Archive for Washington Nationals

Last July when the Oakland Athletics traded for Blake Treinen, Jesus Luzardo, and Sheldon Neuse, providing the Washington Nationals the services of relievers Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson, the Athletics trade was more notably about the prospects of Luzardo’s pitching and Neuse at third base. The Athletics are in the middle of a definitive rebuild; outside of the Athletics organization, the Treinen piece of the trade was simply for his services as a simple bullpen body to hit average (hopefully) and pander on through the remnant of the season as Doolittle and Madson’s replacement.

Contextually, when the trade occurred last July, Treinen was 28 and hitting his ceiling in the Nationals development methodology. He lost hit job in April of 2017 then slowly settled into an awful 5.73 ERA with 48 allowed hits in the first half. There is no magical analytic which explains why he was bad, no pedantically bad situational deterioration – Treinen was simply bad.

Specifically, Treinen was bland on his first pitch (which is a telling sign of a pitcher struggling), lofting sweet, contact worthy pitches to the upper zone. Overall, batters swung and made contact throughout his first-pitch zones. Hence, the same area that created his bizarre downward trend was the first area where Treinen began his 2018 correction. He has cut high zone pitches on the first-pitch count, aptly cutting contact to the high zone. Batters are attacking his first pitch less, taking (or trying to take) a more principled approach to seeing him out.

The batting delay has created Treinen’s most formidable analytical point: the second highest and lowest qualified-reliever swinging strike rate and ERA at 18.8 percent and .93, respectively.

Any improvement this stark demands a resurgence across all pitching categories. First, Treinen has begun to shift his fastball placement. In 2017, on a micro fastball scale, Treinen offered either the fastball outside (44 percent balls) or distinctly inside (76.1 percent contact), failing to hit the lateral sides of the inside zone. That crisp distinctness allowed batters to perceive where his fastball was going to land, allowing a 156 wRC+. In 2018, he has avoided letting the fastball fall distinctly outside of the zone (30 percent balls, 72.7 percent contact), thus offering more variety within more controlled movement. His fastball has kept batters to a negative 20 wRC+.

When batters have been contacting his fastball, they have a 47.1 percent fly-ball rate. Perceptually, this is an alarming rate, less that placement becomes intrinsically important. In a string of reactions, Treinen is enforcing a greater chase rate (38.7 percent, increase from 30.8 percent) while decreasing his chase contact rate from 52.2 to 38.6 percent. This has cut the ability of batters to find barrel contact (2.1 percent), thus cutting his opposite field hit-rate to 19.8 percent. In short, Treinen is deriving contact that is easy to field.

Hypothetically, this might be a philosophical adjunct to the Athletics analytic mantra. The team is shifting on 30.4 percent of left-handed batters, an increase from 17.1 percent last season with the Washington Nationals. Neither team shift at a dramatic rate, but there is a slight difference between the Nationals fielding chart and the Athletics fielding chart behind Treinen. The slight difference may not be the main reason, but the Athletics awareness of how to help Treinen with more movement is, at minimum, an interesting note.

However, for all the jovial notation Treinen’s fastball is receiving, his main-pitch, the sinker, deserves even more praise. He has kept batters to a .200 average, already hitting 17 strikeouts on the sinker for a 56 wRC+. Much like the fastball, the sinker is moving less, but in a crisper fashion (9.7 rating down from 11.9). On a meta point, Treinen is simply more confident and educated in his pitching approach – on a simple eye-test, he is perceptually prepared where to throw. Scrupulous timing and more variety in placement of his sinker has lowered contact to 71.1 percent (was an egregious 86.2 percent last season). The one data-point which fundamentally incorporates how good his sinker has been is the increase in outside swing percentage (43 percent) while decreasing outside-contact (52.1 percent).

In short, pitches that were not meant to be hit, were being hit in 2018, and Treinen has prevented that from occurring. Fundamentally, this is on the breadth of a slight mechanical edit observable with a release point grouping to the right. In the example provided, between 2017 and 2018, Treinen is releasing his pitches with more elevation, signifying a change to his release philosophy.

The Athletics somehow have tapped into Treinen to bring out the best of him; the only question they have to answer is whether he is trade-bait or a long-term staple to the bullpen.

In the NLDS, Stephen Strasburg was absolutely brilliant for the Nationals in his two starts. Due to an injury to Max Scherzer, Strasburg got the ball for Game 1 and was dominant. He threw 5.2 innings of no-hit ball before giving up back-to-back RBI singles to Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo that allowed two unearned runs to score thanks to a rare error by Anthony Rendon. Strasburg finished with an impressive line of 7 IP 3 H 2 R 0 ER 1 BB and 10 K in a losing effort. Although his outing was ruined by the unearned runs and Kyle Hendricks’ outstanding start which shut down the Nationals offense, Strasburg made the Cubs hitters look foolish all night long. Getting the ball once again with his team down 2-1 in the series, Strasburg turned in another absolute gem in Game 4. In a 5-0 victory, Strasburg threw seven shutout innings, scattering three hits while walking two and striking out 12. In his two starts combined, Strasburg threw 14 innings without allowing an earned run, while only giving up six hits with three walks to go along with 22 strikeouts.

