I was wrong a few weeks back when I wrote:

With the new juiced baseball, home runs rates are up, and they are the main driver for the scoring increase. If a pitcher can limit home runs, they will be affected less and the easiest way to do this is to generate ground balls.

By using OPS for and against, the production flyball pitchers have gotten worse over the past 2.5 seasons. By examining the problem using the difference between both FIP and xFIP to ERA, I found the opposite answer and can’t explain why.

I expected this article to go a different route than it did. When I wrote that owners should focus on groundball pitchers, I knew I wanted to eventually determine how much the difference between ERA and both FIP and xFIP shrunk for extreme flyball pitchers.

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Here’s today’s chat transcript. I probably could have spent more time on Correa, but you’ll get over it.

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I nearly forgot to say a few words about the dissolution of the proposed FanDuel-DraftKings merger. It is our burden to carry on without the departed. They will be sorely missed by the living.

To be honest, I was looking forward to seeing who stepped up as the new second best site. I’m ready for a slightly different approach to gain popularity.

AGENDA

1. Chat Today
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. SaberSim Says…
5. TDG Invitational Returns!

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The Astros had a funeral for Carlos Beltran’s glove on Monday ?

Pay your respects.

Story: https://t.co/adgVoacVUA pic.twitter.com/86MmJltOQi

— Cut4 (@Cut4) July 18, 2017

The bat is still kicking, though. He went 2-for-4 with his 12th homer in Monday’s 9-7 loss to the Mariners.

On the Agenda:

• Lindor Heating Up
• Mariners Back to .500
• Lester Bounces Back
• Phillips Stays Hot
• Pham Out of His Mind
• Whiff Watch
• Other News
• WTWT

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Yesterday, I took the first dive into the intriguing waters of Statcast’s Sprint Speed metric. After comparing correlations with other speed-related stats to Spd Score, I now want to see which players are actually faster and slower than Spd would have use believe. Because Spd uses some context-dependent metrics, it could sometimes give us a false impression of a batter’s true raw speed.

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The Cardinals’ closer situation took an interesting turn on Sunday when Mike Matheny brought Brett Cecil in to close out a 3-2 game against the Pirates. While Cecil getting a save chance added a new wrinkle to the Cardinals’ committee arrangement, it was a sensible move. Cecil would have to face Francisco Cervelli, Gregory Polanco and Jordy Mercer, and while Polanco was the only left-handed batter in that group, Cecil had been far more effective against righties this season. He was also on a roll, having built a string of 15 straight scoreless appearances covering 15 2/3 innings. Over that span, Cecil allowed just five singles, two doubles and a walk. It also made sense that Matheny called upon Trevor Rosenthal to take care of the top of the Pirates’ order in the eighth inning.

Cecil picked a bad time to take a break from shutting down opponents, as he gave up a lead-off single to Cervelli, a game-tying double to Mercer and a walk-off single to Adam Frazier.
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I’m sure no one noticed but I took last week off and am now back in the saddle. I needed to catch up on starting pitchers to see who is or isn’t performing as expected. Here are some my thoughts while catching up on the news.

Joe Ross and Michael Pineda will need Tommy John surgery

I was a little surprised to see both of these injuries happen during the All-Star break. After reading the news, Ross’s injury shouldn’t have been a surprise for someone paying attention with him exiting his July 9th start early. His fastball velocity for the start was down 3 mph compared to earlier in the season.
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This is a long one. I appreciate your patience in advance.

Mike Podhorzer, I and sporadic others have — but primarily Mike has — carried the torch on developing ‘expected’ metrics, such as xBABIP (expected batting average on balls in play), xHR/FB (expected home run-to-fly ball ratio) and xK% (expected strikeout rate), all and the rest of which can be found here. For the uninitiated, these xMetrics help describe how a hitter or pitcher should have performed based on various measurements of the events that unfolded and typically are more predictive of future performance than the original metric. They’re not perfect, but, like other advanced metrics, they give us a better understanding of player performance and ability.

Each metric — xHR/FB, xK%, etc. — has formulas for both hitters and pitchers, with the hitter metrics typically having stronger correlations than those for pitchers. Unfortunately, pitcher xBABIP has always eluded us. It’s inappropriate to repurpose hitter xBABIP for pitchers, but it’s because the model coefficients (weights) would be different, not because the theory underpinning the model is flawed.

That’s the problem, though: hard hits, line drives, infield fly balls — these all should affect a pitcher’s BABIP allowed. Our intuition begs it to be true. Yet there’s a resounding lack of evidence that suggest otherwise. The correlation between BABIP and hard-hit rate (Hard%), line drive rate (LD%) and infield fly ball rate (IFFB%), among others, borders on nonexistent:

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Instead of updating these rankings monthly like I did for the past few years, I decided to dial that back this year, with this being the third and final edition for 2017. In the past, I found the four-week turnaround to be a bit quick, as the samples since the previous entry were always small. This year, I’ve given myself more like 6-8 weeks between updates, giving me a format I’m much more confident in.

For reference, here’s what these tiers looked like in mid-May.

TIER ONE

• Jose Altuve

I always flirt with the idea of putting someone in the top tier with Altuve, and I’ve even done it a couple times. In the end, I come back to the fact that he’s been performing at a level above nearly every other second baseman since 2014. There are times when someone else will keep up with him for a month or two, but it doesn’t last, and Altuve always ends up distancing himself from the pack again.

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The defense rests, your honor! #AllRise

JBJ robs Judge in the triangle!! pic.twitter.com/9eDeQlmkLc

— Paul Sporer (@sporer) July 17, 2017

Jackie Bradley Jr. made a fantastic catch in the triangle to rob Aaron Judge of his 31st homer run. Judge was 1-for-9 in the doubleheader and he’s just 1-for-18 coming out of the break. Guess the Home Run Derby ruined him after all. ?

On the Agenda:

• Quintana’s Debut
• Doolittle, Madson to WSH
• Trade Candidates
• Rendon Wrecks Reds
• Price Strong Again
• Turner’s Lefty Domination
• Other News
• WTWT

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