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Joe Biagini (Blue Jays)

Toronto took Biagini in the Rule 5 draft before the 2016 season and the selection is now paying dividends. He started this season as a reliever but transitioned to being a starter in early May. Since then, the 27-year-old has posted a respectable 3.86 ERA (3.21 FIP). I watched his last start at home against Texas and here are my thoughts.

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Dinelson Lamet has made two starts in The Show. In those two starts he’s pitched 10 innings allowing three runs (all earned) on eight hits and three walks while striking out a whopping 16 batters. The surface stats are intriguing, and the underlying stats are quite good, too — more on them to come. Still, you can be forgiven if you know very little about Lamet. Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Grind keeps on keepin’ on.

AGENDA

1. Sanchez Double Donger
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. Hitters to Use
5. SaberSim Says…
6. TDG Invitational Returns!

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Identifying pitching breakouts as they happen can be hard. Anticipating them, even harder. Savvy readers of sites such as this rely on plate discipline metrics, batted ball data, and other indicators designed to tease out luck from results in order to uncover which performances have staying power and which are fleeting. And while we’ve arrived at the point in the season when most pitching rates have stabilized, a simple change in pitch mix can render those indicators obsolete. Think Matt Shoemaker and his splitter, Jake Arrieta and his cutter, Max Scherzer and his curveball, or Sonny Gray and his slider.

If you can spot a pitcher pulling unexpected arrows from his quiver as he does it, then cheers to you. But it’s difficult to do that at scale. While trying to anticipate a change in pitch mix before it happens may seem futile at times, doing so is a bet on potential. And what we talk about when we talk about “stuff,” is really potential. One of the components upon which that potential relies, aside from command and health, is an optimal pitch mix.

To identify which pitchers could benefit by throwing their more effective offerings a little more frequently, we have a number of tools at our disposal. Today, we’ll use some of those tools to identify the league’s underthrown four-seam fast balls and sinkers and the pitchers who underthrow them.
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Episode 268 – Back On The Grossman Train

The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss late takes on the Bryce Harper and Mike Trout news, Matt being a basebrawl enthusiast, trusting German Marquez, giving Ty Blach a new nickname, Scott Schebler’s crazy home run total, Dylan picking a trio of Rockies pitchers in San Diego, Matt leaning into a Randy Savage quote, Dylan picking against Joe Ross, checking out Eric Skoglund, Ariel Miranda having a strong matchup, remembering the legends of David Holmberg and John Hicks, and Hawk Harrelson announcing his (eventual) retirement.

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6/1/17

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 18, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER18!

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Leading Off: Question of the Day

• Trading Trout: Jeff’s Piece
  • What would you take for Mike Trout in a non-keeper roto lg?

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

May Standouts: Hitters

• Justin Bour 11 HR, 201 wRC+
• Brett Gardner 9 HR, 184 wRC+
• Zack Cozart 6 HR, 164 wRC+
• Tommy Pham 5 HR, 4 SB, 157 wRC+

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Manny Machado has been in a slump. That feels like an understatement. Over the past month he’s been one of the weakest hitters in the game, managing only .261 wOBA and 56 wRC+. This value is buoyed by six home runs, which account for 27% of his hits in the month of May. This is one of the worst stretches of his career, if not the worst. Notably, he had a rough patch to begin the 2015 season, but that period only lasted two, perhaps three weeks. It also had a reason, Machado had missed the final 80 games of 2014 while recovering from knee surgery. This year, though. This is different.

There are no obvious signs of problems with Machado.  By all accounts his mechanics seem fine and he appears to be healthy. There could be psychological issues at play and many have used the term ‘pressing’ to describe Machado. Unfortunately there is a possibility that the feud with the Red Sox and the resulting beanings and attempted beanings may have played some role in his slump, although that seems like a bit of a stretch.  None of these explanations are satisfactory, and they raise more questions than they answer.

Today I’m going to look at this slump in a slightly different manner, and hopefully highlight a few measurements and stats along the way that will spark your imagination. As usual, this piece is less about Manny Machado, and more about approaching baseball from a different perspective. Read the rest of this entry »

Since statcast has been added to MLB parks, exit velocities and launch angles have been a hot topic. Some of this is as simple as a players ground ball rates decreasing, while others dive into a little more detail. For example, showing that a player is hitting more balls into the ideal launch angle ranges for batted balls (19-26 degrees). Regardless, it can be hard to keep track of these changes, or to understand what it all means if you are not familiar with the data. Luckily, Andrew Pertpetua put together this primer. You should definitely read it if you have not already. As Andrew notes, there are a few takeaways.

1. Exit Velocity is more predictive than launch angle in terms of measuring success.
2. Exit Velocity peaks between -10 and 10 degrees.

This follows along with what we should intuitively expect. The harder a player hits the ball, the more likely he is to be making good contact, which should lead to better expected results. Certainly, this isn’t an absolute, but it’s an okay starting point. The less directly a ball is hit – positive or negative launch angles – the greater a sacrifice in exit velocity we would expect to see, at the benefit of a potentially more ideal launch angle. Read the rest of this entry »

In last night’s chat, Paul Swydan and I got a ton of questions on Mike Trout’s trade value because of his recent injury. It’s a simple yet loaded question with so many different league types and possible roster construction rules. I will discuss some basic starting valuations for Trout which owners can use.

When looking at possible trade options, I like to start with Yahoo!’s Trade Market page. It lists the most recent trades involving any player. It just lists the last 25 trades so the page can be refreshed with updated information. Here are some post-injury one-for-one trades from the page:

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