Mets Game 143 Recap – 2-out RBIs a-go-go! September 14, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Sports.Tags: 2-out RBIs, Braves, Mets, RBIs
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After yesterday afternoon’s roller coaster, the Mets are at magic number 11. That’s after a – frankly – ridiculous outing where the Mets were actually at a prior 0% win probability. Peter Moylan‘s strikeout of Kevin Plawecki in the ninth inning, 3 runs up, actually moved the win probability to 100% for the Braves, meaning (roughly) that from that state there was no expectation that the Mets would win the game. Never one to listen to statistics, Juan Lagares doubled, Curtis Granderson walked, and Daniel Murphy promptly tied the game with a home run. That’s three two-out RBIs. Later on, Kirk Nieuwenhuis scored from 3rd when Plawecki reached on an error with two outs. Lagares walked, and then Granderson walked to force in Ruben Tejada, and Murphy walked to force Plawecki home. Though Kevin didn’t get an RBI for his play Granderson and Murphy each notched a 2-out RBI.
For the Braves’ part, Andrelton Simmons and Adonis Garcia each notched an RBI with two outs as well.
There’s an underlying mythology that Mets fans hold – the Mets are killer in the clutch. They play better with 2 outs than any other team. For the most part, that’s actually true – the Mets lead the league in 2-out RBIs in 2015 with 266. What’s more, they’re fourth-best in the league on defense, with only 174 2-out RBIs allowed this year. They’re in the upper half for go-aheads with 2 outs, as well, with 47 (behind the Yankees’ 58 and nine other teams).
One side note: the Mets have 13 walks with the bases loaded – that is, run-scoring walks. Granderson leads the team with 5. Of those 13, 12 – Twelve! – came with two outs. Other teams have 194 walks with the bases loaded, and 102 of them came with two outs. After Granderson’s five, seven players (Jose Bautista, Yonder Alonso, Michael Brantley, Marcel Ozuna, Francisco Lindor, Josh Donaldson, and Logan Forsythe) are tied with 3. All three of Donaldson and Lindor’s RBI walks came with two outs; take note, there are two Blue Jays in that list. The Blue Jays have five walks with the bases loaded and two outs.
That’s right. The Blue Jays, combined, have as many of those as Curtis Granderson, and Granderson’s have all come since August 8. The Mets’ team OBP had hovered between .290 and .311 for the first few months of the season, but ballooned to .337 in August and .378 in twelve September games. The Mets have been setting the table and when you play the game right, these oportunities present themselves.
Clippard’s Vulture Win and the Braves’ Double Plays September 13, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Sports.Tags: Braves, double plays, Mets, vulture wins
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During last night’s 6-4 win over the Braves, Mets setup man Tyler Clippard allowed three runs in the eighth, when Adonis Garcia hit a game-tying home run. Tyler finished the inning gamely, and then (through no fault of Clippard’s) the Mets scored two runs – Kelly Johnson batted Eric Young, Jr., home off of closer Arodys Vizcaino, and Yoenis Cespedes batted Johnson home off of reliever Peter Moylan.
Clippard’s sixth blown save of the year was a special kind of decision called a vulture win, which exists when a pitcher blows a save but gets the win anyway. It was Tyler’s first this year. Jeurys Familia relieved him immediately in the ninth for the save. Of the 492 blown saves thus far in 2015, 185 were in games the pitcher’s team won. Vulture wins are a very tiny proportion of those blown saves. Brad Boxberger has two; so do David Robertson, Greg Holland, J.J. Hoover, John Axford, Justin Wilson, and Luke Gregerson. No one has three this year.
In addition, the Braves (led by Andrelton Simmons) turned four inning-ending double plays with a runner on third. Of the 2228 inning-ending double plays this year, 429 came with third base occupied. Atlanta, including last night’s 4, has turned 27, or over 6% of them – almost double what would be expected. The Cubs have turned the fewest, with 6. 7, including all four of last night’s, were turned behind Braves starter Williams Perez.
