked off included 1165 qualified individual pitching seasons spanning from 2000-2016. For each season, I collected the player’s fWAR, rWAR, WARP, RA9-WAR, and RA9-WAR in the subsequent year. As Tango suggested, using RA9-WAR to look retrospectively at our 3 competing pitching metrics will be the most effective way to measure the differences amongst the metrics themselves.

For those interested in the raw data, feel free to check it out here, and make a copy if you’d like to play around with it yourself.

Given the nature of the dataset, a logical first place to start was with a straightforward correlation table and go from there. That correlation table is displayed below.

As expected, small differences do exist between the various metrics in their abilities to predict future performance. In the sample, fWAR leads both WARP and rWAR by slight margins. For all you statheads out there, a linear regression on the data returns statistically significant p-values for fWAR and WARP, but not rWAR.

So that was fun, wasn’t it? With all of the nitty gritty math out of the way, let’s dive into a few examples. Miller already highlighted Teheran’s strange 2017 season, but as it turns out, there are far more extreme instances of metric disagreement.

Take Felix Hernandez’s 2006 season for example. His first full season in the bigs culminated in an underwhelming 4.52 ERA, but a 3.91 FIP and a 3.37 xFIP were promising signs of future success. Similarly, the WAR metrics were unable to come to any sort of consensus.

By WARP, the 20-year-old Hernandez was the 14th best pitcher in 2006. He was surrounded on the leaderboard by names like Roy Halladay, Randy Johnson, and Greg Maddux. By rWAR, his 2006 season ranked 135th alongside Jose Mesa, Cory Lidle, and interestingly enough, Greg Maddux.

fWAR, on the other hand, seems to have found a happy medium between the other two metrics. Sure enough, it was also the most accurate predictor of Hernandez’s RA9-WAR in 2007.

Taking a step back, I now wanted to determine which of the three metrics was the most accurate predictor of a pitcher’s future RA9-WAR. Just as Tango does, we’ll call the current season”Year T” and the next “Year T+1.” The results of this exercise are displayed below.
Yet again, we see a slight victory for the FanGraphs WAR metric. However, with over 1100 seasons in our sample, no single metric stands apart from the others. After all, they are designed with the same goal in mind: measure pitcher value. As you’ll see below, each metric usually ends up with a similar result to the others. (Click to view a larger version)

What happens, though, in instances like Teheran’s? When the metrics have stark disagreements with each other, which metric remains most reliable? To answer this question, I dug up the 10 most significant head-to-head disagreements among each of the metrics, and again looked at which version of WAR best predicted the RA9-WAR in Year T+1. Those results are listed below.

What stands out to me here is not only that fWAR still appears to be the best forward-looking metric, but also that in nine of its ten most significant disagreements with rWAR, the DIPS approach to WAR won out.

Just as in “The Great WAR Debate of 2017,” this discussion too is entirely dependent on what one intends to use WAR for. Here, we’ve established fWAR as an excellent forward-looking metric. Depending on who you ask, rWAR likely serves its best purpose illustrating, as Miller put it, what did happen. WARP may either be many years ahead of its time, or could still use a fair amount of tweaking. Or both. No matter, each version of pitching WAR comes with its own purpose, and each purpose has its own theoretical use.

Jake Arrieta turning himself from a Baltimore castoff to a Chicago Cy Young Award winner was a fascinating thing to watch, especially considering how it happened. This wasn’t just a guy who benefited from a change of scenery. When Arrieta adopted a new look, it was much more than his jersey color that changed.

The alterations were covered in a great 2014 Jeff Sullivan article titled Building Jake Arrieta. Among the things noted in that piece was his new release point that was primarily the result of pitching from the third-base side of the rubber.

Sullivan noted changes in Arrieta’s delivery yet again this May, pointing out an even more extreme horizontal release point in a piece titled Jake Arrieta Has Not Been Good. How extreme? Well, he’s throwing like a giant. No, not the kind that play in San Francisco. Arrieta has achieved nearly the exact same release point as Minnesota Twins pitcher Aaron Slegers, who at 6-foot-10 is one of the tallest hurlers to ever grace the mound.

Among the 562 right-handed pitchers Baseball Savant has data on from 2017, only three of them averaged a release point of at least 6.2 feet vertically and 3.3 feet horizontally: Arrieta, Slegers, and Brewers reliever Taylor Jungmann. Jungmann only thew 0.2 innings for Milwaukee last season, so there’s not much to unpack there. Below is the release point chart for Arrieta, courtesy of Baseball Savant:

And here is the chart for Slegers:

And finally, below is a graph showing how Arrieta’s horizontal release point has evolved over his career. You can see the dramatic dip to his first full season with Chicago in 2014. Things leveled out somewhat from there to 2016, but then there’s another noticeable dive last season.

Arrieta’s horizontal release point was farther toward third base than 98.6 percent of right-handed pitchers last year. It’s easy to see why a pitcher would want to create a unique look, as hitters aren’t accustomed to picking up a ball from that point, but how much does that really matter? Well, by the sound of this Francisco Cervelli quote from an MLB.com article in October 2015, I’m guessing it matters a lot.

“What makes him so tough is he throws the ball from the shortstop,” Cervelli said. “He’s supposed to throw straight. It should be illegal.”

