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Discussion: Late Start Times Bad For Baseball

Posted by Moshe Mandel at 5:04 pm 12 Responses »
Oct 082010

When writers such as the media pundits in the Daily News and New York Post used to bemoan late MLB playoff starting times, I would roll my eyes at their complaints. They came off as crotchety old men who were out of touch with the bulk of the fanbase. Baseball games starting in prime time seemed natural to me, and if they ended late at night, so be it. Now, as these playoffs begin and I see another 3 games starting after 8PM slated for this ALDS, I cringe and wonder whether those writers were right after all.

I am a night owl, and will frequently be up until 1 or 2 am on a weeknight. Yet, with school and 3 kids exhausting me during the day and the kids certain to wake me up early the next morning, I find myself tiring much earlier than I have in the past. I was thrilled to see last night’s 6pm game on the schedule, and it was in fact a much better experience than the 8:37 start from the night before. For the first time, I could envision a situation 5, maybe 10, years down the road where I would actually be forced to go to sleep in middle of a playoff game so that I could function as an employee, husband, and father the next day. I am starting to gain an understanding of what those writers were complaining about, and I can only imagine that there are others who have a similar problem. Another issue is that later games are preventing children from watching playoff games. Essentially, MLB has carved out a playoff audience from ages 15-40 or so, and is limiting itself to partial game viewers in other age brackets.

I wanted to ask whether I am just being a whiny fool here, or whether others feel that this is a legitimate problem. Do you think MLB should have earlier start times for East Coast playoff games? Or are you just fine with the way things are?

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What the First Two Days of LDS Play has Taught Us

Posted by Rebecca Glass at 3:00 pm 30 Responses »
Oct 082010

(Moshe asked me to repost this, and so I have)

The baseball playoffs are just three days old, but already there seem to be certain things that we’ve, if not necessarily learned anew, then have had reinforced to the point where it’s almost comical.

1) What postseason jitters?

In their first career postseason starts, Roy Halladay, Tim Lincecum and CJ Wilson were all fantastic–of course, Halladay’s no-hitter and Lincecum’s 14-strike out game, with game scores of 94 and 96 respectively, exist on a different level entirely.

In fact, it’s going to be a fun question to ponder–which pitcher had the better game?

Lincecum’s bevy of strikeouts argues that he had better pure swing-and-miss stuff (and he had a lot of those, swings and misses, 31 total), but the Reds never came close to hitting Halladay–their hardest hit baseball came off the bat of their pitcher, Travis Wood.

Halladay’s stuff was so good, that by the fifth inning the tweets were telling everyone to call friends and neighbors, that the one walk seemed an unfortunate aberration more than anything else.

You also have to consider that the Reds offense is invariably considered better than the Braves’, and that AT&T Park plays bigger than Citizens Bank Ballpark.

Then again, when you’re striking out fourteen batters, you could be pitching in a silo and it still wouldn’t matter.

There’s also that the Giants won that game 1-0, the lone run scoring after the umpire botched a call at second base, which brings me to point number two

2) The umpires are not very good.

Yesterday, in the River Ave Blues chat, RAB writer Mike Axisa mentioned that umpires are loathe to toss managers from postseason games, and yet yesterday two managers were so ejected.

No one is blaming the managers.

So far we have egregious strike zones in the Rays/Rangers and Yankees/Twins series, Greg Golson’s should-have-ended-the-game catch, Posey’s-steal-but-he-was-out of second that eventually scored last night’s only run, a nice summation of Hunter Wendelstedt’s inconsistent zone last night, Carlos Peña’s hbp-but-was-he-really, so on and so fourth.

There are six umpires assigned to postseason series.

Get it right, or go get robots.

3) The Yankees own the Twins in postseason play.

I’ve been over the tropes in my recaps, but when Minnesota’s scored first in eight straight games and lost all eight, you kind of have to start to wonder if maybe the Twins are hoping that just once the Yankees score first, or something.

Like the games last season (with the exception of last year’s ALDS game one), these games have been close and decided in the seventh inning on, where the Minnesota bullpen simply has no match for the Yankees’ relievers, even the ones not named Mariano Rivera.

You almost hate to give credit to the idea that the Yankees’ are in the Twins head, but barring a spectacular collapse on the part of the Yankees, you almost have to wonder if maybe the Yankees played down for the Wild Card…okay, it’s unlikely, but it’s hard to argue that thus far the Twins in round one has made for a much better outcome than the Rangers in round one may have been.

