Archive for Trevor Bauer

Movement

Pitch movement is simply measured by vertical and horizontal movement. Some websites do differ in the number of inches as some include gravity while others don’t. Movement on a pitch can mean everything. Think about it – of course the more a pitch moves the harder it is to hit. But on the other end, that also means it is harder for the pitcher to command. Below are two pitchers who have seen an increase in movement on one of their pitches. So what does this mean for these pitchers moving forward? Check it out below!

Trevor Bauer

Trevor Bauer has been like a sour patch candy the past two years. In 2018 he was sweet and put up a 2.21 ERA with the underlying metrics to support it. In 2019 he turned sour and put up a 4.48 ERA and again had the underlying metrics to support it. Coming into 2020 it was impossible to make rhyme or reason on what the heck happened to Bauer. Personally I thought his four-seam seemed to over-perform in 2018, thinking his 2020 wouldn’t be far off from his 2019. Boy was I wrong.

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Do you believe in Trevor Bauer? The Cleveland pitcher has been a polarizing arm since he’s stepped onto a major league field, never holding an ERA under 4.00 across four seasons of 25+ starts paired with a WHIP above 1.30, but Bauer continues to raise eyebrows with 20%+ strikeout rates and stretches where he flashes Top 20 SP ability. We all want him to succeed, but it seems everyone has a story behind why they simply can’t back him.

I’m not here to preach 2018 Bauer as the potential Top 20 SP that was promised nor that his previous struggles should demote him to the bottom of your draft boards. I’m here to tell you that Bauer may have grown in 2017 more than you realize. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the small sample, the pitching trend continues (as of 4/11):

Strikeouts are up. Offense is down. The MLB ERA as it stands is 3.39! You can read why in the The Hardball Time’s Baseball Annual 2015: Jeff Sullivan looks at whether or not sabermetrics have tipped the balance of power toward pitching and defense — it has. PITCHf/x evaluation is one major reason.

More and more, pitchers know what works within their own repertoires, and we can then tell some “reperstories” based on their pitch characteristics (movement and velocity) and outcomes (swinging-strike and groundball induction).

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Everyone loves a sleeper. I’d say this is an indisputable fact — or close to it. Not all sleepers are the same, though, and I find the post-hype sleeper to be the most rewarding type to peg correctly. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for tools being actualized and promising prospects figuring it out after struggling initially. While the season isn’t even a week old yet, let’s check in on a few post-hype sleepers who are off to a good start. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

According to WAR, FIP and xFIP, the Indians rotation was one of the three best in the league last year, which is kind of amazing considering Trevor Bauer had the second highest innings total on the staff. But it certainly didn’t hurt that they had a guy with a 4.30 ERA as a starter prior to 2014 who more than delivered on the promise indicated in his peripherals by winning the AL Cy Young award. But one pitcher does not a good rotation make. In addition to their Cy Young winner, they got sub-3.00 ERA ball from another starter for just over 90 innings, and they had five starters throw at least 90 innings with an xFIP of 3.50 or lower. Assuming everyone is healthy come Opening Day, two of those five don’t figure to crack the rotation. I dare say this rotation might be good again. Read the rest of this entry »

Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

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This week, Eno presented Pitch Arsenal scores. There were a sundry of impactful responses which will result in a more comprehensive score in the future, such as incorporating pitch usage; a dominating pitch used more should be scored higher than a pitch with the same results that is used less.

The other clear requirement is associating weight to the outcomes in which Eno evaluated: whiff per swings and grounder to fly ratios. That is all this post will get at. It sounds like follow-up scores may incorporate pop-up% and zone% as well. Again, we are looking for undervalued pitchers, but if we want to get more descriptive (simply presenting the results from last year), we could look at HR/FB and LD/BIP on each pitch type as well.

I did something similar in the past, and there are different approaches, but here goes.

Using BP’s PITCHf/x Leaderboard (1oo-pitch qualifier) I first found each pitch type’s Whiff/Swing and GB/FB z-score. I then weighed each z-score by swinging-strike’s (.62) and GB/FB’s (.27) average correlation to ERA, SIERA and xFIP for all pitchers over 70 innings pitched (my lazy attempt to omit relievers). What is not incorporated and should be in the future, is differentiating weights for each pitch type. For example, groundball induction is a more important requirement for Sinkers; Sliders and Change-ups should induce more whiffs as we know from these Pitch Type Benchmarks.