Given Arrieta’s struggles, however, you can’t help but wonder if maybe he has taken this too far. He hit a career-high 10 batters and led the league in wild pitches for the second-straight season. Coming into 2017, Arrieta had averaged up just 6.2 H/9 and 0.5 HR/9 as a Cub. Last year, those numbers ballooned to 8.0 H/9 and 1.2 HR/9. His quality of pitch average also dipped from a score of 5.31 over his first three seasons with the Cubs to 4.98 last year.

The free agent market has been slow to get moving, but you’d have to figure things will start to pick up once the calendar turns over to 2018. It’ll be interesting to see if Arrieta’s new team tries to tweak some things with his mechanics. If nothing else, he’s shown a great openness to experiment.

Arrieta used his feet to get his arm into an angle that only a much taller pitcher should be able to achieve. Is it possible another set of eyes could get him pointed back in the right direction in 2018?

Tom Froemming is a contributor at Twins Daily and co-author of the 2018 Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook.

About 12 hours apart, news of two very similar moves broke out of Chicago and Minnesota, as the Cubs agreed to terms with Drew Smyly while the Twins signed Michael Pineda. Both pitchers inked two-year deals with $10-million guarantees and additional incentives based on innings pitched, but the two deals shared an even more important similarity: both pitchers underwent Tommy John surgery this summer and seem unlikely to contribute significantly during the 2017 campaign. Both clubs are clearly betting on a return to health and productivity in 2019 for the two still relatively young pitchers, as evidenced by the financial distribution of the contracts. Pineda is only owed $2 million for the upcoming season but will receive $8 million in 2019, while Smyly will be paid $3 million next year but will pull in $7 million the following year. Since both pitchers underwent surgery around the same time, during the middle of the summer, it seems unlikely that either will throw pitch in the coming season.

While uncommon, these types of deals certainly aren’t entirely unprecedented. The Kansas City Royals have inked three pitchers with similar situations over the past few years, with varying degrees of success. These contracts, given to Luke Hochevar and Kris Medlen in 2015 and Mike Minor the following season, seem to represent the most relevant examples of such a deal. While Minor was non-tendered by the Braves following repeated shoulder issues, both Medlen and Hochevar underwent Tommy John surgery the previous year. All three pitchers would appear for the Royals in the major leagues over the life of their deals, albeit with differing results. Hochevar would appear in 89 games for the Royals, and accumulate only marginal value, as he posted a FIP around 4.00 and tallied only 0.3 WAR combined before succumbing to thoracic outlet syndrome surgery. Kansas City declined their option over Hochevar last winter, who became a free agent and sat out 2017 recovering.

Medlen would also return to pitch in 2015, making eight starts and seven relief appearances for Kansas City. He saw an uptick in walks and a downturn in strikeouts compared to his previous work, but overall pitched his way to a 4.01 ERA with similar peripherals and rang up half a win of value. 2016, however, would not be so kind to Medlen, as he was shelled to the tune of a 7.77 ERA while walking more batters than he struck out and battling a shoulder injury. He would sign a minor-league deal with the Braves after the season, but would not return to the majors. Although he did not appear with the Royals in 2016 after struggling in AAA, Minor marks the largest success story of the three. Over 65 relief appearances, Minor registered a 2.62 FIP and was worth 2.1 WAR out of the bullpen. He recently signed a three-year contract with the Rangers to return to a starting role.

In total, the Royals invested $25.75 million in the three pitchers and saw them accumulate a grand total of 2.9 WAR, with most it coming from Minor. This works out to a $/WAR figure of $8.88 million per win, which is slightly higher than the $8 million per win value assumed of the free-agent market. Based on these three deals, it would appear that this type of signing is not a bargain, but rather an overpay on average. However, it isn’t fair to make such an assumption without looking at a larger sample of data. If we classify a similar deal as one in which a team signed a pitcher that was injured at the time of the signing and expected to miss at least part of the following season and either signed a major-league deal or a two-year minor-league pact, that leaves us with 18 similar signings since 2007. One of these signings, Nate Eovaldi, has yet to return from his injury but should in 2018, so we won’t include him in the sample.

These 17 signings correlate to 25 player seasons following injury, with 24 of those representing guaranteed contract years, as well as one option year (Joakim Soria, 2015). The breakdown of these player seasons by games, innings pitched, strikeouts, walks, earned runs, and WAR are presented in the table below:

Altogether, when on a big-league mound, the group pitched to a 4.30 ERA to go along with a 7.52 K/9 and a 3.05 BB/9, numbers not entirely dissimilar from, say, Dustin McGowan or Sal Romano in 2017. So even the healthy group put together fairly middling results, but it’s also important to remember that eight of these player seasons wouldn’t see the player throw a single big-league pitch, and therefore provided no value to the club. Let’s plot the distribution of value produced by WAR:

That 2.1 WAR recorded by Minor last season was the highest figure of any player season in the sample, and besides Mike Pelfrey’s 2013 season, no other player season really comes close. Of the 10 player seasons recorded by primarily starting pitchers, only Pelfrey’s season even came close to average production, as every other starter either wasn’t durable or good enough to rack up any significant value. On the relief side, Minor and 2014 Joakim Soria both excelled, but no other relief season (out of the 15 in the sample) even crossed the 0.5 win threshold. As with the Royals pitchers earlier, it is important to look at these deals from a value standpoint. We can do this by calculating $ per WAR for the whole sample to find a mean, and for each deal to find a median, and visually represent the distribution. Overall, teams invested a total of $78 million in these 25 player seasons, with $71 coming in guaranteed money and $7 million in Joakim Soria’s club option. All minor-league deals to MLB veterans were assigned a dollar value of $333,333 for ease of calculation. Bonuses and incentives were ignored from this figure, as it is very difficult to find these details of the player contracts and few of these seasons would reach such incentives. As we saw above, the sample produced a total WAR of 6.9. This means that on average, teams paid $11.3 million per win when committing money to injured pitchers in hopes of a bounceback, well above the market rate of $8 million per win in free agency. Based on some quick calculations, teams paid that $78 million for production worth $55.2 million, for a net loss of $22.8 million. Let’s now look at the value gained/lost for each contract (in millions of $):