Behind all of this, Noah Syndergaard shined, facing 223 batters in 7 innings of one-run baseball. Despite his hopeless inability to bunt (which set up a double play with Wilmer Flores on third), he managed to pitch to a 76 game score and hold the game in check so that even Clippard’s buzzarding didn’t cause any major issues.
Give Noah a fair shake. September 12, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Sports.Tags: Noah Syndergaard
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Noah Syndergaard is set to start tonight’s game in Atlanta. Syndergaard has had a tough year on the road: he’s 7-1 with a 2.15 ERA in 10 starts at Citi Field but 1-5 with a 4.91 ERA in 10 road starts. However, the offense hasn’t been good on the road, and there’s an argument that the defense hasn’t been supportive on the road.
In Noah’s road starts, the team (not Noah, necessarily) has beaten the Dodgers and Phillies, and lost to the Cubs, Pirates, Padres, Braves, Cardinals, Nationals, Rays, and Orioles. In his home starts, the Mets have won against the Brewers, Phillies, Blue Jays, Reds, Diamondbacks, Padres, Nationals, Rockies, and Red Sox; his only home loss is to the Giants. The road teams Noah has beaten have a combined record of 134-148; the teams he’s lost to on the road combine to 585-539. Meanwhile, his loss to the Giants at home was Chris Heston‘s no-hitter, and his wins came against the bottom-dwelling Red Sox, Reds, Rockies, and Phillies, and the fourth-place Padres, Brewers, and Braves, the balance coming against the Nationals (who he lost to on the road) and 3rd-place Diamondbacks (still below .500). It’s true that Noah isn’t as good at home as we’d like to pretend.
He isn’t as bad on the road as we think, either, though. Three of those road losses are to the ridiculous NL Central, including the Cubs, Pirates, and Cardinals. (The Cubs are in third place and still have more wins than the NL East-leading Mets.) He’s overall faced a tough schedule on the road and not received much help – 29 runs of support (that’s 1.2 below the league average) on the road, compared with 48 at home (over 2/3 of a run above the league average).
Credit Flickr user slgckgc
That corresponds to his 1-2 road record in August, bolstered by Yoenis Cespedes, Juan Uribe, and Kelly Johnson and receiving 4.67 runs per game of support . (He’s 3-0 at home in August.)
In addition, Noah’s batting average on balls in play (BAbip) at home is .240. The league average hovers around .290, meaning that more balls in play are hoovered up by the defense at home than would be expected. On the road, not so good – a Farnsworthian .364. Without a doubt, Noah has some issues – he more than doubles his home walk numbers on the road from 9 to 20 – but he’s gotten some very unlucky hits as well.
Finally, a piece of advice: Let Noah face no more than 18 batters. When facing batters for the first time, he holds them to a .288 on-base percentage, and pushes that down to .246 in the second appearance. That balloons to .333 when a batter sees him for the third time. With a strong and rested Mets bullpen, don’t be afraid to hook Syndergaard for long man Sean Gilmartin or lefty specialist Dario Alvarez. Make sure that if you leave him in, you have a strong defense behind him, and for heaven’s sake, help him out by producing some runs for him.
Mets Game 141 – Expect big things! September 11, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Sports.Tags: Braves, bullpen usage, Mets, preview
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Atlanta scored 2 runs last night, significantly below their season average of 3.59. Even their average is half a run below the National League’s 4.12 run-per-game mark. That’s a fantastic situation for Mets starter Steven Matz, who will no doubt feel under some pressure to maintain his 1.89 ERA; Matz is facing an Atlanta lineup that has produced 30 runs over their last 10 games, including 7 and 8 against the Phillies, who may technically be their own AAA team at this point.
Matz is coming off a finger blister that the Mets say probably wont affect his pitching. Nonetheless, Bartolo Colon, Dario Alvarez, and Addison Reed combined to keep the bullpen fairly fresh tomorrow. That means that if Matz falters early, Sean Gilmartin is available for long relief; Tyler Clippard and Jeurys Familia are both rested in the case of a tight game. Though Bobby Parnell has had a rough season, I fully expect Terry Collins to use him in case of a big deficit. Hansel Robles is unavailable; no date has been set for his return.