The seven pitch types incorporated are Fourseamers, Sinkers, Cutters, Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. For Trevor Bauer‘s Screwball and R.A. Dickey’s Knuckleball, I went to Brooks Baseball’s player cards and used their sabermetric outcome z-scores for these two pitch types and combined the weighted z-score to the rest of their repertoire score.

The list will be distinguishable from Eno’s initial list based on the weights, but the names within each cluster will look similar.

When you get Felix Hernandez and Corey Kluber in the top 5 and Kevin Correia dead last, you know we got it right:

Notes:

• Pitchers with outcomes missing threw less than 70 IP.
• Pitch types were included only if pitches were thrown 100+ times. For example, Trevor Cahill wound up at #8 on this list. He has excellent breaking and off-speed pitches (all 1+ standard deviations more than average from a whiff/swing perspective), but his Fourseam is awful, and BP’s PITCHf/x leaderboard did not present his Fourseam outcomes based on a sub-100 pitch count as a starting pitcher so it was not included in his full arsenal/repertoire score.

Results:

Think the Indians aren’t looking on the pitch-outcome level? They have 5 pitchers in the top 55 Repertoire Scores: Carlos Carrasco and Corey Kluber are numbers 3 and 4 respectively! Newcomer Gavin Floyd is #15 on the list thanks to great breaking balls. Danny Salazar is #43 and his per-pitch outcomes were even better coming into 2014. T.J. House is the real deal at #54. And not far off is Trevor Bauer at #75 overall.

I cannot not mention that the Mets have two guys in the top 21: Zack Wheeler (#9) and Jacob deGrom #21). Harvey if healthy should join them.

As it relates to Cahill, for some value-add, I highlighted (red/green) those .50 more or less standard deviations from the mean in SwStr% and GB/FB, but also the three “luck” categories: LOB%, HR/FB and of course BABIP. Cahill ranks well in both SwStr% and GB/FB and was also relatively unlucky when it came to his BABIP and LOB% (about 65 points and 9% respectively from his career average). Cahill is a deep-league…even standard-league asset with some returned control and an ERA closer to expected ERAs below 4.00. I am thinking the magical-mystery-kind age 27 season for Cahill.

Attend to the luck stats. Carlos Martinez has one of the best repertoire scores yet had a 4.03 ERA in part due to a .333 BABIP. His xFIP (3.45) and SIERA (3.54) in conjunction with the #1 overall arsenal score should ensure he is significantly better next year.

The list verifies breakouts: Carlos Carrasco, Garrett Richards, Yordano Ventura and Tyson Ross (all top15). Ross has a devastating Slider (8th best; 100-pitch qualifier) with a solid Change from a whiff/swing perspective, but he induces a ton of grounders with his Change and Sinker (both have top 11 GB/FB rates).

The list also provides hope for Justin Masterson who wound up at #7 on the list with 2.72 Sinker score and .74 Slider score. That 2.72 Sinker score out-summed 205 other full repertoire scores, but again keep in mind that his Sinker whiff/swing of 22.88% might be 3 standard deviations better than the average Sinker whiff/swing, but that rate is under the average whiff/swing rate for Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. This is why it is important to differentiate weights for each pitch type.

If there is a pitcher’s Repertoire score that baffles you, check out the “RepScores” tab to see which pitches were omitted and the individual pitch-type z-scores and weights under the “zWh/Sw” and “wzWh/Sw” columns. Each pitch-type score and repertoire score is in the last column, titled “Wh/Sw_Gb/Fb_Scr.”