The dominance on display by Strasburg is nothing new. Despite being the second-best pitcher on his team, Strasburg is an ace and finished second (behind Scherzer) among NL pitchers with 5.6 WAR. When Strasburg come to mind, the immediate thought goes to his power fastball. It’s one of the main reasons why the Nationals selected him with the first overall pick in the 2009 draft. He throws the pitch with an average velocity of 95.6 MPH good for fifth among qualified pitchers. Yet, Strasburg also loves to throw changeups, especially to right-handed hitters. Throughout the course of the regular season, Strasburg threw 16.3% changeups to right-handed hitters. This is an absurdly high amount for a power pitcher like Strasburg. Typically right-on-right changeups are primarily thrown by low-velocity sinkerballers, since changeups typically have the same movement as their sinker despite being thrown 5-10 MPH slower. Conventional wisdom has dictated for years that power pitchers should throw fastballs and curveballs (or sliders) to the same-handed hitters while throwing fastballs and changeups to opposite-handed hitters. The idea behind this is to throw a breaking pitch with movement that breaks away from the hitter, making it harder to hit. Right-on-right changeups were regarded as a dangerous pitch since a mistake almost always ended up with the pitch being barreled.

In 2013, Ben Lindbergh wrote an article for Baseball Prospectus about the Tampa Bay Rays (because who else besides Joe Maddon and Andrew Friedman) and their increased usage of same-sided changeups (this article includes left-on-left changeups as well). However, the team refused to recognize this increased same-sided changeup usage as an intentional move, but rather tried to classify it as an increase in the emphasis on throwing changeups to all hitters regardless of handedness. As a team in 2013, the Rays led the league in percent of same-sided changeups, as 15.9% of all pitches thrown to same-sided hitters were changeups. The league average was 5.4%. This league average has held relatively constant over the last four years. Using Statcast data from 2017 for all right-on-right pitches thrown by starting pitchers, 6.6% of all right-on-right pitches were changeups.

Back to Strasburg. Throwing his changeup 16.3% of the time to right-handed hitters, he generated a whiff rate of 27.2% while only allowing five hits and 13 other balls in play, on 213 changeups. Four of those five hits were singles, while the other was a home run hooked down the line by Josh Harrison (hit probability of 13%). He used his changeup primarily as an out pitch, as most were thrown down and in with two strikes. It totally makes sense for Strasburg to use his changeup so much, as it is one of the best pitches in baseball, and it really is its own animal. It’s unique because he throws it really hard. It was the second-hardest changeup among qualified starters, coming in at an average of 88.7 MPH. Despite throwing it so hard, it was 7 MPH slower than his average fastball, right in the ideal range of velocity differential. It also has a decent amount of arm-side run to go along with late and sharp drop (as can be seen here). According to the Pitch Values assigned by FanGraphs, Strasburg’s changeup was fifth best among qualified starters in total value, and 10th best on a per-pitch basis.

In his Game 1 start, Strasburg threw six right-on-right changeups out of 45 pitches (13.3%) and generated four whiffs with zero balls in play. This was right in line with his season averages, which would’ve been expected to continue in Game 4. But this was not the case. It was reported on Tuesday that Strasburg was sick and would not pitch on Wednesday despite being on regular rest after the rainout. Yet, on Wednesday morning, plans changed and he was announced as the Game 4 starter with the Nationals season on the line. As mentioned earlier, he did his job by turning in a spectacular start, and the Nationals’ season lived to see another day. However, in Game 4 Strasburg decided to get funky. He threw 16 right-on-right changeups out of 45 pitches, equal to a whopping 35.6% of the time, and generated eight whiffs with one ball in play hit at 27.7 MPH. His changeup and its increased usage was no doubt a huge factor in shutting down the Cubs once again (as can be seen here, here, and here). Who knows why he decided to go to it so much more often. Maybe he saw the success he had with it in Game 1, or maybe that pitch was the most comfortable for him to throw while supposedly not feeling well (his average fastball velocity of 95.4 MPH suggests he was feeling just fine). No matter what it was, it doesn’t matter. Strasburg has proved that the right-on-right changeup can not only be an effective pitch, but an absolutely devastating one. A pitch that can even be used over a third of the time. Let’s see if hitters will be able to adjust.

A lot of things have clicked for the Kia Tigers this season, chief among them being their offense’s record production. Kia’s fearsome lineup features three of the Korean Baseball Organization’s top-10 hitters by batting average, and five of the top-20 hitters by wRC+, and is a driving force behind the team’s domination of the standings, currently sitting in a comfortable 1^st place at 64-34-1, five games up on the second-place NC Dinos.

A major force behind the dominance of the Kia offense has been the unexpected emergence of their new center fielder Roger Bernadina, in his first season in the KBO. Just a season ago, Bernadina was toiling in the minor leagues, playing with the Las Vegas 51s, the New York Mets’ Triple-A affiliate.

The difference between the old Bernadina, a failed prospect who played seven partial seasons in Major League Baseball, mostly with the Washington Nationals, and the current Bernadina, who hits leadoff for the Kia Tigers’ offensive juggernaut, is stark.

In less than a fifth of the games played, Bernadina has already accumulated over three times his MLB WAR and hit over half as many home runs (19 to 28). By wRC+ he has been the 16^th most productive player in the KBO this season, and by WAR, he has been the 6^th best position player in the league. On Thursday night he hit for the cycle, becoming only the third foreign player to do so in the KBO. Quite a jump for someone who was a career 81 wRC+ hitter in the MLB.

Which of course begs the question: What’s changed? In less than a season, how has Roger Bernadina improved this much?

It isn’t plate discipline; Bernadina is actually walking slightly less (7.7 percent in the KBO versus 8.2 percent in the MLB) and swinging more (50.3 percent vs 42.1 percent). His strikeouts are down from 21.3 percent in the MLB to 17.4 percent in the KBO, but that change may be more a function of the leagues themselves (the MLB’s higher overall K% means Bernadina’s mark is about league average in both leagues) than any adjustment Bernadina himself has made.

