Oakland

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Just Watchin'

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=== Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting ===

... except when it doesn't.  Dave Fleming, at BJOL, goes over the four Division Series matchups to see if Good Pitching won.  He's not trying to prove a case in a court of law.  He's just cracking peanuts, and watching baseball.  ... Of the Final Eight teams, in four matchups, how many qualified as Pitching vs Hitting matchups?

NYY vs BAL:  both teams had 109 ERA's.  NYY had a far better offense.  No test case here.  The better team squeaked out a win.

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A's vs DET:  both teams had ERA's of 114 and 112, and both had OPS's of 97-104.  Fleming called Oakland the pitching team and Detroit the hitting team, saying that hitting beat pitching.  I'd call it a non-test case.

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SF vs CIN:  Huge test case.  Did you realize that the Reds had an ERA+ of 127 ?!  And they had a lousy OPS+ of 90 also, despite Votto, Bruce, Phillips and Ludwick.  San Fran, on the other hand, had an excellent offense and below-average pitching.  

The Giants won, so that's an In Yo Face against the purists.

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Gnats vs Cards:  the Montreal Expos had a sky-high ERA+ of 119.  The Expos' offense was league average; the Cards' offense was better than their defense.  Legit test case.

The Cardinals, the hitting team, won -- staging a huge comeback against a terrific closer.  In Yo Face.

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The Big Three in 2013: Here You Go Amig-O

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Also at BJOL, and moshing off the previous question with a hip bruise, is ...

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We're loving the pennant race out here in Oakland. By my rough count 650 of the A's 1303 innings pitched so far have been by rookie pitchers, almost exactly half. Is that a very unusual ratio for a successful team?
Asked by: OwenH
Answered: 9/17/2012
It is, yes.   I don't THINK any championship team has ever had 50% of its innings pitched by rookies.      There have been teams that won around 90 games with heavily rookinized pitching staffs.     Disturbed by the fact that my word editor fails to flag "rookinized".  

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Davey Johnson and Billy Martin

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The Nationals are one of the prettiest Cinderella teams in recent years.  Davey Johnson is one of my favorite managers of all time.  And I hadn't connected the two dots in any way, until this at BJOL:

 

Bill, in the 80s you wrote that Billy Martin had a consistent record of improving every team he joined; with the downside that his pitchers got used up and their careers suffered subsequently. Since then, Dave Johnson has had a comparable record of sudden improvements. Does he also have a frequent history of pitchers coming apart after working hard for him?
Asked by: Trailbzr
Answered: 9/11/2012
The relevant history for Billy Martin was not simply improving his team; it was stressing his pitchers.    A third party reader might think, based on your question, that I had initiated the theory that Billy Martin burned out his pitchers.    In fact, Martin used starting pitchers in ways that were extremely unusual, such as allowing Mickey Lolich to make 45 starts and pitch 376 innings in 1971, and allowing his Oakland A's staff to throw 94 complete games in 1980, when the second highest complete game total in the majors was 48; no other two teams combined had 94 complete games.  
 
Because of Martin's extremely unusual workloads for his starting pitchers, there was a controversy raging well before I started writing about baseball as to whether Martin's handling of his pitchers presented an undue risk to their future.   My contribution to that discussion was to go back through his teams, and look at the future performance of the pitchers who had good years for him.   My conclusion was that ALL of those pitchers, without exception, had gone through very serious career downturns--and in almost all cases career-ending downturns--after one or two good seasons for Martin.   
 
There is no analogous history for Davey Johnson, thus there's really no question here.   Johnson does not abuse his pitchers or use them in unusual ways, no one has alledged that he does, and many of his past pitchers have continued to thrive after having good seasons for him. 

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Little kids dream about growing up and playing quarterback for the Cowboys.  Retired managers dream about coming back and having Davey Johnson's 2012 season. From a managerial point of view it's an impressive kind of 89-54 for Washington:  their offense is 101, their pitching 121.  They added pitching, but there are a whale of a lot of teams that add pitching that don't finish the season with 121 ERA+'s.  And DJ would have had a lot to do with which pitchers they added.

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=== 1999-2000 Dodgers ===

Slap me silly, the last time DJ managed was in the year 2000!  Before that 116-win season the M's keep advertising on Root Sports.  Simply judging by W/L, he didn't take that team anywhere.  They won 83 in 1998, then 77 and 86 the two years with him.

