Nationals Arm Race

Can the effusive Swisher lead his rag-tag team to victory? Photo via wikipedia.

At first glance, knowing that the Rays have been travling around the country for the last two weeks like an indie band chasing side gigs, you would think the Indians would be favored in this matchup.

But look closer and you’ll see an Indians team that has a lot of heart but may not really be as good as their record indicates.  They readily beat up on the two weak teams in their division (going 17-2 versus the White Sox and 13-6 versus Minnesota).  They went 6-1 against the hapless Astros.  That’s a combined 36-9 against these three awful teams.   Against the rest of the league, just 54-51.  They lost the season series to Tampa, winning just 2 of 6 games.  They lost 15 of 19 against Detroit on the season.  They lost 6 of 7 to both Boston and New York.  So I think this is a weaker team than its 90-72 record; in fact I feel like in a different division they’d probably be just a .500 team.

You can only play who they put in front of you though.  They still had 90 wins and a fantastic 10 game winning streak to end the season  … but those 10 games were all against the 3 worst teams in the league.  What will happen when they play a battle tested, playoff-veteran AL East team like Tampa?

Tampa earned its way into a game 163 with tough road series victories at the end of the season, and earned its win over Texas in its first do-or-die game.  Unfortunately they burned their ace in the process and now will go with #3 starter Alex Cobb.  Not that Cobb doesn’t give them a great chance at winning: he’s 11-3 on the season, has pitched to a 138 ERA+.  His away splits are *better* than his home splits.  He’s been very solid since returning from the D/L and I would expect a solid outing tonight.  Perhaps 7 innings, 2 earned runs with 6 strikeouts.

Cleveland had to play it “straight” all they way til the end to guarantee a playoff spot and thus finds itself depending on 23-yr old Danny Salazar, he of exactly 10 major league starts, in this coin-flip game.  Salazar’s numbers in short sample sizes are good; 2-3, 3.12 era, 1.13 whip, 65/15 k/bb in 52 innings and a 121 ERA+.  The blogs rave about his heat and his change-up.  He gets a ton of Ks.  But he’s young, he throws too many pitches, and he’s likely only going to be able to give his team 5-6 innings in a best case tonight.   The Rays see a lot of pitches and are a patient team (2nd in the league in BBs); they and manager Joe Madden knows they can wait out Salazar, get into the Indians bullpen and take their chances.  The Indians pen is a mess, closer Chris Perez is lost, and they’re in the bottom third of the league in most macro categories (bullpen ERA, FIP, fWAR).   Their bullpen is righty heavy, so they can’t play matchups very well.   And the Rays are one of the better RH hitting teams in the league (top 10 in wOBA, top 5 in wRC+).

The Indians are at home (where they’re good), and they’re incredibly hot right now (21-8 in September).  They hit righties at about the league average and have a ton of left-handed/switch hitters at their disposal.   But I somehow see the Rays asserting their dominance, getting into the Cleveland bullpen and eking out a win.  I’m thinking perhaps a 4-3 victory for Tampa.  I’m not as confident here as I was in my first two predictions for the 2013 post-season … but have faith that Tampa will take the next step over the surprising Indians.

Kershaw leads the best rotation in the playoffs. Photo via wiki.

Now that the playoff fields are set … who has the most formidable playoff rotation?

Unlike previous rotation rankings posts, the playoffs focus mostly on the 1-2-3 guys.  Your 5th starter may not even be on the playoff roster and your 4th starter usually just throws one start in a series where you can line up your guys, and some teams skip the 4th starter altogether if they at least one veteran pitcher who can all go on 3 days rest (there’s enough off-days in the 2-3-2 format to allow most guys to go on regular rest).  So the focus here is on the strength of your top guys.

Here’s how I’d rank the 10 playoff teams’ rotations, despite the fact that two of these teams will be wild card losers and never get a chance to use their rotations:

1. Los Angeles: Kershaw, Greinke, Nolasco, Ryu (Capuano left out).  As great a 1-2 combination Kershaw and Greinke are, Nolasco has for stretches outpiched them both since his trade, and Ryu is a #2 starter talent in the #4 slot.  They’re going to be a tough out in any short series where Kershaw gets two starts.  Easily the #1 playoff rotation.
2. Detroit: Scherzer, Verlander, Sanchez, Fister (Porcello left out).  Hard to believe that a guy who most thought was the best or 2nd best pitcher in baseball (Verlander) may not even get the start in the first game of the playoffs.  But they’re still the 2nd best rotation.
3. St. Louis: Wainwright, Miller, Wacha, Kelly (Westbrook and Garcia hurt, Lynn left out).  The knock on St Louis’ current rotation is their youth; two rookies and a 2nd year guy who was in the bullpen all last year.  Are there any innings-limit concerns here that could force a shutdown  It doesn’t seem so at this point?  It continues to amaze me how well St. Louis develops players.  Carpenter and Garcia out all year?  No worries we’ll just bring up two guys in Wacha and Miller who are barely old enough to drink but who can pitch to a 120 ERA+.
4. Tampa Bay: Price, Moore, Archer, Cobb (Hellickson left out); A tough top 4, if a little young on the back-side.  Moore has quietly returned to this dominant form upon his call-up and gives Tampa a formidable 1-2 punch.  Price has already pushed them past game 163.
5. Pittsburgh: Liriano, Burnett, Cole, Morton (Rodriguez hurt, Locke left out).  The team previously said that Cole would likely a reliever in the playoffs, but I’ll believe that when I see it; he’s been fantastic down the stretch.  It is difficult to put a rotation headlined by the burnout Burnett and the reclamation project Liriano this high, but their performances this year are inarguable.
6. Boston: Lester, Buchholz, Peavy, Lackey (Dempster, Doubront left out).  Buchholz just returning mid September after a hot start; could push this rank up.  I don’t necessarily trust the #3 and #4 spots here in a short series, but Boston can (and probably will) bash their way to the World Series.
7. Cincinnati: Bailey, Cueto, Arroyo, Cingrani (Leake left out, Latos hurt).  Cingrani may be hurt, Cueto has returned to replace the sore-armed Latos.  Leake’s performance may push him over Arroyo if they get there, but the odds of them beating Pittsburgh were already slim after their poor finish and were vanquished last night.  Still, isn’t it nice when you have more quality starters than you need heading into a season, Mike Rizzo?
8. Atlanta: Minor, Medlen, Teheran, Wood (Hudson hurt, Maholm left out).  If Wood is shutdown, Maholm makes sense as the #4 starter but has struggled most of the 2nd half and finished poorly.  I may have this rotation ranked too low; they’re solid up and down, just not overpoweringly flashy.
9. Cleveland: Jimenez, Kluber, Kazmir, Salazar (Masterson in the pen, McAllister left out).  How did these guys get a playoff spot?  Amazing.  They’re all solid, nobody especially flashy, and they won’t go away.
10. Oakland: Colon, Parker, Griffen, Gray (Milone, Straily left out, Anderson in long relief).  I didn’t want to rank them last, considering Oakland’s record over their last 162 game stretch.  But here they are; on an individual level one by one, they just do not stack up.  The age-less wonder Colon is easily the staff Ace.  The rest of these guys’ seasonal numbers are just not impressive.

These teams obviously didn’t make the playoffs, but were in the hunt until late, and since I had already typed up this content might as well say where I’d have ranked them, had they made the playoffs…

• Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Haren (Ohlendorf, Roark left out, Jordan shut down)  Perhaps you’d replace Haren with Roark based on September performances;  I just can’t imagine trusting Haren in a 7 game series..  I’d put them about #4, just ahead or just behind Tampa.   Gonzalez and Zimmermann have shown themselves to be oddly vulnerable here and there coming down the stretch, and I just don’t put Strasburg in the same elite category as Kershaw right now.  Too bad months of indifference cost them the 4 games they needed to make up in the standings to reach the WC game.
• Kansas City: Shields, Santana, Chen, Guthrie (Duffy, Davis, Mendoza left out): Duffy may be a better choice than Guthrie based on small sample sizes.  I’d have put them just behind Cincy at #8 in terms of rotation depth.
• Texas: Darvish, Garza, Holland, Perez (Tepisch, Grimm left out, Harrison hurt): Great Ace in Darvish (even if he has occasaional blowups), but falls off badly after that.  The Garza acquisition has just not worked out, and the rest of the rotation is good but not overpowering.  I’d put them behind KC but just ahead of Baltimore.
• Baltimore: Tillman, Chen, Gonzalez, Feldman (Norris, Garcia, Hammel and others left out).  They’d probably be behind Atlanta at #9, only ahead of Oakland/Cleveland.
• New York: Sabathia, Kuroda, Nova, Pettitte (Hughes, Phelps left out): Kuroda has been the ace of the staff this year, but you’d always lead off with Sabathia (though, had they made the playoffs it would be unknown if Sabathia could even go with his late-season injury).  Either way, this would be behind any other playoff team’s rotation.