Bernadina also still profiles as the same type of hitter, hitting a majority of his batted balls on the ground, with a moderate preference to pull. He never displayed particularly drastic platoon splits, hitting roughly the same against lefties and righties, and this tendency is also unchanged. Though his batted-ball characteristics would have made him a reasonable shift candidate, shifts were almost never employed against him in the MLB, so his increased numbers in the KBO are also not the result of the KBO’s relative lack of defensive shifts.

The biggest difference is the change in Bernadina’s batting average on balls in play. His current KBO BABIP is .353, a drastic increase from his career MLB BABIP of .288.

On one hand, Bernadina profiles as the type of hitter than might naturally run a higher BABIP. He runs well, having rated as a positive baserunner and base-stealer in both his time in the MLB (59 steals, 83% success rate, 8.9 BsR) and the KBO (21 steals, 81% success), and the fact that he is primarily a ground-ball hitter should give him ample opportunity to take infield hits and run a higher BABIP.

However, his track record shows this to not be the case. BABIP is a statistic that takes a long time to stabilize, and as such his career average is more indicative of him as a player than his current 2017 outlier mark. With no other changes in batted-ball profile or batting approach, Bernadina’s increased BABIP, and by extension increased offensive production, is more likely the result of fortunate circumstances and luck than any real change in skill.

That being said, simply acknowledging that Bernadina has been lucky this season does not diminish his performance. Regardless of whether he is performing to his expected outcomes or not, he has been a productive member at the top of the Kia Tigers’ lineup and, perhaps even more interestingly, has hit better as the season has progressed.

Well, here we are: Over 100 games into the season and Bryce Harper has yet to break out of his slump. When Bryce came to the Majors back in 2012 he was one of the most hyped prospects since Alex Rodriguez broke into the bigs as a 19-year-old shortstop. The pressure, I’m sure, was immense, and through his first three seasons Harper had put up good numbers, but had yet to establish himself as the superstar we all thought he’d be. Something clicked in 2015 though, as he posted an amazing 9.5 WAR, 197 wRC+, and 0.461 wOBA, all best in the MLB by a fair margin. We all thought he’d done it, he had exceeded expectations and was ready to join Mike Trout as one of the most exciting, talented, and productive players in the game. His 1.5 WAR, 180 wRC+, and 0.443 wOBA through April of 2016 merely affirmed this sentiment.

Here we are. 2.8 WAR, 115 wRC+, and 0.346 wOBA. To be fair, these are by no means terrible numbers. He is still creating runs at a decently better rate than the average MLB player, with much of the credit going towards his MLB-leading 18.2 BB% and his 0.214 ISO. His defense has also been very good this year, helping to raise his WAR to 41st in the MLB. No, I am not saying Harper is a bad player, I’m just saying he is worse than the Bryce Harper we saw in 2015. We were all ready to call him a superstar (heck, we even voted him into a starting spot at this year’s All-Star Game), but now he’s taken this step back and we have no choice now but to start questioning his superstar status. Let’s take a look both at what might be causing this slump, and what Bryce could do to bust out of it (if anything at all).

The stat that jumps out at me most is his BABIP. The MLB average is exactly 0.300 this year, and Bryce has a career mark of 0.317. Bryce isn’t too far into his career, and while it’s possible that his 0.369 BABIP last season was an anomaly, it’s certainly safe to say that Bryce is definitively above average in this area. This season his BABIP has dipped down to 0.234, good enough for second to last in the MLB, ahead of only Todd Frazier (0.203). BABIP has a great degree of luck involved, in that some hitters with higher BABIPs might just get lucky (e.g. hit a little bloop into shallow right field that drops for a hit), or might be playing poor defenses (e.g. Jason Heyward would have caught that little bloop, but Jose Bautista was in right field and missed it by a foot). I believe, though, that going from 0.369 in 2015 to 0.234 in 2016 is enough of a differential to at least form the hypothesis that Bryce is struggling beyond just facing better defenses and getting less breaks.

One of the keys to figuring out this drop in production is figuring out what has changed from last year. Obviously his BABIP has declined, but why? For the  most part, pitchers are throwing him the same types of pitches at the same rates, and are throwing pitches in/out of the zone at the same rates as well. He has almost the exact same swing% on pitches outside the zone, but there’s about a 5% decrease in his swing% on pitches in the zone; nothing monumental, but something we ought take note of. The greatest changes that may be observed are in his batted ball numbers, shown here:

We can almost construct a narrative from these numbers: He’s hitting balls soft significantly more often, and he’s also hitting less line drives. Soft ground balls and fly balls are easier to convert into outs, and his infield fly ball% increase implies that he is hitting fly balls with less power. This explains why his home run rate is down. Where he was previously hitting hard line drives and grounders, and turning fly balls into home runs, he is now hitting softer, more easily-fielded grounders and popups, resulting in a steep decline in BABIP.

But this isn’t a cause, it’s a symptom. Again, we are forced to ask why it is that Bryce isn’t hitting balls as hard, and why he’s hitting less line drives? Bryce has been known for having great plate discipline, something that generally hasn’t changed over the last two years. At the surface, we see that he still has a very high walk rate, lays off pitches outside of the zone, and is one of the more patient hitters in baseball. However, one stat that caught my eye was his contact% on pitches outside the zone (and even inside the zone). His O-contact% went from 60.9% to 67.4%, and even his Z-contact% increased from 84.4% to 87.7%. This can be visualized here:

For the 2015 season

And for the 2016 season

There are two ways to look at this: The types of pitches Bryce is seeing, and the counts he’s getting himself into. All of this revolves around where pitchers are throwing pitches, where he’s swinging, and where he’s making contact. As you can clearly see, Bryce has been making a tangibly higher amount of contact this season. Logically, it makes sense to say that he is taking more pitches in the zone, and making weak contact where he used to just swing and miss. But that can’t be the whole story, can it? In attempting to find differences between this season and last, I merely found that regardless of what the count was, Harper was always making more contact; it didn’t matter if he was ahead, behind, or even. He was also making more contact regardless of what pitches were being thrown.

