Next Up: The Los Angeles Dodgers

I wrapped up my last preview, of the Cubs series, with the line: 

This should be a fun four games.

Yeah, losing three straight, having the home-field wild card advantage slip from four games to two, and losing your best player...that was a freakin' blast.

Now the Pirates head west for three games against the NL West leading Los Angeles Dodgers. There's one word that foreshadows any Dodgers series this year: Kershawgreinke. Do you face the Dodgers's two aces, Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, or not?  The Dodgers in games started by Kershawgreinke: 38-20 (.655 winning percentage). The Dodgers in games started by everybodye else: 46-41 (.541 winning percentage). That's the difference between a 106-56 team and an 88-74 team. Unfortunately, the Pirates go against Greinke tonight and Kershaw tomorrow night, meaning that over the course of four days, they'll see the three contenders for the National League Cy Young Award (they faced the Cubs' Jake Arrieta on Wednesday).

How Are They Doing Lately? The Dodgers are 17-9 over the past 30 days, second only to the 19-8 Mets in the National League. (Naturally, the Cubs, Cardinals, and Pirates, in that order, round out the top five.) They've scored just 3.85 runs per game, the third fewest in the league, but their pitchers have been by far the stingiest, allowing just 3.19 runs per game, nearly half a run per game less than the second-best Pirates. If you're thinking, "That's a pretty good won-lost record given that run differential," you're right. The Nationals, Mets, Pirates, and Cubs all have a better run differential over the past 30 days. So the Dodgers have been good, but maybe not as good as their record might suggest.

What's Going Right? The starting pitchers' ERA is 2.66 over the past 30 days, way ahead of the Pirates, in second with 3.29. They have the fourth best strikeout rate, the second lowest walk rate, the highest ground ball rate, and the second-lowest rate of fly balls becoming home runs. But none of that's surprising; we all knew that with Kershawgreinke, the starters' stats would be good. The surprise is that the relievers, the team's key weakness this year, have a 3.10 ERA over the past 30 days, the third lowest in the league. The Dodger bullpen had a 4.20 ERA in June (second worst in the league) and a 6.27 ERA in July (easily the worst), so they've turned things around dramatically of late. Over the past 30 days, the bullpen has struck out 27% of the batters they've faced and walked only 6%, best and second-best in the league, respectively.

What's Going Wrong? The offense. Over the past 30 days, Dodgers hitters have a .232 batting average (last in the league), .313 on base percentage (fifth lowest), and .373 slugging percentage (second lowest). They've hit the fifth fewest homers and struck out at the sixth highest rate. 

Who's Hot? The team's only reliable hitter of late has been rookie shortstop Corey Seager, called up September 3. He's batting .426 with a .526 on base percentage and .617 slugging percentage in 13 games, sending veteran shortstop Jimmy Rollins and his .194 batting average and .280 on base percentage over the past 30 days to the bench. The three best Dodgers starters over the past 30 days are Kershaw (1.15 ERA, 52 strikeouts and six walks in 39 innings), Greinke (1.78 ERA, 32 strikeouts and five walks in 35.1 innings), and Brett Anderson (2.76 ERA). The three starters the Pirates will face are, in order, Greinke, Kershaw, and Anderson. In the resurgent Dodger bullpen, closer Kenley Jansen has 8 saves and a 2.57 ERA, with 18 strikeouts in 14 innings, over the past 30 days, and setup man Chris Hatcher has a 1.35 ERA and 17 strikeouts in 13.1 innings.

Who's Not? Rollins, as discussed above, is cold and benched. Catcher Yasmani Grandal is 1-for-53--one single, so that's an .047 batting average and slugging percentage--over the past 30 days. First baseman Adrian Gonzalez has a .229/.312/.365 slash line. Third baseman Justin Turner's is .207/.333/.287. Second baseman Chase Utley's is .224/.305/.388. With right fielder/lightning rod Yasiel Puig hurt, the four main outfielders are Andre Ethier, who's been OK (.314/.345/.451) and three players--Scott Van Slyke, Joc Peterson, and Carl Crawford--who've combined for .224/.303/.355.

What's the Outlook? The Pirates swept three from the Dodgers when the teams met in Pittsburgh in early August. In the first game, Kershaw gave up four runs in six innings (his ERA in seven starts since is 1.00) as the Pirates won in ten. In the second game, the Pirates scored six runs in three innings off Mat Latos (no longer with the team) and held on to win 6-5. In the third game, the team exploded for nine runs in the seventh inning, erasing a 5-3 deficit and winning, 13-6. Reliever Jim Johnson, who took the loss in the first and third games (allowing eight runs in two-thirds on an inning in the latter), has four holds and a save in 14 games since. Jung Ho Kang was 4-for-11 with a home run and 4 RBI in the series. In other words, if the Pirates are going to enjoy similar success at Dodger Stadium, the script will have to change, because it's not going to repeat itself. In the meantime, the team will hope for mutual destruction this weekend when the Cardinals play three in Wrigley against the Cubs.