Will Liriano pitch the PIrates deeper into the post-season? Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images

The Reds sputter into the one-game playoff tonight having lost 5 of their last 6 games at home.  Those 6 games were against the hapless Mets and the same Pirates who they now face in a do-or-die wild card game.  Meanwhile Pitsburgh has WON 5 of their last 6, all on the road, and got things done when it counted in the last series of the season.

Before we even look at the starters, clearly Pittsburgh has momentum on their side.

The Pirates are going with their ace Francisco Liriano, who had a complete career turnaround this year, finishing 16-8 with a 3.02 ERA and a K/inning.  Liriano features a fantastic slider from the left-hand side and should be relatively effective against the Reds, who are in the bottom third of the league against lefties as a team and whose lineup features three prominent lefties (Choo, Votto and Bruce) in the first five batters.  Choo in particular is just brutally bad against lefties, likely nullifying Cincinnati’s otherwise dynamic lead-off hitter.

However, interestingly, in the four games Liriano has pitched against Cincinnati this year, Pittsburgh is 0-4.  Despite a couple of great starts (including an 11 strikeout performace in June and an 8 inning 2 run outing two weeks ago), Liriano has had tough luck against the Reds.  Liriano is 8-1 with a 1.47 ERA in 11 home starts this year, and that one loss was against Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati got some bad news when their “ace” Mat Latos bowed out of the one-game playoff with a “sore arm,” leaving it to their opening day starter Johnny Cueto (and pre-season actual “Ace”) to make the start.  Cueto’s season has been peppered with D/L stints and he’s only made 11 starts.  He’ll be going on 8 days rest and has been reasonably effective since his latest return.  Interestingly, Cueto’s best start of the season came in Pittsburgh, where he threw 8 innings of one-hit ball en-route to a 3-0 victory in May.  Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is dead-last in the majors in wOBA against right handers this year.   But presumptive NL MVP Andrew McCutchen hits righties just fine (an .864 ops), so perhaps we’ll see some post-season magic tonight (even despite the fact he got hit in the head during BP yesterday).

I’m thinking this is going to be a tight, tense pitching duel, and I think its going to be Cueto who blinks first.  Count on Reds manager Dusty Baker to over-manage some aspect of the game tonight (probably involving a bunt or two) and to leave his best reliever (Aroldis Chapman) on the bench because it’s not a save situation while Pittsburgh squeaks out a win.

Who do you think is favored in this game?

Rivera’s last Yankee Apperance. Photo Jim McIsaac/Long Island Newsday.

As cool and awesomely thought out as it was for the Yankees to get Metallica to perform a live version of Mariano Rivera‘s signature walk-on song Enter Sandman earlier this week, this was even cooler; Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte coming out to pull him from his last home game.  The 5 minute ovation was great, but I gotta admit this video is pretty moving.  You’re not a baseball fan if you’re not a least a little choked up here.

A legend moves on.  The greatest reliever by any measure (opinion or stats) will set the bar pretty high going forward for any hall-of-fame calibre closer to achieve once he’s enshrined.

Tampa or Texas tonight, who you got?  Gut check says Tampa.  Reasons:

John Feinstein, a guy whose opinions on things I used to read and look forward to, completely lost my respect with his ridiculous Sept 25th column where he argues, somehow, without anything in the way of proof, that the 2012 Stephen Strasburg shutdown affected the 2013 team.  He lost most of my respect last year with a similarly ridiculous article (discussed further on) but this one took the cake.

This column was so bad that the mild-mannered Adam Kilgore felt the need to post a rebuttal, to his own Washington Post colleague, online soon after it was posted.

This column was so bad that noted Nats troller Craig Calcaterra of HardballTalk (who has clearly criticized the team for the 2012 shutdown) lambasted the article in this nbcsports.com blog.  Seamheads.com’s Ted Leavengood posted a similar critique.

This column was so bad that when asked for a response, Davey Johnson called Feinstein “an idiot” during a radio appearance.

Do you know when the last time Feinstein wrote an article about baseball was?  Take a guess.  Yup; October 13th, 2012, the day after the Nats were knocked out of the NLDS, in a clearly canned article the he probably wrote in late August waiting for the Nats to lose in the playoffs.  Go back and read the 2012 article and see how awful it was as well; dripping with lazy sportswriter narrative and with not one mention or occurence of these key words: doctor, injury, medical or rehab.  You know, all the words that were key reasons as to why Strasburg was shutdown in the first place.