Let’s start with the types of pitches Bryce sees. We’ll split it up into fastballs (which includes 4-seamers, 2-seamers, and cutters), and secondary pitches (curveballs, sliders, and changeups). With secondary pitches, pitchers have begun to come into the zone a bit more than they used to. These charts show where pitchers are throwing Bryce non-fastballs:

2015

2016

It is by no means a huge difference, but it’s still there. Obviously, pitchers are still mostly throwing him non-heaters down and away, they’re just getting them in the zone more frequently. How does Bryce respond to this change? Well, he’s been laying off the low pitch a bit more, and instead has attempted to hit the inside pitch. These are his swing percentages on secondary pitches:

2015

2016

This also means that those non-fastballs are being called as strikes more frequently (assuming that umpires are generally going to call pitches in the zone as strikes). As we can see in his contact% charts, this season Bryce has been making contact at an extremely high rate on those high and inside pitches, and softer pitches have been absolutely no exception. In fact, he’s been making contact with the high and inside non-heaters more than he is with high and inside fastballs. What are the implications of this? Let’s look at his slugging% against secondary pitches:

2015

2016

Slugging% is by no means a perfect measure of a hitter’s ability. Yet, in this case, it gives us a decent idea of which locations a hitter is making solid contact. In his 2015 campaign he was able to get his arms extended and drive curveballs with great power. This season he is attempting to pull the ball more, and it’s resulting in weaker contact. While he is able to drive the inside breaking ball at a pretty decent rate, I suspect that he’s opening up his stance, which can occasionally result in a hard-hit ball, but will often result in a weak fly ball to the opposite field, or a weak grounder to the pull side. The fact that he’s swinging so much more frequently at inside pitches would also be reason to guess that as he’s swinging at breaking balls out over the plate he is still attempting to pull them, as opposed to going with the pitch. Further evidence of this comes from looking at how he hits breaking balls from lefties (curving away from him), versus how he hits them from righties (curving towards him).

2015

He even seems to do better against lefties. Against both of them, however, he clearly is able to see the pitch that will eventually break across the middle/outer half of the plate, and drive it with power. Let’s head over to 2016:

While his production has decreased against both righties and lefties, it is clear that the disparity is much larger when it comes to lefties. This is because Bryce is able to get away with trying to pull the ball against righties, as the ball is curving towards him. This makes pulling the ball a much more natural motion. Against lefties, the only breaking balls he is hitting are the ones that start inside and break right to the inside part of the plate, and the pitches that break to be right down the middle. It is the non-fastballs that are low and on the outer part of the plate that he is unable to drive, especially the ones being thrown by lefties. He’s opening up more, which also explains why his pull% hasn’t gone up (in fact it’s gone down). When he’s open, it’s hard to drive the outside pitch even if you make contact with it intending to hit it to the opposite field. Instead, he’s making that weak contact that results in outs.

Looking solely at secondary pitches, the narrative becomes: Bryce is taking the pitches that are out over the plate, and is instead swinging at pitches that are high and inside. He has a tendency to attempt to open up to the ball, and while he can sometimes get away with it against righties, lefties have been able to essentially shut him down. He is also making much more contact with all of these pitches, meaning that he’s putting more balls in play, yes, but they are weak balls that are easy to field, and are thus resulting in outs. With this mindset, even trying to hit the ball to the opposite field becomes more difficult, and all of this culminates in a lower BABIP.

Next, let’s look at how he’s handling fastballs. One thing that quickly becomes evident is the fact that Harper has been swinging at fastballs a lot less this year, especially ones up in the zone.

2015

2016

His swing% on fastballs in other areas of the zone is roughly the same; it’s really just those high and down-the-middle fastballs that he’s suddenly laying off of more. And yet, just as with non-fastballs, Harper still has been managing to make more contact this year, especially on pitches high and inside, as well as pitches low and out of the zone. How has that translated in terms of his slugging%?

2015

2016

What immediately jumps out at you is the large hole in the top part of the zone this year where Bryce is generating virtually no production. His production on low fastballs is closer to on par with last season, but up in the zone (the same area where he isn’t swinging nearly as often) he can’t get anything going. Why is this? With fastballs it’s a little more simple than with breaking balls in some aspects: For whatever reason he’s laying off fastballs in the zone, and he’s making weak contact with fastballs both high and inside, and down and away (which is where pitchers throw him fastballs most frequently). He’s giving pitchers more opportunities to throw fastballs out of the zone too. The big question mark comes at why he can’t do anything with those high fastballs specifically?

The answer isn’t too straightforward, but I do think that a large part of it is what types of pitches Bryce swings at in which counts. See, there is a very large differential in Bryce’s swing% in counts with no strikes between last year and this year, whereas in two-strike counts his swing% is about the same. He is taking more pitches when he has no strikes against him, especially the high fastball:

2015

2016

He seems to be swinging at less pitches overall, and his focus has shifted from the top of the zone to the inside part of the zone. It should be noted, too, that he is swinging significantly less at breaking pitches with no strikes as well, which highlights something that’s a little less tangible. With fastballs the narrative becomes this: Bryce is taking more fastballs early in the count, which means he isn’t capitalizing on those fastballs. Once he has two strikes on him, it would reason to guess that he would have more trouble making square contact, right? Well, not quite…

Against fastballs in two-strike counts Bryce is actually hitting decently, but he’s still missing the ones across the middle of the plate. One thing I noticed is that, in two-strike counts, he’s getting thrown more breaking pitches than before, and less fastballs. In 2015, 258 out of 719 two-strike pitches were breaking balls (36%). In 2016, the mark has been 189 out of 448 (42%). With two-strike pitches in 2015, 383 out of 719 were fastballs (53%), whereas 2016 has only seen 220 out of 448 (49%). Bryce has become more aware of the outside pitches, both fastballs and breaking balls, and this has something to do with it.