Next Up: The Los Angeles Dodgers

The Pirates have 23 games remaining in August. Only three--a three-game series in St. Louis starting Tuesday--are against National League Central opponents, but 13 are against the National League West, starting with a three-game series beginning Friday against the Dodgers. I'm going to be off the grid most of the weekend, so I'm going to hit it up now. The Pirates have a better record than the Dodgers (62-44 vs. 61-46) but while the Pirates trail the Cardinals by 5.5 games in the tough National League Central, the Dodgers have a two game lead over the San Francisco Giants in the National League West. The series in Pittsburgh begins with a marquee matchup of Gerrit Cole vs. Clayton Kershaw Friday night. The Pirates face two pitchers the Dodgers acquired at the trade deadline, Mat Latos and Alex Wood, on Saturday and Sunday.

Remember when nobody cared about the Pirates? The entire Dodgers series will be nationally televised. Friday's game will be on ESPN, Saturday afternoon's on Fox Sports 1, and Sunday evening's is the ESPN Game of the Week.

How Are They Doing Lately? At 14-9, the Dodgers are tied with the Phillies for the third-best record in the National League over the past 30 days. (The Pirates are half a game behind at 14-108) The Dodgers have scored only 3.8 runs per game, fifth fewest in the league over that span, while giving up 3.6, the fourth fewest. That run differential is more typical of a team that goes 12-11 over 23 games, not 14-9, so the Dodgers have been a little lucky to have that record. On the other hand, the Pirates have been outscored (106 scored, 115 allowed) over the past 30 days, so maybe both teams have had some fortune on their side.

What's Going Right? Dodgers starters, led by Kershaw and Zack Greinke, have a 2.43 ERA over the past 30 days, the best in the league. They have the second-highest strikeout rate, the third-lowest walk rate, the highest rate of ground balls and soft contact allowed and the lowest rate of hard contact allowed. They've allowed just five home runs over the past 30 days; no other team's allowed fewer than ten.  starting pitchers have a 2.99 ERA over the last 30 days, fourth best in the league, with the highest strikeout rate and sixth-lowest walk rate. They've induced the highest rate of ground balls and the second lowest rate of hard contact in the league. On offense, the Dodgers have been OK (sixth in batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage over the past 30 days). Nothing really stands out other than the lack of larceny, with only five stolen bases over the past 30 days, fewest in the league.

What's Going Wrong? The relievers have been as bad as the starters have been good. The bullpen ERA over the past 30 days is 5.83, more than 1.2 runs worse than the next-worse team. They've struck out a lot of batters and they don't walk an excessive number, but they've given up more homers than any other bullpen (13, eight more than the starters in about 60% fewer innings), they don't induce grounders (lowest ground ball rate in the league), and while they can pitch to the strike zone (third-highest pitched strike rate in the league), they're not fooling batters, who've swung at only 29% of their pitches outside the strike zone, the third-lowest rate in the league.

Who's Hot? The Dodgers offense has been led by two hitters over the past 30 days: First baseman Adrian Gonzalez (.305/.387/.537 slash line) and catcher Yasmani Grandal (.382/.460/.527). Over the last 30 days, Kershaw has given up no runs, one walk, and 16 hits over 34 innings while striking out 45. A bunch of starters that the Pirates won't face (Greinke, Brett Anderson, and the recently-demoted Mike Bolsinger) have also done well over the last 30 days. Of the starters they'll face, Latos, who pitched well in his first start for the Dodgers, has a 1.89 ERA over the past 30 days. Wood, who had a rocky first start, is at 4.85. He had a 3.17 ERA through the end of June, 5.06 since. In the bullpen, Pedro Baez has a 1.86 ERA over the last 30 days. 

Who's Not? The team's two most-watched young batters are right fielder Yasiel Puig and All-Star rookie center fielder Joc Pederson. Both have slumped over the last 30 days, with Puig hitting .200/.244/.400 and Pederson, who's struck out in a third of his plate appearances, .177/.286/.266. I noted Baez's nice relief ERA; he's the only Dodgers reliever with more than two innings pitched over the past 30 days with an ERA below 4.26. Closer Kenley Jansen has six saves in nine appearances and 16 strikeouts in just eight innings, but he's also given up three homers--that's as many as the three starters the Pirates will face have given up combined over the same period--and has a 5.63 ERA. 

What's the Outlook? Well, it's pretty obvious: To beat the Dodgers, you have to get to their bullpen. The problem is, to do that, you have to get by their starters. That's always going to be a challenge when Kershaw's on the mound. The Pirates' outlook improves after tomorrow night's game.

Snubs

You got a second? Open up another tab or window, pull up your favorite search engine, and type baseball all-star snubs 2015. You'll get a lot of hits! Just from perusing the search results, here are some of the players whose absence from the All-Star Game (at this point--there's still the Final Vote and the inevitable late injury substitutions):

• Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers pitcher
• Alex Rodriguez, Yankees DH
• Justin Turner, Dodgers third baseman
• Clay Buchholz, Red Sox pitcher
• Brian Dozier, Twins second baseman
• Brad Miller, Mariners shortstop
• Kolten Wong, Cardinals second baseman
• Brian McCann, Yankees catcher
• Xander Bogaerts, Red Sox shortstop

This isn't an exhaustive list. All I did was scroll through the first four pages of search results and pull names from the headlines. I didn't go into the many articles with lists of snubs. So there are undoubtedly more.

