Next Up: The New York Mets

Two things about the series with the Cardinals: First, this excellent article by Grantland's Ben Lindgergh describing how the Cards, while admittedly a very good team, have also been lucky. Second, hate to be the voice of doom, but if the Cardinals play .500 ball the rest of the way, they'll finish 97-65. If the Pirates area going to overtake them, the Bucs need to go 32-18 the rest of the way. That's a .640 winning percentage. That's a really tall order, given that only one major league team--the Cardinals, of course--have been able to sustain that level of success.

With that behind them, the Pirates now move on from playing the best-pitching team in the National League on the road, playing the the second-best pitching team in the National League, the New York Mets, on the road.

How Are They Doing Lately? The Mets are 16-10 over the last 30 days, the fourth-best record in the National League. They've scored 4.7 runs per game, tying the Diamondbacks over the past 30 days, while giving up 3. 4 runs per game, the second-fewest. Those are all solid numbers. Their record's well-deserved. More recently, they've won 11 of 13, moving into first in the National League East, and becoming the "it" team in New York.

What's Going Right? The Mets starters have a 2.83 ERA over the last 30 days, the second best in the National League. They've struck out the batters the fifth most frequently, been the stingiest at allowing walks, allowed the third-lowest rate of hard contact. Opposing batters have made contact on only 73% of their swings against Mets relievers, resulting in the highest rate of soft contact and the fourth lowest rate of hard contact over the period. 

What's Going Wrong? The offense has been just okay. Over the last 30 days, the Mets are eighth in the 15-team National League in batting average (.252), eighth in on base percentage (.317), and seventh in slugging percentage (.408). They've walked at the fifth-highest rate, but their eight stolen bases are last in the league.

Who's Hot? The offense has been carried over the past 30 days by first baseman Lucas Duda (team-leading nine homers, .640 slugging percentage, but out with a sore back) and right fielder Curtis Granderson (team-leading 20 runs scored and 20 driven in, .291/.373/.553 slash line). Saturday's starting pitcher, Jon Niese, has a 2.93 ERA over the past 30 days, and Sunday's starter, Matt Harvey, has been nearly unhittable, with a 1.23 ERA and .162 batting average over the period. 

Who's Not? The Mets traded for Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe to fill in for the injured David Wright at third, and they've combined for a .207 batting average and .263 on base percentage. Bartolo Colon, Friday's starter, is the only Mets starter with an ERA above 3.00 over the past 30 days. His 5.93 isn't close. Closer Jeurys Familia has a 4.38 ERA and nearly as many blown saves (three) as saves (five) over the period.

What's the Outlook? The Pirates don't have the meat of their pitching rotation (J.A. Happ, Charlie Morton, Jeff Locke) against the Mets. So the offense, which has scored 5.0 runs per game over the last 30 days, second in the league, will have to keep it going in order to overcome the Mets' starters.

Sweet Plays of the Day: June 18

Quite a day for pitchers. Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw pitched a dominating no-hitter at home against the Rockies: 15 strikeouts, no walks. It would've been a dominating one-hitter without this play by third baseman Miguel Rojas and first baseman Adrian Gonzalez:



Earlier in the day, 41-year-old Mets starter Bartolo Colon, listed at 5'11", 285 pounds, put on a hitting and baserunning clinic in St. Louis: 

Throwing Strikes, Getting Strikes - May Update

Over the winter, I did a series of articles about how pitchers' ability to throw strikes affects outcomes. The research is here, here, here, and here. The basic conclusion is this: throwing strikes is good, getting strikes is better. 

Last year, these pitchers threw the largest percentage of pitchers in the strike zone:
     Pitcher           Zone%   W-L    ERA  WHIP
  1. Bartolo Colon     58.5%  18-6   2.65  1.17
  2. Cliff Lee         56.9%  14-8   2.87  1.01
  3. Bronson Arroyo    56.1%  14-12  3.79  1.15
  4. Jordan Zimmermann 55.0%  19-9   3.25  1.09
  5. Jose Fernandez    55.0%  12-6   2.19  0.98
  6. David Price       54.0%  10-8   3.33  1.10
  7. Julio Teheran     53.2%  14-8   3.20  1.17
  8. R.A. Dickey       53.1%  14-13  4.21  1.24
  9. Shelby Miller     53.1%  15-9   3.06  1.21
 10. Travis Wood       53.0%   9-12  3.11  1.15
Data from FanGraphs. Zone% = percentage of pitches in the strike zone.

