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Suddenly, problems in the Lonestar State

Posted by Stephen R. at 3:00 pm No Responses »
Sep 032010

hamilton

The stars are night are big and bright…Photo courtesy of daylife.com

As the Yankees and the Rays battle for the AL East division crown and the Twins fight off the White Sox, the Rangers enter September as the clear favorite to win the AL West.  Barring something catastrophic, they will win wrest the division title away from the Angels and return to the playoffs for the first time since 1999.  The Rangers have been a model of playoff futility in the past.  Texas is one of three MLB franchises never to appear in the World Series, with the Mariners and Nationals being the others, and is the oldest franchise of that group.  They have never won a playoff series, and have only won one single playoff game in their three appearances.  Yet, this year hopes in Texas are high.  Texas is a club with a lot of young talent and high variance players, and mostly everything has gone right for them this year.  They’re getting an MVP performance from Josh Hamilton and great results from starters CJ Wilson and Colby Lewis, and they added one of the best pitchers in the game in Cliff Lee in July.  The Rangers are the American League version of the Cincinnati Reds: everything has clicked at once, and nothing major has gone wrong.  Yet, not all is well in Texas.

The Texas Rangers have watched Cliff Lee struggle after snatching him out from underneath the Yankees’ nose in July.  In 80 innings, Lee has a 4.79 ERA and has yielded 10 home runs.  He has still maintained good peripherals with 72 strikeouts and 8 walks, but the results just haven’t been there.  Recently, Lee admitted that he has been suffering from lower back discomfort, and returned to Texas to receive an injection. The Rangers are optimistic that he will start on Tuesday, but the Cliff Lee experiment in Texas has not gone well so far.  Adding to the Rangers’ worries is the fact that Josh Hamilton’s knee seems to be worsening.  His knee has been something that has bothered him all year, and he has received two cortisone injections already in an attempt to alleviate the pain.  However, the pain appears to be getting worse.  While another cortisone injection might help, most clubs don’t like to give more than two in a single season.  So instead the Rangers gave him an injection of the lubricant Synvisc.  Hamilton has reported that his knee feels 40-50 percent better, and he has been able to perform at peak levels all season despite the pain.  However, if the pain continues to persist and the knee deteriorates further, Hamilton’s knee could be a serious problem for Texas.

These aren’t the Rangers’ only problems.  Their rotation behind Cliff Lee has big questions.  Derek Holland has struggled with injury and inconsistency this year, despite his immense talent and impressive minor-league pedigree.  CJ Wilson has been a revelation for the Rangers, but has now thrown 171 innings on the year, 100 more than his major league high and around 40 more than his career high established as a 21 year-old in A/AA ball nine years ago.  On the offensive side, the Rangers have seen Vladimir Guerrero cool off in a major way: since the All-Star Break, he is batting .238/.284/.368 with 6 HR.  After fielding Cristian Guzman and varying outfield platoons, the Rangers have finally gotten  reinforcements with the returns of Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz.  However, neither of those players are the paragons of health and seem to be a constant risk of straining a groin (Kinsler) or hamstring (Cruz).

The futility of the Rangers franchise is somewhat sad.  To have only won one playoff game in franchise history is pitiful, especially considering the kind of talent that has passed through Texas in the past decade.  Yet thanks to some smart managing in the past (the Teixeira trade, in particular) and some aggressive maneuvering this season, the Rangers are set to make the playoffs this year and do so with two of the best players in baseball.  Yet, there are major injury questions surrounding this club, and the absence of either Hamilton or Lee could be devastating to their postseason chances.  Fortunately for them, they have a giant lead in the AL West and can afford to rest their players down the stretch.  But a Texas Rangers ballclub at less than 100% might find their postseason visit cut short yet again.

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How do you judge a guy like David Phelps?

Posted by EJ Fagan at 1:00 pm 6 Responses »
Sep 032010

In many ways, the really talented guys in the system are easy to judge. Jesus Montero has a great scouting report, hits well, and meets expectations, or hits poorly and fails to meet expectations. The really fringy guys are easy to judge as well. Eric Wordekemper does not have major league stuff, so his performance doesn’t really matter. The guys in between are the hard part. David Phelps is an experienced, mostly talented starting pitcher whom the Yankees drafted out of Notre Damn in 2008.

After thinking about Phelps, the content of this post has changed. I originally wanted to sit down and write a “David Phelps, meet Pittsburgh Pirates”, but I think that I may be wrong. If I apply the criteria for a good prospect laid out in this post, I think Phelps actually stacks up pretty well. To review: those criteria are fastball velocity, innings pitched, strikeout rate and walk rate. In all of those departments, Phelps has made key improvements over 2009. Before I go into the criteria, here are his statistics:

Year Age Tm ERA G GS IP H R ER HR BB SO H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
2008 21 Staten Island 2.72 15 15 72.2 67 28 22 4 18 52 8.3 0.5 2.2 6.4 2.89
2009 22 2 Teams 2.38 26 26 151.0 151 57 40 10 31 122 9.0 0.6 1.8 7.3 3.94
2009 22 Charleston 2.80 19 19 112.2 117 48 35 9 25 90 9.3 0.7 2.0 7.2 3.60
2009 22 Tampa 1.17 7 7 38.1 34 9 5 1 6 32 8.0 0.2 1.4 7.5 5.33
2010 23 2 Teams 2.57 25 24 150.2 134 51 43 6 36 137 8.0 0.4 2.2 8.2 3.81
2010 23 Trenton 2.04 14 14 88.1 63 21 20 2 23 84 6.4 0.2 2.3 8.6 3.65
2010 23 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre 3.32 11 10 62.1 71 30 23 4 13 53 10.3 0.6 1.9 7.7 4.08
3 Seasons 2.52 66 65 374.1 352 136 105 20 85 311 8.5 0.5 2.0 7.5 3.66
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/3/2010.