Now, Kershaw and Bogaerts could still make their respective teams via the Final Vote. But the other guys--yeah, the only way they're watching to All-Star Game is to score a ticket or tune into Fox next Tuesday.

My question is: How much of a snub is this, really?

I mean, there are guys who have money riding on this. Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer, who's going to the game, gets $50,000 for appearing. So I could see him being disappointed--feeling snubbed seems a bit strong--if he hadn't been chosen. His teammate, second baseman Omar Infante, who isn't going, would've gotten a $250,000 bonus in each of 2016 and 2017. That's a big chunk of cash (his base salary is $7.75 million in 2016 and $8 million in 2017), but it's hard to call a guy who's got a .246 on base percentage (lowest in the majors among 164 batting title qualifiers) and .309 slugging percentage (fourth lowest) snubbed. So yeah, if I'm Dozier or Wong, and my contract pays me extra for going to the All-Star game, I'd probably be annoyed.

But most players? I wonder whether the fans and media mythologize the All-Star Game a bit. I would imagine a player's first All-Star Game is a thrill. You bring your parents, maybe your siblings, your wife or girlfriend, probably your kids. You rub shoulders with all the big names. You get this cool All-Star uniform that you throw into your duffel bag right after the game, not knowing that MLB would have washed and sent it to you anyway. You probably lift the All-Star insignia notepads and pens from the conference room. All that sort of thing.

Once you've done one, though...Take Andrew McCutchen. This'll be his fifth straight All-Star Game. Yes, it's nice to get the recognition and all, but from his point of view, twenty of his teammates get the full All-Star break, four days off next week to relax, hang out with their families, ice down sore muscles, catch the matinee of Terminator: Genisys, and go out for dinner at a reasonable hour, while he spends Monday and Tuesday on the field and with the press. For the fifth straight year Cutch's break will be abbreviated. 

Baseball players have a tough job. Yes, they're playing a game for a living, but they play it 6-7 days per week for six months. That's seven and half including spring training, eight and a half including the postseason. They put in long hours at the office, with most games not ending until after 10 PM, and if they get a day off, it's always a Monday or Thursday and never a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Plus they're living out of a suitcase, on the road, half the time. I know that some of you are going to say, "Big deal, they're paid tons of money to do that," to which I'd reply, "I know, but that's not the point." I'm betting most of you would accept $10 million to step into the ring with Floyd Mayweather, but that doesn't mean his punches wouldn't hurt. Playing baseball pretty much every day for half the year, even if you love the game, is grueling. Think about the last time you had a big project at work that had you coming in over the weekend, then think how much you were dragging by the end of the next week. Then imagine that for 26 weeks. The four days of downtime that Pirates Neil Walker, Francisco Liriano, Tony Watson, Pedro Alvarez and sixteen other teammates will get has got to seem great to them. So yes, you could make a case for Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli making his first All-Star team this year. Among NL catchers with 250 or more plate appearances, he's second in batting average, first in on base percentage, and third in slugging percentage. He also ranks second in Baseball Prospectus's measure for pitch framing, i.e. the ability to get umpires to call pitches on the outer edges of the strike zone strikes instead of balls. So going the All-Star Game would be pretty sweet. But given that we're in early July and he's already 30 games away from setting a career high in games played, at the toughest position on the diamond, I've got to think four days off will be pretty sweet too.

April Oddities

Here, in no particular order, are my view of the five strangest things in baseball's first month. (Full disclusure: I am not trying to imitate Jason Stark's Strange but True column, if for no other reason than that Stark is way more clever than I.)