My opinion on this is pretty clear (most succinctly stated in this article titled “Innings Limits and Media Hypocrisy” earlier this year); if you want to criticize the Nats decision to shutdown Strasburg, then you HAVE to similarly criticize all the other “shutdowns” of pitchers we see.  If you don’t, then you’re a hypocrite; the placement of the team in the standings should NOT dictate medically-driven decisions for a 24-year old.  What really gets me is writers like Feinstein who don’t even bother to address the medical reasoning for the shutdown and act like its 1950.  Thankfully Feinstein doesn’t have a Hall of Fame vote or else he’d be posting drivel like what we get out of Murray Chass and making inane arguments about why the modern revolution of statistics is “stupid” and “ruining the sport.”

Feinstein needs to stick to his little niche of College Basketball with occasional complaints about how the PGA tour has screwed him, and keep his nose out of sports that he clearly doesn’t understand.

For the most part, I gave up on this team in mid July.  Told my buddies they didn’t have it.  Still have the email to prove it.

Today they swept the best team in the NL throwing a guy who at one point was the worst qualified pitcher in the league by most statistical measures (Dan Haren) and throwing another guy who at one point this year was demoted out of the AAA rotation (Tanner Roark).  Roark and Haren combined for 13 innings and gave up a combined total of 1 run and 5 hits.  Amazing.

At what point do we say that Roark is more than just a fluke?  He’s now thrown 41 2/3 innings and given up 26 hits, 9 walks and 5 earned runs.  And gotten 7 wins.  As many as Stephen Strasburg, if you believe the “Win” statistic is indicative of anything.

Is there actually a chance after this team has underperformed so badly for 130 games that they could possibly make a race out of this?  Am I really going to check out the Reds’ remaining schedule tomorrow to see how tough it is?

Yeah I think so.

Roark is putting himself into 2014 rotation contention. Photo Alex Brandon/AP via wp.com

I’ll admit it; I’m a fan of Tanner Roark.  I’m a fan of the underdog.  I’m a fan of the 25th round draft pick working his way up and making an impression at the MLB level.

I never could understand how his decent numbers in Texas’ AA hitters league AA didn’t translate once he got to the Eastern league (after he was included in a trade for Cristian Guzman back in 2010).  I figured that he was bound for the dreaded “org guy” title after his 2011 season; a middling .500 record with a 4.69 ERA while repeating AA in his fourth pro year.  I figured he was just playing out the string when he passed through Rule-5 drafts and posted a 6-17 record in AAA.

Nobody thought he could suddenly be dominant.  And around August of this year, it seemed like calling him up to cover for a suddenly open “long man/spot-starter” role in the bullpen made complete sense.  And so far, he’s done nothing to disappoint.

Is he putting his name into the lead for the 5th starter spot on this club in 2014?

After Ross Ohlendorf failed to make a case to stay in the rotation, Roark was given a start over the weekend and threw 6 incredibly efficient innings of 4-hit ball.   71 pitches, 46 for strikes, giving up 4 hits and zero walks to earn his 5th victory of the season and first by way of being a starter.   Since this was Roark’s first start of the season, his pitch f/x data is telling (in shorter stints pitchers can throw harder knowing they’re done after 20 pitches).  Roark threw his 49 fastballs at an average of 93.07mph with a max of 94.81mph, had great success with his change and curve (throwing 5 of each and getting 8/10 for strikes).   He maintained the same velocity he was showing in shorter stints before his start.  Roark got excellent movement on his fastball, hit corners well (as he has shown he can do), and controlled the Marlins for 6 innings.

Now, this is the Marlins we’re talking about.  So we’re not talking about the 1927 Yankees.  And one telling stat about Roark was this: he only got 2 swinging strikes the entire game (he had 4 punchouts for the night, mostly called).  He does not have swing-and-miss stuff.  But he does seem to really have “weak contact” stuff; there were only 2-3 really well hit fair balls on the night.  But, like I’ve pointed out in the past, Roark works the corners, throws a heavy ball, gets a lot of weak contact, and doesn’t need to have 8.5 k/9 stuff to succeed.  And it isn’t like this Marlins team is a little league team; they pounded Dan Haren the night before (you know, Dan Haren, the guy who’s making 26 times what Roark is and the guy who, when he’s on the mound his team is now 9-18 on the year.  Great signing he’s turned out to be…).