Arodys Vizcaino hasn’t pitched since the 7th. He hasn’t allowed a run on long rest this season and has tended to pitch better on longer rest. Starter Matt Wisler had a stellar throw-day relief appearance on the 6th, though he’s been inconsistent this year. Rested starters David Wright, Daniel Murphy, and Travis d’Arnaud may take advantage of Wisler’s up and down year. However, note that Wisler threw 8 innings of 1-run ball against the Mets on June 19; it was a 1-0 game but for a double allowed by Gilmartin in the 8th. It’s tough to say which Wisler you’ll get, but we’re fortunate to have a tight bullpen in case our rookie starter is just good and not great.
Update – Robles out; Clippard, Familia unavailable September 10, 2015
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Hansel Robles has left the Mets to attend to a death in the family, says Adam Rubin. As expected, Tyler Clippard and Jeurys Familia are unavailable; expect Addison Reed to close.
Preview for Mets Game 140, September 10 September 10, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Sports.Tags: #imwith47, Braves, bullpen usage, gratuitous Hansel Robles, Mets
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Coming into tonight’s game against the Mets, the Braves are on a Meh streak: they took two from a terrible Phillies team over the past few nights, with scores of 7-2, 0-5, 8-1. Closer Arodys Vizcaino hasn’t pitched since the first game of that series; over those three games, the Braves bullpen threw 6 innings and gave up 3 runs, but all of those were in the 0-5 loss. The bullpen has thrown 422 1/3 innings this year and has a 4.67 ERA, but expect to see Vizcaino regardless as it’s been a few days since he worked.
Starter Shelby Miller has been hot and cold; he’s coming off a 4 1/3, 6-earned-run outing on September 5th, and he’s allowed 3 or more earned runs in three of his last four. However, when he’s good, he’s good: he has 2 complete games this year, both shutouts. Miller will probably be given a lot of rope tonight, which is fantastic for Lucas Duda and Daniel Murphy; Murphy is 3 for 7 lifetime against Miller with a double, and Duda is 3 for 8 with a double and a home run. David Wright is 3 for 6 against Miller, with Juan Uribe 1 for 7; Uribe’s OPS in Turner Field is an anemic .638, so expect to see Juan as a pinch hitter if you see him at all.
The Closer Monkey has Tyler Clippard on the vulture save watch because Jeurys Familia has pitched in the last three games, but Clippard has pitched in three of the last four and allowed runs in two of them; Clippard may come in for emergency firefighting, but with Clippard and Familia both fairly gassed (6 2/3 innings combined since September 6), I think it’s more likely we’ll see Hansel Robles handed the eighth and Addison Reed take the ninth. Again, that’s if we see them at all; Bartolo Colon hasn’t pitched back-to-back complete games since 2003, but the way the Mets have been hitting, Bart may get us seven or eight good innings and a strong lead. In that case we’d be more likely to see Bobby Parnell given an opportunity to win the fans back.
The World’s Worst Mets Preview September 9, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Mets, Nationals, preview
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Tonight, the Mets start Jacob deGrom against the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg. Seven current Mets have OBPs above .400 against Strasburg, and that list looks a little bit like a lineup:
| Name | PA | AB | H | HR | BB | SO | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lucas Duda | 6 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | .333 | .667 | .333 |
| Travis d’Arnaud | 3 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .667 | .667 | .667 |
| Curtis Granderson | 7 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | .400 | .571 | .400 |
| Michael Cuddyer | 6 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .500 | .500 | .500 |
| David Wright | 4 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .500 | .500 | .500 |
| Kevin Plawecki | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .500 | .500 | 1.000 |
| Wilmer Flores | 5 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .400 | .400 | .600 |
| Total | 54 | 49 | 15 | 0 | 4 | 13 | .306 | .370 | .347 |
(Full list here– current Mets are .306/.370/.347 vs Strasburg).