• The First Place Houston Astros. Five teams finished April with 15 victories. Two, the Cardinals and Tigers, were expected in many circles to win their divisions. Two more, the Mets and Royals, were pegged as wild card contenders. Then there's the Astros. They're viewed as up-and-coming, with a young team (weighted average batter's age 27.3, youngest in the American League) and, according to ESPN Insider Keith Law, the third-best farm system in baseball. But the team was 70-92 last year. The Astros were 51-111 in 2013. They play in the same division as the Angels, who had the best record in baseball last year; the A's, who were a wild card team and had the best run differential in the league; and the Mariners, who were only a game behind the A's and picked by many to win the division this year. Now, granted, the Astros have played the easiest schedule in their division so far, but they have the second-best run differential (1.3 more runs scored than allowed per game) in the league so far. They had the best team ERA, third-best starter ERA, and third-best reliever ERA in the league in April, after finishing 12th, ninth, and fifteenth, respectively, last season. As expected, their batters are striking out a lot (24% of plate appearances, most in the league), and their team batting average of .238 was 12th in the league. But their .316 on base percentage is ninth and their .411 slugging percentage is sixth, so they've made up for the lack of batting average with walks and power. They've probably been a little lucky, and I don't expect them to remain in title contention--this year. But there may be enough here for the team to be a 2016 contender.
• Clayton Kershaw, 1-2, 3.73 ERA. There are 60 National League pitchers who qualify for the ERA title (one inning pitched per team game played). Kershaw is 32nd. I could list some of the unlikely pitchers who rate higher, but really, anybody ahead of Kershaw's a surprise. The defending NL MVP has led the league in ERA for each of the past four years. Now, granted, he had a 4.08 ERA in May 2014, but that included arguably the worst start of his career, when he gave up seven runs in 1.2 innings against Arizona on May 17. The last time before that he'd had an ERA as high as 3.73 was April 2009. So other than the one start last May, this is his worst month in five years. Here's the catch, though: His underlying statistics suggest he was a lot better than his record indicates. His strikeout/walk ratio of 6.1 is seventh in the league and he leads the league in strikeout rate. His fielding independent pitching, which is an ERA-like measure based on strikeouts, walks, and homers (and a better predictor of future performance than ERA), is 2.85, eleventh best in the league. If you normalize that for his unusually high (and possibly bad luck-driven) 22% ratio of home runs to fly balls allowed (fourth highest in the league), it drops to 1.95, which is best in the league. So expect a return to ridiculously good form from Kershaw.
• 10-13 Washington Nationals. They were a near-unanimous pick to win their division. Several saw them as the best team in baseball and the favorite to win the World Series. So seeing them half a game behind the Marlins and Braves, and fully five games behind the Mets, at the end of April is jarring. Like Kershaw's start, the Nationals' problems don't seem likely to persist. They ended April winning three straight, scoring 34 runs. The pitching's been OK but the team was 11th in the league in both batting average and on base percentage in April. Slow starters in April included shortstop Ian Desmond (.217/.287/.326 slash line; the league average including pitchers was .248/.310/.383), left fielder Jayson Werth (.175/.254/.211), and first baseman Ryan Zimmerman (.217/.277/.380). Starter Max Scherzer had a 1-2 record despite a 1.26 ERA; in two losses and a no-decision his teammates scored a total of six runs. The return of third baseman Anthony Rendon (currently rehabbing a sprained knee) who finished fifth in MVP voting last year, should help, and I'd expect improvement as players return to form and the amazing Bryce Harper (.286/.440/.545, still the second-youngest player in the league) continues his strong performance.
• Mike Moustakas, Batsman. I'm don't get too excited about a month's worth of batting statistics. Anybody can get lucky (or unlucky) for a month. Light-hitting Marlins second baseman Dee Gordon and Tigers shortstop Jose Iglesias batting .423 and .370, respectively? Not going to last. Neither will some of the poor performances (see next point). But Moustakas may be different. The third baseman was one of several highly-regarded Royals prospects a few years ago. In four years in the majors, he's been a disappointment. His batting averaged declined every year from 2011 to 2014 (falling from .263 to .212), as did his on base percentage (from .309 to .271). His OPS last year, .632, was the lowest of his career, third lowest in the league among players with 500 or more plate appearances, and 25% below the league average, adjusted for park. Last month, though, he was tenth in the league, at .942, 67% better than average. The reason it doesn't appear to be luck is that Moustakas has overhauled his approach to hitting--not easy to do at age 26. He's been an extreme pull hitter. Batting left, he only 20%-30% of his base hits went to the left side of the field in 2012, 2013, and 2014. As a result, he faced an extreme shift, with three infielders to the right of second base, in 71% of his plate appearances last year. He was easy to predict, easy to defense. But this year, he's got 32 base hits. Of them, thirteen singles, four doubles, and a homer--over 56% of his base hits--have gone to the opposite field. That's a real change, and the five extra-base hits indicate that he's not just popping bloop singles out to left. By using the whole field, he's become a different, and, finally, good hitter.
• Andrew McCutchen, Sub-.200 Hitter. I'm not going to get into this a lot, because I've written about it enough: My concerns about his health here, my analysis of what's wrong with him (mostly, bad luck) here. During April, among 86 National League batting title qualifiers, McCutchen's .194 batting average with 80th, his .302 on base percentage 59th, his .333 slugging percentage 73rd, and his .636 OPS 68th in the league. He had the worst batting average on the Pirates, and the second-worst slugging percentage. Now, hold that for a minute, because I want to talk about fielding. Yesterday, I heard two SiriusXM MLB Home Plate hosts go on and on about how one of the advanced fielding metrics rates Mets center fielder Juan Lagares as slightly below average so far this year, and how this proves that you can't trust some of these new statistics. Look, nobody's going to argue with the idea that Lagares is probably the best center fielder in baseball today. He won the Fielding Bible Award last year and was runner-up the year before. Without getting into the mechanics of how the advanced fielding metrics are calculated (I think they're sound), let's look at what the numbers for Lagares are saying: That he didn't have a fabulous April with the glove. Is that true? I don't know. I didn't watch every play he made, and neither did the folks on the radio. The people who calculate these advanced metrics did. But that's not the point. The point is that the stats are saying Lagares didn't have a great April in the field. So what? Getting back to McCutchen, the stats say that McCutchen didn't have a great April with the bat. Is anybody going to deny that? If a radio host said, "Andrew McCutchen hit .194 in April, therefore he's a bad hitter," we'd call him an idiot. We would also call him an idiot if he said "Andrew McCutchen hit .194 in April, so batting average says he's a bad hitter, which we know if false, so we can't trust batting average." No, no, no. But that's what the guys on satellite radio were saying: if the stats don't say that a great fielder is great every month, the stats are wrong. No, the stats are right, just like McCutchen's slugging percentage is right. But what they measure isn't a player's overall value, it's how they did over a 30 day period. Lagares's defensive numbers in April should be viewed the same way as McCutchen's batting numbers in April: An aberration, unusual but well within normal variation, for an excellent ballplayer. I feel pretty confident in saying that, by season's end, Juan Lagares will be rated as one of the top fielders in baseball, just as I feel pretty confident in saying that, by season's end, Andrew McCutchen will be rated as one of the top hitters in baseball. The fact that the numbers didn't reflect that in April about Lagares doesn't indict the fielding stats any more than McCutchen's .194 indicts batting average.

