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.
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.
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.
The state of the bullpen is wrong August 20, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Closer Monkey, Mets, Mets bullpen
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Over at CloserMonkey, the current Mets closer hierarchy has Jeurys Familia as the closer, Tyler Clippard in the second slot, and …. Carlos Torres third in line? Fascinating.
Torres was upgraded above Bobby Parnell on August 16, at which point Torres promptly allowed 3 runs, 2 earned. Over Torres’ last 15 appearances, stemming back to June 27, Torres has 17.1 IP and a 3.12 ERA – solid for a reliever, but not closer stuff.
Meanwhile, my current favorite pitcher, Hansel Robles, has pitched a similar 17.1 since June 28 (in his last 15 appearances), but with an ERA of 2.60. However, Robles has two issues:
- Torres has allowed an alarming 50% of his 10 inherited runners to score. Robles has allowed an inexcusable 100% of his 6 inherited runners to score.
- Torres is battling a .348 BAbip against; Robles has gotten lucky with a .206 BAbip.
Robles is 25 this year. He’s going to be a fantastic reliever, and I’m looking forward to seeing his development.
Don’t Knock Curtis, Even if He Isn’t Knocking It Out of the Park July 8, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Curtis Granderson, Mets
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Curtis Granderson has, for some reason, developed a reputation as a streaky hitter. For example, Adam Rubin opened this article from June 27 commenting on it, although the thrust of the article was Granderson’s defensive issues. Amazin’ Avenue was justifiably a bit more nuanced, describing Curtis’s change of approach at the plate as a favorable influence on Mets scoring. What’s surprising to me is that Granderson’s hitting has been described as a ‘streak.’
Granderson’s hitting was unpredictable at the beginning of the season, certainly, but those sorts of fluctuations are natural with a small sample size. What’s visible from the time-series chart of Granderson’s first 85 games should be two things: his batting average has improved, and his hitting has been consistent if not trending upward.
Some rudimentary data analysis bears that out. A time-series regression of batting average on game number shows an intercept of .148 and an increase of .0016 per game, both significant at the 99% level (showing a bad start and a slow but steady increase). However, Granderson’s hitting is coming at the expense of his OBP, which showed a 99%-significant .360 intercept and a 95%-significant decrease of .0002 each game. The fluctuation of OBP, which is almost certainly due to his high proportion of walks at the beginning of the season, is about an eighth of the increase in batting average; Curtis’ consistent production can be counted on, whether the rest of the team contributes or not.
In A Pinch July 7, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Mets, pinch hitting, Pitchers batting, weird lines
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Much has been made of the Mets’ inability to hit, often with the tongue-in-cheek point made that Mets pitchers are hitting better than Mets pinch hitters. In fact, that’s true: Mets pitchers have made 178 plate appearances, owning a collective .165/.174/.213 slash line with a .255 BABIP, while pinch hitters get on base slightly more often but otherwise do worse. The pinch hitters have 118 plate appearances thus far, hitting .147/.248/.186 with a ,242 BABIP.
Of course, a big portion of the Mets pitchers’ abysmal slugging average is Steven Matz‘ .500/.500/.667 in 6 plate appearances. Even so, the pitchers are still hitting fairly well – even without Matz, the pitchers have a higher batting average than the pinch hitters.
John Mayberry, Jr., has taken the most plate appearances as a pinch hitter for the Mets. In his 30 PA, he’s hit – though I’m not sure ‘hit’ is correct – .080/.233/.080, although with a terribly unlucky .118 BABIP. Darrell Ceciliani, who was recently sent back down, had 20 plate appearances at .176/.263/.235, inflated by a .375 BABIP. The recently recalled Kirk Nieuwenhuis is 0-14 with a walk (.071 OBP) pinch hitting. Together, those 64 plate appearances make up about half of the Mets’ pinch hitting appearances.
For comparison, MLB pitchers are hitting .132/.156/.163 this year collectively, while MLB pinch hitters have a collective.211/.283/.316 line. That means the Mets pitchers are decidedly above average hitters, but the thin bench is hurting their run production when it comes time to lift a pitcher for a bat.
Logan Verrett’s Three-Inning Save July 6, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Logan Verrett, Mets, Three-inning saves
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During yesterday’s game, Mets reliever Logan Verrett came in to start the seventh inning during a 7-0 game. During the eighth, the Mets would add another run. Two interesting things happened.
slgckgc on Flickr (Original version) UCinternational (Crop)
First, Verrett made his first plate appearance in the majors. He’s a career .098/.132/.098 hitter in 56 plate appearances in the minors, so his groundout to second wasn’t a big surprise.
Second, he earned a three-inning save. Those aren’t common – in fact, the last Met to do so was Raul Valdes in 2010. Valdes actually hit a double in that game. Three-inning saves are a fairly rare beast; the most in the 2000s was 35 in 2001, and in 2014 there were only 9. There have already been 10 in 2015, though, perhaps in keeping with the trend toward using strong minor league starters as bullpen arms.
