Keep Your Friends Close, But Your Enemies Closer

[Darnell's Son]

On top of his great coverage of the Sox, iayork has been writing about players that Boston is facing in each series.Today, he wrote about Adam Jones and specifically about his approach at the plate. One thing is clear, he has something in common with SoSH's favorite tubby lumpkins:

When comparing Jones to all right-handed batters in baseball, it’s clear that he swings far more than average at pitches outside the strike zone.

ICYMI, iayork has also covered Francisco Lindor and Russell Martin. Tomorrow, we'll be publishing his piece on Darren O'Day.

 

[Darnell's Son]

The Red Sox and Yankees aren't the only teams in the AL East with a deep bullpen. The Orioles re-signed Darren O'Day this offseason, and iayork wrote about the sidearm pitcher today. As usual there are some awesome graphs.

Notice the release point, in the top and side views: Not only is it far out to the right, it is so low that O’Day actually throws the ball slightly upward at release. This means that, unlike conventional pitchers, gravity not only doesn’t help his pitch velocity, it actually slows the pitch down. As major-league pitchers go, O’Day has fairly slow pitches: In 2015 his fastball and sinker were thrown on average 88.3 and 87.3 mph, respectively.

 

[Darnell's Son]

Chris Archer takes the hill tonight and iayork wrote about the blossoming ace for the .com today.

The Tampa Bay Rays had a strong pitching rotation in 2015, but Chris Archer stepped up to show that he was the ace of that staff. In just his third full year in the majors, Archer placed fourth in baseball for strikeouts and K/9, and 11th in FIP. He does this without much fanfare, since he has a limited repertoire (just three or four pitch types) with no particularly spectacular or overwhelming pitch.

 

[Darnell's Son]

Cuzitt wrote about Atlanta's horrible offense today. Their OBP is higher than their SLG, which hasn't been done in sometime so he puts it in historical context.

 

[Darnell's Son]

iayork applied his charts and PITCHf/x to Matt Wisler to see if there's ANYTHING on this craptastic Braves roster worth watching.

 

[Darnell's Son]

MFY are rolling out their ace tonight, and iayork wrote about Tanaka this morning on the .com

 

[Darnell's Son]

Old friend Rich Hill is on the.......hill tonight, and iayork wrote about his interesting pitch usage, his most effective pitch may surprise you.

 

[iayork]

Old friend Rich Hill is on the.......hill tonight, and iayork wrote about his interesting pitch usage, his most effective pitch may surprise you.

Actually, I don't think he's starting tonight, but he's still cool.

 

[Darnell's Son]

Indeed, he got bumped for the much less exciting Eric Surkamp.

 

[Darnell's Son]

ICYMI: After the bearded wonder(Dallas Keuchel) won the Cy Young, iayork wrote an article about his season.

 

[Max Venerable]

Are the Orioles for real? As well as the Sox are playing, Boston remains in second place by percentage points. Baltimore is on pace for 97 wins and their are playing just a game over their Pythag to do that. I honestly hadn't given them much thought preseason, assuming that Toronto would be the team to beat in the east.

Whats up with the O's?

 

[simplicio]

They've seen the Twins 5 times now, for starters. Plus Machado's a beast, Trumbo's playing like he's a Red Sox and the pitching staff has generally over performed.

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

Are the Orioles for real? As well as the Sox are playing, Boston remains in second place by percentage points. Baltimore is on pace for 97 wins and their are playing just a game over their Pythag to do that. I honestly hadn't given them much thought preseason, assuming that Toronto would be the team to beat in the east.

Whats up with the O's?

They fall a bit short of the Sox in most categories on the position player side. What's getting it done for them is the pitching, and the key ray-of-hope number for Sox fans there is the difference between their FIP (3.58) and xFIP (4.10), which is fueled by a 7.8% HR/FB. Over the past decade no AL team has had a HR/FB allowed under 8%, and only twice in the past decade has an AL East team had a HR/FB under 9% (Yankees and Red Sox, both 2007). Change the O's HR/FB to 10%--still well under league average--and they'd have given up six more home runs so far this year. That would add about 9 more runs allowed, pushing their ERA up into the 3.80s and their pythag down to 95 wins. And this is conservative, because it ignores the domino effect that more HR allowed would produce in terms of longer innings, more pitches thrown, quicker exits, more suboptimal bullpen use, etc.

So the short answer is: they're keeping it in the park. At a hopefully unsustainable rate.

 

[mauf]

Are the Orioles for real? As well as the Sox are playing, Boston remains in second place by percentage points. Baltimore is on pace for 97 wins and their are playing just a game over their Pythag to do that. I honestly hadn't given them much thought preseason, assuming that Toronto would be the team to beat in the east.

Whats up with the O's?

The O's have a .590 third-order win percentage (per BP) and are the only AL East team whose actual win percentage is better than its third-order percentage. They certainly aren't a fluke like the Phillies, but they're not as good as their W-L record would suggest.