As you can see, only five such contracts actually generated positive (above market value of $8 million per win), while the remaining 12 contracts provided their team with below-market value. The mean loss per contract is $1.34 million, while the median is represented by the Phillies’ $700k loss on Chad Billingsley. While neither number is outrageously high, both figures only serve to reinforce the fact that teams have generally lost more often than they have benefited from inking an injured pitcher.

None of this is necessarily to say that the Pineda, Smyly, and Eovaldi contracts are doomed or that no team should ever make this type of investment, but simply to look at how similar deals have worked out in the past. Admittedly, the sample is hardly big enough to make any sort of definitive conclusion, but the overall trend on these “bargain” signings isn’t pretty. Both Smyly and Pineda are better pitchers than most in the sample, so it is entirely possible that they (along with Eovaldi) could significantly shift the outlook on these types of deals in the future. Whether this trio of pitchers can buck the trend or will follow in the footsteps of their predecessors will certainly be an interesting, if minor (pun intended) storyline to watch over the next few seasons.

FanGraphs.com leaderboards, Baseball-Reference transaction data, and MLBReports Tommy John surgery database were all used extensively for this research.

Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve were seemingly neck and neck in MVP voting this year (even if they are neck and belly button when standing next to each other). Judge had the edge in FanGraphs WAR, while Altuve held an edge according to Baseball Reference. Altuve had gaudy batting average and stolen-base totals, while Judge reached the coveted 50-home-run plateau to go along with his jaw-dropping Statcast numbers. Heading into awards season, the American League MVP was hyped as a two-man race that could go either way.

But, then the voting happened, and Jose Altuve got 27 first-place votes to Aaron Judge’s two. There were a lot of reasons for this from storyline, to traditional numbers, to team record. One of the most prominent among them for sabermetric voters was Aaron Judge’s clutch performance. According to the Clutch metric found on this site, he was the least clutch player in baseball this year. Actually, he was the least clutch player in baseball this entire millennium. Wait no, actually, he had the single least clutch season in the history of the metric (since 1972).

Up until now, Clutch has not been shown to have predictive value, even if it is important in deciding things like MVP races which are based on things that have already happened. But, as you may have guessed from the article title, I think there may be evidence to suggest otherwise. Here a list of the least clutch players in history for their entire career according to the clutch metric.

This list is populated by a certain type of player: good ones. The difference in WAR between Jermaine Dye and Lance Parrish in 9th place would be a fantastic career for almost anyone. But, more importantly, it is populated by high-strikeout, power-hitting sluggers. Every single player on this list has a double-digit strikeout rate and everyone but Chet Lemon has at least 300 career home runs. The list of the most clutch players in history, on the other hand, is not made up of power hitters.

This list is made up of a very different kind of hitter. Tony Gwynn, Pete Rose and Ichiro are perhaps the three most well-known contact hitters of all time. Only three players on this list have double-digit strikeout rates, and only one has 300 career home runs. Chet Lemon, dead last in home runs on the other list, would rank second on this one.

Aaron Judge fits right into the pattern of these lists, as one of four qualified players with a 30% strikeout rate or higher. If you sum the clutch score of the top 10 players in strikeout rate this year, you get -9.05, or nearly one win per player lost due to clutch performance. If you remove Aaron Judge, the sum is a still gaudy total of -5.41.

I charted Strikeout rate against clutch score for all players qualified in 2017, and there is a small but definite trend. Below the chart, you can see the regression equation along with the P value for the coefficient and the R^2.

CLUTCH = 0.593 – 3.736*KPCT
R^2=.045
P=.0101 pic.twitter.com/msrDUblKtJ

— Arron Kruse (@arron_kruse) December 22, 2017

Ultimately I don’t have the tools or the time to fully explore this idea, but it would appear that there is an actual relationship here. The effect may be minuscule as the R^2 indicates, but the general trend seems to indicate that clutch players are more contact-oriented. This makes sense, because the most clutch situations in a game happen with men in scoring position, where the difference between a strikeout and a fly out or ground out can be an entire run. Further work needs to be done, but I would not be surprised to find that batted-ball type or walk rate also has an impact. For example, hitters with higher fly-ball rates may be more clutch because, with runners on base, a fly ball avoids a double play with a man on first, and may drive in a run with a man on third. With nobody on base and nobody out, the way a batter gets out does not make a difference. But in clutch situations, all outs are not created equal.

I’ve always wondered if certain players are aware of the comparisons floated with their names.

For one, it could be valuable to observe and learn from a player with similar mechanics. Struggle can be an unexpected teacher, and if their look-alike possesses a career with peaks and valleys, those turning points make invaluable late-night research material for a baseball nut. On the other hand, comparing can create unrealistic expectations.

Because I have not had the pleasure of speaking to Brewers pitcher Josh Hader, knowing whether he sees value in comparisons eludes me. What I do know is the most frequent comparison attached to Hader immediately creates those lofty expectations: Chris Sale.