Waino

This is a Pirates blog, but I'd like to talk about a Cardinals player. Adam Wainwright is St. Louis's best pitcher. Going into last weekend, he led Cardinals starters in innings and ERA. Last year, he led Cardinals starters in innings and ERA. In 2013, he led Cardinals starters in innings and ERA. He missed 2011 recovering from Tommy John surgery, and he was used somewhat cautiously in 2012. But in 2010, he was second on the team in innings (by 4.2) and led in ERA. In 2009, he led the team in innings and was second in ERA. From 2009 to 2014--including his missed Tommy John season and his recovery year--his 2.83 ERA was the third best in baseball (behind Clayton Kershaw's 2.33 and Felix Hernandez's 2.73) among pitchers with at least 1,000 innings pitched. He'd been credited with 92 wins, the fourth most (after Justin Verlander's 106, Jered Weaver's 96, and Kershaw's 93).  He finished second in the voting for the Cy Young Award in 2010 and 2013 and third in 2009 and 2014. That's four top-three finished in six seasons, one of which he missed and one of which he was coming back from major surgery. All told, Wainwright is not only clearly the Cardinals' best pitcher, he's also one of the best in baseball, probably the second best in the National League after Kershaw.

And he's done for the year. This is what happened to him on Saturday:



Diagnosis: Torn Achilles tendon. Out for the year. Injury expert Will Carroll (that's his Twitter handle, too: @injuryexpert) notes

Surgery and rehab has developed over the past few seasons and players in the NFL and NBA have come back well. That bodes well for Wainwright.

That's good for Wainwright and the Cardinals, but only for 2016. For 2015, they'll have to make do without one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. In a National League Central race that's expected to be tight, with the Pirates and Cubs seen vying for second place behind the Redbirds, it's looking a lot more like a three-team race. (As of this morning, the 13-6 Cardinals are a game ahead of the 12-7 Cubs and three ahead of the 11-10 Pirates).

Somewhat surprisingly, Wainwright's injury has re-ignited the designated hitter debate. As you almost certainly know, given that you're reading this blog, the American League has a designated hitter for the pitcher and the National League does not. This has been the case since 1973, so with the DH now in its 43rd season, it would be, as lawyers would say, settled case law, one might think. One would be really, really wrong. The discussion of a universal DH has set off a free-for-all on the internet. I'm not surprised. I attend a lot of baseball lectures and conferences, and saying something along the lines of "abolish the DH" or "we shouldn't have two leagues playing two different rules" is a guaranteed applause line. And I don't mean polite applause, I mean the kind of applause that political candidates get when they're talking to their supporters: Loud, enthusiastic applause, punctuated by whoops and whatnot.

The relationship to Wainwright is that if he hadn't been batting, he wouldn't have ruptured his Achilles tendon. (Probably not. He could've ruptured it pitching or fielding or jogging in the outfield between starts. We'll never know. But since he didn't have a history of Achilles problems, this looks much more like a fluke accident than one waiting to happen.) So if we have a DH, we don't have Adam Wainwright rupturing his Achilles tendon getting out of the batter's box, and we don't have Chien-Ming Wang, a 19-game winner for the Yankees in 2006 and 2007 and off to a 6-0 start in 2008, injuring his foot in an interleague game and pretty much never being the same pitcher again. 

Now, let me give you two disclaimers:

1. I think the prevention of pitching injuries is not a great justification for the DH. Yes, what happened to Wainwright and Wang and others is terrible. Had they not been batting, I'd wager, they wouldn't have gotten hurt. But what happened to them is pretty rare. We don't get a lot of pitcher injuries from swinging the bat or running the bases.
2. I'm pretty agnostic on the DH issue. I'm mildly in favor of expanding it to the National League, for reasons I'll explain below. But I'm OK with leaving things as is, and I'd be OK if major league baseball were to abolish it. I just can't see getting worked up over the issue. It doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game, one way or the other. 

That being said, I'm going to show you a graph. I do a lot of charts and graphs here, and I know that it's a bit much for some of you. So this'll be the only one for today. And I'm not going to tell you (yet) what it is. I'm just going to present it and let it sink in, OK? Here goes:

Here's how you should perceive a graph like that: It's measuring something that's in steady decline. Ignore the scale on the left, and this could be something like infant mortality rates, or percentage of Americans engaged in agriculture, or proportion of homes heated by wood, or something. It's a pronounced, consistent, downward trend.

