Whale

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.

Is there a "Best Pitch?"

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A little philosophical birdwalk laid out by The Counselor.

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Q by Mojo: Maybe this is common knowledge, or maybe it is just absurd, but are changeups the most effective off-speed pitch?

I've watched a whole summer of Vargas and now Ramirez embarrass hitters with a change that dives into the dirt. It seems that curves and sliders often get botched, hanged and then hit for extra bases, but the changeup rarely goes wrong and seems just as effective when it goes right. Maybe the curve and slider are more difficult to throw and more unreliable because they rely heavily on a hard spin for the ball.

Is this right baseball thinking?

A: Why do you say "common knowledge" OR "absurd"? You're a lawyer. Who would know better than you not to present those two terms as antonyms! Oh yeah. Bill James, 1977. Well, you're probably second.

It would be incredibly trite to say "it depends on the pitcher." Mojo axs, normalizing for the pitcher, is one pitch inherently better than another, in any meaningful sense. It's better to swing away than to bunt. It's better to shoot an open 3-pointer, if you have it, than it is to run a set 5-man play. It's better to run a 4-3 defense than to put 10 men in the box.

How would you think about this? Is a changeup the best pitch?

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Q. Does one pitch rate out better than another?

A. Limiting ourselves only to 2nd-order thinking, here, we have the following simple outcomes for each type of pitch. This is a leaguewide stats tabulation from the fantabulous statistical site Fangraphs. The top row is 2009, followed by 2010, 2011, 2012.

In the first cell (if I understand wFB/C right) -0.15 means that for every 100 fastballs thrown, the pitcher's team suffered an increase of .15 runs scored (above average) by the other team's hitters.

Q. Wow! Easy! The slider is by far the best (normal) pitch and the fastball's the worst, right?

A. Not so fast. There's the concept of "pressure" on a pitch type. If you throw lots of fastballs, and the hitters are always looking fastball -- which is in fact the case -- then a slider is "surprising" the hitter and "playing up."

Fastballs are thrown 58% of the time, while sliders are thrown 14% of the time. Imagine if Kevin Millwood went out and threw 58% sliders, and just mixed in his 90 MPH fastball once or twice an inning. The slider's run value would be like -2.00.

So the above table represents what a pitch type is giving its team AFTER it has decided to put almost all the pressure on the fastball. This implies, obviously, that the fastball is inherently the best pitch, by a wide margin.

Impossible Is Nothing, Dept.

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Q. Iwakuma had his "B game" working?

A. How doth he limp tonight? Let us count the ways:

Slider was flat, staying up, 4" less sink than usual, you could look it up
Shuuto had little bite, staying up, 2" less sink
Fastball was down about 1.0, 1.5 MPH
Command wasn't great, especially early, was behind in the count

So his line was 5.1 innings, 7 hits, 2 runs, 1:4 CTL ratio - on the face of it quite good against the Rangers in Texas, but he could have given up four runs. He gave up two solo shots and scattered the other five hits. (On the other hand, one of the HR's was a cheap HR that was an easy out in Safeco.)

Still and all, the story is: he cobbled a win-quality performance out of a grade B evening. Against the mighty Rangers. There are a whale of a lot of guys who can't.

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Q. Any reason he was on his B game?

A. We mentioned last time that Iwakuma needs to step forward an extra few inches, to promote the wrist snap. It was raining in Texas. Bad footing, wet ball. Iwakuma-san himself would tell you that his balance was off. Never saw him look so graceless physically.

Mike Zunino Tears Off AA's Arm and Beats Them With It

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G, Spec*, are you guys now wavering as to whether you'd have grabbed Zunino with the 1-1? I certainly am. If Houston had had this information on draft day -- 13 homers in 38 games with massive walks, 10/23 CS, etc., they wouldn't have taken Zunino?

Of course, SSI will cheerfully admit that it doesn't know much about the HS hotshots. . But! Usually a high school hitter would have to be pretty close to Hamilton-, Griffey-level talent for modern ML teams to pass on a college hitter who is head-and-shoulders over the crowd. Never heard anything about Correa or Buxton being THAT good.

Zunino parchutes into the high minors, the high minors being AA baseball where pitchers can throw breaking pitches for strikes when behind in the count, and in his first nine games crushes it like a pop can: three HR's, four more doubles, a .406 AVG with an EYE in excess of 1.0 and a .800 SLG. This follows his clear overmatch of the Northwest League, and let us hastily remind you that most pundits were quite dubious about Zunino's promotion.

No, LrKrBoi29, we're not declaring the case closed and declaring that Gary Carter are belong to us. We're asking whether this additional data on Zunino -- that his first six weeks in the minors would produce dominating control of pro pitchers -- would have affected his draft standing. For example, on draft day, you didn't know for sure whether the change in bats would affect Zunino, right?

On draft day, I was moderately bummed at a "forced" choice. Re-rack the draft and it says here that Zunino is a no-brainer at 1-1.

.... Indians 1

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Felix had good stuff, even by his own standards, on Tuesday night. His fastball averaged 92.9 MPH and would have been even higher if the last seven -- 15% of them -- had not dropped off in velocity. Felix' speed is, more or less, back.

Here is a movement chart for Tuesday night. The blue spots are from the perfect game; the red spots are from the start before that. As you can see, his breaking pitches were pretty much where they were for the perfect game. The fastball did not cut in as much on lefties as it has been doing -- it was about 50-50 half way between a regular 8" armside two-seamer and a crackling 0" cutter -- but still had the movement we love to see. The Cleveland game is represented by the black spots:

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Felix had a #1 starter result Tuesday night, eight* innings, one run. But you and I know that he wasn't as dominant as usual. The reason was pitchability and, as Matt said, command that was less than his best. The Indians guessed a lot of his pitches spot on.