Not as lanky, or elite, Hader’s sidearm-lefty slot causes Sale-like deception.

David Laurila of FanGraphs spoke with Hader about mechanics, and a few points resonated with me.

Hader is cognizant of the value biomechanical analysis can have, disclosing his run-in with motion-capture cotton balls affixing themselves to his body as he pops a glove with 95-mph heat. His max-effort delivery may cause worry for some, but reading about Hader’s confidence in his concoction of a motion is settling, even if it’s coming from the horse’s mouth. If you subscribe to the theory that past injury predicts future injury, Hader eclipsing 100 innings every year since 2013 should ease your concerns. (Thanks to Laurila for getting Hader’s thoughts in the column linked above.)

Hader also confirmed his awareness of the deception he creates when talking with Laurila. The less time a hitter has to pick up the ball out of his hand, the better. Left-handed hitters, in particular, have been decimated by Hader’s fastball-slider combo.

Lefties combined for a .158 slugging percentage against Hader last season. That was second in baseball, behind Pittsburgh Pirates closer Felipe Rivero (minimum 70+ total batters faced). Firmly inside the 99th percentile; when you drill down to how effective Hader’s slider was, I fear for any lefty who had to deal with this release point and horizontal bite (see gif above). Hader threw his slider 77 times last year to left-handed hitters and the resulting slugging percentage was .071. When they swung at this slider, 44% of the time they missed. Both metrics sit comfortably above average in relation to average slugging percentages and whiff rates for hitters, adding statistical backing to Hader’s dominance.

Unique about Hader is not only this slider, his hair, and his effectiveness, but his role heading into the offseason.

Since his move to Milwaukee from the Houston Astros in 2015’s Carlos Gomez swap, Hader was a starting pitcher for every one of his minor-league appearances. Craig Counsell & Co. entertained the reliever role for Hader only upon his promotion to the major leagues on June 10. Culprits for the switch could be situational — the Brewers were contending, and needed bullpen arms — but you could also convince me they were performance-based. A 13.6% walk rate over 52 Triple-A innings doesn’t inspire confidence.

This isn’t breaking news to Brewers fans.

Control issues have always been a problem for Hader, but as a reliever, the Wayne’s World look-alike had a good enough fastball to utilize it 75 percent of the time to lefties, upwards of 85 percent to righties, and net himself a shiny 36 percent strikeout rate (47 2/3 innings). In the process, Hader cut his walk rate to 11.7 percent in the majors, from north of 13 percent at Triple-A.

Unfortunately for Hader, even that improvement shouldn’t inspire confidence. We haven’t had a qualified pitcher at the major-league level, with a walk rate greater than 11.6%, since Francisco Liriano in 2014. I wouldn’t fault Hader for making a deal with the devil and taking Liriano’s 1,500-inning career, but my intentions are to consider a pitch vital to determining Hader’s 2018 role.

***

“Considering everything” headlines an MLB.com column from Brewers beat writer Adam McCalvy just over a week ago.

The vocalist of that quote was Craig Counsell, and the topic was our very own Josh Hader.

Indifference exists because Hader pitched so well in his 35 relief appearances and because of the smattering of question marks. The biggest of which is emerging ace Jimmy Nelson’s shoulder health. One depth chart has Hader as Corey Knebel’s set-up man. With an individual named “B. Suter” in the Brewers 2018 rotation. (Not “Bruce” Suter, just to confirm. Sorry, Brent.)

One question mark Hader can control is the development of his changeup. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but a developed third pitch — so often the changeup — is how many minor-league arms get a chance to work for five-plus innings in the upper levels.

One of my favorite finds from 2017 has been the scout Chris Kusiolek (@CaliKusiolek on Twitter). In regards to changeups, Kusiolek mentioned on the Fantrax Baseball Show how much of a feel pitch it truly is. He detailed how he looks not at the present state of a pitcher’s changeup when determining the viability of the pitch’s future, but the athleticism of the pitcher, his arm action, fastball, and other aesthetics, to make that call. I’m nowhere near as seasoned of a scout as Kusiolek, but Hader hits a few of those points.

Even Hader will admit changeups are a feel pitch, and found in that same McCalvy column, the Brewers beat writer tweeted out the grip Hader was working on back in March of 2017.

“Messed up” can often prime one to think inconsistent, but that may apply to the resulting action Hader achieved on the pitch, rather than the results.

FanGraphs has Hader’s changeup just below 86 mph. This average velocity was the more common action on the pitch I observed watching tape of Hader. Other times, however, I’ve seen Hader’s change kick up to 88 mph. From my crude observation, the harder changeup only came spontaneously and later in counts. You’re about to see an 88-mph changeup on a two-strike pitch to Adam Duvall.

Harry Pavlidis has conducted extensive research on why some changeups are effective, noting those who generate elevated levels of ground balls and swinging strikes with the pitch are ideal (Stephen Strasburg is the poster-child).

Hader’s changeup hits one of those two criteria. Among starters and relievers with 50 or more changeups thrown, when Hader’s is put in play, it generates grounders at a 75-percent clip, sixth-highest in all of baseball (320 total starters and relievers). I understand it’s a pipe dream to ask Hader to replicate the arm action or grip that leads to the harder offering — if it is spontaneous — but if the structure of his general changeup leads to an elevated level of ground balls, this harder changeup might push him further into worm-killer territory.

Given Hader’s changeup has a sub-par whiff-per-swing rate in the bottom quarter of the league, playing to his strengths and embracing the harder version could make an interesting case for change.