With two strikes, Bryce is swinging at around the same rate in 2016 as he was in 2015. The pitches he is hitting successfully are: High and inside fastballs, away fastballs, away breaking pitches from righties, all breaking pitches in the middle of the plate, and high and inside breaking pitches from lefties. Ok, that’s pretty tedious. Let’s show all of that visually, looking just at 2016:

First, fastballs with two strikes

Again, he’s gearing up for away pitches, and he’s swinging at almost anything, so he has success against away fastballs. We know that he’s been very keen on high and inside pitches of all kinds and in all counts this year, and that is also the easiest pitch to see. He has a reactionary eye for that pitch, and is able to catch up and drive it. High fastballs out over the plate can be somewhat easy to react to but he a) isn’t as keen on hitting them, b) isn’t seeing them that often in two-strike counts anyways, and c) isn’t expecting them. Thus, he’s most likely popping them up, which explains his high increased infield fly ball%. This is supported by the fact that his ground-ball rates on high fastballs with two strikes is quite low:

Next, let’s look at slugging% against breaking pitches from righties with two strikes

Again, it appears that because the ball is curving towards him it’s going to be easier to drive. He is then able to pull the breaking pitches that are up and out over the plate, and is able to drive the low and outside pitches with authority. His lack of success on up and away pitches is a little perplexing, but could be attributed to anything from bad luck, to him possibly not seeing that exact pitch as well, to the fact that the sample size here is pretty small and he hasn’t seen a ton of pitches in that area.

Finally, let’s check out breaking pitches from lefties

Nothing monumental in this aspect, especially as it’s not too different from how he hits breaking pitches against lefties in all counts. Regardless, it still fits our narrative as the up and inside pitches are right in his wheelhouse, and the pitches that breaking out over the plate are easier to hit than any other breaking pitch coming from a lefty.

Whew. That is a lot of heat maps to take in. Let’s review a bit: Bryce has a tendency to take more pitches early in the count, something he hasn’t done before. He’s also opening up, which makes him susceptible to breaking pitches and causing him to make weaker contact. The fact that he’s making more contact on pitches outside of the zone doesn’t help much either. He’s taking more fastballs as well, and once he has two strikes on him he’s seeing less of them, and is most likely expecting them less. He then begins to swing much more frequently, which actually reaps pretty good rewards, though there are some holes in his swing against certain pitches. He can’t get the high fastball, and struggles with breaking pitches against lefties. The result of all of this? Lower BABIP, lower wRC+, lower wOBA, you name it.

Obviously there are factors involved with this that go far beyond what heat maps and stats can show us. Baseball is an incredibly mental game, and once you realize you’re in a slump it can sometimes just drive you deeper into that slump. Statistics also can almost never tell the whole story, and as I mentioned earlier the sample size here is small enough that none of this is much of a predictor for future behavior. There’s a good chance that, on many of the situations mentioned above, Bryce has just gotten unlucky (or heck, maybe even lucky) and thus the heat map doesn’t reveal much. Overall though, when looking at everything in a holistic manner it allows us to construct an idea as to why Bryce is failing where he previously succeeded. We can never know everything for sure, but we know more than we did.

I’ve been hearing for months now that Bryce will be just fine, slumps happen to everyone, he will soon return to form, etc., and I’m not here to disagree with that. Although, I will ask (and I ought add that I am a big supporter of Bryce’s): What if he doesn’t break out of it? Odds are his 2015 will be one of the best seasons of his career, and 2016 (if it continues like this) will be one of his worst, and he will find himself somewhere in between for the rest of his career. It’s just that the deeper he drives himself into this rut the more compelled I am to find the source of problem as best I can, from a purely analytical standpoint.

Love him or hate him, the more that Bryce (and the many young superstars like him) thrives, the more baseball thrives.

(Note: All statistics and heat maps taken from Bryce’s page on FanGraphs.com)

In the world of sports, the catcher position is kind of weird. Catchers start each play out of bounds, facing a different direction than their teammates. On a more micro level, baseball’s most important in-bounds/out-of-bounds determination, the strike zone, isn’t static as it is other sports; it’s determined on every pitch, and the catcher has a role in making that determination. In a non-contact sport, they’re covered in protective armor. Those of us with lousy knees are in awe just of their ability to do all that squatting.

Catcher is also the only position on modern rosters where there is planned redundancy. Thirteen-man pitching staffs have more or less eliminated platoon tandems, but catching tandems persist. The Pirates don’t carry an extra center fielder to give Andrew McCutchen a rest in the second game of doubleheaders. The Nationals don’t have a second right fielder to play instead of Bryce Harper on day games after night games. The Yankees don’t roster a spare third baseman in case Chase Headley gets hurt or tossed from a game. But every team has to have two catchers, and each of them sees a decent amount of playing time. (The catchers for those three teams in particular, as we’ll see.)