Matt Andriese of Tampa Bay leads the majors in three-inning saves this year (with two); Verrett is now tied for second (along with seven other pitchers).
Why isn’t Robles the left-handed specialist? July 5, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Alex Torres, Hansel Robles, Loogy, Mets, Platoon splits
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“Alex Torres on April 23, 2015” by slgckgc on Flickr, Cropped by UCinternational.
In yesterday’s post, I made reference to Terry Collins‘ maddening habit of treating Alex Torres as a left-handed specialist against all better evidence. In 17 of Torres’ 33 appearances, he’s faced three batters or fewer; those numbers are similar to bridge man Hansel Robles‘ 26 appearances, in which 15 appearances have faced three batters or fewer (each has faced a maximum of eight batters). Robles’ median appearance is a full inning pitched, whereas Torres’ median was 2/3 of an inning. 19 of Torres’ appearances have come in a clean inning, whereas Robles has come in 16 times to start an inning and twice more with one batter on but 0 outs. Overall, the two pitchers are being used in very similar ways, except for one major factor: Almost 48% of the batters Alex Torres has faced are left-handed, as opposed to a hair over 38% for Hansel Robles.
Against righties, Torres has a .297 OBP-against, compared to Robles’ .328, neither being much to write home about. (Closer Jeurys Familia allows a .225 OBP against right-handers and .254 against left-handers, and reliable eighth-inning dude Bobby Parnell carries .294 against righties and .222 against lefties, in a very limited sample this year.) But against lefties, Robles strictly dominates Torres. Robles has a .222 OBP allowed against right-handers, which is as good as Parnell and a smidge better than our closer. But Torres, who’s faced 59 lefties, more than anyone except Familia? Torres allows a monstrous .407 OBP when facing left-handers!
.407.
Four oh seven.
That’s the worst platoon split of any active Mets pitcher. Not only is Alex Torres not even better facing lefties than righties, he’s so bad that Alex Torres Against Left-Handers should be sent down to keep Alex Torres Against Right-Handers on the roster! If Left-Handers Against Alex Torres were a single player, they would rank #3 in OBP in the National League, ahead of Anthony Rizzo with .405.
Both Parnell and Robles are better against lefties than righties, but Parnell should be comfortable in his eighth-inning role. Why not bust out Robles against lefty-heavy lineups and see if he can keep up his difference? But for heaven’s sake, quit using Alex Torres against left-handers.
One pitcher and two guys on the disabled list July 4, 2015
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Curtis Granderson, Lucas Duda, Mets
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This season, the Mets have been fighting against a pernicious series of injuries, mainly focused on the offense. Although we lost Jenrry Mejia, Zack Wheeler, and Jerry Blevins, we’ve also lost David Wright for much of the season and missed Daniel Murphy, Michael Cuddyer, and Juan Lagares for smaller pieces. Let’s take a look at some interesting statistics:
Steven Matz leads the team in OBP (1.000) and total bases per game (4). Second to Matz in OBP is David Wright (.371); Travis d’Arnaud is second in total bases per game (2) and fifth in OBP (.338). Wright follows up with 1.75 total bases per game. In order to get to active position players, we have to go 3 deep to Lucas Duda (OBP of .358 and 1.56 TB/G) and Curtis Granderson (OBP of .348, 1.54 TB/G). In other words, of the Mets’ top 5 hitters, one is a pitcher who’s played one game, and two have spent more time on the disabled list than on the field. Argue with the choice of metric, but our best active hitter can’t touch Andrew McCutchen‘s 10th-best OBP (.370) or the total bases mark (Duda has 122, Granderson 125, and the bottom of the top 10 is a three way tie with 162 total bases involving Prince Fielder, J.D. Martinez, and Manny Machado).
Of course, it could be worse: we could have Ike Davis (.322 OBP, 1.3 TB/G). (But I still like Ike.)
So here’s the problem: When the Mets started off the season, they were hitting incredibly – during the first 25 games, they averaged 4.04 runs per game and allowed only 3.28. The league average this season is 4.01 runs scored to 4.11 allowed, so that was a pretty nice set of stats. But during games 26-50, those stats slid to 3.84 runs scored and 4.04 runs allowed, and in games 51-75, the Mets averaged only 3.16 runs scored to still 4.04 runs allowed. Our pitching, despite being at times inconsistent, is still better than the league, by average.
Although the Mets have made some interesting moves in the bullpen, and Terry Collins‘ insistence on using Alex Torres as a left-handed specialist is maddening at times, the pitching side of the equation is okay. All the team needs is a break on the offensive side – Duda could break out. Cuddyer could stay healthy. Murphy can keep up his hitting and Wilmer Flores can continue developing. This season has been a comedy of errors offensively, but SOMETHING has to go right soon.
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