'Dizziness Due to Success'

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... His fall from grace, or his fall from other-dimensional status, at least...

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Q:  So the only sanctuary for my sanity right now is that Felix must be tipping his pitches.  

Q:  Yeah, what's up with Felix getting knocked around three starts in a row?

A.  What's up is that Felix' Rock 'n Roll' Fantasy got him overconfident and he began to think of himself as bulletproof.  Point of order:  after two innings tonight he'd thrown 23 strikes and 6 balls.  Here's his strike zone plot.

Bill Krueger, who is a very informative pitching analyst, one with more overall light bulbs on than you or I, jumped on the postgame and instantly delivered the goods.  "Felix is a very confident pitcher.  He believes in his pitches ... against aggressive teams like Toronto, he's got to go off the plate, over their heads, take advantage of their approach."  The Oakland A's were similarly stocked with razor-sharp lefty batters just waiting for strikes they knew they were going to get.

Krueger accurately supplied, "He's making what I call a lot of arm-side mistakes."  In other words, Felix has a tendency to kind of spin/sail the ball out-and-over against LH.  Against lefties, Felix' dumb little two-seam fastball -- his only Achilles' heel -- fades right out onto the outer 1/3 of the plate and they are CHEATING onto that location.  

As a side point, the Jays' 40-homer righty, Edwin Encarnacion, happens to have a rare hot zone for a RH:  he likes the ball right on his hands.  He leans back in 1970's style, swwaaaaats the bat through real quick and barrels it up.  He took Carter Capps deep too in the same game - 15 feet foul.  Gorgeous snake-fast bat.

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Felix' changeup dropped right into the hot zone and we were treated to the unpossible sight of a Felix Hernandez dry spitter getting launched, what was it, 440 feet?  

Great hitter, great pitcher, Hitter guessed exactly right, Pitcher threw a great pitch but right where Hitter likes it.... video game battle of the titans.  Boom time.

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M's 3, Indians 1 - Gameflow

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Zach McAllister was cruising along rather easily, whereas Iwakuma was holding the Indians down through grim determination.  After six innings, the Tribe had outhit the M's by 7-3, just about like Tuesday's game.  The score was tied 1-1, just like Tuesday's game.  And with the M's new power bullpen, the win felt scripted, just like Tuesday's game.  Kyle Seager scrounged a double and my son looked shocked at something ... Seager's slide, maybe?  "Man, Dad, this game is exactly like last night's."

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With the score tied 1-1, Seager grounded that long single past the second baseman and ... took off for second.  OH NOO NOO NOOOOOOOOOO! He's out by 15 feet ... no, throw's on the wrong side of the bag MAN! he's FAST! and Seager does a "Superman" boot camp exercise to raise his torso up off the dirt.  His hand slides under the tag and, technically, Seager gets to the bag before the ball gets to him.

This is the Mariners.  Ball beats runner, runner out.  Except, this time, the ump makes a Yankee call, and makes sure the Yankee is tagged out correctly.  The ump signals Seager safe.  Yes, Virginia, the umpires do respect the M's scramble up the ladder.  Slap me silly and call me Shelley.

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Jason Vargas Scouting Report - 7.26.12

Going into July 31, 2011, JasonVar's grass had been mown four consecutive starts.  KO'ed in the 3rd and 4th in two of 'em, blasted for 12 hits in another one, and racked up for 6 runs in the fourth.  He was shorn so the bare dirt and looked like an Eastern Washington putting green.

Not coincidentally, when Zduriencik attempted to pawn him off to neighboring league GM's, they pointed at the other doggies in Z's window.  As SSI constantly reminds, July form weighs heavily.  No, it isn't that baseball people are dumber than you and I are, but they're closer to the situation and it's a nervy game they're playing.  It's got to be tough to lay out the long green on a Ferrari when there's blue smoke billowing from the tailpipe.  What's the worst it could be?  A $3,000 ring job, maybe.  But when you're making a big deal, it's human nature to want the car full of gas and oil.

There's also the fact that, if a good-hit no-pitch contender is going to give you quality for a certified MLB(TM) postseason* starter, they're going to be paying you for 10-12 starts plus playoffs.  Look at it from that angle, and you can see why it matters whether a July pitcher is on a hot roll.  You don't want to spend 1/3, or 1/2, of your investment wondering if or when he's going to start doing a little mowing of his own.