Seems reasonable – Granderson in right, Michael Conforto in left, Yoenis Cespedes in center, d’Arnaud catching, Duda at first, Flores at short, Daniel Murphy at second, and Wright at third. (Murphy is 1 for 6 lifetime against Strasburg.) That leaves Cuddyer to come off the bench as an early pinch hitter; Plawecki, despite his .500 OBP against Strasburg, is probably not our best option off the bench. [NOTE: Cuddyer is unavailable. Mea culpa.]
Meanwhile, with Ryan Zimmerman day to day, the Nats are missing his .375/.333/.350 against deGrom; that leaves their best options as Yunel Escobar (.500/.545/.600 in 10 plate appearances) and Bryce Harper (.385/.429/.462 in 14). Jose Lobaton (.500/.500/.500 in 2) and Ian Desmond (.308/.308/.538 in 13) also appear to be threats, but of course Desmond’s defense makes him a double-edged sword. In 109 plate appearances, current Nationals hit .223/.250/.350 against deGrom.
In a crucial late-season game, this one looks promising for the Mets.
Visualizing 2-Out RBIs September 8, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics, Sports.Tags: 2-out RBIs, data visualization
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In yesterday’s win against the Nationals, Yoenis Cespedes hit a crucial RBI double to score David Wright. What’s more, this came with two outs. In every game against the Nationals, the Mets’ postseason is at stake, so even though Cespedes’ hit wasn’t a go-ahead run, the insurance was key.
The Mets haven’t had a great season with two outs; they have 182, 24th in the Majors. Of those 182, 25 were hit by Lucas Duda, who isn’t even active (he’s on the disabled list). That’s quite distinct from Kansas City, which has 51 of its 2-out RBIs credit to Kendrys Morales; Duda, the Mets’ leader in 2-out RBIs, isn’t even in the top 40. I thought it would be interesting to mine whether teams with a lot of 2-out RBIs won a lot of games, and whether there was any information gained if most of those runs being batted in by one player.
In the graph above, the number of 2-out RBIs this season is on the horizontal axis, and the number of wins this season is on the vertical axis. The size of each dot represents the number of RBIs owed to the team’s top scorer.
There’s a weak correlation between wins and 2-out RBIs – about .25. That makes sense, given that more runs lead to more wins (correlation .39 this year). There’s a weaker correlation (.16) between the number of RBIs with 2 outs from the leading scorer and wins; that’s probably due to the runs effect, to be honest.
Take a look at Kansas City in the upper right, with lots of 2-out RBIs and Kendrys Morales’ enormous dot. Then, take a look at St Louis in the upper left – Kolten Wong is there with a tiny 25-RBI dot. Similarly, Nolan Arenado and his 47 RBIs with 2 outs haven’t done much to pull Colorado up out of the southeast corner of the graph. Also interesting is the overlay of Pittsburgh (Starling Marte, 38) on Kansas City – it doesn’t get much clearer that the correlation here is small.
The Playoff Bullpen, or, Bartolo Colon Makes his Seventh Relief Appearance August 31, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Bartolo Colon, starters in relief, wild playoff speculation
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So as not to bury the lede, Bartolo Colon made a planned appearance in relief for the Mets on Saturday. Though the Mets lost the game, Bart pitched a nice eighth inning, allowing a double (although David Ortiz was really out, thanks to Juan Uribe‘s heads up play) but striking out 2. He finished the game for the Mets.
At a 7 Line game a few weeks ago, someone asked me, “Who do you keep for the playoffs?” My answer, as always, was “Make Bart the highest-paid setup man in the league.” Obviously, you can’t take Jeurys Familia out of the closer’s role – he’s just too good there. With extra days off, though, the Mets could rely on Colon as a strong eighth-inning man with the capability to carry a game into extra innings. No matter what the situation, Bart would be the right choice in the eighth, leaving Tyler Clippard as an ace reliever/fireman.
Bartolo Colon. Photo: Arturo Pardavila III
Clippard has been used ecumenically from the bullpen, facing 113 right-handed batters (who hit .229/.336/.406 against him) and 125 left-handed batters (.108/.208/.135). The lefty numbers are a bit deflated by a .141 BAbip, compared to a .261 BAbip against righties, but Clippard is clearly very good regardless of the situation. It’s clear that Terry Collins is aware of that, since he’s relied on Clippy to come in mid-inning in several appearances (and that allowed him to avoid waving early for his closer). You don’t need two left-handed specialists if you have Clippard on hand.