Fastball Velocity – We’ve heard reports that Phelps throws between 89 and 95 mph with a two seem fastball. In reality, he’s probably a 90-93 mph thrower with a little bit of sink. That’s pretty strong, and he compliments it with a newly-improved slider. The sinker-slider combination is a pretty classic recipe for pitching, but also tends to produce misleading minor league numbers. For whatever reason, minor leaguers can’t handle the sinker-slider combination in any way proportional to how major leaguers handle it. I can’t count the number of sinker-slider guys who put up great numbers (but, and we’ll get to this, usually strikeout-light numbers) in High-A and Double-A before being knocked out in Triple-A or the majors. Hockey fans might know this as the “Alexander Daigle” effect. Luckily, the Yankees understand this, and it hasn’t seemed to ruin their confidence in Phelps.

Innings Pitched - Since being drafted, Phelps has been a healthy, reliable innings eater. He has yet to miss a start, and has put up a pretty consistent 5.8-6.0 innings per start rate all the way through the minor leagues. This means that he is fairly economical with his pitch counts, and consistent week to week. His healthiness is another big plus.

Strikeout Rate – Here’s the big improvement. Sinker-slider pitchers tend to dominate the low minors, but peter out as they rise through the minor leagues. Phelps has actually done the opposite. His K rate has risen as he has rises. Much of this can be owed to an improved slider. Phelps has also been knowing as more of a pitcher than a thrower, so there could be a little bit of added pitching aptitude in there too. His K rate dipped a bit in a half-season of Triple-A ball, but it still remained elevated from previous levels. The Yankees have been promoting him out of pure confidence.

Walk rate – Phelps has excellent control. He has enough stuff to throw strikes, and enough command to not throw balls. His walk rate has been pretty consistent. If nothing else, Phelps will be a major league starter somewhere just on the basis of being able to throw low 90s strikes.

The big question? Will Phelps be throwing his strikes out a first-division team like the Yankees, or will he join the ranks of interesting Yankee prospects throwing for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After thinking about it for a little bit, and sticking with my chosen criteria, I think that Phelps is going to be good enough to pitch for the Yankees. He has fewer warning signs than Ivan Nova, even if his ceiling is lower. The Yankees can probably rely on Phelps to be their first man out of the minors next season, and I could even see them give him an outside shot to earn the job in spring training. A 3.32 ERA at Triple-A is nothing to sniff at, and its made even better by his consistent K/BB ratio. He’s changed my opinion is six short months, and I hope the Yankees have noticed too.

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Examining the Other Side

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 11:00 am 2 Responses »
Sep 032010

Over the last few months, I’ve looked at Derek Jeter’s season from a singular perspective: that of Jeter himself. Granted, that’s what makes the most sense. Jeter is the player and he is the one who’s most responsible for his performance (or lack thereof). There is, however, the possibility that pitchers are attacking Jeter differently and he’s been unable to adjust.

To test this theory, I decided to look at Jeter’s pitch data on Texas Leaguers to see if pitchers were approaching Jeter’s at bats differently over the last two years. I chose the last two seasons, a relatively small amount of data admittedly, because they highlight Jeter’s biggest problem this year: his insane ground ball rate. In 2009, his GB% was essentially at his career average (over by about .04). This year, as we know, it’s much higher. Maybe Jeter’s gotten more balls thrown to him down in the zone in 2010 and that’s leading him to hammer the ball down and burn some worms.

First let’s look at the swing data and see what we can find:

2009

2010

Maybe I’m missing something, but I looked at those pictures a lot last night while writing this and could not find much difference between them. It appears that Jeter’s swinging at the changeup down and away a little more and he’s swinging at more balls out of the zone (highest career OOZ%, though it’s worth noting he’s below the league average OOZ which is way up to 29.2% this year). The fastball placement–mostly up and away–is pretty similar, too. The difference, then, isn’t what the pitchers are doing against Jeter, but what he’s doing against the pitches they’re throwing.

The take plots don’t offer much either.

2009

2010

It seems that 2010 features fewer takes on the inner part o the plate. Maybe that’s leading to the influx in groundballs. But, that’s more of a Jeter issue than a pitcher issue.

Derek has seen about 6% fewer fastballs (four seam and two seam combined) this year, though, so maybe that’s an issue. That is the only real noticeable difference in pitches he’s seen this year, along with an uptick in two seamers from 3.5% to 12.2%.

I’m trying to find any angle I can to explain Jeter’s struggles in 2010 but I’m having trouble doing that. It seems that there is one explanation, the simplest explanation possible: he’s just having a bad year.

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