Rays Flopping

Rays Flopping

            I recently wrote an article about how the Astros were on the rise due to their prospects and coaching staff really coming through for them.  This time we look at a team that’s future doesn’t look nearly as bright as the Astros.  The Rays have been considered the permanent Cinderella Story, every year having a good season and even making the playoffs and still looked down upon.  This year though they have hit a brick wall…and upon hitting the wall the wall promptly fell on top of them.  Lets take a look at just how bad this team has been and see if there is a Ray of light at the end of this tunnel…I’m sorry.

            Offense

	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	BABIP	ISO	wOBA	wRC+
2014	9.1%	18.6%	.242	.316	.363	.679	.283	.121	.302	94

            Looking at the numbers there’s two things that stand out.  The team’s numbers all around aren’t too terrible though they are below average just a little bit.  The one thing that truly stands out is the lack of power from this team having a grand total of 172 XBH this season so far.  The ISO is almost 20 points below the league average for the last 5 years and the OPS isn’t far behind that.  This team has 0 power at the moment and from the signs were seeing it doesn’t look like it’s changing anytime soon.  Longoria has been a disappointment, Wil Myers is hurt and he wasn’t doing anything anyways and Zobrist has been hurt recently.  The list of players having a struggle hitting for power pretty much spans the lineup.

            The Rays can’t even claim that their getting unlucky, a BABIP of .283 is just under the league average of .290 so luck isn’t a factor there.  The one good thing that this team can say about itself is they’re not striking out much and they’re taking a good amount of walks.  Though that means relatively little when your team can’t score the players you do get on.

            Pitching

	BB%	K%	HR/9	AVG	ERA	FIP	WHIP	BABIP	ERA-	FIP-	LOB%
2014	8.53	3.18	0.88	.243	4.04	3.65	1.30	.298	108	100	71.3%

            The pitching has been a real issue for this year’s team and it starts with the WHIP.  While the BB% is a little high its not terrible the BAA against is a lot higher than you’d like to see and its letting more runners reach base more often, you let them reach base more often the more often they’re going to score on you.  The more then normal amount of hitters reaching base leads to the higher ERA since the defense isn’t holding them on very well either.  The FIP is a clue to that, in fact the FIP says a lot to the luck this team is having.  While it is common to have an ERA under you FIP to some extent it is never a good sign for your team when the FIP is lower than the ERA.  Pretty much it mean the team is getting unlucky or that the defense is really weakening the teams pitching.  The Rays have a lot of good strikeout pitchers but they also have a good amount of contact pitchers.  Many of which are the relief pitchers.

            So what can we take away from this quick look at the advanced stats and the Ray?  Well we see the hitters are hitting pretty average but the power is non-existent and the lower BABIP means they could just be getting unlucky.  The Pitching is facing a similar problem but they give up to many hits and the BABIP says their getting unlucky.  There’s one more issue about this team that isn’t getting a lot of talk.  If the Rays have so many struggling players why haven’t the brought up a few to replace them?  Well the team is starting to hit rock bottom in their system now and more interesting to note is how many of the teams first round picks have made it to the majors recently.  Evan Longoria and David Price are the only players that have been Rays draft picks that have come up and made a major difference for this team.  Even players like Wil Myers and Desmond Jennings haven’t really lived up to the expectations (yet).

            If the team is starting to struggle in the minors how do they fix the majors?  Sadly the team may have just hit that critical max where they have to choose which to fix.  If they fix the minors they’ll have to give up pieces in the majors to do so and were not talking about players like James Loney or Yunel Escobar.  Were talking Price or Zobrist or Jake McGee level of players which would cripple the team in the short term but potentially bring in a haul and make the system stronger and make a brighter future.  They could also start spending the money to sign free agents and start going the “Yankee’s route” sacrificing the system and prospects that they have left to make the big team competitors.  Both plans come with huge risk and if it doesn’t work for them the team still hits rock bottom, just look at the Astros as an example.  Bottom line there is not quick fix and there’s not easy way out for the Rays this year.  There’s always hope in the future though and I’ll always put my money where Joe Maddon is coaching.

Tony Gwynn: One of the Greats

Tony Gwynn: One of the Greats

            On June 16^th, 2014 baseball lost one of its best players.  Tony Gwynn died at the age of 54 due to throat cancer brought on by years of tobacco chewing.  Today I wanted to do a quick look at Tony’s career and really show everyone how amazing a hitter this man really was.  So lets get started by looking at his career stats and comparing them to the total averages from the years 2008-2013.

	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	BABIP	ISO	wOBA	wRC+
Career	7.7%	4.2%	.338	.388	.459	.847	.341	.120	.370	132
08-13	8.3%	19%	.257	.323	.404	.727	.297	.148	.319	96

            Wow that is amazing to compare isn’t it.  While he never walked much Gwynn was never known for his ability to walk since he had such a smooth swing and such sharp eyes he knew what he could hit.  This fact is proven with that 4.2% K% for his career; think about that for a second.  This day and age we praise players that have a K% of 10% or even 13%, Gwynn had a 4.2% for his career and that to me is just mind-boggling.  I’ve read some reports that said how he had only struck out 3 times in a game 4 times in his career and never struck out 4.  He didn’t take a lot of walks but look at that slash line.  He was still able to maintain an OBP of .388 throughout his career and hit for a staggering .338.  To put that into perspective if *Adam Dunn wanted to hit .300 for his career he’d need to bat 589-589 and to get to Gwynn’s level he’d need to bat 1,066-1,066.

