Anyway, if this site ever does get updated again, it’ll be over at infieldfly.ca, not here at the generic WordPress site.

In conclusion, I still believe in Brandon Morrow.

The fact that Rogers, who began the season in the bullpen (where he had an ERA of 4.23, a WHIP of 1.41, and only 4.6 K/9), has made the transition to a starter wonderful. It is kind of a representation of just how inexplicably well things have gone since June 5th. As a starter the same Esmil Rogers has and ERA of 1.71, a WHIP of .95 and 6.85 K/9. Yes, when asked to do more, and face a lineup 2 or 3 times, Esmil has had better results by any measure you would like to use.

On June 5th, the Blue Jays got 8 1/3 innings out of R.A. Dickey in San Fransisco. It was the first time all season that a Jays starter had recorded an out in the 9th inning. The win brought the team up to a 25 and 34 record. Since that day, the Blue Jays have been rolling. They are, in many ways, a very different team than they were in April and May.

They took 2 out of 3 from Texas. The first game was an easy victory, 6-1, in which the Rangers only scored in the first. The second game was an 18 inning affair, but they prevailed 4-3. The third game was one in which they frittered away an early four run lead, and lost 6-4. They went to Chicago, and after an off day, they played in the fog, and lost 10-6 behind a lackluster R.A. Dickey start. That’s 5 games, and the Jays were 3-2 after those 5, so, why did I start the ‘hot streak’ there?

Well, the 6-1 game was started by Esmil Rogers on a limited pitch count, only his second start, and the bullpen held the Rangers scoreless for 5 innings, which is part of what has been so great about the Jays in this stretch. The 18 inning game was a nail biter, and you could make a good argument that they got lucky by the 18th inning, but also that the bullpen continued to dominate. So, two of the wins are about luck and the bullpen, and one of the losses can be blamed on the ‘pen.

The next game in Chicago was a 10 inning affair, highlighted by a last-strike game-tying home run by Jose Bautista. One swing saved the day, and the bullpen held the Sox for the bottom of the 10th.

Then the Jays beat the Rangers, in a game untied from 1-1 with 2 outs in the 8th on and Encarnacion double. Another ‘clutch’, or lucky, depending on your viewpoint, hit, and it saves the day. That’s four games that hinge on one hit and a shutdown bullpen.

Then 8-0, 6-1, and 7-2 victories. Not real nail biters.

Colorado comes to the Rogers Centre, and the Jays are no-hit for 6 innings. Maicer Izturis saves a run with a diving stop. A line drive rocket is hit at Adam Lind. Encarnacion takes a double away by making a leaping catch at third. The Jays score on two singles and a walk in the bottom of the 8th. Another 2 out rally saves the day, and another shutout inning by Casey Janssen ends the game.

Tonight, it was Colorado’s turn to get no hit for 6 innings. By the time they plated a run, the Jays had scored 8, for an 8-3 final.

In a 10-2 run, the Jays have had 5 games that hinged on a single hit, and depended on a nearly flawless bullpen to complete. I understand that’s how the game goes sometimes, and I can’t get enough of those kinds of breaks going in the Jays favour. I love it. But remember, every game is important, and lots of them could swing any which way.

Just another way to look at the swing in fortunes around this team: The Blue Jays starters In April, had the 27th best ERA in baseball and the 24th best FIP (a measure of pitching with fielding removed). In May, they were 27th and 28th. In June they are 6th and 17th. The April starters have not been replaced with better players. Three of them are the same guys exactly. I’d be willing to bet that none of those three months represents a true talent level for any of those pitchers.

So the Jays are on a hot streak. Everything keeps breaking right, and at the right time. It turns out better than expected. It isn’t some great epiphany on the part of the players or the coaches. It’s just the best part of a 162 game ride. Hang on, nobody knows what happens next.

The thought behind this post, began to bounce around in my head when I was looking at Hit Tracker Online. It is a website that estimates the ‘true distance’ and plots the path of every home run hit in the majors. The site takes video and wind speed with other weather info and puts it together to estimate how high, how hard, and how far every home run ball is struck.

