MASH Report (9/16/13)

Lots of decent information today.

• Miguel Cabrera is hurting and it is killing his bat speed (source)

“All that stuff has affected my offensive numbers,” Cabrera said. “My swing is not as fast as it normally is, and those are things that you must face on a daily basis. But that won’t keep me from going out on the field and trying to help this team win ballgames.”

Cabrera has been definitely slower with his bat. Here is the average angle of all home runs, fly ball and line drives which have come off his bat this year (-45 is the left field line and +45 is the right field line).

Cabrera is just not the same (.219/.359/.250 in September) and if a person is looking for the key for his turn around, look to see if he begins to pull the ball again.

• Stephen Strasburg is dealing with some arm injuries. All hard throwing pitchers who had Tommy John Surgery end up with more injuries in 2-3 seasons. Strasburg just seems a little ahead of schedule.

• David Wright is trying to come back this season. I just don’t see any reason. My best guess is he is trying winning the National League Silver Slugger Award and a $100K contract bonus for it.

Pitchers Returning from the DL

• David Phelps‘ velocity looked fine.

• Jeremy Affeldt’s was a on the low end.

• Josh Tomlin’s velocity looked good.

General Reading

• Diamondbacks may need to reevaluate how they handle elbow injuries.

• Anthony Castrovince at MLB.com looked at strategies teams have used to limit arm injuries. While here are some of the highlights, I would recommend everyone read the entire article:

“I’m certain we’re going to look back on what we did here in 2012, 2013 and not too far into the future and think that it was really primitive,” said Dr. Marcus Elliott, a Harvard-trained physician specializing in sports science.

The key here was personalizing the programs, suiting them to a certain guy’s certain needs. It is a goal Dr. Glenn Fleisig, research director of the American Sports Medicine Institute, has also sought in his biomechanical studies of thousands of pitchers from all amateur and professional levels.

But the problem with these studies is that their findings are difficult — and expensive — to implement in organizations that employ literally hundreds of players. In baseball, it is easier to take broad preparatory concepts and apply them at large, rather than tailoring them to the individual.

I completely agree. Not every pitcher can be lumped in with every other one. Tom Seaver has recently stated that pitchers don’t throw enough, but in a talk I had with Ralph Terry, whose career was cut short by injuries, stated he wished he was on a five man rotation. The extra day off would have been huge for him.

[Dereck] Johnson has spent his first season in the Cubs’ system visiting the various affiliates and gleaning an understanding of the personnel. His goal in the future will be to implement programs that train arms to absorb the stress placed on them in-game and to do so on an individualized basis.
“That’s the tough part,” Johnson said. “Any strength trainer or athletic trainer will tell you guys are built differently. Where baseball is at now is: We bean count. We count pitches, we count innings. I think if that were that easy, you’d see a lot less injuries.”
….
“If the pitching coach has good understanding of the training and conditioning, and the athletic and strength trainer have a working understanding of the mechanics, then you’ve got three people working in unison on this guy and not taking two steps forward and one back, which probably ends up happening way more than it should.”

Johnson states the entire staff and player needs to be on the same boat with injury prevention. With some teams, no one seems to be together (see Washington Nationals) and injuries just continue to pile up.

PAIN (Pitcher Abuse INdex) Rankings (min 200 pitches in Sept to the rest of the 2013 season)

Any player with a PAIN value over 100 (red) has the traits of a pitcher likely to be hurt.