OK, enough mystery. I used a statistic called wRC+. It's an overall measure of offensive contribution computed by FanGraphs. It stands for weighted runs created. The + means that it's normalized: It adjusts for each player's home park and the year in which he played. The average wRC+ every year is 100. Good hitters are above 100, weaker hitters are below it. All-star Andrew McCutchen had a wRC+ 168 last year, the best in all of baseball. Since the average is 100, McCutchen's 168 means that he was 68% better than the average batter last year. Light-hitting middle infielder Clint Barmes had a 79 wRC+, meaning he was 21% below the league average. I'm not saying that wRC+ is the perfect measure of offensive performance, but it's a consistent calculation that evens out the variations between high-offense and low-offense eras.

Anyway, the graph is the combined wRC+ for pitchers beginning in 1901. That's a pronounced, consistent, downward trend. PItchers are getting worse and worse at batting. And, when you think about it, that's not surprising: Pitchers don't bat. There's a DH in high school. There's a DH in college. (Note that the DH in high school can be used for any hitter, not just the pitcher, and in both high school and college, a manager may elect not to use the DH if the pitcher's a good hitter.) There's a DH in the rookie and Class A levels of the minors. There's a DH in Class AA and AAA unless both teams playing a game are National League affiliates and agree not to use it. The list of leagues in which the DH is not used is shorter than the list of leagues that use it. The holdouts are the National League, Japan's Central League, Japanese high schools, American Legion, and Little League. That's it. I'm probably missing some obscure leagues, but it's not uncommon for a National League pitcher to not swing a bat in a game from the time he leaves Little League until he reaches the high minors.

So even if the American League were to eliminate the DH, pitchers would still be lousy hitters, because they don't learn to hit as they're developing. Yes, that might change with time if other leagues drop the DH as well, but there's no guarantee that they will.

We're left with pitchers being almost automatic outs. When you hear about good hitting pitchers, you hear about Madison Bumgarner and Zack Greinke, among others. Bumgarner, somewhat famously, hit more grand slams last year (two) than Derek Jeter did in his entire career (one). Greinke provided these memorable moments during the Dodgers' Divisional Series against the Cardinals:

So yeah, a DH would deprive fans of seeing Bumgarner and Greinke hit. But hold on: Bumgarner's career slash line (batting average/on base percentage/slugging average; the average in the majors last year was .251/.314/.386) is .160/.201/.247. Greinke's is .214/.263/.325. You may have heard of Mario Mendoza, the 1970s-era weak-hitting shortstop. Sometime in the late 1970s, some player--the identity's unclear--coined the term "Mendoza Line." Back then, Sunday newspapers listed overall batting and pitching statistics for the players in each league. They'd list batters in descending order of batting average. Due to space limitations, they wouldn't display every batter, just those above a minimum level. It seemed that the last name listed among hitters would always be Mendoza's. He habitually hit around .200. The player in question talked about starting the season so slowly, he was "hitting below the Mendoza line"--his batting average was so low the papers didn't even bother printing it. It's come to mean, in common usage, a batting average of .200. 

Well, Mario Mendoza's career slash line is .215/.245/.262. That means that Greinke's hitting a little better, and Bumgarner a good deal worse, than the man whose name signifies futility with the bat. And they're the best of the bunch. Last year, pitchers as a whole batted .122/.153/.152. So far this year, they're even worse: .095/.119/.109. 

So if you like the DH because it adds offense, fine. If you don't like it because it takes away strategy, OK. If you like it because you don't want to see a pitcher who's cruising get pulled by a pinch hitter, I see your point. If you don't like it because it removes things like pinch hitters and double switches, I get it. If you like it because it'd prevent injuries like Wainwright's, sure. But you really can't say that the DH takes the bat out of the pitcher's hands, because pitchers haven't had a bat for a long time. There have been, in baseball history, 66 pitchers who batted at least 500 times and maintained an OPS+ of 50 or more, which means that their on base plus slugging was at least half of the average. Of them, only one--Carlos Zambrano--started his career in this century. All but eight retired before the American League adopted the DH in 1973. Exactly two-thirds were done playing before the end of World War II. Pitchers capable of much more than laying down the occasional bunt have been out of baseball for a long, long time. Getting rid of the DH, whatever its merits, isn't going to bring them back.

That's why I'm in favor--just mildly--of expanding the DH to the National League. I don't get any enjoyment from watching pitchers at the plate. Yes, there's the comic relief of Bartolo Colon's at bats, but they just can't hit, and that's not going to change. 

Does Johnny Cueto Have the Pirates' Number?

It was, to date, the pinnacle of the Pirates' renaissance. October 1, 2013. National League Wild Card game. The Pirates' first postseason game since 1992, and the first ever at PNC Park. A raucous sellout blackout crowd. (Note to people outside of Pittsburgh: "Blackout" refers to everyone in the stands wearing black. It doesn't have anything to do with a power outage. That, unfortunately, happened to the Pirates' lineup, save Pedro Alvarez, in the Divisional Series against St. Louis.) The Bucs' Francisco Liriano vs. the Reds' Johnny Cueto. And it wasn't close. Marlon Byrd and Russell Martin hit home runs in the second inning. Cueto allowed nine baserunners and four runs before getting pulled in the fourth inning, chants of "CUE-TO" ringing throughout the ballpark. Liriano cruised and the Pirates were 6-2 victors. It was not only an embarrassing defeat for Cueto, who at one point dropped the ball while standing on the mound, it was also the last game for Reds manager Dusty Baker.

