Well, that was a pretty eventful weekend for closers, let’s get to it with some news from today as well…

• Zach Britton has dreaded soreness in his forearm and was placed on the 10-Day DL. I say dreaded because of a common connection with the elbow but Britton is saying he won’t need a MRI. I’m assuming that’s a good thing and not the Orioles trying to save a buck. Either way, Brad Brach should see save chances in Britton’s place with Darren O’Day and Mychal Givens behind him. From 2009 to 2015 O’Day had a 2.07 ERA in 400.1 innings but last year it jumped to 3.77 and he’s been rusty to the start of this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Givens leapfrog O’Day here.

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Per Baltimore Orioles: Zach Britton on 10-day DL w left forearm strain. RHP Stefan Crichton recalled from Triple-A Norfolk. (cc: #BlueJays)

— Laura Armstrong (@lauraarmy) April 16, 2017

Hot off the press, the world’s best relief pitcher has been sent to the Disabled List with a dreaded forearm strain. A strain, for those of you not familiar, is the tearing of a muscle or a tendon. This is a big deal in the forearm, particularly for a pitcher, because these muscles are the ones that protect the UCL during the pitching motion.

We are all familiar with the performance Zach Britton put out in the 2016 season – arguably, one of the most dominant relief pitching performances of all time. What was happening under the hood to lead to this injury?

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Santiago Casilla, who we have listed as the A’s closer, relieved Liam Hendriks in the 7th inning with runners on the corners and one out with a two-run lead.

Casilla got Jose Altuve to ground into a force out, on which a run scored, then struck out Carlos Correa after falling behind in the count, 3-0, and allowing two steals to Altuve.

Casilla came back out for the top of the 8th, at which time the A’s still had a 5-4 lead, and he issued a lead-off walk, a stolen base, another walk, and a sacrifice bunt. He was then replaced by Sean Doolittle, with runners on second and third and one out for Nori Aoki.

Doolittle’s first pitch was a fastball in the dirt that got away from the catcher. The tying run scored and the go-ahead run moved up to third with one out. Aoki then gave the Astros the lead with a sacrifice fly to center field, and both runs were charged to Casilla. Doolittle then allowed a single and a home run by George Springer.

Before Casilla and Doolittle entered the game, the score was 5-3, Oakland. When they left, it was 8-5, Houston.

Long story short: stay away from the volatile A’s bullpen until things settle down.

… Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a lot of questions and comments this season about the change in pitch velocity readings. I am not going to go into depth why these changes were made, but I have seen a lot of people questioning these velocity readings, and how they might compare to past seasons.

I am sure you have seen articles about how velocities this season are roughly 0.6 mph faster than last season, so maybe you have been subtracting a mile per hour from each number you see as a back of the envelope estimate.  Maybe you’re happy with that, maybe not.  Tom Tango mentioned a manner for calculating the traditional pitch velocities in the comment section of his blog post about the change to Start Speed. After seeing this, I immediately implemented it on my personal pitch database, and I am here to share those results with you today. Read the rest of this entry »

Another Sam Dyson meltdown has everyone running to their waiver wires, but for who? Matt Bush is the fantasy favorite with a 97 mph and gaudy strikeout rate (26% since the start of 2016), but he’s getting an exam on the AC joint in his right shoulder and will be out for at least a few days. I tend to believe Jeremy Jeffress is the next-in-line even with a healthy Bush after notching 27 saves last year, but he lost the game after Dyson blew it on Tuesday night and has allowed runs in three of his five outing, so it’s not like he’s instilling a ton of confidence in manager Jeff Banister right now, either. We haven’t gotten much from Banister himself, though this non-committal comment from Evan Grant’s piece suggests it’s under review:

“We’ll evaluate all our options,” manager Jeff Banister said when asked about the closer situation.

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Pitch forks have emerged, and rage has exploded over the most recent Rich Hill trip to the disabled list – once again, for a blister. Hockey fans gearing up for the playoff run scoff, stating how their sport has players who take slap shots to the face and return in the same game – blisters? Those are a sign that baseball players are weak, pampered, and fragile. Why do blisters keep forming on Rich Hill’s fingers? What are the implications for changing his style that could prevent blisters from occurring all together? Why can’t Sidney Crosby grow a beard? Let’s get into the answers to these questions.