Back to the actual value of the content though – we are looking for interesting names and patterns, which I have highlighted in Red or Yellow based on the content below:

• Trevor Cahill interests me if he never uses his Fourseamer again and can induce more grounders with his Sinker. Cahill has a nice Cutter/Slider that he used toward the end of last year too. There is more swing and miss to his game.
• Dan Straily and the Sinker Pattern: Dan Straily might not have a spot in the Cubs rotation at this point, but he has a solid Slider and induces a surprising number of pop-ups. If he can keep his HR/FB ratio down (probably more of an issue in Wrigley than the Coliseum though) and have better luck in the left-on-base department, he could become effective again. His ranking in this list though is because of an elevated Sinker value (similar to Masterson). Look out for the Sinker and take the associated rankings with a handful of salt.
• James Paxton: By name and the Mariners un-willingness to move him, you know that he is good. It’s nice that our list backs him up. While his expected ERAs were 3.50+ (about 50 points higher than his 3.04 actual ERA), he should get even better; mainly his Change-ups, which should induce more whiffs. Even if we don’t see an impressive strikeout rate next year, I think he will be able to prevent hard contact with his CCC (Change-Curve-Cutter) repertoire and Fastball velocity (17th at 95.51 MPH last year; 100-pitch qualifier).
• Shane Greene: He’s no Max Scherzer, but the Tigers finagle themselves into another Yankees-Diamondbacks swap and again may have acquired the best piece. Another potent righty, Greene had the 10th best Slider Whiff/Swing rate and 5th best Cutter Whiff/Swing rate (enough velocity differential where they are distinguishable). Unlike Masterson and Straily, his Sinker does not inflate his repertoire score. Losing Rick Porcello hurts, but Shane Greene could be even better.
• Jesse Hahn and Pitch Omissions: Similar to Masterson and Straily, Hahn’s repertoire score is inflated by his Sinker although he had a great Curve (31st best Whiff/Swing rate). His Slider and Change were omitted from his arsenal in this evaluation based on pitch-counts under 100. Both would impede on his overall score. Through this approach, Hahn’s Changeup would be valued at -.15, which would drag his repertoire score from 1.59 to 1.44. The Slider would be far worse, but he used it less than 30 times, so I won’t subtract from his overall score in case he decides to swap the pitch out altogether next year.
• Wily Peralta. This is more about confirmation than highlighting a surprising name. Peralta won’t provide haughty strikeout rates, but his 18.4% rate from last year could jump a bit based on the per-pitch outcomes/more breaking-ball usage. In a future FanGraphs+ post, his release point consistency (within-game but especially game-to-game) will be highlighted, which could be a source of deception. While the Sinker does inflate his value some here (almost a standard deviation more whiff/swing than the average Sinker), it does its job inducing grounders. His Changeup and Slider are also .55+ standard deviations better than average at inducing whiffs.

Eno already emphasized Carlos Martinez and Carlos Carrasco – both have glorious peripherals within each pitch-type beyond their Fourseams. Every pitch of theirs outside the Fourseam induced 1.5 standard deviations more whiffs/swing than average!

Watch out for Danny Salazar who (by classification) introduced a devastating Changeup in September and should output value similar to or better than Carlos Carrasco based on a haughtier strikeout rate. Salazar was probably a luckier BABIP away from a 3.5 ERA last year. In fact, unsurprisingly, each Indians starter outside of Carrasco had a BABIP .5 standard deviations over the average (70IP qualifier).

Review:

• Look for sleepers/surprises based on “Rep.Score” in column two of the embedded file as presented.
• Check out the “RepScores” tab to see if any pitch-types were removed based on pitch-counts and keep pitch-type usage in mind (counts in the 5th column).
• Remember, differentiating weights for each pitch type is not incorporated. Scroll to the right within the “RepScores” tab to view individual pitch-type scores as well as the complete repertoire/arsenal score. Watch for pitchers with Sinkers as their highest score. Sinkers whiff rates aren’t as impactful. Allen Webster has a great score, but it is inflated because of its Whiff/Swing rate. As mentioned above, the same holds true for Justin Masterson and Dan Straily among others.
•  The Diamondbacks and Yankees won’t let the Tigers finagle themselves into another deal after Shane Greene enjoys success similar to the Scherzer application.
• And finally, try to own the entire Indians rotation in your fantasy leagues.