You could argue Hader needs to continue mixing the two, but if the hittable, 86-mph changeup is thrown more as an early-count offering to righties, exploiting Hader’s attempt to pitch backwards could become an game plan. Or, in a perfect world, Hader can refine the swinging-strike rate on the slightly softer offering and turn into a two-changeup lefty. (A boy can dream, right?)

***

Considering Hader for a rotation spot is not a spontaneous decision, especially with Hader’s talent and polished, 23-year-old arm.

Both of his raw pitch count season-highs throwing his changeup came in consecutive appearances during late September. His usage with the pitch crept towards 19 percent, and both outings lasted north of two innings.

Hader can survive as a starting pitcher if his changeup becomes a legitimate weapon to right-handed hitters, especially if opposing managers understand Hader’s dominance against lefties and stack against his natural platoon split.

While Hader’s changeup is often knocked for being inconsistent, I counter that sentiment by saying he has a substantially better feel for the pitch than most, especially given the tendency of hitters to pound it into the ground, regardless of the velocity.

My gut tells me Hader will be utilized as a multi-inning reliever, and dominate both sides of the plate in 2018. My heart tells me to give Hader starts to further refine his feel for a pitch he’ll have to use effectively the second and third time through major-league lineups in order to survive.

In Craig Counsell and Derek Johnson I trust.

A version of this post can be found on my website, BigThreeSports.com

Statistics all from BrooksBaseball, BaseballSavant, Baseball Prospectus, and FanGraphs, unless otherwise noted.

Ichiro is one of the most bizarre players of the past 20 seasons. While many hitters have come over from Japan to the MLB, Ichiro has stuck in North America like no one else. The NPB is famous for its ground-ball-heavy approach — per DeltaGraphs, the NPB ran a GB% of 48% compared to 44% for the MLB last season — but that approach usually doesn’t work that well across the pond. That wasn’t the case for Ichiro. He made it work, and he made it work all the way to capturing the single-season hit record. And he did it in a really, really weird way.

How to Hit In Japan

To explain why it was so weird that Ichiro did what he did, we have to go all the way back to the beginning, back to Ichiro’s home country of Japan. Nippon Pro Baseball is the highest level of professional competition in Japan, and it’s where MLB superstars (and future superstars) like Ichiro, Shohei Ohtani, and Hideki Matsui started their careers.

The NPB is traditionally referred to as a ‘AAAA league’ — its level of competition is below that of the MLB, but above that of typical AAA team, which is why players who could mash in AAA but couldn’t hang on in the majors usually end up in the land of the rising sun (guys like Álex Guerrero and Casey McGehee were among the best hitters in the NPB in 2017).

The NPB’s style of baseball, however, is unique. It exists as some strange mesh of dead-ball play and modern baseball, where ground ball machines can thrive.

Earlier this year, Ben Lindbergh took a look at the biggest ground-ball-machine in the world, Nippon-Ham Fighter Takuya Nakashima, who ran an astonishing 74.4% GB% in 2016. Nakashima’s batted-ball profile looks like something of a caricature of the rest of the league, a gross exaggeration of the way the rest of the league plays.

League-wide, the NPB GB% year to year falls between 47% and 48%, which is quite a bit more than the 44%-45% that the MLB posts every season. Japanese players also traditionally reach base more frequently on grounders too, posting a BABIP of .245 on ground balls in 2017 compared to the MLB’s .241 figure.

But the biggest difference between MLB and NPB grounders? Ground balls are generally worth 30% more in Japan as they are in North America. MLB batters posted a 29 wRC+ on grounders, but NPB grounders were worth 42 wRC+. That’s a huge difference, especially for a league-wide figure. While it’s still not technically beneficial to hit ground balls, in Japan, hitters are rewarded for doing so more frequently than their North American counterparts.

How does such a huge difference exist between NPB and the MLB? Lindbergh, in the above article, suggests that the spongy Japanese turf is to blame, causing ground balls to have more life on them. In addition, Lindbergh suggests that the NPB, which has been slow to adopt many sabermetric and modern ideas, is shift averse, meaning many pull-happy hitters can run higher BABIPs. It’s also possible that since NPB has a lower skill level than the MLB, NPB infield defense could allow more hits than MLB infields.

Whatever the reason, hitters who came to the MLB from the NPB while relying on the ground ball as a means of production generally saw their production suffer. Tsuyoshi Nishioka, for example, hit .346/.423/.482 the season before coming to the MLB, but managed only a paltry .215/.267/.236 with the Twins in two seasons. Nishioka relied heavily upon the ground ball in both leagues but was punished more heavily for doing so in the MLB than in the NPB, and that, coupled with the difficulty of facing MLB pitchers, doomed him to mediocrity.

Ichiro was much the same — a ground-ball production machine. When he came over from Japan, perhaps in hindsight, he should have flopped for the same reasons that Nishioka, Kensuke Tanaka, Munenori Kawasaki, and Akinori Iwamura flopped. He fit the profile — speedy, high-contact ground-ball hitter coming over from Japan. Hell, Ichiro’s best-case scenario should have been what Nori Aoki turned out to be.

Instead, he thrived.

Ichiro Breaks the Mold

When Ichiro arrived in America, he was nothing short of a revelation, and a key factor in the Seattle Mariners posting the best record of the modern era in 2001 — and he was arguably the face of the franchise for close to a decade.