Further, the impact of a catcher injury can be significant. A disabled catcher’s replacement could well be unfamiliar with his pitching staff and opposing hitters’ tendencies, impairing his ability to call a game. He may not know the league’s umpires and their interpretation of the strike zone. He might not be up to speed on his infielders’ shifting tendencies and how that may affect pitch selection and location. And his presence probably means extra work, and extra fatigue, for the team’s other catcher. Just ask a Boston Red Sox fan about the importance of healthy catchers. (That’s a rhetorical suggestion. I don’t recommend actually doing that, unless you want to hear a long exposition about the importance of good free agent signings, a reliable starting rotation, offensive production from your first basemen, keeping your closer and second baseman off the DL…really, it can go on for a while.)

This summer, while attending a Phillies-Pirates game during which the Pirates used both of their catchers, my friend wondered whether the Pirates had the skinniest catchers in the league. (Francisco Cervelli is listed at 6’1″, 205, Chris Stewart 6’4″, 210). While actually putting in the time to figure this out (the answer appears to be “yes,” if you can trust listed heights and weights), I noticed that Cervelli and Stewart had caught all but 17.1 innings for the Pirates in 2015. This was in August, but it remained the case for the entire year. Cervelli caught 1099.2 innings and Stewart 372.2. Combined, that represented 98.8% of all the Pirates’ defensive innings last year. This struck me as notable, as the Pirates had lost the durable Russell Martin to free agency over the winter, replacing him with Cervelli, who’d never played more than 93 major league games in a season previously. The Pirates are famous for their use of analytics, including monitoring player health, with an eye toward injury prevention. Maybe that’s working. Or maybe they’ve figured out something with skinny catchers. Either way, I wondered whether the Pirates’ tandem represented something unusual.

To check, I looked at every team’s catchers since the 1969 start of divisional play. Using this year’s Pirates as my model, I looked for teams for which the top two catchers caught 98.5% or more of all innings. Last year, the average team’s catchers caught 1,446 innings, so I was looking for teams for whom top two catchers were on the field for all but 21.2 innings, on average.

It turns out the Pirates weren’t unique. Brian McCann and JR Murphy caught every inning for the Yankees this year. Wilson Ramos and Jose Lobaton caught all but nine innings for the Nationals. Carlos Ruiz and Cameron Rupp were behind the plate for all but 18 innings for the Phillies. That’s about typical. Since 1969, there have been 240 teams whose top two catchers caught at least 98.5% of all innings during the season, or a little over five per year (closer to four and a half if you exclude strike-shortened seasons).

But totals don’t tell the whole story, since baseball’s expanded from 24 teams in 1969 to 26 beginning in 1977, 28 beginning in 1993, and 30 beginning in 1998. The graph below shows the percentage of teams, per season, with two catchers handling 98.5% or more of the workload. The overall average is 18.6%. There’s a very slight downward trend to the line–the slope is -0.03% (yes, I got the decimals right)–meaning that catchers have been becoming a little less durable over the years, but almost imperceptibly so. (I was tempted to say “a little less durable or managers are giving them more rest,” but other than the occasional Kyle Schwarber, who primarily plays another position but can catch in a pinch, teams just don’t carry three catchers any more, so rest for one catcher in a tandem means playing time for the other.)

(The outlier on the high side is 1994, when there were only 117 games played.)

Teams for which two catchers caught 98.5% or more of innings won, on average, 85 games during the non-strike-shortened seasons. That’s not super impressive, considering the selection bias inherent in this sort of analysis. Specifically, teams with two catchers handling virtually all of the time behind the plate are teams that not only avoid catcher injuries, but also have two catchers good enough that they’d want to have them there all year, contributing to overall team success. In 2014, for example, the Red Sox had three catchers with over 400 defensive innings, in part because none of them could hit: A.J. Pierzynski (540 innings, 71 wRC+), Christian Vazquez (458.1 innings, 70 wRC+), and David Ross (418.1 innings, 71 wRC+). (See, I told you not to ask a Red Sox fan about catchers.)

Still, 85 wins is decent, four games better than .500–that’s the Angels this year. Of the 213 teams for which two catchers caught 98.5% or more of innings in non-strike-shortened years, 77, or 36%, won 90 or more, which is generally good enough to get you into the postseason these days. So there’s certainly an advantage to getting all the work out of two catchers.

So has anybody cracked the code on keeping their two catchers healthy? I looked for teams that had three or more seasons in a row with two catchers handling 98.5% more of innings. If teams have a secret sauce, they should show up on this list with regularity:

Nope. The closest thing there is the Yankees, who had streaks with Thurman Munson in the 1970s and Jose Posada around the turn of the century. The only other teams to appear more than once are the Johnny Bench Reds and two iterations of the Pirates, over a decade apart and 30 years ago. There’s nothing in this table suggestive that it’s a matter of skill, rather than luck, to keep two catchers on the field all season. Specifically, these teams generally had an All-Star caliber No. 1 catcher who avoided injury with various guys in the backup role. That’s about it. No team has cornered the market on that formula.

So maybe that’s making the criteria too tough. Maybe I should be looking just at back-to-back 98.5%-plus inning performances. Given that, on average, 18.6% of teams had two catchers with 98.5% or more innings caught since 1969, random chance suggests that a team with two dominant catchers has about a one-in-five chance of repeating the following year, like flipping a coin that comes up heads 18.6% of the time. A rate of repeat significantly above that could indicate skill rather than luck. Of the 236 teams, 1969-2014, that had two catchers with 98.5% or more innings caught, 60 repeated the following year, or 25%. That’s not a statistically significant difference (using an N-1 chi-square test, if you were wondering). In other words, there’s no reason to believe that a durable catcher tandem is a matter of anything but good fortune.

