Next Up: The Milwaukee Brewers

In theory, the Pirates open a three-game series against the Brewers tonight, though it appears likely that the weather will intervene tonight. A.J. Burnett, Francisco Liriano, and Charlie Morton are scheduled to oppose Jimmy Nelson, Taylor Jungmann (in his first major league start), and Kyle Lohse, respectively. This is the third time the two teams have met this year. The Pirates took two of three in Milwaukee and swept a three-game series in Pittsburgh in April. 

How Are They Doing Lately? This is shaping up as a pretty bad year in Milwaukee. The Brewers have the worst record in the majors, 20-37, and over the past 30 days, their 11-16 record is fourth worst in the National League. The Pirates have the league's best record over that stretch, 18-9. 

What's Going Right? The Brewers' bullpen has pitched 95 innings over the last 30 days, the second-most in the National League. (See the comment below about the starting rotation to see why.) Despite the workload, the relievers have a 2.65 ERA, third best in the league, and it hasn't been a fluke: they've induced the second-most grounders and struck out batters at the second-highest rate. The hitters have been challenged at getting on base but when they've hit the ball, they've hit it hard: they're third in homers and tied for first in triples, yielding an isolated slugging percentage (slugging percentage minus batting average) of .161, best in the league.

What's Going Wrong? The rotation's been a weakness. The Brewers' 4.98 starters' ERA over the past 30 days is surpassed by only the Diamondbacks' 5.32 in the National League. bullpen's got a 5.45 ERA over the past 30 days, easily the worst in the league. On offense, the team's batting average is .240 over the past 30 days, third-worst in the league, accompanied by a league-worst .292 on base percentage. 

Who's Hot? Going into the season, the Brewers had three All-Star level players: catcher Jonathan Lucroy, right fielder Ryan Braun, and center fielder Carlos Gomez. They were hoping for a bounceback from shortstop Jean Segura, who'd had a poor 2014 after a promising 2013. All four have raked over the past 30 days (OPS: .889 for Lucroy, .938 for Braun, .849 for Gomez, .913 for Segura), though Lucroy's played only six games after returning from a broken toe and Segura lost time with a broken pinkie. Another strong performer, left fielder Khris Davis, has a .933 OPS but is disabled. 

The only starting pitcher who's been decent over the past 30 days is Mike Fiers (2.78 ERA), but the Pirates aren't facing him. Of the seven relievers who've appeared in nine or more games over the past 30 days, all but one have an ERA of 3.55 or better. Those six have also struck out 84 batters in 74.1 innings. Closer Francisco Rodriguez has only four saves over the past 30 days, tying the Reds and Padres for fewest in the league, but that's due to a lack of opportunity.

Who's Not? With so many hitters doing well, why has the offense suffered? First baseman Adam Lind has hit a wall after a hot start, with a .229/.297/.373 slash line over the past 30 days, and third baseman Aramis Ramirez is worse at .171/.224/.329. Martin Maldonado, who caught in Lucroy's absense, contributed .197/.270/.318. Luis Sardinas filled in for Segura, hitting, .227/.239/.258. Second base has been a black hole all year for the Brewers as well; the players splitting the position are last in the NL in batting (.182), on base (.220), and slugging (.261), by far the worst in each category.

Rather than list the starting pitchers who've been bad of late, suffice it to say that those whose last name is not Fiers have a 5.58 ERA. Setup man Jonathan Broxton has a 6.97 ERA over the past 30 days.

What's the Outlook? The The Brewers are not a good team. However, they've been playing shorthanded much of the year, with several starters spending time on the disabled list. They're mostly healthy now, and have more good bats than poor ones in the lineup. The key would appear to be to strike early against the starters, since the Brewers bullpen's been up to the task of shutting down the opposition in late innings.

Odds and Ends - April 19

In about a month, I'll restart my weekly Trailing 30 report, which lists league leaders over the prior 30 days. There's no sense in doing it until then, though. If you want to know who's leading the league over the past few weeks, just look up the current standings. Once we get into May, seeing who's hot (and not) of late becomes interesting. At this point, it's just current events. 

Breaking the Brewers Curse?