Since then, Cueto's faced the Pirates seven times, including yesterday's season opener. The results are pretty overwhelming: 1.53 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, five wins for Cueto, seven wins for Cincinnati. His two no-decisions were both games in which he left positioned to get the win (yesterday, leading 2-0 after seven; and last June 17, leading 3-2 after six) only to watch the Reds bullpen blow his lead in a game the Reds ultimately won. Has Cueto become the Pirates' kryptonite?

I don't think so, for two reasons. First, the Johnny Cueto the Pirates faced in the 2013 wild card game wasn't the typical Cueto. He started only eleven games all season that year in between two stints on the disabled list due to a strained lat muscle. Prior to the wild card game, Cueto had started only two games since the end of June, on September 16 and 23. He was still rusty, and it showed. By contrast, he's been healthy since, leading the league in innings pitched and batters faced.

Second, the Cueto the Pirates have faced since October 2013 is basically the same Cueto the rest of the league has faced. Look at this table:

ROW = Rest of world, i.e. everybody other than Pittsburgh.

Other than ERA, there's not a lot of difference, is there? He's allowed fewer walks against the Bucs, but also gotten fewer strikeouts. Otherwise, everything looks pretty much in line, except ERA. So what's going on with runs?

Well, here's another comparison:

RISP = Runners in scoring position

That pretty much tells the story. The Pirates' raw statistics--hits, walks, home runs, strikeouts--are similar to Cueto's other opponents. Their overall batting average is the same as the other hitters Cueto faces. But once they get players on base, the Bucs have been unable to bring them around to score. They're 2-for-27--two for twenty-seven!--with runners on second and/or third (with a bases-loaded walk and a run-scoring ground out added in).

Nobody hits well against Cueto, who was the runner-up to Clayton Kershaw for the Cy Young Award last year. The Pirates, overall, hit on a par with Cueto's other opponents. Once they get runners in scoring position, though, their bats turn to ice. That's why Cueto's dominated them.

The silver lining is that batting with runners in scoring position, or the lack thereof, isn't a particularly replicable skill. In 2013, the St. Louis Cardinals famously led the league in batting with RISP, at .330. The Pirates were second-to-last, at .229. But last year, the two were neck-and-neck, as the Cardinals tumbled to sixth, at .254, and the Bucs rose to seventh, at .249. That sort of variation suggests that batting with runners in scoring position includes a fair amount of luck. So while it's never easy to score against Johnny Cueto, it doesn't need to be as hard as it's been for Pittsburgh over their last seven games against the Reds hurler. It's reasonable to expect improvement in 2015.

The Risk of Giancarlo Stanton

The Miami Marlins have signed their star right fielder, Giancarlo Stanton, to the longest and richest contract in baseball history: 13 years, $325 million. The 25-year-old Stanton can opt out of the deal after the 2020 season. We don't know the details of the contract, i.e. how the dollars are spread around over the years, but I'll go out on a limb and say that at an average value of $25 million per year, he's going to be paid a lot of money every season. Stanton, who turned 25 earlier this month, was an All-Star and finished second in MVP balloting in 2014, leading the National League in home runs (37), total bases (299), slugging percentage (.555), and, in a statement both of his talent and that of the Marlins lineup surrounding him, intentional walks (24). He's tied for tenth all time in home runs through age 24:

Rk	Player	HR	From	To	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Eddie Mathews	190	1952	1956	732	3141	2634	497	735	119	24	492	471	443	.279	.388	.559	.947
2	Alex Rodriguez	189	1994	2000	790	3515	3126	627	966	194	13	595	310	616	.309	.374	.561	.934
3	Mel Ott	176	1926	1933	983	3978	3367	680	1059	195	31	711	537	258	.315	.412	.548	.959
4	Jimmie Foxx	174	1925	1932	810	3270	2750	612	923	159	57	667	460	377	.336	.432	.625	1.056
5	Mickey Mantle	173	1951	1956	808	3491	2944	642	907	136	43	575	524	578	.308	.412	.560	.972
6	Ken Griffey	172	1989	1994	845	3606	3180	518	972	194	19	543	374	477	.306	.379	.541	.920
7	Frank Robinson	165	1956	1960	735	3155	2741	501	818	145	27	449	321	427	.298	.380	.552	.932
8	Albert Pujols	160	2001	2004	629	2728	2363	500	787	189	9	504	304	279	.333	.413	.624	1.037
9	Orlando Cepeda	157	1958	1962	764	3220	2987	471	922	163	16	553	172	463	.309	.350	.532	.881
10	Giancarlo Stanton	154	2010	2014	634	2640	2288	350	619	138	8	399	318	742	.271	.364	.540	.903
11	Johnny Bench	154	1967	1972	782	3229	2887	421	781	142	12	512	288	470	.271	.334	.488	.822

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

Generated 11/18/2014.

As you can see, he got there in fewer plate appearances than anyone on the list (among players with 100 or more homers through age 24, only Mathews, Pujols, Bob Horner, and Willie Mays went deep more often than Stanton's 5.8% of plate appearances), and he's also struck out more than the others. 