And these pitchers got batters to swing at the largest percentage of pitches outside the strike zone:
     Pitcher        O-Swing%   W-L    ERA  WHIP
  1. Hisashi Iwakuma   36.5%  14-6   2.66  1.01
  2. Cole Hamels       36.5%   8-14  3.60  1.16
  3. Patric Corbin     35.3%  14-8   3.41  1.17
  4. Adam Wainwright   34.5%  19-9   2.94  1.07
  5. Homer Bailey      34.1%  11-12  3.49  1.12
  6. Andy Pettitte     34.1%  11-11  3.74  1.33
  7. John Lackey       33.8%  10-13  3.52  1.16
  8. Felix Hernandez   33.6%  12-10  3.04  1.13
  9. Dillon Gee        33.4%  12-11  3.62  1.28
 10. Jordan Zimmermann 33.2%  19-9   3.25  1.09

Data from FanGraphs. O-Swing% = percentage of pitches outside the strike zone at which batters swung.

For a frame of reference, the average ERA last year was 3.87 and the average WHIP was 1.30. In case you were wondering, NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw was 35th in Zone% and 13th in O-Swing%. AL winner Max Scherzer was 16th in Zone% and 48th in O-Swing%. 

Obviously, these aren't perfect measures, but they're not bad. The pitchers listed above are all really good. How about this year?

     Pitcher           Zone%   W-L    ERA  WHIP
  1. Bartolo Colon     58.5%   2-5   5.36  1.37
  2. Phil Hughes       56.9%   4-1   3.92  1.28
  3. Zach McAllister   56.1%   3-3   3.89  1.30
  4. Nathan Eovaldi    55.0%   2-1   2.86  1.11
  5. Robbie Ross       55.0%   1-4   5.04  1.52
  6. Alfredo Simon     54.0%   4-2   2.89  1.08
  7. Henderson Alvarez 53.2%   2-3   3.33  1.40
  8. Jordan Zimmermann 53.1%   2-1   2.92  1.32
  9. Cliff Lee         53.1%   3-3   3.64  1.29
 10. Jesse Chavez      53.0%   2-1   2.47  1.03
Data from FanGraphs. Zone% = percentage of pitches in the strike zone.

     Pitcher        O-Swing%   W-L    ERA  WHIP
  1. Masahiro Tanaka   40.0%   5-0   2.57  1.00
  2. Felix Hernandez   38.0%   3-1   2.73  1.10
  3. Phil Hughes       37.0%   4-1   3.92  1.28
  4. Jose Fernandez    36.7%   4-2   2.44  0.95
  5. John Lackey       36.4%   5-2   3.57  1.21
  6. Tim Hudson        36.3%   4-2   2.09  0.81
  7. Francisco Liriano 35.4%   0-3   4.64  1.45
  8. Stephen Strasburg 35.3%   3-2   3.42  1.35
  9. Roberto Hernandez 35.2%   2-1   4.08  1.46
 10. Dallas Keuchel    34.8%   3-2   3.68  1.18

Data from FanGraphs. O-Swing% = percentage of pitches outside the strike zone at which batters swung.

There are two ways you could look at this year's leaders. With the obvious caveat that we're not a fourth of the way through the season, so this isn't a large sample, you could look at that list and see some misfires. (All data are through Sunday, by the way.) I mean, Colon and Ross have been legitimately bad, and Liriano and Hernandez have been...how would you put it...not very good? So has the throwing strikes is good, gettng strikes is better rule broken?

Or is there a better explanation - that maybe Colon et al have pitched better than their record might indicate, and they could be positioned to perform better, and that the perhaps surprising performance of Hughes and Alvarez and Keuchel might be sustainable?

I'm guessing that's the case, but we'll check in later in the season for an update. 

How High-Quality is a Quality Start?

One of the easier-to-understand new metrics is the Quality Start, a statistic invented by Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter John Lowe in 1985 (according to Wikipedia). (I suppose something that's been around 29 years isn't all that new.) A starting pitcher gets credit for a quality start if he pitches six or more innings and allows three or fewer earned runs. That's it.

The criticism you hear of a quality start is that three runs in six innings is a 4.50 ERA, which isn't very good. Of course, a perfect game's a quality start too. Do quality starts indicate pitching excellence or mediocrity?

I looked at quality starts in 2013. Here are a few tidbits:

• There were 2,431 games last year, so 4,862 games started. There were 2,556 quality starts. That means about 53% of starts were quality starts. That doesn't sound that impressive. But wait.
• The leaders: Clayton Kershaw and James Shields had 27, Adam Wainwright had 26, Cole Hamels and Max Scherzer had 25. By percentage of starts: Kershaw had quality starts in 82% of his starts, Shields 79%, Scherzer 78%, and Cliff Lee, Bartolo Colon, Chris Sale, and Matt Harvey all had 77%. Those are all good pitchers, including both Cy Young Award winners. That sounds good.
• Teams that got a quality start won 65.6% of their games last year. That's the equivalent of going 106-56. That tells you that a quality start gives a team an excellent chance to win. 