A few years ago, I remember hearing Keith Law on some podcast talking about how scouting comes down to a yes or no answer, either acquire or do not acquire. Scouts can’t waffle. You either want the player or you don’t. I like the bottom-line certainty of that in this confusing world of the false notions of hope and change, globalization, automation, rapid technological change, and yet a seemingly permanently stagnant economy. Wait, what? I don’t know; the point is the world is a very confusing place in 2014.

And so but my fantasy strategy this season was to buy the bats early and get young pitching later. I was able to draft Jeff Samardzija (1.46 ERA), Sonny Gray (1.99 ERA), Yordano Ventura (2.80 ERA) and Michael Wacha (2.54 ERA). Samardzija isn’t exactly young (29 years old), but there’s probably less mileage on his arm given his college football background. Those three are a pretty solid rotation foundation.

The guy I was most confident in, however, is already toiling in Triple-A. Danny Salazar was still missing bats (25.5 percent strikeout rate) with Cleveland this year after a dominant ten-start showing in 2013. When I saw him throw late last year I immediately put him into my “acquire” pile for 2014. What’s not to like about a guy averaging 96 mph on the heater with a plus-plus change? Unfortunately, Salazar had control (9.2 percent walk rate) and command issues (1.77 HR/9) over eight starts to open this season, earning a demotion. His average fastball velocity was down three ticks from last year.

Salazar is out and former (and arguably current) top prospect Trevor Bauer is back in the Cleveland rotation. Bauer is a good cautionary tale for those ready to pull the plug on the talented Salazar. Like Salazar, Bauer had some early-career velocity dips. After averaging 92.8 mph on the fastball last year, Bauer’s velocity is up to 94.6 over his two big league starts this season. With the velocity bump has come an increase in strikeouts. In 2013, Bauer struck out 19.3 percent of Triple-A hitters and just 13.6 percent over four starts with Cleveland. So far in 2014, he’s fanned 24.2 percent at Triple-A and 26 percent in the big leagues.

The real question with Salazar in the long-term might be his health. He had Tommy John surgery in 2010 which, combined with the sudden velocity loss, could be construed as evidence that health is the problem here. That’s obviously just speculation; perhaps his problems are just mechanical. We don’t know what the problem is, but we do know that something isn’t right with Salazar in the here and now when everything looked pretty great just a handful of months ago.

If Salazar could dominate in the big leagues before, he can certainly do it again. He’s only 24 years old, he has swing-and-miss stuff, and he’s had recent professional success. It’s far too early to quit on a talent like this, just as it was too soon to give up on Bauer.

The 23-year-old Bauer was the third pick of the 2011 draft and a top-ten prospect in 2012. The 24-year-old Salazar looked like a future ace last year. Arms like this don’t grow on trees, and they also don’t always grow on a linear trajectory towards stardom. There are often bumps in the road, and stardom isn’t guaranteed. However, in the final analysis, Bauer and Salazar remain two young arms worth riding the waves of struggle with towards fantasy success and perhaps renewed hope in Cleveland.

When I’m determining what I’m going to spend on players during my leagues’ FAAB runs, I think about the long term. We all do, right? In my experience, however, most fantasy players tend to base their bids on the here and now: The players on hot streaks fetch the most dollars. The exceptions include recently named closers and promoted prospects of great esteem, among others, but you get the idea.

I’ll talk more about FAAB strategy in future columns, I’m sure, but I wanted to plant the seed: Bid according to what kind of returns you figure to receive from the player for the rest of the season, regardless of recent performance. A player’s latest feats can factor in a little, sure, especially if characteristics of them indicate skills growth. In the latter instance, though, you’re already wisely influenced by possible long-term gains.

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Perhaps it’s not who will win the position battle for the last starting pitcher slot for the Cleveland Indians that matters. Rather, from a fantasy baseball perspective — who do you want to start on day five for the Cleveland Indians? Because it’s most certainly not Aaron Harang, who seems to be the poster boy for noodle-at-the-ceiling throwing when it comes to a requisite starting pitcher to nom nom nom innings. The battle, it seems, is down to Carlos Carrasco, Josh Tomlin, and Mr. Harang. Yes, yes, I know those of you clutching to your pretty shiny Trevor Bauer cry foul, but the tea leaves are suggesting a need for “refining” in beautiful Columbus.

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