4) The Rays are not infallible. Much was made that the winner of the AL East was arguably the best team in the American League, but not only have the Rays lost the first two games of their ALDS matchup, you can argue that they’ve hardly even competed.

Part of this is no doubt due to the stellar pitching of Cliff Lee and CJ Wilson, but Tampa’s first two starters, David Price and James Shields, haven’t held onto their end of the bargain, allowing Texas to stake to large leads early, giving the Rangers’ pitchers all they need to get their job done.

Yankee fans are no doubt rooting for the Rays to win the next two games and thus force a game five, and thus hopes of “tiring out” their potential ALCS opponent (assuming the Yankees hold up their end of the bargain), but now it’s the Rangers that have the benefit of heading home, and all the confidence in the world…

Good Wood: the battle of Kerry and Chad is over

Posted by Stephen R. at 1:02 pm 3 Responses »
Oct 082010

wood

OK Orlando, here comes a fastball.  Ready?  Strike three. Photo courtesy of daylife.com

Back in July the Yankees and the Rays both acquired bullpen arms to prepare for the stretch run.  At the time, I was torn between which team got the better reliever.  In my piece Wood vs. Qualls, I discussed the differences between the two pickups: Wood had higher upside but health concerns, while Qualls was a groundball machine who had seemingly run into horrific luck on balls in play but possessed less strikeout ability.  At the time I concluded that I preferred the Yankees’ haul:

The Yankees now have a potentially-dominant reliever able to take the reins on the 8th inning and combine with Robertson and Marte [note: whoops!] in the playoffs to give Girardi a potent arsenal.  The Rays have a stabilizer, the type of pitcher that can generate ground balls and limit the free passes, a guy that they hope can fill the role that Balfour played before going on the DL after hurting himself rough-housing in the clubhouse.

All things considered, I would probably prefer Wood to Qualls.  The Yankees only realistically need 30-40 solid innings out of their reliever, and while I tend to expect Qualls to rebound by the end of the year I am enticed by Wood’s potential dominance.  Hopefully the Yankees can catch lightning in a bottle. Regardless, both clubs did well to take on relievers with good track records and decent upside for minimal cost.  The moves were savvy, the types with potential to pay big dividends in October.

In August and September, Chad Qualls saw action in 27 games, pitching 21 innings.  He struck out 15 and walked 6, and allowed 15 runs, 13 of them earned.  This amounts to an ERA of 5.57 and a FIP of 3.89.  Qualls saw an improvement in his BABIP, as it dropped over a hundred points from his .434 mark in Arizona to .332 with Tampa.  Meanwhile in New York, Kerry Wood gradually grew into the role of eighth inning setup man.  In the regular season he pitched 26 innings, striking out 31 and walking 18.  He allowed only 2 earned runs, and held batters to a .161/.311/.195 line against.  His ERA was a microscopic 0.69 and his FIP was 3.39.  The closeness in their respective FIPs aside, the regular season was a clear win for Wood.

In the postseason both Wood and Qualls have seen action in both games.  On Wednesday, Qualls relieved David Price and pitched a scoreless inning and a third.  The game was already pretty much out of reach by then.  The Rangers  were winning 5-0 and Lee was large and in charge.  Yesterday, Qualls relieved James “Big Mouth” Shields with runners on first and second and one out and Michael Young at the plate.  After running the count to 2-2, Young tried to check his swing on a slider down in the zone.  The umpire said he held up but the Rays players were apoplectic, several of them screaming at the umpire from the dugout.  On the next pitch, Young golfed a 94 mph sinker over the center field wall to give the Rangers a 5-0 lead, and they never looked back.  Checked swing aside, this was a big moment for Qualls and he couldn’t get the job done.

Kerry Wood has also pitched in both playoff games, each time as the eighth inning option.  In Game 1 he entered the eighth with a two run lead to face Michael Cuddyer, and promptly struck him out.  He followed that up by walking Jason Kubel, and then allowed a single to Danny Valencia, meaning that the Twins had runners on first and second with one out.  Girardi left him in to face Hardy, and Wood got him to ground out to Cano.  The runners advanced to second and third, and Girardi brought in Rivera to face the lefty Span with two outs.  All in all, it was a decent enough outing, but not his best.  Apparently he was saving his best for last night.