All well and good, you're thinking, but do pitchers in quality starts actually pitch well? It turns out the answer is: Yeah, do they ever.

The major league average ERA and WHIP for starters last year were 4.01 and 1.306, respectively. The six-inning, three-run outing with a 4.50 ERA cited above would thus be below-average.

But that's not the norm. In their 2,556 quality starts last year, pitchers compiled a 1.93 ERA and 0.986 WHIP. The closest to those figures: Kershaw's 1.83 ERA and Jose Fernandez's 0.979 WHIP. Yes, it's true that a starter can get a quality start with a 4.50 ERA. That happened 213 times last year, 8.3% of quality starts. But on average, you're getting something like Kershaw and Fernandez when you get a quality start.

2014 Predictions: NL East

As Yogi Berra is alleged to have said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. These predictions for upcoming season are going to be pretty quick and dirty. You don't want to spend a lot of time reading them anyway, do you? Unlike other prognosticators, though, I'll revisit these to see how badly I did.

Since baseball games are the product of runs scored and runs allowed, I'm going to focus on those two metrics in developing my 2014 predictions. Here are predictions for the NL West and NL Central and the American League West, Central, and East.

Atlanta Braves - 96-66 in 2013, 4.2 runs scored per game (13th in MLB), 3.4 runs allowed per game (1st in MLB): Color me skeptical. The Braves got a lot of credit for locking down their young stars over the offseason, but what's that got to do with 2014? Here are two pairs of numbers that worry me about Atlanta: .266/.357/.512 vs. .236/.284/.473, and 22.2 vs. 11.6. The former pair is departed catcher Brian McCann's slash line against righties vs. that of his replacement this year, Evan Gattis. That may not be entirely fair, given that McCann bats left and Gattis right, but hey, 72.5% of plate appearances in the NL last year were with righties on the mound. The second pair is an estimate of the number of runs McCann saves per 7000 pitches (roughly a season) by pitch framing--catching a pitch on the fringe of the strike zone in such a way that the umpire calls it a strike instead of a ball--compared to Gattis. That may sound esoteric, but framing is something that can be measured, given that there are cameras in every ballpark the measure where a pitch crosses the plate and how it's called by the umpire. McCann's consistently been one of the very best. I think McCann's departure hurts the Braves' ability to both score and prevent runs. And that's before we consider the injuries to the team's starting pitchers this spring. (Pitch framing stats from Baseball Prospectus.) Prediction: Fewer runs scored, more allowed, 89-73.

Washington Nationals - 86-76, 4.0 runs scored per game (16th in MLB), 3.9 runs allowed per game (7th in MLB): The Nats still have questions at second base, where their .670 OPS was fourth-worst in the league, and they're hoping center fielder Denard Span plays more like he did after the All-Star Break (.302/.337/.413) than before (.263/.320/.358). But they added Doug Fister, a quality starter, for spare parts, bolstering an already-strong rotation. Prediction: A few more runs scored, a few fewer allowed, 90-72, and I'm going to regret that if Fister's elbow inflammation reported this month turns out to be serious.

New York Mets - 74-88, 3.8 runs scored per game (24th in MLB), 4.2 runs allowed per game (17th in MLB): The Mets added three 30+ free agents (SP Bartolo Colon, 41 in May; LF Curtis Granderson, 33; RF Chris Young, 30) to some promising youngsters (CF Juan Lagares, whose bat not keep his outstanding glove in the lineup; SP Zack Wheeler; SP Noah Syndergaard, who will probably start the year in the minors). But oh, for those Matt Harvey days... Prediction: More runs scored, more allowed, 74-88.

Philadelphia Phillies - 73-89, 3.8 runs scored per game (25th in MLB), 4.6 runs allowed per game (25th in MLB): The Phillies are making noises about embracing modern fielding analysis, which should help their newly-acquired groundball pitchers A.J. Burnett and Roberto Hernandez. But other than those moves, they're still a really old team (key offseason acquisitions: Marlon Byrd, 36; Burnett, 37; Hernandez, 33) that can't score runs even in a hitter-friendly ballpark. Prediction: Fewer runs scored, fewer allowed, 70-92.

Miami Marlins - 62-100, 3.2 runs scored per game (30th in MLB), 4.0 runs allowed per game (11th in MLB): The Marlins play in a pitchers' park, but their offense was really was bad as it looked: They scored easily the fewest runs in baseball at home and on the road. Among the new starters this year are 2B Rafael Furcal, who is 36, missed last year with Tommy John surgery, and will start at second base for the first time since 2002; and 3B Casey McGehee, who last year batted .292 with 28 homers and 93 RBI--in Japan. At least they'll have a full season of Jose Fernandez, knock on wood. Prediction: More runs scored, same number allowed, 65-97.