This chart shows the Pirates' winning percentage against Milwaukee, at home and on the road, over the past 15 years. The pattern is pretty clear.

The Brewers used to absolutely own the Pirates, particularly at Miller Park. From 2006 to 2011, the Pirates went 6-48 in Milwaukee--a .111 winning percentage. After Pittsburgh's three-game sweep at home over the weekend, they're 3-0 at home, 2-1 on the road against a Milwaukee team that, to put it nicely, didn't look particularly sharp.

Ryan Braun--Star or No?

As I pointed out last Thursday, Brewers right fielder Ryan Braun had no extra-base hits entering the series against the Pirates. He exits the series the same: eleven games played, 38 at bats, nine hits, all singles. That's not much of a start for a player considered to be the team's biggest star and, at $13 million, its highest-paid player. This is Braun's ninth year in the majors, and this is only the second time he's gone over ten games straight in a season without an extra-base hit. That's not good. However, the one other time it occurred was in 2011, when Braun had a 12-game, 7-for-44 (.159) streak to start May. That was also the year he was the National League's Most Valuable Player, so it's not like he can't overcome his slow start. On the other hand, he wasn't 31, coming off two disappointing seasons, back in 2011.

This raises a question as to whether Braun is, in fact, the Brewers' biggest star. I'd make a case for center fielder Carlos Gomez or catcher Jonathan Lucroy. Gomez is on the disabled list with a strained hamstring, and Lucroy's started the year batting .132, which, combined with Braun's light hitting, helps explain Milwaukee's 2-10 start, the worst record in the majors.

But apparently the Pirates still view Braun as the team's star. In Saturday night's game, Brewers reliever Tyler Thornburg hit Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen with a high and inside pitch in the bottom of the seventh. I cannot fathom any reason for Thornburg to have hit McCutchen intentionally. The Brewers were losing, 6-1 at the time. There were two outs, nobody on. One of the stupid reasons that pitchers throw at batters is the prior batter hitting a home run. That wasn't the case; right fielder Gregory Polanco preceded McCutchen by grounding to second. Another stupid reason pitchers throw at batters is if the batter's having a big night; McCutchen had walked in the first, fouled out in the third, and walked in the fifth. So, as I said, Thornburg didn't have any justification for hitting McCutchen. Here's a plot of his pitches from Saturday night.

The pitch that hit McCutchen is the green square up and to the left, with the number 1 next to it. That's not the most inside pitch Thornburg threw. The second pitch he threw to leadoff batter Josh Harrison, the green square farthest to the left, with the number 2 next to it, was more inside. He didn't hit Harrison. Was he trying to hit McCutchen? I doubt it.

The point is, McCutchen is, unquestionably, the Pirates' biggest star. The code of baseball says that if you hit my star, I'm going to hit yours. McCutchen was hit in the bottom of the seventh inning. The Brewers went down 1-2-3 in the top of the eighth, with lesser lights (15 total plate appearances among them this season entering the inning) Martin Maldonado, Jason Rogers, and Luis Jimenez retired without incident. In the top of the ninth, Braun led up, and Pirates reliever Arquimedes Caminero promptly nailed him with a 98.6 mph fastball. Pirates fans cheered, the umpires warned both benches, and, a single and a run scored later, the Pirates had a 6-2 victory.

I'm sorry, but I really find Caminero's action objectionable, for two reasons. First, this eye-for-an-eye macho stuff serves no purpose I can see. Yes, I get it, McCutchen shouldn't have gotten hit. And if there were any reason to believe that Thornburg had done it on purpose, I could see the logic behind retaliation. But that really doesn't seem to be the case--Thornburg just threw too far inside, and McCutchen was unable to get away from the pitch, unlike Harrison, who was able to avoid an even closer pitch. Why is it necessary to retaliate for an accident?

Second, if you're going to retaliate, why do you need to do it with a 99 mph fastball? I don't refer to a hit batter as "getting plunked," because plunked conjures up an image of something soft and gentle, like getting hit by a pine cone falling from a tree. A baseball's hard to begin with, and throwing one nearly 100 miles per hour at somebody would be called assault, not plunk, away from a baseball diamond. 