The contract has resulted in predictable reactions.

• It's too much money. Yes, it's the biggest contract in baseball history in total dollars, but not in average annual value. Miguel Cabrera, Clayton Kershaw, Alex Rodriguez, and Justin Verlander are in contracts that pay them more than an average of $25 million per year, and the $25 million average equals the current contracts of Ryan Howard, Josh Hamilton, and Felix Hernandez. There are players whom one might view as more valuable than Stanton (Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen, to name two), but Stanton's contract isn't out of line with those of the players on the $25 million-plus list.
• No, I mean, it's too much money for a player. Sports Illustrated's Joe Sheehan has pointed out that the share of baseball revenues going to player salaries has steadily declined since the turn of the century. Given that no teams were going bankrupt in 2000, and that fans would probably rather watch Stanton hit than watch his owner, Jeffrey Loria, count money, I can't see a problem with the players getting a bigger slice of the pie.
• No, seriously, we can pay a baseball player that much and we can't pay schoolteachers and firefighters? This argument will make sense when kids walk around wearing their teachers' replica jerseys and firefighters negotiate with regional sports networks to televise their rescues.
• Thirteen years is too long. There's no question that's a risk. But Stanton will be 38 when his contract ends. Cabrera's will pay him at least through age 40, possibly a couple years longer, depending on options that vest based on his MVP vote. Rodriguez is under contract through age 41. Same with Albert Pujols. It's a long contract, but not ridiculously long. 
• He won't age well. Stanton is 6'6", 240. One could easily see him slowing down as he ages, moving from right to left to, eventually, first. He's in the National League, so he can't become a DH. But here's the thing: Historically, players with "old player skills" (home runs, walks, strikeouts) tend to flame out relatively early. Stanton last year was first in the National League in homers, second in walks, and sixth in strikeouts. On the other hand, Stanton is a good athlete. He grades out as an above-average right fielder and was 13-for-14 as a basestealer in 2014. He's not just a slugger.
• His owner's crazy. Well, that's true. He's "the most hated man in Major League Baseball." The Marlins' payroll last year was $42.4 million, last in the majors. The average annual value of Stanton's contract equals nearly 60% of that total. It doesn't make sense to pay that much to one guy while doing everything else on the cheap. Is this indicative of a willingness to spend? If so, the Marlins, who have a lot of promising young players, could contend. But we've been down this road before with Loria, when he added players after the 2011 season only to unload them after a disappointing 2012. But say this for Loria: His sins have consistently been of being penny-pinching, not profligate.

Rather, there are two things that I worry about with Stanton:

• Durability. Stanton's first full year in the majors was 2011. He played 150 games that year. He hasn't matched that total since. In 2012, he missed 39 games due to knee pain that required surgery in July. He also had oblique and shoulder injuries that year. He missed 46 games in 2013 due primarily to a strained hamstring but also with shoulder soreness and an ankle sprain. Last year he was healthy until September 12, when he was hit in the face by a Mike Fiers fastball in one of those can't-watch-it injuries, suffering multiple facial fractures. Hard tissue injuries (bones) tend to fully heal and are as much bad luck as anything. Soft tissue injuries (muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage) can be recurring. Toronto shortstop Jose Reyes, for example, has been on the disabled list five times, and day-to-day several other times, with hamstring problems. Stanton's been on the DL only twice in is career (the hit-by-pitch last year was in September, when teams don't bother disabling players), and he had a healthy 2014 until the Brewers' Fiers beaned him, but his record isn't scot-free. (All injury data from Baseball Prospectus.)
• Sustainability of revenues. The reason baseball revenues have grown dramatically in this century is television. With the proliferation of DVRs, consumers can record the programs they like and watch them when they want, fast-fowarding through the commercials. Sports are one of the few events consumers watch live. So they see the ads for beer and trucks and insurance while watching a game that they skip while watching sitcoms. That has made sports programming particularly valuable to advertisers and, therefore, for the networks that carry them. Additionally, TV broadcasting has shifted from national networks to regional sports networks (RSNs), like NESN in New England, YES and SNY in New York, and MASN in Baltimore/Washington. Teams have national contracts with ESPN and FOX, but they also have local contracts with RSNs that can dwarf the national contracts. Cable subscribers pay to have RSNs bundled with other channels. However, there's been a move to "unbundle" cable, letting consumers pick and choose the channels they want rather than the average of 189 that they receive now. Will your great aunt want ESPN, much less the RSNs, if she could pick her channels? And if she doesn't, and many others don't, what will happen to RSN revenues? The prospects for unbundling, as well as the savings it might yield, are unclear. But Stanton's contract assumes a stable economic model in baseball. In my role as a financial analyst, I've often said that Wall Street has a penchant for seeing a point and drawing a line through it. Baseball's doing the same thing with its current revenue mix. What works today may not in 2027, the last year of Stanton's contract.

Overall, I can't get too excited over Stanton's contract. Baseball's rolling in dough; might as well give it to a marquee player. I question what the Marlins have in mind longer term, and I worry about his injury risk, but the focus here's on the field of play anyway.