Name	PAIN	Velocity (Apr – Aug)	Zone% (Apr-Aug)	Velocity(Sep)	Velocity(Sep)
Steve Cishek	404.3	92.4	52.5%	90.8	32.1%
Jeff Francis	297.3	85.5	48.7%	85.0	32.7%
Josh Outman	253.0	92.4	47.1%	91.9	34.3%
Charlie Morton	245.1	92.8	47.3%	92.2	34.9%
Lucas Harrell	243.7	91.9	40.4%	90.6	32.1%
Oliver Perez	236.3	92.5	54.3%	91.1	42.5%
Clay Buchholz	235.4	90.8	48.3%	88.9	40.0%
Roy Halladay	225.6	87.6	45.8%	86.7	36.0%
Rob Wooten	223.4	87.0	45.1%	86.0	35.6%
Dane de la Rosa	195.3	93.9	55.0%	94.5	39.8%
Cesar Ramos	195.2	91.1	46.8%	91.8	33.8%
Edward Mujica	191.0	88.9	54.1%	87.1	46.2%
Michael Blazek	191.0	95.1	40.5%	93.8	35.1%
Burch Smith	184.2	92.6	58.1%	91.1	48.7%
Mike Leake	179.1	89.4	50.2%	89.7	38.0%
Dale Thayer	175.7	92.8	54.8%	92.7	43.0%
Paul Clemens	173.9	93.7	49.6%	90.8	47.3%
Luis Mendoza	166.5	91.5	42.4%	91.0	35.8%
Preston Claiborne	164.0	92.8	46.1%	91.7	40.3%
Zach Miner	159.2	91.6	42.1%	91.3	35.1%
Kevin Gregg	151.5	89.6	46.1%	89.3	38.8%
Nick Tepesch	150.9	90.9	48.4%	91.7	36.8%
Jake Dunning	150.2	90.5	49.1%	89.8	41.8%
Sergio Romo	148.3	87.7	43.1%	86.9	37.9%
Carter Capps	147.6	95.4	51.3%	95.8	40.6%
Tony Sipp	143.9	90.3	43.9%	90.2	36.7%
Ryan Pressly	141.1	92.9	48.4%	93.4	38.5%
David Carpenter	140.0	95.0	53.5%	95.2	42.9%
Ivan Nova	134.9	93.3	44.9%	92.0	41.7%
Ethan Martin	132.6	92.8	44.6%	92.9	37.5%
Tim Collins	132.4	93.0	50.7%	92.8	42.7%
Danny Farquhar	130.9	92.1	48.0%	91.5	41.9%
Craig Breslow	130.0	89.7	43.7%	90.3	35.6%
Aaron Loup	129.9	91.4	52.6%	92.8	39.6%
J.C. Ramirez	127.1	94.2	55.2%	93.3	48.2%
Brandon Kintzler	123.9	92.1	48.3%	92.6	39.4%
Brad Brach	121.8	90.8	45.8%	90.8	39.2%
J.P. Howell	119.7	87.3	43.1%	87.5	36.8%
Danny Duffy	118.8	93.4	51.4%	93.3	43.8%
Neil Wagner	117.6	95.8	51.6%	95.7	44.0%
Tommy Milone	113.6	86.9	46.6%	87.3	39.1%
Wade Miley	112.7	90.9	46.8%	91.0	40.4%
Tyler Clippard	112.2	91.5	49.0%	90.5	44.7%
Stephen Fife	110.3	89.3	52.6%	89.3	44.8%
Aaron Harang	110.0	89.8	49.5%	88.7	45.5%
Julio Teheran	109.7	91.4	53.3%	91.0	46.5%
Drew Smyly	108.2	89.0	47.8%	89.1	41.1%
Gonzalez Germen	106.5	92.8	41.9%	93.1	36.5%
Donnie Veal	106.3	92.5	41.4%	93.4	34.6%
Boone Logan	106.1	93.6	44.4%	93.6	39.2%
Koji Uehara	104.9	85.1	55.8%	84.7	48.4%
C.J. Wilson	104.3	90.8	48.3%	90.5	42.9%
Ryan Mattheus	102.9	91.4	44.3%	90.7	41.1%
Addison Reed	101.5	92.8	54.1%	92.6	46.9%
Matt Moore	101.1	92.4	46.6%	92.2	41.6%
Luis Avilan	100.5	93.1	42.8%	92.8	39.2%

• I tried to find any pitchers who have really struggled this month. I would not be too concerned about drops in Zone% unless there are other signs of a pitcher struggling.

• Clay Buchholz doesn’t seem 100% yet. His velocity is down 1 mph from earlier in the season and he is having all kinds of problems finding the strike zone.

• Edward Mujica has struggled quite a bit in September (8.31 ERA, 5.58 FIP). Compared to the rest of the season, his fastball is down almost 2 mph in September and he is also having problems finding the strike zone.

Players on the DL

(*) 15 Day Disabled List
(**) 60 Day Disabled List
(***) 7 Day Concussion List
(****) Free Agent
Red colored entries are updates since last report.

Unofficial DL List

Official DL List