You know what this whole thing reminded me of? Last summer, when Diamondbacks reliever Randall Delgado threw a 96 mph into McCutchen's back, ostensibly in retaliation for Arizona's star first baseman Paul Goldschmidt getting hit by a pitch the prior day. McCutchen was hurt, missing several games, and a number of commentators called for Delgado to be suspended. What's the difference here, except that Braun didn't suffer an injury? Same casus belli, same action by the pitcher, same type of pitch thrown. I could do without all of it.

I suppose, though, that Braun can take solace in, apparently, still being the Brewers' big star despite his .237 slugging percentage.

Hit Batters as Collateral Damage of Rising Strikeouts Rates

My latest in my obsession with batters getting hit by a pitch was just published at FanGraphs. Link here. Pretty graphs, neat tables--I really pulled out the stops! The conclusion can be expressed as a syllogism (a word that, I'll admit, generally isn't associated with baseball);

• Batters are most likely to be hit when the pitcher is ahead on the count. Counts of 0-2, 1-2, 2-2, and 0-1 are by far the most likely ones to result in batters being hit by the next pitch.
• With rising rates of strikeouts, batters are facing more counts of 0-2, 1-2, 2-2, and 0-1.
• Therefore, rising rates of strikeouts are causing more batters to be hit by pitches.

Click over to the article, which, I promise, does not contain the word syllogism, though it does have a clever link illustrating why correlation is not causation. 

Reality Check: The Gold Glove Awards

On November 8, I received my 2015 edition of The Bill James Handbook. I wrote a lot about the Handbook last winter, and I will again this year. It's a fun book. I'll find myself going through it, looking at the pages, all the way until the 2016 edition's delivered next November. It contains career records for every player who appeared in a major league game in 2014 as well as all sorts of features on pitching, managing, fielding, hitting, and baserunning. Want to see how much Phillies starter Cole Hamel's fastball slowed down last year? (It didn't; he's been around 90-91 mph each of the past eight years.) Wondered who got thrown out trying to take an extra base most frequently? (The Dodgers' Yasiel Puig, which isn't a surprise, and the Brewers' Carlos Gomez, which sort of is; both with nine.) Which AL manager called the most sacrifice bunts? (Trick question; the Royals' Ned Yost has a reputation for being bunt-happy, but he trailed Cleveland's Terry Francona, Tampa's Joe Maddon, Baltimore's Buck Showalter, Toronto's John Gibbons, and Seattle's Lloyd McClendon.) You can order it here or at your preferred book retailer. I really like it.


The first thing I do every year when I get the Bill James Handbook is check out the Fielding Bible Awards. These are fielding awards voted by a panel of twelve baseball experts. You've heard of several of them, probably: Bill James, ESPN analyst Doug Glanville, MLB Network host Brian Kenney, sportswriter Peter Gammons. The voters receive data from John Dewan's Baseball Info Solutions, which compiles and distributes baseball statistics to teams and consumers, to help them make their decisions. The two key differences between the Fielding Bible Awards and the Gold Glove Awards is that the former are voted by baseball experts who use statistics, while the latter are voted by managers and coaches. I like to compare how the more empirical vote does compared to the more intuitive one. The stats vs. scouts storyline is a false dichotomy, and the Gold Glove voting includes a statistical component, but I always look to see how the Gold Glove winners do in the Fielding Bible voting to get a read on how the much the two views of the game are diverging.

There is one Fielding Bible Award per position, while the Gold Gloves are awarded to a player in each league. Here's the rundown:

FIRST BASE: Adrian Gonzalez of the Dodgers won the Fielding Bible Award. The Gold Gloves went to Gonzalez in the NL and Kansas City's Eric Hosmer in the AL. Hosmer finished in a three-way tie for twelfth in the Fielding Bible vote. He was tied for sixth in the American League, which was led by the Angels' Albert Pujols, so there was a pretty big disagreement there.

SECOND BASE: Boston's Dustin Pedroia won the Fielding Bible Award and the Gold Glove, with the NL Gold Glove going to the Rockies' D.J. LeMahieu. LeMahieu was the top National League vote-getter in the Fielding Bible balloting, so there's no disagreement here.

