Archive for MASH

MASH Report (7/8/13)

Today, I will examine five pitchers who came off the DL this past week and give a top 30 ranking for HURT and PAIN.

• Yesterday, Joakim Soria made his 2013 debut after his 2nd Tommy John Surgery. He came out only throwing fastballs with an average velocity of 90.2 mph.

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report (7/5/13)

Just a quick update on injuries over the long holiday weekend.

• Darius Austin of MLB Injury News put together nice write up on how the Mets may handle Matt Harvey innings pitches as the season goes on with all the latest research.

Jeff Locke is having a break out season for the Pirates with 8 wins and a 2.12 ERA. Signs of regression exist with a .233 BABIP and with his ERA estimators near or above 4.00.

He was been a leader on my PAIN index because of an extremely low Zone% (41.4%). His last start was the first since the season’s start with a plus 47% Zone%. I would be selling him right now if possible.

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report (7/1/13)

In the last MASH Report, I introduced SLOW which looks for hitters having problems catching up with fastballs. From now on, I will be looking at players on HURT and PAIN for my Monday/Tuesday post and then SLOW for my Thursday/Friday post. Today, I have three closers coming off the DL, several reports of hitters playing through injuries and some other tidbits.

Michael Pineda is looking to return to the majors soon. A week ago, I looked at the data available on him so far during his rehab. I have found a bit more recent data on his return:

Pineda threw only three innings Sunday in a start for Trenton against Binghamton, the Mets’ Double-A affiliate. Pineda allowed four runs on four hits and four walks, striking out four. He gave up two home runs, throwing only 32 of his 67 pitches for strikes.

According to one scout, Pineda’s fastball ranged from 90-95 mph, sitting mostly around 92. The scout said Pineda fell behind too many hitters, was inconsistent with his fastball command, throwing “flat” fastballs that got very few swings and misses, exhibiting a “sluggish” demeanor on the mound.

The fastball velocity still looks to be down a few mph and he seemed to struggle throwing strikes. Temper expectations for him.

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report (6/21/13) – Introducing SLOW

Today, I am mainly going to look at new metric, SLOW. It looks for hitters who are having problems hitting fastball in the strike zone. Besides SLOW, just a few other quick looks at Scott Kazmir, Jeanmar Gomez, Ryan Zimmerman and Felix Hernandez.

• I have read and heard many experts state a player has a slow bat and/or can’t catch up to fastballs. Finally, I have come up with an initial stab to see if a player is having problems hitting fastballs. To keep it easy, I am going to name it SLOW.

The basic parameters for the pitches examined are:
1. Pitches thrown into the heart of the plate (I don’t want to look at a chase rate)
2. Fastballs >=92 mph (looking for fastish fastballs)

I created the final metric using a weighted combination of:
1. Contact% (contact with the pitches)
2. Foul% (In play contact)
3. Pull angle on line drives and ground balls (is the hitter hitting the ball late)

The SLOW value may change a bit (I will probably put it on a 100 scale where 100 is league average) as I tweak it a bit here and there over the next couple of weeks. I have included two leader boards. One with the 2013 value. Another with players who have slowed the most from 2012 to 2013. Let me know if anything seems out of place.

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report (6/24/13)

No pitchers going off the DL over the last few days, so I will just examine a few injury stories. Also, the PAIN and HURT leaderboards for younger players are posted.

• With about every pitcher who goes on the DL, I like to see if there were any glaring injury signs. With Jon Niese (torn rotator cuff), no signs really existed. His fastball velocity dropped 0.5 MPH from 2012 and his Zone% was down 0.9% points. While a declining velocity and Zone% are signs of a injury, these levels don’t usually raise any read flags. Of the 453 pitchers PAIN ranks, he was the 295 least injury prone.

Another factor I examine is his late game consistency (process is faster, it used to take over a minute to calculate and now it is almost instantaneous). Niese’s value has slow risen over the past three seasons.

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report (6/20/13)

Injury information will be a little slim today, so I will examine in detail a few cases. Also, I will report the fastball speeds of three pitchers returning from the DL. Finally, I have adjusted PAIN and HURT so any value over 100 is a player at a high injury risk. Complete rankings are available.

Albert Pujols stated he is finally feeling unhurt.

But Pujols swears he felt something.
“I was like … this is me right here,'” Pujols said. “That did it. I feel right now like my old me, like when I was in St. Louis.”
Did you ever feel that way last year?
“Not at all, man — I swear,” Pujols said. “There were some streaks here and there that I hit, but I was battling. I never got to a point where I could say, ‘Holy cow, that’s my bat speed.'”

Every player always states they feel better than they actually do, but it may be time to try to buy into Albert’s hot bat. His ISO (power) is trending up.

Month: ISO
April: .165
May: .173
June: .254

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report – (6/17/13)

Quite a bit injury news happened over the weekend. I will examine several pitchers returning from the D.L. and several more acting hurt.

Stephen Strasburg returned from the disabled list to make a start yesterday. The biggest concern for me was the 4 BB in 5 IP with a Zone% just over 47%. His overall. velocity was consistent with his past speeds.

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report – (6/13/13)

Today I am going to examine Ryan Dempster and Jon Lester in detail. Also, I am rolling out some changes to HURT and PAIN. With PAIN (called Pitcher Abuse INdex based on a poll during the Tuesday night chat) Contact% is added and a regression amount factored in. With HURT, instead of evenly weighting the three previous seasons, I weighted the most recent seasons more. On both of them, I put the max value to be around 100, but a few players are determined to go over.

Ryan Dempster ranks 12th in the most recent PAIN. His fastball velocity is down 0.6 mph from last year which should be expected from 36-year-old pitcher.

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report (6/10/13) – PAIN – Pitcher Injury Finder

After introducing HURT (hitter injury finder), I am introducing PAIN (pitcher injury finder) today. Besides a list potentially hurt hitters and pitchers, I will examine Ryan Braun, Anibal Sanchez, Kevin Youkilis and report the velocity for some pitchers returning from the D.L.

• Last week I introduced a metric to help look for position players playing through injury called HURT. Today, I introduce PAIN which looks for pitchers with traits of injured pitchers. Mainly it looks for fastball velocity drops and low, dropping Zone%’s from only the previous season. I have weighted in a bit on Pace (hurt pitchers take longer between pitches) and average fastball velocity (I have found harder throwers are more injury prone). I tried to add consistency of release points, but could not get it to work because too many pitchers have more than one release point. Finally, I am going to add in a measure of contact in the future and regress the values. Enough of the boring stuff, here are the pitchers PAIN determines to be a injury risk:

Read the rest of this entry »


MASH Report (6/6/13)

A little bit of everything today, a few pitchers returning from the disabled list, HURT rankings (I will do a different subset of players every report) and a couple of injury related articles. I am hoping to introduce PAIN, the pitcher injury predictor on Monday.

• I found two injury-related articles interesting this week. The first is on the Nationals being too “macho” to go on the DL. The other deals with the intense schedule and the inability of players to keep up with it.

Josh Johnson returned from the DL and Ben Duronio covered his return in detail yesterday.

Read the rest of this entry »