Ichiro’s high-contact, low walk/strikeout approach shouldn’t have worked. I ran Ichiro’s 2003 season through my similarity tool, and the best comps I generated were Jose Vizcaino’s 2004 season, Warren Morris’ 2003 season, and Brad Ausmus’ 2004 season (yes, that Brad Ausmus). None of these guys posted a wRC+ over 90 in those years, but Ichiro was at 112. How did Ichiro get by using a strategy that had failed so many hitters before him?

On paper, the answer is BABIP. For his first four seasons, Ichiro never posted a BABIP below .333. While the league average for BABIP is around .300, elite players generally have a BABIP skill above .300 as a result of making elite contact. If we make a rough and naive assumption that a high SLG means that a player made good contact, we see that the among the top 15 career BABIP leaders (with 10000 PA), most of them made good contact, except for Lou Brock … and Ichiro.

It gets weirder. Remember all that talk about ground balls? Ichiro hit a lot of them — since 2002, the earliest season for which we have batted-ball data, Ichiro has hit the most ground balls in the majors, almost 800 more than 2nd place (Derek Jeter). Here is a scatterplot of GB% versus BABIP for qualified single seasons since 2002.

There exists a weak, but roughly positive correlation between BABIP and GB%. Most everyone is hanging out somewhere around the 35%-50% GB% and .250-.350 range, but then there’s Ichiro, who consistently posts BABIPs well above what he should be getting. Ready? It gets even weirder.

Here’s that same chart, but I’ve thrown in the ages of each hitter in a gradient color scale. There’s a good spread around here, but I’ve highlighted Ichiro’s 2004 season, and it should stand out in three big ways. First, he posted one of the highest GB% since 2002 (63.1%). Second, he posted the second highest single-season BABIP since 2002 (.399). And third, he was 30 when he did this! Many of the light blue values in the upper right of the column belong to Ichiro. Which is really unusual, since many of them are when he’s older than the median MLB player (29 years old).

In this chart, the red dots represent hitters 29 years old or younger, and the blue dots represent hitters 30 years old or older. Notice how there’s a roughly even mix in the middle, but older hitters tend towards the bottom left, and younger hitters tend towards the upper right (though there are exceptions to each).

Here’s that same chart, but I’ve removed Ichiro’s seasons — look at the far upper right. See the difference?

Ichiro’s specialty is defying all aging curves and all logic by consistently posting these ridiculous BABIPs while acting like a ground-ball machine, and making contact that most hitters would be ashamed of.

Legs Don’t Fail Me Now

We’ve already identified that Ichiro makes sub-par contact, hits a lot of ground balls (not exactly a recipe for production), and doesn’t strike out or walk much. No, the biggest tool for Ichiro, as anyone who watched him play could tell you, was his speed.

August Fagerstrom previously found that Ichiro had elite speed in his younger days, estimating his time-to-first in his prime as just under 3.75 seconds, which would blow Billy Hamilton (3.95 seconds) out of the water. It’s no exaggeration to say that Ichiro could be one of the fastest men in MLB history.

So many hitters came over from Japan with profiles similar to Ichiro — speedy ground-ball hitters who make a lot of contact. But none of them had Ichiro’s generational speed, and so, none of them found the type of sustained success that he did.

One cannot help but feel a sense of wonder in looking at Ichiro’s career. Because his production relies almost solely on his ability to make contact and his speed, tools that decay slowly with age (I’m aware that speed tends to decrease with age, but exceptionally speedy runners such as Chase Utley and Rajai Davis can retain their prowess on the basepaths well into their late 30s), he was able to defy what we might expect from someone of his age and with his batted-ball profile.

Ichiro was shooting the moon with his approach the plate, in a way. Sabermetric wisdom tells hitters to elevate, draw walks, don’t be afraid to strike out, make solid contact, and don’t worry about speed. Ichiro did the exact opposite and was rewarded handsomely rewarded for it. I can think of no more unique player with such a storied career and legacy. Here’s hoping 2017 won’t be Ichiro’s last hurrah.

The Giants made a big splash by acquiring Evan Longoria, owner of three All-Star nominations, three Gold Gloves, a Silver Slugger, and the 2008 AL Rookie of Year. I will come right out and admit that I have hardly spent any time thinking about Longoria at all through his 10-year career. As a fan of an NL West team, the Rays are about as far away from my realm of focus as you can get. Throw in the fact that they are a small-market team dwarfed by the Yankees and Red Sox, and Longoria simply hasn’t made a huge impression on me.

After reacquainting myself with his player page, I realized how much I have been missing. Longoria has amassed almost 50 WAR in his career so far, placing him on the bubble of many Hall of Fame stats despite being only 32 years old. He has avoided any disastrous seasons, as his lowest WAR total was 2.2, and that came in a 2012 season when he only played in 74 games. Almost as impressive as his WAR totals – that 2012 season has been the only season in 10 years that he missed significant time due to injury. In the past five years, he has played in more games (798) than anyone in the MLB. He has been the epitome of health and consistency for a decade.

Longoria has earned his value by being very well-rounded. He provides significant value with his bat, as his career wRC+ mark of 123 matches up with the likes of Yoenis Cespedes, Jose Altuve, and Mookie Betts, all extremely accomplished hitters that have yet to enter their late-career decline phases. As the three Gold Gloves imply, Longoria is also an impressive fielder, with career marks of 75 DRS and 89.1 UZR. While not a massive base-stealing threat, he has shown enough speed and baserunning intelligence to provide slightly above-average baserunning value. Simply put: the dude is good at playing baseball, and he’s been proving it for an entire decade now.