THIRD BASE: Oakland's Josh Donaldson won the Fielding Bible Award, edging out Colorado's Nolan Arenado, who was the top National League vote-getter for the second straight time. The Gold Gloves went to Arenado and Seattle's Kyle Seager. Seager was ninth in the Fielding Bible voting, behind Donaldson, Chase Headley (who split his season between the Padres and Yankees), Texas' Adrian Beltre, and Baltimore's Manny Machado among American Leaguers. 

SHORTSTOP: Brave sensation Andrelton Simmons was a unanimous Fielding Bible Award winner for the second year in a row, and he took the Gold Glove too. Baltimore's J.J. Hardy won the AL Gold Glove and was the top American League shortstop in the Fielding Bible voting. No controversy.

LEFT FIELD: The Royals' Alex Gordon was a unanimous Fielding Bible winner, besting the Marlins' Christian Yelich. They won the Gold Gloves too. No disagreement.

CENTER FIELD: Juan Lagares of the Mets got all but one first-place vote to win the Fielding Bible Award. He won a Gold Glove, along with the Orioles' Adam Jones. Jones is probably the one player for whom the analysts and the managers have the widest disagreement. He has a strong arm and he can go over the fence to rob a homer, but he's well below average at getting to balls. He finished behind six American League center fielders, led by Boston's Jackie Bradley, in the Fielding Bible vote, en route to a 13th place finish overall. Big continuing dispute here. 

RIGHT FIELD: The Braves' Jayson Heyward was a unanimous Fielding Bible winner and he took the National League Gold Glove too. He's now a Cardinal. In the American League, there was another Oriole-related difference, as Tampa Bay's Kevin Kiermaier was first, followed by Oakland's Josh Reddick and Boston's Daniel Nava, ahead of Baltimore's Gold Glove winner, Nick Markakis. 

CATCHER: Jonathan Lucroy of the Brewers barely edged out the Pirates' (now Blue Jays') Russell Martin, who in turn was just a bit ahead of the Cardinals' Yadier Molina in the Fielding Bible vote. Molina won the Gold Glove, as did the Royals' Salvador Perez, who was the top-rated AL catcher per Fielding Bible. Close enough.

PITCHER: I've always been skeptical of fielding awards for pitchers because the sample sizes are so small. The Fielding Bible Award went to Houston's Dallas Keuchel, who also won the Gold Glove. The NL Gold Glove went to the Dodgers' Zach Greinke, who was third, behind the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw and the Marlins' Henderson Alvarez in the Fielding Bible vote. 

So that wasn't all that controversial, was it? There was a big disagreement between the Fielding Bible votes and the Gold Glove voters for the AL center field and first base awards, and a smaller disagreement over third base and right field in the American League. But that's pretty much it. Every Fielding Bible award winner got a Gold Glove other than Lucroy and Donaldson. 

It wasn't always this way. What this is saying is that the empirical view and the intuitive view are getting closer together. I'll leave it to you to figure out who's influencing whom.

Flyover: Milwaukee Brewers

This continues a series of looks at each team over the past month. I was doing these alphabetically--got through Detroit--but I'm going to jump around now, for three reasons. First, I haven't been able to post as frequently as I wanted. Second, at this point in the season, I think the interest in non-contenders (the Florida Marlins are next alphabetically) is pretty limited. Finally, in September, with all the minor league callups, the mix of players for teams not in the pennant race can get pretty diluted. So I'm going to pick these based on my interest.

Let's start with a tale of woe: The Milwaukee Brewers.

How Are They Doing Lately? Thirty days ago, the Brew Crew was in first place in the National League Central (as they'd been every day since April 5), two games ahead of St. Louis and two and a half ahead of Pittsburgh. They had the third-best record in the league, just half a game behind Washington. Since then, they're 10-17, second-worst in the league, and they've fallen not only out of first place but also out of a playoff spot, as they're a game and a half behind the Pirates for the second wild card spot entering play today. What happened?

What's Going Right? This is going to be a short list, since over the last 30 days, the Brewers have scored 3.4 runs per game, the third fewest in the league, while giving up 5.0, the most (by a quarter of a run). The offense has put up mediocre but not terrible raw statistics (ninth in batting, eighth in on base percentage, tenth in slugging) but they haven't bunched their hits together in order to score runs. 