            The one thing you could fault Gwynn for is the lack of HR power only accumulating 135 for his career.  Once again lets look at a comparison; *Cal Ripken Jr. had 431 HR’s and a carer SLG of .447 a very impressive total.  Tony Gwynn had 135 HR’s and a SLG of .459 even higher than Ripken’s career SLG and far less HR’s.  Gwynn was a pure hitter in all the ways possible.  The wRC+ just proves it when he was 32% better than the league at scoring runs.

            This was a short one but it wasn’t going to be a look at his entire career since many of the saber stats that I use aren’t really calculable at this point.  That said I don’t think it matters and the points of how good Gwynn was has been made.  Tony Gwynn stands as one of baseballs best hitters and the sport will miss him dearly.

RIP: Tony “Mr. Padre” Gwynn.

*Trivia taken from @Aceballstats on twitter.

Collin McWho?

Collin McWho?

            You could pretty much sum up the Astro’s season thus for with one simple phrase.  “Where did this guy come from?”  For the most part the team has survived on players that either weren’t relevant last season or just ineffective.  Take today’s pitcher we’ll be looking at, Collin McHugh.  A young journeyman his entire career than all of a sudden a star with the Astros.  So lets take a look at his success and see if there’s anything to say what has caused this amazing improvement.

	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA	WHIP	AVG	FIP	LOB%	ERA-	FIP-
2014	9.94	3.15	0.66	2.82	1.03	.188	3.04	76.8%	71	80
2013	3.81	1.73	2.08	10.04	1.92	.375	5.78	50.5%	247	143
Career	7.79	2.83	1.33	5.67	1.39	.268	4.35	62.4%	143	112

            So I’ll start off by saying I only looked at his major league stats and didn’t add in his minor league stats.  He also pitched a few less games last season compared to what he’s done to this point.  With all this said you’ve already looked at this and shook your head asking yourself “where did this come from!?”  Well like I’ve said in the past these numbers give us the ground works but not the full story.  Still what a transformation this pitcher has made from his early work to now.  Increasing the K% by 2 per 9 is a huge deal and lowering that HR/9 to the levels its at is no small task either.  The most important stat to look at here is the FIP and just how close to the ERA it is since you always expect to see a higher FIP to ERA but his is low even on the FIP side.  League AVG FIP is roughly 3.30 so he’s pitching way better than the rest of the league and it makes me wonder how sustainable it is.  The fact he’s pitching so well and beating his career totals will always make nervous but he’s pitching well and he’s actually lowered the FIP from earlier which to me says this could be legit.  So we know he’s pitching well but lets look at the contact he’s giving up.

Batted Balls

	LD%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB	GB/FB
2014	22.1%	40.4%	37.5%	7.8%	1.08
2013	28.2%	39.8	32.0%	18.2%	1.24
Career	25.3%	38.6%	36.0%	13.5%	1.07

            McHugh has done one thing very well and that’s limit the hard contact.  The LD% is down quite a bit which could mean that teams are having a hard time lining him up for hard hits but he’s also giving up more FB%.  Even though the FB% is up so is the IFFB% which last year was at 6.1% and this year is at a staggering 15.7% which once again adds to the argument of opposing hitters not squaring the ball up.  The GB% being the same makes sense since he is trying to get the soft contact.  Bottom line is McHugh has found a way to limit the hard hits and even get more K’s, next question is how is he doing this.  Lets see what pitches he’s using and see if there’s something that can answer for this success.

            PITCHf/x Pitch Value

	Fastball	Curveball	Slider	Change-up
2014	-0.3	5.2	4.4	0.5
2013	-9.6	0.3	-1.0	-0.9
Career	-16.5	7.8	-0.4	-.02

            From this chart its plan that McHugh has started relying less on the FB and more on his off-speed pitches.  Specifically his CB, he’s increased his percentage thrown from 15.2% last season to 23.3% this season which is the biggest jump of all his pitchers.  It seems to be working for him since the CB is his best-valued pitch saving an average of 5.5 runs above average.  He’s also really backed off his FB going from 52.4% last season to 43.7% this season.  The decreased use seems to be improving the pitch but he also is using his 2-Seamer far less, a pitch that was causing issues for him in the past.  What we see here could be a good reason for his ability to keep the opposing hitters from getting solid contact.

            PITCHf/x Plate Discipline

	O-Swing	Z-Swing	Swing	O-Contact	Z-Contact	Contact	Zone
2014	31.5%	63.3%	47.7%	60.7%	83.5%	76.0%	50.2%
2013	33.3%	65.5%	50.8%	76.1%	86.4%	83.3%	53.8%
Career	32.6%	63.7%	48.1%	69.8%	84.0%	79.2%	49.8%

            Now here is some differences and could explain some of the improvements.  We can see that he’s been able to decrease the swings that batter take in and out of the zone but the big difference is the Contact% dropping 7% overall and a lot of that comes from the pitches outside the zone.  While you don’t expect that to be too high in the first place he has been able to avoid contact from hitters outside the zone while still getting them to swing about the same rate as he normally does.  This could explain why his K% and BB% are up so dramatically.  If batters are making less contact but still swinging that means more strikes but if you live outside the zone to much you’ll walk more hitters.

            We’ve really learned quite a bit about a pitcher who’s career seemed to be stuck in the minors for all eternity.  I have read many reports on how McHugh had been learning to throw his CB with more efficiency but this is above even what I expected to see him capable off.  The key thing we learned is his ability to get batters to chase the pitches outside the zone and make the contact in the zone very weak causing less hard hit balls.  Is McHugh the next big pitcher?  Sadly I don’t think so but he is going to be a good solid pitcher moving forward.