So feel good about keeping your two catchers healthy this year, Yankees, Nationals, Pirates and Phillies. Especially the Pirates (111 wRC+) and Yankees (104 wRC+), who got above-average offensive performance from their catchers as well. (The 69 wRC+ Phillies and 62 wRC+ Nationals catchers were among the worst in baseball.) Just don’t assume you’ll be able to keep those two guys on the field all of 2016 as well.

To a casual baseball fan, Stephen Strasburg’s numbers are not pretty. The owner of a 4.76 ERA and a 1.38 WHIP, Strasburg is clearly having the worst season of his career. But how bad has he been, really? Not as bad as you think. Take a look at these 2015 stats:

Player A: 3.48 xFIP, 22.8 K%, 5.5 BB%
Player B: 3.31 xFIP, 24.1 K%, 5.3 BB%
Player C: 3.18 xFIP, 24.9 K%, 6.0 BB%

Player A is none other than Johny Cueto, recently traded to the Kansas City Royals. 12th in ERA among qualified pitchers, Cueto is widely considered among the best, and perhaps deservedly so with five straight years of a sub-3 ERA. While he has consistently outperformed the above metrics, they are still indicative of general pitcher performance and should not be overlooked when comparing the quality of different pitchers.

Player B actually has the fifth lowest ERA among qualified pitchers and was also traded at the deadline. He’s been one of the most reliable pitchers over the past five years and has been an ace on every staff for which he’s pitched. Player B is David Price.

Player C is obviously Stephen Strasburg, and as you can see, his peripheral stats stack up against the best in the game. In addition to these 2 players, Strasburg also compares positively to others like Sonny Gray and Scott Kazmir, both of whom have better ERAs but a worse xFIP, K%, and BB%.  Strasburg is pitching like an ace, and xFIP shows that, so why have his results been so poor?

Well, first of all, there’s his .345 BABIP. Not only is this high compared to the league average (.296), it’s well above his career mark of .302. Considering he’s not giving up any more line drives or hard contact than usual, his BABIP should fall back to around the .300 mark and bring his ERA down with it.

Not only is his BABIP at an all-time high, his LOB% is at an all-time low. Currently at 65.3%, it figures to inch back up to his career 73.2% mark, or at least to the league average of 72.4%. Considering his strikeouts have not dropped off, there’s no reason for his drop on LOB%, and it can simply be chalked up to bad luck, something that he’s had plenty of this year.

Looking at these stats, there’s nothing that suggests Strasburg is anything but unlucky. However, as Jeff Sullivan pointed out here, Strasburg’s problem could stem from the injury he suffered in the spring. He had apparently adjusted his mechanics to compensate for the discomfort, and even though it appears as though he has fixed this, it’s possible that when pitching from the stretch and in higher leverage situations, he returns to this altered motion by default. When looking at the difference in Strasburg’s stats between pitching from the windup and the stretch, this is what we see:

Evidently, this claim has some ground. Strasburg is clearly having some problems with runners on base, particularly in striking batters out. Before we deal with the strikeout numbers, let’s take a look to make sure that he’s not just getting killed during the at bats that don’t end in strikeouts.

Strasburg is actually generating more ground balls and weaker contact with runners on base. His infield hit percentage is triple what it is when the bases are empty, something that can be attributed to luck. With such weak contact, it’s safe to say this isn’t the problem. So it must be the strikeouts. If we take a look at his whiff rates, the results are intriguing:

OK, so there’s definitely a problem here. With runners on base, he’s only whiffing batters at half the rate he’s done previously in his career, as well as half the rate that he does with the bases empty. So what’s the issue? Well, it’s not his pitch velocity:

The Nats signed reliever Casey Janssen, formerly of the Blue Jays, to a one-year, $5-million contract a few weeks ago (feel free to stop reading now to avoid the existential dread associated with over-analyzing Casey Janssen). Overall, it’s hard not to like this pick-up. One year and five million dollars is basically nothing (except when it comes to signing a second baseman), and the Clippard trade certainly left a hole in the bullpen. There was also a recent stretch of time when Janssen was quite good. From 2011-2013, Janssen averaged 57.1 IP, 8/9 strikeouts per 9 innings, and a sub 3 FIP. WAR isn’t the best way to measure relievers, but he averaged 1.2 WAR a season over those three years, which put him squarely in the pretty damn good category of relief pitchers.

So why did a recently good closer sign for a seemingly below market sum? Because 2014 was mostly terrible. Strikeouts were way down (5.5 Ks/9 in 2014 compared to 8.5 in 2013), Homers were way up (1.2 HR/9 in 2014 compared to 0.5 in 2013), and his groundball percentage dropped from 48% to 34%. These are all fairly alarming trends for a relief pitcher that is 33 and doesn’t throw very hard (2014 average fastball velocity: 89.3 miles per hour). Every analysis for relief pitchers should contain small sample size warnings in all capital letters, but important indicators trending that strongly generally indicate something wrong happening.

In July of last season, Janssen came down with a particularly awful bout of food poisoning, and he probably came back too quickly. And looking at the mid-season splits, there’s a case to be made that it was the (negative) turning point for the rest of Janssen’s season. Let’s compare:

1st half: 22 IP, 1.23 ERA, 0 HR, 14 Ks, 1 BB, .218 wOBA against
2nd half: 23.2 IP, 6.46 ERA, 6 HR, 14 Ks, 6 BBs, .378 wOBA against

In the first half, Janssen made opposing hitters look like Austin Kearns. In the second half, they all looked like Yasiel Puig. His numbers did take a nosedive in July when he was sick, but got worse in August when one would have expected him to be feeling better (or put on the DL to recuperate). It’s impossible for anyone to really know how he was feeling, and if food poisoning actually was the main cause of Janssen’s second-half struggles. But, his velocity didn’t change from the first half to the second half, and his strikeout rate remained about the same. The uptick in walks and home runs in the second half are troubling, but maybe first-half Janssen was a fluke based on a year over year decrease in velocity (lost about .8 MPH on his fastball from 2013 to 2014)  and a decrease in strikeouts. For comparisons sake, here is an unnamed reliever’s 1st and 2nd half splits in 2014:

1st half: 37 IP, .97 ERA, 1 HR, 36 Ks, 11 BBs, .208 wOBA against
2nd half: 25 IP, 6.48 ERA, 3 HR, 23 Ks, 8 BBs, .375 wOBA against

This reliever? Rafael Soriano. There wasn’t an injury narrative to fault for his falling off a cliff bad second half, but he stunk nonetheless. Screwy things can happen in small samples, which is why we try to avoid over-analyzing them. Janssen may have just had impeccable timing, and his new true talent level as a command relief pitcher is that of a 4.00 ERA. But unlike with Soriano, there is a realistic narrative for Janssen that fits the timeline of his struggles. Here’s another 1st half/2nd half comparison

1st half:

2nd half:

While his K rate was basically the same from the first half the second half, these charts show that his whiff rates weren’t. Janssen had much more success both down and up in the zone earlier in the season in terms of swings and misses, so while his velocity was the same between the first half and second half, it appears that his stuff wasn’t.

Again, in such small samples, it’s impossible to draw any definitive conclusions. It’s true that first-half Janssen looked pretty similar to 2011-2013 Casey Janssen, while second-half Janssen looked more like Brian Bruney. It’s reasonable to look at the splits and say that Janssen’s bout with food poisoning ruined what looked to be a promising season. It’s also reasonable to look at his decrease in velocity and strikeout rate and think this was money not well spent. But for a paltry (in the context of the MLB) five million dollars, it’s not that much money anyways, so why the hell not?

From my personal blog: msilbbaseball.wordpress.com

Path to the Draft

     What’s the usual story with first-year draftees?  They put up stellar numbers in college and/or high school, but can’t replicate those numbers after they’re drafted due to better competition in the minors.  A college All-American who hit .400 can struggle to stay above .200 as they adjust to minor-league ball.  It’s nothing to worry about, just the way things go.  So what would you expect to see from a college senior infielder, converted outfielder, converted back to infielder who hit .176 in 330 career at-bats, who didn’t hit a home run until the end of his last season, and who only had six extra-base hits in his entire college career?  I’d have my doubts that this player would even record one minor-league hit.  However, I present to you Cody Dent, the man who’s mirroring the trend.

Speaking of home runs, his father did this.

     Cody played for four years at the University of Florida, and reached the College World Series three times.  Throughout his career, he was a light-hitting utility infielder who saw a majority of his time as a defensive replacement.  During his senior year, Dent started 48 games for the Gators, but his struggles at the plate still remained.  Cody hit .233 his freshman year, then .207, .134, and .169 in each subsequent season.  But, he’s 6th on UF’s all-time sacrifice bunt leaderboard with 26 in his college career.  So, that’s something; It seems like he’d make a good-hitting pitcher.

     Dent’s bright spot was the 2011 NCAA Tournament, where he played in and started 11 games, and hit .273 with a double, triple, and 4 RBIs as the Gators made it the championship series in Omaha.  He was named to the All-Tournament team.  Following his senior season, the previously undrafted Dent was selected by the Washington Nationals in the 22nd round of the 2013 First-Year Player Draft, likely/hopefully for his defense.

Faux-Struggles?

     As a student a the University of Florida, I attended a large amount of baseball games, and I always rooted for Cody to do well.  He never showed negative body language, and went about his business professionally.  Also, he was the king of the “at ’em ball”.  I can’t count how many times he’s hit a rope right at an outfielder.  I always imagined what kind of horrible BABIP Dent would have, so I calculated it.  During his senior season, Cody Dent had a .193 BABIP.  With an average BABIP ranging from about .290 – .310, this created a huge dent in his average (pun intended).  Some players have established BABIPs in a different range (ex. Miguel Cabrera and Ichiro Suzuki around .345), however .193 can not be the true average for an SEC starter with MLB bloodlines.  By personally watching Dent play, I can also attest that he’s better than the numbers show.  I consider BABIP to be a measure of luck, and use it to determine whether a player is playing at their true ability.  A BABIP far under the average means that a player is under performing, and a BABIP far above the average means that a player is over performing.  To re-iterate, Dent’s senior BABIP was .193.  This, coupled with only an 11.7% Strikeout Percentage (K%) creates a sense of hope that Cody could grow into a serviceable/not as dreadful bat.

Professional Performance

     So what does he do during his first 27 games in Short-Season A ball?  Hit .278/ .365 /.300 with a .326 wOBA and a 108 wRC+.  With 100 being the standard average for wRC+, this means that Cody Dent is an above-average producer in Short-Season A ball.  ABOVE AVERAGE!!!  Considering the offensive woes he went through as a Gator, this is absolutely huge.  Maintaining his improved offense will be a challenge for Cody, as he’s in danger of regressing.  Dent’s minor-league BABIP is .387, way above average, and astronomically above his college numbers.  Is this a sign of the real Cody Dent?  Is he having a lucky month?  Or has Cody Dent gone through enough punishment and suffering from the baseball gods that they’re rewarding him for his perseverance?  It’s time to sit back and watch The Curious Case of Cody Dent.

Like Father, Like Son

     Also, now he’s breaking up perfect games. This came against the Lowell Spinners, the Boston Red Sox’s New York-Penn League team.  The pure perfection of this can’t be explained. Cody “Bleeping” Dent!