What's Going Wrong? I keep repeating this in these reviews, but it's because it comes up as such an important factor: The On The Field Of Play pitching mantra is It's good to throw strikes, but it's better to get strikes. Over the past 30 days, Brewers pitchers have been third worst in the league at throwing strikes (47% of pitches in the strike zone compared to a league average of 49%) and last in getting batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone (29% compared to a league average of 31%). In other words, the pitchers aren't getting pitches in the strike zone, and when they don't, they're not fooling batters. They've probably been a bit unlucky, as they're allowing a .324 batting average on balls in play, compared to a league average of .298. A large deviation from the league average is usually indicative of luck. Nonetheless, the starters' ERA of 4.68 is the league's worst, and the relievers' 4.36 is the fifth worst.

The offense hasn't been standout terrible, just overall not very good.

Who's Hot? Catcher Jonathan Lucroy, a fringe MVP candidate, has been OK over the last 30 days, batting .288 with a .362 on base percentage and a .442 slugging percentage. The team's other standout this year, center fielder Carlos Gomez, has a .274/.379/.479 slash line. Every one of those figures I listed, other than Gomez's on base percentage, is equal to or worse than the player's season-long average, but it's not easy coming up with happy stories here. The best pitcher over the past 30 days, easily, has been starter Mike Fiers, who is 4-1 with a 2.20 ERA.

Who's Not? Three starters have ERAs over 5.50 over the past 30 days: Wily Peralta (5.74), Kyle Lohse (6.04), and Matt Garza (9.00). Closer Francisco Rodriguez has blown only one save but he's compiled a 5.40 ERA, giving up five walks and five homers over his past 10 innings. (Frame of reference: Cardinals starter Lance Lynn has given up three more homers, for a total of eight, over 184.2 innings this year). 

All-or-nothing first baseman Mark Reynolds has been nothing over the last 30 days, batting .091 with a .114 slugging percentage. That's three singles, one double, and eleven strikeouts over 44 at bats. Second baseman Scooter Gennett is batting .244 with only a .262 on base percentage. 

What's the Outlook? At this point, the Brewers need help to make the postseason, though they've picked things up of late, winning three of their last four entering today's game against the Reds. After today, they have three games in St. Louis, three in Pittsburgh, three in Cincinnati, and then three at home against the Cubs. Their closest rival, the Pirates, have an easier schedule, but not by much: six games at home (three for the Brewers), remaining games against teams with a weighted won-lost percentage of .486 (.498 for the Brewers). If the Brewers are going to make the postseason, it seems, they'll have to continue their mastery of the Pirates, against whom they're 11-5 this year. I wouldn't rule them out yet.

Sweet Play of the Day - May 1

Two today because they're both fun. First, check out Joey Votto's reaction to Carlos Gomez's catch.



Next, maybe it's me, but doesn't Cesar Ramos look surprised to find the comebacker from Jackie Bradley in his glove? His teammate David Price seems to think so.

The Offseason Gets More Tolerable

Today, just two days after the Series ended, I received this in the mail:

The Bill James Handbook is full of stats on the 2013 season: Career records for every player who appeared in a major league game as well as all sorts of features on pitching, managing, fielding, baserunning...it's really a fun book, and I'll pull out some excerpts over the next few weeks.

Oh, and you can order it here. You should. It's a lot of fun.

The first thing I do every year when I get the Bill James Handbook is check out the Fielding Bible Awards. These are fielding awards voted by a panel of twelve baseball experts. You've heard of several of them, probably: Bill James, ESPN analyst Doug Glanville, MLB Network host Brian Kenney, sportswriter Peter Gammons. The voters receive data from John Dewan's Baseball Info Solutions, which compiles and distributes baseball statistics to teams and consumers, to help them make their decisions. The two key differences between the Fielding Bible Awards and the Gold Glove Awards is that the former are voted by baseball experts who use statistics, while the latter are voted by managers and coaches. I like to compare how the more empirical vote does compared to the more intuitive one. The stats vs. scouts storyline is a false dichotomy, and the Gold Gloves include a statistical component, but I always like to see how the Gold Glove winners do in the Fielding Bible voting to get a read on how the much the two views of the game are diverging.