As the Twins and Yankees headed to the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees led 5-2 and brought in Wood to face the J.J. Hardy.  Wood simply embarrassed him.  After missing with a first pitch fastball, a 95 mph heater down in the zone, Wood threw Hardy two straight sliders.  The first one was taken for a strike, and Hardy swung and missed on the second one.  These were excellent sliders with great horizontal action.   They broke away from the right-hander Hardy like a cutter, darting away from him at the last second.  Now with the count 1-2, Wood didn’t return to the slider or the fastball.  Instead, he dropped a 78 mph curveball on the inside part of the plate for strike three.  You can see the knee-buckling curveball in this video clip on MLB.com.  It was hardly fair.  In terms of the sequence and the quality of pitches it was one of the best at-bats I’ve seen from a Yankee reliever this season.

After Hardy, Wood took on Denard Span.  Wood went to the fastball first and got a called strike on a 95 mph heater on the outside corner.  He then threw Span a slider that cut in his hands, and Span could only foul it off.  In a way, it was a lot like the way Rivera’s cutter treats lefties.  He followed that slider with another one, this one over the middle of the plate, and Span flied out to center. In the last at-bat against Hudson, Wood went exclusively with the fastball, daring Hudson to hit it.  He threw him three straight heaters around 95 mph, and Hudson struck out on three pitches.  Inning over.  Enter Sandman.  Exit light, enter night.

If you had asked me to describe my absolute best-case scenario when the Yankees acquired Wood two months ago, I would have said something like this: “Gradually earn the manager’s trust in low-leverage positions as he gets fully healthy, then emerge as a late-inning shutdown option as the season moves into September”.  Yet, as optimistic as I was, I didn’t actually expect it to happen.  Kerry Wood still walks way too many batters, and there’s always the looming specter of a blowup or a shoulder blowout.  But here we are in October, and there was Kerry Wood standing on the mound in the eighth inning putting the proverbial ether rag over the Twins’ faces last night.  Realistically, the Yankees only need 5 to 8 more innings out of Kerry Wood this year.  If he can pitch the way he did last night, the games will effectively be over in the seventh inning.  The Wood vs. Qualls battle is practically over.  This one was a clear win for the Yankees.

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Andy via PFX

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 11:00 am 9 Responses »
Oct 082010

Yesterday, I went to work at 4 PM. By the time I got out, the Yankees had already defeated the Minnesota Twins 5-2 to take a two games to none lead in the American League Division Series. (Sidebar: anyone need SAT tutoring?)

What I wanted to see most was Andy Pettitte. He had one good start after coming off of the disabled list and two shaky ones. While we were all confident in Pettitte’s ability and experience, we couldn’t help but feel a bit of trepidation as he took the hill in Game Two. After all, how did we know what Andy we’d get? Luckily, we got the Andy we’ve come to know and love.

Pettitte allowed just five hits and one walk against the Twins. He surrendered two runs and struck out four. Since I missed the game entirely, the only thing I have to go off of is Andy’s PitchFX data. Let’s have a look.

Andy threw just 88 pitches, 58 of them for strikes (65.91%). He used mostly fastballs, splitting the pitches between his four seamer (37), cutter (27), and two seamer (15), while sprinkling in a curveball here and there (8). He was most accurate with the cutter, throwing it for a strike 70.37% of the time.

In terms of swinging and missing, Pettitte got seven whiffs. One was on a straight fastball and the other six were on his cutter, which is a great sign.

Here’s the strikezone plot, with pitch type labeled:

We can see the usual strategy with his cutters (the black squares): hit the inside corner against right handed batters. The two seamer was a little more spread out, but stayed towards the inside corner against lefties.

Normally, I’d be worried about the lack of curveballs, but Andy’s location on his fastballs and their variants seemed to be fine, as was the movement. From the looks of the curveballs, it seems as though Andy was trying to back leg and back door the pitch to right handed batters.

Pay attention to the black dots here:

Andy was able to get strikeouts in a few different parts of the plate, and that’s really encouraging. The fact that he was able to get those two strikeouts way down in the zone is always a great sign: guys were chasing against his pitches.

This start looks great by the pitch data and I’m sure it looked just as great live and in color. I’m annoyed that I didn’t see it, but I’ll sacrifice that for a win. Pettitte should be able to build on this moving forward and I think it’s safe to say we don’t need to be worried about him as the playoffs (hopefully) progress.

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