Roughly, that means that the Mets could start with a core rotation of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Jon Niese, with a potential 8-man bullpen anchored by Familia, Colon, and Clippard for the late innings; Hansel Robles, Carlos Torres and Addison Reed to eat innings; Eric O’Flaherty as a lefty specialist; and Sean Gilmartin as a long man. That leaves the Mets with a short twelve-man bench, but Terry does have the flexibility to use Niese to run and deGrom and Syndergaard to hit, situationally. I wish Steven Matz would make an appearance, but that’s off the table.
The alternative might be to carry a third catcher in lieu of Robles or Reed in the pen, but the upside of Kevin Plawecki and Anthony Recker on the bench doesn’t seem like a great payoff, since the marginal runs from having both Plawecki and Recker as pinch hitters wouldn’t add up to much. Plus, with the depth of production from the infielders, the ability of Uribe, Wilmer Flores, and Daniel Murphy to play multiple positions, and strong outfield defense, the Mets can get away without as many hard hitters on the bench.
Do I really think Terry Collins will play a short bench and use Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard as pinch hitters? No, of course not. I think it’s more likely that Syndergaard ends up being used more often in relief due to his road struggles and O’Flaherty gets left off the roster (with Gilmartin being used as a lefty specialist), or Torres gets sent down, in order to maintain a longer bench with an extra outfielder to hit or run situationally. Still, I think if the Mets can dial in their run production, a shorter bench won’t be an issue.
Just to show Colon isn’t the only starter who makes the occasional relief appearance, three starters have earned saves on their throw days this year:
- Williams Perez, June 13, for Atlanta at the Mets
- Tommy Milone, August 23, for Minnesota at Baltimore
- Jerome Williams, August 28, for Philadelphia vs. San Diego
Carlos Torres is not a long reliever August 29, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Sports.Tags: Carlos Torres, ERA
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Carlos Torres has been a fixture in the Mets bullpen this year, tossing 52 1/3 innings thus far in relief. The Closer Monkey had him listed as our reliable setup man for a bit, but that spot has been taken over by the World’s Worst Sports Blog‘s current favorite bullpen man, Hansel Robles.
Torres cost the Mets last night’s game against the Red Sox, with a little bit of help from Blake Swihart. Torres has seemed unpredictable this year, sometimes seeming strong and other times unreliable. For that reason, I wanted to take a look at whether that’s recency bias or something else.
Carlos Torres’ ERA, season-long and on a rolling five-game basis
To do so, I generated a time series of Torres’ ERA for the season, which (predictably) spends most of its time decreasing, hovering around 4.0, and then periodically spikes upward to start another decrease. There are very few times when Torres’ season ERA increases more than one game at a time. In fact, he put up 39 scoreless appearances making up 39 2/3 innings of work this year. When he gives up runs, though, he gives up big ones.
The rolling-five-game ERA is meant to demonstrate that Torres’ performance is much spottier than we would expect – in many cases, his ERA5 spends several games at 0 before spiking up and staying high for several games. That indicates that Torres follows up runs with shorter appearances, more runs, or a combination of both, showing that he definitely has a streaky side.
In addition, the correlation between Torres’ runs allowed and his number of pitches is quite clear – it’s about .42. That indicates that Torres tires quickly. This is borne out by a back-of-the-envelope regression; estimating Carlos’ runs allowed as a function of his pitches that night and his days of rest, I found that each pitch thrown adds about .04 runs to Carlos’ total (significant above the 95% level). Days of rest doesn’t give a statistically significant estimate, nor do the quadratics of either term. (This looks pretty linear to me.) No combination of pitches thrown in the previous 3 games and batters faced in previous games give any additional information. This isn’t a great method – there’s obviously some endogeneity – but there is a strong correlation between Torres staying in the game longer and giving up more runs.
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