There is one Fielding Bible Award per position, while the Gold Gloves are awarded to a player in each league. Here's the rundown:

FIRST BASE: Paul Goldschmidt of the Diamondbacks won the Fielding Bible Award. The Gold Gloves went to Goldschmidt in the NL and Kansas City's Eric Hosmer in the AL. Hosmer finished seventh in the Fielding Bible vote, but was second in the AL to Mike Napoli (!) of the Red Sox, so we'll say the two awards agreed.

SECOND BASE: Boston's Dustin Pedroia won the Fielding Bible Award, getting 11 of 12 first place votes. He also got the AL Gold Glove. The Reds' Brandon Phillips took it in the NL. Phillips was fifth overall and third in the NL in the Fielding Bible vote, behind the Cubs' Darwin Barney and the Dodgers' Mark Ellis. It wasn't all that close between the Barney (7 seconds, 3 thirds, a fourth and fifth) and Phillips (one first, one third, everything else fourth or lower, and not named on Gammons' ballot). Let's call this one a disagreement along the lines of the typical complaint about Gold Gloves: the award went to the better hitter who makes some eye-popping plays but may not be as reliable overall.

THIRD BASE: No surprise that Oriole Manny Machado won the Fielding Bible Award unanimously. Rockies rookie Nolan Arenado was second. They won the Gold Gloves. No disagreement here.

SHORTSTOP: Brave sensation Andrelton Simmons was a unanimous Fielding Bible Award winner, and he took the Gold Glove too. J.J. Hardy won the AL Gold Glove, but he ranked behind the Rangers' Elvis Andrus, the Twins' Pedro Florimon, and the Royals' Alcides Escobar in his league. Hardy tied Troy Tulowitzki for homers by shortstops, and one of the complaints about the Gold Glove is that it goes to guys who hit well...I'm calling this a dispute.

LEFT FIELD: The Royals' Alex Gordon tied with the Pirates' Starling Marte and won the Fielding Bible Award on a tiebreaker. The Gold Gloves went to Gordon and the Rockies' Carlos Gonzalez. Cargo finished third in the Fielding Bible vote. We'll call this one an agreement, but barely.

CENTER FIELD: The Brewers' Carlos Gomez got all but one first-place vote to win the Fielding Bible Award. He won a Gold Glove, along with the Orioles' Adam Jones. This is the one case where there was a wide disagreement between the voters. Jones received almost no support among the Fielding Bible voters; there were ten American League centerfielders who got a higher vote. The knock on Jones has always been that he's got a cannon for an arm and he can go over the fence to rob a homer, but he just doesn't get to as many balls as he should. Big dispute here. 

RIGHT FIELD: The Diamondbacks' Gerardo Parra got all but one first place vote in capturing the Fielding Bible Award, and he won the Gold Glove too. Boston's Shane Victorino was second, and he was the AL Gold Glove. No disagreement.

CATCHER: Yadier Molina of the Cardinals was the Fielding Bible Award winner, edging out the Pirates' Russell Martin and the Royals' Salvador Perez in a close vote. The Gold Gloves went to Molina and Perez. Complete agreement.

PITCHER: I've always been skeptical of fielding awards for pitchers because the sample sizes are so small. Kyle Kendrick led the majors in pitchers' assists with 43. Andrelton Simmons got more assists every two weeks or so. Anyway, the Fielding Bible Award went to R.A. Dickey, who won a Gold Glove. The NL Gold Glove went to Adam Wainwright, who finished only seventh in the Fielding Bible voting. I suppose you could call this a dispute, but with pitchers, I'm disinclined.

So that wasn't all that controversial, was it? There was a big disagreement between the Fielding Bible votes and the Gold Glove voters for the AL center field award, and a smaller disagreement over AL shortstop and NL second baseman. Kind of a disagreement over NL left fielder. But that's it. Every Fielding Bible award winner got a Gold Glove. 

It wasn't always this way. What this is saying is that the empirical view and the intuitive view are getting closer together. I'll leave it to you to figure out who's influencing whom.