This time around, 2012, Vargas has left the lawn mower in the shed and busted out the wood chipper.  Last 6 starts, he's given up a total of 8 - count them, 8 - earnies and he's got the strikeouts to go along.  A 10-K game vs. a red-hot Oakland, games of 6, 6, 5 ... I forget.

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Scout's Clipboard

Did see three or four innings tonight, first time in about oh six Vargas starts I'd watched one of his games.  Wow, Dr. D thought.  He's coming sidearm now, and that fastball is really slicing in on righties.  Is that his cutter he's throwing there, or does he have a power slider now, or what?

The 1973 A's: 253 runs at home, 445 road - and the World Series

 

The Mariners are scoring 4.96 runs per game on the road this year and 2.86 at home. I wonder whether this would be the largest home/road split ratio ever? ... theory is that Safeco, where the wind off the sea blows LF-to-RF, creates an updraft effect that makes batted balls hang in the air (as Mike Cameron first noted). This results in super-low BABIP's and low HR per fly ball percentages. The Mariners' young hitters are routinely quoted as very frustrated; Seager's splits especially are horrific. Worry is that the park is getting into the young players' heads too much and threatening to ruin this generation's rebuild ... any thoughts as to a systemic fix? Change the park, the players (again), or let some time pass? ...
Asked by: jemanji
Answered: 7/19/2012
That could be a record; I'm not sure.   The 1934 Boston Braves scored 280 runs at home, 403 on the road.
 
Oh, I think the '73 A's have them beat.   The '73 A's scored 253 runs at home, 445 on the road--and won the World Series.    So tell them to quit gripin' and see if Blue Moon Odom is available.  - From Hey Bill, billjamesonline.com

The 1973 A's had a 26-year-old Joe Rudi, a 25-year-old Bill North, a 26-year-old Gene Tenace, a 26-year-old Ray Fosse, and a 27-year-old Reggie Jackson in the lineup.  They weren't as young as the M's, but they were young.  The thing is, they had in effect 3 Felixes in their rotation.  3 Felixes out of 4 slots.  Pretty much.  Ken Holtzman made 40 starts that year.  Their Big Three tossed 300, 260, and 260 innings.  All had very long, very glorious careers.

Bill's kidding around some, which is his way of letting you know that he's not particularly confident about his answer.  ... but his basic idea here is still so sharp as to induce vertigo.  Suppose you just accepted --- > that you'll be last in home scoring and first in road scoring?  Could you win that way?

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Athleticism

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In his latest article at Bill James Online, co-author John Dewan discusses the best baserunning teams in the majors:

 

The Atlanta Braves are in the thick of the National League playoff race and can thank good baserunning for part of that. The Braves rank first in the 2012 Baserunning Net Gain statistic featured annually in the Bill James Handbook. Baserunning Net Gain evaluates each player's opportunities to advance on hits and avoid outs on the basepaths, crediting him for the bases advanced better than average and penalizing him triple for baserunning outs. Led by outfielders Michael Bourn and Martin Prado, the Braves have a team Net Gain of +54, comfortably above the second-best Oakland Athletics.

 

Top Baserunning Teams, 2012
Team Net Gain
Braves +54
Athletics +46
Giants +30
Mariners +28
Phillies +26
 

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In terms of baserunning - not stolen bases - the 2012 Seattle Mariners are motoring around the bases at drag-race speed.  Man on first, long single between the outfielders, the local nine are more likely than just about anybody to spin around for a 1st-and-3rd.  Considering that my man Jesus Montero cannot reach second base on a double, I'd say the other dozen guys must be into time warps.

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The 2012 Mariners have been famously good at fielding batted balls.  As measured by UZR/150, they rank 4th of 30 major league teams.  Wow:  a team built on speed and defense, eh?

M's 0 ...

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=== Still With Fangs Down To Their Chins ===

 .... though Danny Haren doesn't strike you as all that goth, probably.  I dunno, is the werewolf look included in the fad or is it just vampires and, um, zombies?

Bill James' 'Pitcher Rankings' paradigm basically treats the last 2-3 seasons as one continuous season, underlining pitchers who have demonstrated their excellence.  My favorite use of the 'World's #1 Pitcher' tool right now, is the large, overarc'ing insights into which teams may be playing over their heads.  And which teams may be ripe for a surge in the standings.  

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