Indians 3 ......

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=== Kevin Millwood ===

Preseason, we admired the onomatopoetic names of Kevin Millwood, Joe Blanton and Jeff Suppan. Blanton sounds like bludgeon - his pitching style and his physical appearance suggest un-subtle approaches to victory. Millwood's blue-collar approach does conjure images of a guy with three days' stubble bending over a table saw. Suppan gives you pitching enough to, well, we won't say feast on, but enough to subsist on.

This might have been Millwood's table-saw'iest game of the year. He came into the game averaging 6.60 strikeouts and 2.99 walks; with Miguel Olivo neglecting Millwood's rawhide-UCL cutter and slider, the M's #5 starter fanned 0 men and walked 3.

Dr. D had to blink several times when he saw the box score. It wound up being, by definition, a "quality start." The man just has a way of keeping his thumbs off the line of the blade.

One of yer all-time great 4-and-10 seasons. Millwood is the one Mariner pitcher this year to suffer a W/L and ERA fate far worse than he deserves. He's 37 years old, still firing the elbow-rending slider, still doing it Every. Fifth. Day. What a workhorse!

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=== Charlie Furbush ===

POTD Mike Trout

Watcher sez,

How 'bout a POTD for Trout? If he's as you suggest, the best player in the game, etc., how was he not drafted higher like A-Roid or Jr? Imagine if the Yankees had not signed Teixiera. They would have been able to draft Trout, and which would you rather have right now? Yeah, me too. And Trout vs Ackley? Even easier answer.

I don't know much about Trout's pre-draft situation as such, but Terry McDermott hooks us up with the pitch-perfect sorry Freudian slip there interview on it: Link Man, Billy Beane lights Reiter UP on that baby. HEH! By the way, Terry ... how did you like the headline Reiter went with, after Beane schooled him?

Mike Trout was drafted #25 overall, which is a high compliment, not a criticism. But why wasn't he 1-1? The short version is,

(1) Trout plays better than his body, which is nothing unusual.

(2) Everybody did have Trout as a 1st-round quality player.

(3) You can't visualize 18-year-olds as 23-year-olds with such a level of accuracy that you can discern between a normal MLB player - who is a miracle of reflexes - and a star MLB player.

(4) Trout wasn't playing against top competition, which scouts don't necessarily grade down for that too much, but how can you compare players then? But read the Beane interview. It is epic, every word totally accurate and every word right to the point.

Shrill vs Chill, Hittas

Most amigos here have noticed that Dr. D isn't always right, have noticed that he isn't usually right either, and have also noticed that he's unduly interested in Eastern spiritual mumbo-jumbo. With those caveats and quid pro quo's, here's a bit of what he sees on the Shrill vs Chill Mariner front these days:

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Dustin SHRILL Ackley - Deuce has his technical issues, such as the fact that he can't reach the outside edge, partly because his "chi" is generally to right field. This is particularly toxic on soft stuff away. Pitchers base their entire games around this - you probably saw Ackley swing weirdly through three straight Johnson fastballs in Baltimore to lead off. But this morning we're talking about state of mind. Ackley's flavor of "Shrill" is "Pear-Grape Greed." He wants too much, too soon, which is kind of a good thing. Every-body - wants - to - rule - the- world ......

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Mike CHILL Carp - His 2012 season has been like straightening curls, or chewing on pearls, or making Dr. D hurl, or something. Somebody give the guy a rabbit's foot. But his state-of-mind is loose, it's aggressive, it's focused and it's relaxed.

He's had several agile little shots to left field on pitcher's pitches. In case you forgot, the guy has a pretty good HIT tool along with that 425-foot power. Buy long on Mike Carp. He's been hurt. That's all.

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Mike SHRILL Saunders - Except that the Mariners looked deeeeeeep and saw something, the Condor might have been another casualty and might be home farming chickens... hold it, mining zinc, eh hoser. He's back to opening up the lead hip too much, swinging way too hard, just grinding generally. He's got 3 walks and 26 strikeouts the last 24 games.

I Love You, Man

Q. Which version of Iwakuma was that, getting beaten by the Yankees?

A. The second version. Or the 2 1/2 version. As we recall, there have been three iterations of Mr. WBC:

The spring training version with a short fastball and a nibble-and-pick game, the one who had MLB hitters standing on the plate and swinging from the back leg.
The sharper version, with a 90 fastball he'd use inside and up in the zone, the one who is demonstrably an MLB middle-of-the-rotation starter. The Shaun Marcum comp.
The elite version, the one with a 82 MPH "change-slider" who dominates. The James Shields comp.

Against the Yankees, I didn't feel the arm action was as snappy on the slider -- in fact the fastball velo was down, too, and it seemed that his arm was fatigued from the 13 K's or something. But the slider was good, all his pitches were good, and he needed about 47 unlucky breaks to give up three earned runs. Jason Vargas has done worse.

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Q. Bad breaks, like what.

..... M's 1

=== Eric Thames Plays Catch-Up ===

Let's say we didn't have any stats, any background, no performance to go off of? Let's say we'd just traveled to Cuba to catch a weekend series, and all these guys had been wearing Cuban uniforms? I'd have said for sure that the M's three good hitters were Carp, Jaso, and Eric Thames.

Next time you get a chance? Check out how long Thames reads the pitch before he decides whether to swing. Man, he takes a looooong look. And then he whips that Jose Lopez speedy gonzalez Andale! Andale! Arriba! bat through the zone and he can pull anything.

This was Ted Williams' number one rule. Be quick - quick!, he'd yell at Yaz, breaking him out of a slump. Thames is one of the quickest batters you'll see.

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