Taylor Jordan, Nathan Karns: attention; Roark’s making a name for himself.  Spring Training could be fun.

Really? Photo presumably Cleveland Police department via netnews5.com

I thought this story was interesting.

Indians closer Chris Perez pled no-contest to a charge of mailing his dog 9 ounces of marijuana.  That’s right; his DOG.  That was really clever; no way anyone was gonna figure that one out.

His punishment?  A measly $250 and a year’s probation.

I think you get fined more if you cheat the HOV lanes on the Dulles Toll Road.

Frankly I think he should have gotten more punishment just for the stupidity of his actions.

Oh, by the way, Perez makes $7.3 MILLION dollars this year.  7.3M.  You think maybe perhaps he could have just paid whoever mailed him his weed to just drive the stuff up to him, making that kind of coin?

Now here’s a question: where’s Perez’s PED suspension??  Marijuana is clearly stated as a “Drug of Abuse” in section 2.A of the Joint Drug Abuse agreement, whose language says that players shall be “prohibited from using, possessing …” the drug.  Clearly Perez was caught possessing a rather large amount of the drug; whether or not he ever tested positive for it isn’t he warranted a suspension?  Or could legally everyone just claim it was all his wife’s idea?  Maybe so, but it was Perez who pled it out and seemingly should face the music from Bud Selig.

Strasburg has an nice bounceback month. Photo unk via thewifehatessports.com

Continuing a monthly series of look-backs at our starters (here’s Apr 2013, May 2013, June 2013, July2013 posts), here’s a glance at how our rotation did for the last month. As with previous posts, we’ll have “Grades” per outing, the team’s performance per opposing starter sliced and diced a few ways, and other per-starter stuff that I like to track.

MLB Rotation Per-Start Grades (click here for Nats overall season stats)

Strasburg: A-,A+,F/inc,B-,A/inc
Gonzalez: B+,B+/inc,B+,F,A+
Zimmermann: A,D,A,F,A-,B+
Haren: A,A,A,A,C-,F-
Ohlendorf: D-,A-

Roark: A+ long relief stint

Quick Summary:  Stephen Strasburg remembered how to pitch again and had several strong outings.  His two “incomplete” starts were of course the Atlanta pay-back game and last week’s rain delay game.  Its pretty unfair to give him an “F” in a game where he failed to finish the 2nd inning but … you have to give some sort of grade there.  I’d give him an “A+” for being the first and only guy on the team to show any g*d d*mn backbone in the wake of the Bryce Harper bean-balls.  Dan Haren put together four great starts in a row after coming off the D/L and promptly laid an egg in his weekend start.  Ross Ohlendorf has been shaky, prompting many (including me) to replace him with Tanner Roark.   

Performance By Opponent Starting Pitcher Rotation Order Number

A look at the opposing team’s rotation ranked 1-5 in the order they’re appearing from opening day.  This table changes at the all-star break and honestly must be taken with a grain of salt, since guys like Clayton Kershaw are now the “#3 starter” on their teams because their turns were skipped coming out of the all-star game.  But here’s the table anyway:

Quick thoughts:  Kyle Kendrick as #1 starter, yeah.  Lets just move on.

Performance By Opponent Starting Pitcher Actual Performance Rank Intra-Rotation

A ranking of opposing teams’ rotations by pure performance at the time of the series, using ERA+ heavily.

Quick Thoughts: Not much; the next table is the most useful.

Performance By Opponent Starting Pitcher League-wide “Rank”
My favorite analysis each month.  A team-independent assignment of a league-wide “rank” of what the starter is. Is he an “Ace?” Is he a #2?

Quick thoughts:  The Nats showed some interesting results this past month when it came to the talent levels of their opposing starter.  They got the best of the two best arms they faced all month (Madison Bumgarner and Cliff Lee) but then faltered badly against what I call #3 starters.  Meanwhile they pummelled the starters they should have, going 10-0 against #5 or lower starters in this league.  This is what you want to see frankly.

Records by Pitching Advantage

Start-by-start advantages in my own opinion and then looking at the results.

Quick thoughts:  For the first time all year, the Nats really took care of business when I thought they had the starting pitching advantage.  They went about even when the stakes were even.  That’s good.

Matchup analysis

Looking at the opposing starter rank that our guys are going up against to see how their competition fares.

Quick Thoughts: A good month all things considered, going 16-11.   Too much one step forward/one step back though with the middle of their rotation.