All of pitching revolves around applying the appropriate amount of pressure to specific areas at ball release, and causing the ball to spin about a certain axis. This pressure applied along the seams, generates friction, and spin on the ball. More friction? More spin. That’s why pitchers try the ol’ Icy Hot trick to get a better grip on the ball, and throw funkier pitches. Sorry if I got most of my pitching knowledge from Rookie of the Year – I flamed out as a player in High School.

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With about a week of 2017 baseball data in the books, there are already thousands of innings, plate appearances, and batted balls to parse through. We’ve seen a perfect game bid, a cycle, multi-home run performances, and a huge lead blown in the ninth. Unfortunately, something else we’ve seen are injuries to key players. Like the crack of the bat and pop of the glove, injuries are a part of the spot. They’re bad for the player, the team, the fans — and fantasy owners.

When a key player on your fantasy roster gets injured, it often leaves you scrambling to fill the unexpected hole. The following exercise is designed to help you survive such situations. We’re going to look at viable players who are readily available in most fantasy leagues. To qualify for this list, a player must be owned in less than 50% of all Ottoneu fantasy leagues, based on the Ottoneu Average Salaries page. He also must be able to help your team right now (i.e., no prospects).

Getting right to the list, here are of five players worth a shot in an emergency who are owned in less than 50% of Ottoneu leagues, along with their positional eligibility, average salary, and owned percentage: Read the rest of this entry »

• Oakland was up four runs heading into the eighth inning today and they called on Santiago Casilla with Kole Calhoun, Mike Trout and Albert Pujols due up. If it was a smaller lead we likely would have seen higher leverage extraordinaire Ryan Madson in that spot (heart of the lineup) but with four runs it was Casilla. Casilla retired the side 1-2-3 and in the ninth handed the ball off to Sean Doolittle who allowed a base hit but struck out three in the process. As we have mentioned in these parts this week, Madson is the “closer” but on days where the eighth inning is a higher priority we will likely see Casilla and Doolittle in the ninth, and likely in that order.

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• Addressing the committees (again). Cam Bedrosian should be the closer for the Angels but Scioscia is calling it a committee for now. While one should be inclined to believe what the coach says, the other alternatives for saves are currently the oft-injured Andrew Bailey and the currently injured Huston Street. Even when Street returns, the chances of him pitching particularly well don’t seem particularly high. I would suspect this is an early season hedge by Scioscia and consider Bedrosian fairly safe for now, in spite of the dreaded committee tag.

Similarly in Oakland, the A’s might be running a committee approach after Santiago Casilla received the first save chance. Ryan Madson was originally our designated closer but he came on in the eighth to get Mike Trout, leaving Casilla to the ninth which is the kind of mix-and-matchup one would expect in a committee. While the Angels seem to be playing pretend, I’m calling the A’s an actual committee. Expect Madson to see the higher leverage situations not necessarily in the ninth inning (especially against righties) with Sean Doolittle and Casilla also in the mix.

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With the season starting, new useful information will finally become available. Let me know if I can provide any hard to get information in which other analysts aren’t providing. I will continue trying to notice injured players, provide Quick Looks at new/suspect pitchers, give velocity updates, and prospect comparisons. Other writers can provide normal group-think information. Let me know where I can provide that early edge.

The principal shareholder in the Rays, Stuart Sternberg, discussed how finding and developing the new frontiers provides competitive advantages.

Maybe, Sternberg said, it’s by falling behind, taking a lead from companies that follow Starbucks into good locations, copy Apple electronics or make generic drugs.
“I think where the advantage for us is going forward — and it’s going to sound crazy — is to try to allow all, and I will say all, these other organizations to devote enormous resources, and that’s not just money but thinking, brain power and devotion, to things that will have very little payoff, while those resources, brainpower and money might be better spent somewhere else,” he said.

“You build it, you invest all the (research and development), you devote everything you can and like a drug company, I’ll do the generic version for nothing, and I’ll undersell you. And while you’re doing that, I’ll worry about some other stuff over here.

“Everything I’ve seen, it’s an arms race right now, and guys are using elephant guns to kill mosquitoes.”

No matter what the target, the Rays have to find a way to get back ahead.

“There’s always going to be new frontiers,” Bloom said. “If we don’t find them, somebody else will.”

Let me know which frontiers we can explore together.

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