As impressive as that resume is, the Giants don’t get to enjoy any of his past accomplishments. They didn’t trade for 2008-2017 Evan Longoria, they traded for 2018-2022 Evan Longoria. So now the question becomes: Is Evan Longoria still good? Jeff briefly touched on this immediately after the trade, but I wanted to take a deeper look.

At 32 years old, he is past the typical peak years for most baseball players, and in Longoria’s case, he already sustained a pretty clear peak over his first six seasons (ages 22-27). As Jeff noted, he put up a wRC+ of 135 during this time; compare that to his four seasons since then (ages 28-31), when his wRC+ has dropped to 108. Don’t get me wrong – 108 is still good! It’s just not the elite All-Star player we saw at the front of his career. His defense has followed the same trajectory, as he put up +79 DRS and +78.4 UZR over his first six seasons, then dropped to -4 DRS and +10.7 UZR over his last four seasons.

This is a familiar story: good baseball player gets older, becomes worse baseball player. But it’s so familiar that it can also be a trap – Longoria might end up following the Adrian Beltre career path, who posted a 6-WAR season at 37 years old. Looking at the numbers, though, I just can’t make myself believe that Longoria is anything more than a useful starter right now, and one that will shortly become a below-average player.

Longoria’s strikeout rate immediately jumped out to me, as he only struck out 16.1% of the time last year, setting a new career low, almost 4% below his career average. This is promising! In an era of increasing strikeouts, Longoria is figuring out how to put more balls in play, giving him more chances of getting on base. Of course, this line of thinking requires that he is trading strikeouts for quality batted balls, and considering his ISO last year sat 50 points below his career average, it didn’t look like this was the case. After digging deeper into some plate discipline numbers, it became very obvious to me what was happening.

2013 was Longoria’s last star-caliber season. The following year, his wRC+ dropped from 132 to 105, with a corresponding spike in Swing%. All of a sudden, Longoria was much more aggressive, swinging at more pitches both inside and outside of the zone. And especially in 2017, he seemed to be focusing intently on putting the ball in play, with a large spike in Contact% despite seeing the 2^nd lowest Zone% in his career. Some people are able to cut strikeouts by controlling the strike zone better, but it looks like Longoria was cutting strikeouts by swinging more often and making poor contact on bad pitches. Consider his batted-ball distribution:

The first big red flag here is the red line along the bottom. Once again, starting in 2014, we start seeing a worrisome trend as he began hitting more and more infield flies. All his improvements in strikeout rate are erased here, as infield flies are essentially automatic outs and are just as bad. The other interesting tidbit in this graphic is the interplay between his GB% and FB% the past two years. Longoria had a mini-offensive resurgence in 2016, and it looks like that can be attributed to him lifting the ball more often. In 2017, he lost all of his FB% gains and then some, driving more balls into the ground than ever before.

Jeff also touched on the relevant Statcast data. Longoria’s exit velocity dropped significantly last year, as did his rate of barrels and xwOBA. There was nothing fluky going on for Longo in 2017 – he was swinging more often but making worse contact, and more of his batted balls were either going into the ground or popped up in the infield.

Is a turnaround completely out of the question? Of course not, nothing is out of the question. Perhaps a change of scenery will provide a spark for the 32-year-old. Perhaps he will be motivated to prove to the baseball world that the Giants made a good trade, and he will work harder than ever to make it back to All-Star levels. Even if he simply sustains his current production, he is still a 2-3 win player right now. But the Giants need more than that, and we’re already four years into a significant decline for Longoria. Both his bat and his glove are on the wrong side of the age curve, and it looks like the Giants just added another expensive, aging veteran to throw onto the pile.

On December 20th, the Rays shipped Evan “Career Ray” Longoria to the Giants for Christian Arroyo, Denard Span, Matt Krook and Stephen Woods. On the surface, this seems like a deal that fits the needs of both teams. The Rays have initiated yet another rebuild that Longoria didn’t want to be a part of, and got some young players in return. Arroyo is a former top-100 prospect who, despite destroying lower levels in 2017, struggled in his debut with the Giants. The two arms are the classic “pitching prospects,” and, well, Denard Span is Denard Span. On the other side, the Giants filled an absolutely gaping hole at third base. They no longer have to play Pablo Sandoval, and that should be a win for any team.  However, this trade has left me scratching my head, and there’re a few reasons why. Let’s look at some statlines.

Player A – 96 wRC+ / 11 DRS

Player B – 108 wRC+ / 10 DRS

Which one do you think the Giants just gave Christian Arroyo up for? The answer is A, Evan Longoria, a 32-year-old who is making 13.5 million dollars a year.  Player C is Todd Frazier, a 31-year-old (almost 32-year-old) free agent who will more than likely sign a contract in the 10-12 million dollar range. Now, Longoria did have a down year at the plate in 2017 and is the better defender of the two, but looking at these numbers raises some questions. Why did the Giants give up a talented young prospect for someone they could have just signed in the free-agent market? It’s understandable that you can look at Longoria’s track record and expect him to bounce back from a down year, but there are a few other things to consider before jumping to that conclusion. First of all, Longoria is moving from Tropicana Field to AT&T Park, one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in the majors. According to Baseball Reference, Tropicana was also stifling, but still, moving to AT&T is not a welcome change for any hitter. Secondly, Longoria is 32 years old, and we all know what side of 30 that’s on (it’s the bad side). Thinking Longoria can bounce back during his age-32 season is a tough sell for anyone who believes in the aging curve.

