Agenda
The title of the article is an allusion to Schott’s Miscellany, which you should definitely check out if you never have and feel compelled to know that a group of larks is called an exaltation or that a member of the 32nd degree of Freemasonry is known as a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.
–League-Neutral FIP–
A few weeks ago, I was researching quality of opposition and stumbled upon the unsurprising conclusion that there are major differences in the AL and NL. For pitchers, one difference between the leagues is obvious. In the NL, they face opposing pitchers. In the AL, they face designated hitters.
It can be difficult to tease out the impact of that difference for pitchers in stats like ERA because runs are the result of a series of events that are not easily attributable to individual players. However, with FIP, pitchers are measured only by their strikeouts, walks, and home runs, each of which can be assigned to a specific batter. As such, you can adjust FIP for league by measuring those strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed by pitchers against only non-pitcher, non-DH batters. It does not wholly capture the differences in quality of competition between the leagues, but does account for the most glaring discrepancy in types of batters faced.
Strikes are good. Your favorite starting pitcher throwing a higher rate of them is a wonderful sign. In fact, I like to identify high strikeout starters with control issues as breakout candidates. Control is much easier to improve upon then strikeout rate and it tends to get better with maturity. So let’s take a look at eight American League starting pitchers throwing a higher rate of overall strikes than last season. For context, the league average Str% is 64.2%
I of course adore baseball, but I love soccer as well. Count me among the millions of fans who were happy to see FIFA begin to get their just desserts with a series of federal indictments. The official Department of Justice release can be found here.
On today’s agenda:
1. Quick thoughts on Khris Davis
2. Scott Kazmir’s potential injury
3. Justin Verlander heads to Triple-A
4. Streaming Pitching Options Read the rest of this entry »
John Axford nailed down the win for the Rockies over the Reds and firmed up the bullpen order in Colorado. It’s time we finally turned them green. And no, that’s not a terrible marijuana joke, so just cool your jets. He struck out one and lowered his ERA to a sterling 0.75. His BB% is a pretty ugly 13.6%, he’s owner of a 92.3% LOB% and a 4.51 xFIP. Just because those numbers aren’t pretty doesn’t mean he’s in danger of losing his job. He’ll have to start coughing up leads for the color to change back to a yellow or red. He’s safe for now, but monitor his results.
Episode 38 – The Day of the Obvious Pick
The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!
In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss the Marco Estrada trade and the predictable results, Lucas Duda’s strange splits, how taglines are decided, Matt Carpenter = good hitter, Dylan explaining his DFS process too much, being sad about Danny Santana, Matt making bad jokes, and Matt being in defense of Chase Anderson again.
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The older we get, the more awed we are by catchers and the more literally unthinkable we find what they do. Our imaginary lives are as richly textured as the next stat geek’s, and now and then, in the kingdoms of our own minds, you might find us pretending that we’re thirty or forty years younger, and far better baseball players than we ever were. But though we might imagine ourselves hitting Stargellesque home runs, throwing Koufaxian pitches, or making Robinsonable plays in the field, we just can’t conceive of getting into and out of a crouch as often as catchers must and do. Our geriatric knees just won’t let us get our geriatric minds around the possibility.
But being able to crouch that much and that often is of course merely one part of a catcher’s job. As you know, he’s also got to call pitches, block the bad ones, frame the good ones, throw out base stealers, pounce on bunts, and, so it’s said, serve as the on-field team’s prefrontal cortex. So it’s unreasonable to expect catchers to hit very much, and in fact, many of them don’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Agenda
Craving some serious deep league action? Look no further as I have another one of those popular 0% ownership names!
Today’s Roto Riteup was researched while the present author ate a popsicle. Well, technically it was an Otter Pop, but I think those should be considered a type of popsicle. Though it lacks a wood stick, it is still a self contained frozen treat. Things such as lemon ices, etc. are not popsicles to me.
On today’s agenda:
1. Jung-ho Kang continues to rake
2. Quad injury for Matt Adams
3. Quick thoughts on Adam Warren
4. Streaming Pitching Options Read the rest of this entry »