Let’s consider what the Giants could have done differently. If they would have signed Todd Frazier, they would have been getting a cheaper contract for a player with essentially the same skill-set as Longoria; a power right-handed bat with a plus glove at third base. They’re practically the same age, and now, the Giants can keep Christian Arroyo around and give him some more time to develop in the minors or give him exposure at the major-league level if Joe Panik continues to struggle. Yes, they did offload Denard Span’s contract, so technically, Longoria is cheaper than Frazier would be, but I’ll address that in just a bit. They also had the option to not sign anyone at all and hope Arroyo develops into some sort of Matt Duffy 2.0. To make it clear, I don’t think Arroyo will ever be as good as Longoria, but I have no problem believing he could be a 2-3 win player a few years down the road.

Now, in terms of the big picture, only one of these moves keeps the Giants’ hopes for the future alive. If you haven’t noticed, all the stars on the Giants are going to be on the wrong side of the aging curve soon. Signing Frazier only contributes to that problem. Arroyo could have been a piece the Giants could have built their team around in the future when all of their other superstars are decrepit skeletons. Remember what I said about Denard Span being Denard Span and his contract being offloaded? That’s another problem that the Giants have to fix now. Denard Span isn’t good, but he’s essentially league-average at playing center field. Who do the Giants stick out there now? Steven Duggar? Mac Williamson? Both of those options represent a downgrade to Span. Instead, we can expect the Giants to throw a bunch of money at a free-agent outfielder, perhaps someone like Lorenzo Cain. Cain would represent a huge upgrade over Span, but Cain is still another 31-year-old who is projected to decline in his production while making close to 20 million dollars a year, which cancels out the effect of getting rid of Span’s contract in the first place.

If they do sign Cain, the Giants will then be spending more money than they were before they traded for Longoria in the first place. If they don’t, then they’ll have to expect lackluster production out of center field, somehow even more lackluster than Span already was. Finally, you have to consider if this move actually makes the Giants better than the rest of the NL West. It doesn’t. The Dodgers are still a super team, the D-Backs are still very good, and the Rockies, despite having some question marks about their rotation, are a good team as well. Well, okay, the Giants won’t finish behind the Padres, but you still have to be better than the best team in baseball last year to win your division. This is a lot to ask for a Giants team that has only added something like 1.5 wins this offseason and was the worst team in the National League last year. Don’t get me wrong; getting Longoria, a good player who makes way, way less than his market value is a great move, but I don’t think it is in the context of where the Giants are as a team, what they gave up, and the holes they still have to fill.

As for the Rays, this is a move that was going to happen eventually. They see that the Yankees and Red Sox are going dominate the AL East for a while, so they decided that now is as good a time as any to tear it down and start again. The Rays will continue to the do the Rays thing we all know and love, stockpiling as many Matt Duffy-type players as they can while consistently pumping out awesome pitchers from their farm system, then trading those pitchers for more clones of Matt Duffy. Arroyo will more than likely take the second-base job in Tampa over at some point during 2018, and will be a fun player to watch in the Rays lineup. Span might end up taking some time from Mallex Smith in left field, but Smith is definitely the more exciting and interesting player of the two. The real Matt Duffy will end up playing third, and the Rays will finish 3rd or 4th in the AL East like they do almost every year. Again, this a trade that was going to happen, but it’s just surprising to see how it ended up going down.

Elevating is en vogue; everyone wants to do it and it seems like every hitter who does it can become a power hitter, especially with rumors about a new ball. There have been many examples of successful hitters of that mold: Daniel Murphy, Justin Turner and Jose Altuve, among others. Is there a limit to this? Could we see hitters with a 25% GB rate in the future? 20% 15%?

One thing that seems to cap this is BABIP. There is a pretty positive correlation of BABIP and GB rate, i.e. GB hitters tend to have a higher BABIP. That seems logical since FBs tend to have a lower average, and even if they are hits they often don’t count for BABIP as they are often home runs.

This table shows the relation of BABIP and GB rate between 2008 and 2017. You can see that BABIP does go down with lower GB rates, but wRC+ is actually better with lower GB rates. Still, you could see a point being reached where the lower BABIP eats up the advantages.

Average launch angle shows a similar picture:

It seems that once you get past a certain launch angle or GB rate, a drop in BABIP is inevitable. However, an exception might be possible. I looked up guys with a lower than 35% GB rate and a FB rate of lower than 45%, and their BABIP was 0.304. Those guys were pretty rare between 2008 and 2017, but it is possible. You just need to get the ball off the ground and avoid both pop-ups and high outfield fly balls above 25 degrees. Not an easy thing to do, though, as the bat is a round object, and batted balls will always be distributed rather normally around the average LA, meaning that a higher average LA usually will mean more high outfield fly balls.

However, it is possible to imagine a super-hitter who has such good bat control that his band is very narrow. The best example of this might be Daniel Murphy, who managed to have a 34% GB rate with just a 40% FB rate (meaning a very high LD rate), and subsequently a very high (.345) BABIP over the last three years.

So we could indeed imagine a kind of “super Murphy” who hits 25% grounders with lower than 45% FBs. However, to date, we have not seen a guy sustaining such high LD rates; that guy would probably have to have superhuman bat control (which probably eliminates almost all >25% K rate guys). But with modern training methods, who knows what might happen.