I was playing around with the sortable tables, and started looking at the softest home runs hit all year. Much as I expected, the softest fly ball to leave the park was hit to here:

Yankee Stadium has the most talked about short porch in baseball. For the softest tater of the year, Marlon Byrd muscled up on Adam Warren and pushed one over the fence at 90.8 MPH.  The Pitch f/x data from the at-bat tells us that Warren threw the pitch at 94.MPH, so I’m being pretty generous with ‘muscled up’ here. So, there it is, the softest homer in 2013 was exactly what I thought it would be a ‘Yankees Stadium Special’. Game over. Post done.

Of course it isn’t. The rest of the table is still sitting there, and there aren’t a lot of Yankee Stadium Specials on the list.

These are all the home runs that left the bat at under 95mph, up to June 3, 2013. There are thirty of them in total. Four of them were hit in the Bronx. Thirteen of them were hit at Minute Maid Park. There are 30 places to hit home runs in the league, yet more than a third of the softest ones came in the same ballpark. So I learned something else here. I learned that the short porch in Houston isn’t like Yankee Stadium’s. In fact, it isn’t in right field at all. It looks like this.

Image from Mop Up Duty

The scoreboard wall in left is nineteen feet high. Which would be a lot, if the corner wasn’t 315ft at the foul pole and 362 in the ‘power alley’. For comparison, the ultra-symmetrical Rogers Centre is 328 at the pole and 375 in the power alley. Here’s and overlay of both fences, Minute Maid in black, Rogers in red.

Pretty apparent that there are a whole lot of home runs (the blue landing spots) that would come up short in the RC. And Rogers Centre is the the second most homer-happy park in all of baseball.

So, I learned that the short porch, which actually appears to taper in towards the foul line, is turning outs into home runs. I started thinking about Houston’s new ownership, and how they might already be looking for ways to leverage the easiest seats to hit in all of baseball. I was envsioning a pull happy, right handed hitting free agent. Somebody who needed to boost his value, signing a one year deal and lofting pitches up into the ‘Crawford Boxes’ as they are officially called.

Then I looked at video of the actual home runs on the list.

Most of them look like this one. Which you will have to click on, because WordPress does not allow MLB.com embed code. That’s Victor Martinez, hitting it off of the end of the bat, and letting it drift over the wall. I included Victor’s homers because I learned somethign very specific when I was viewing the clip. I learned that during his home run trot (and this was his first trot of 2013, so maybe it was special), VMart made this face.

I’m not going to comment any further, it’s on the internet, it will be there forever.

I also learned that baseball announcers don’t like to call a cheap joke of a home run for what it is. The Oakland announcers were quoted with ‘We might have found our jetstream.’ on a Coco Crisp opposite field shot that went 340 feet. Any other field, and the jet would have crashed into an outfielder’s glove.

The Houston announcers, commenting on Fernando Martinez hitting a 338 foot fly ball, were even more generous. Alan Ashby summed up the dinger with, ‘When you do get that pitch, don’t miss it.’ He didn’t miss it in the strictest sense of the word, but in 28 other ballparks, that’s a flyball out, so he kind of missed it…. just an an opportune moment.

Hard to find a pull-happy righty on that list. I assume it has something to do with the pull-happy righties hitting baseballs harder, rather than softer when they pull them. So now I’m wondering, does Houston think about scouting left-handed hitters who like to inside out the ball? Or ones who hit a lot of pitches off the end of the bat? Probably not.

Ultimately, I learned that when you go wandering into the wrong end of a sortable table, you never quite know where you’ll end up.

]]> https://infieldfly.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/baseballs-shortest-porch/feed/ 4 2712 coolhead2011 short porch cheap home runs Image from Mop Up Duty vmart hr face https://infieldfly.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/reality-check-this-guy-cannot-hit/ https://infieldfly.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/reality-check-this-guy-cannot-hit/#comments Tue, 28 May 2013 03:28:14 +0000 http://infieldfly.ca/?p=2698 Continue reading →]]> Dustin Ackley cannot hit.

Jesus Montero cannot hit.

Ike Davis cannot hit.

Mike Moustakas cannot hit.

Brett Lawrie cannot hit.

B.J. Upton cannot hit.

Aaron Hicks cannot hit.

Jeff Keppinger cannot hit.

Some guys who used to hit a little bit…. for example, 

Jeff Francouer, Victor Martinez, Miguel Montero, Juan Pierre and Ichirio Suzuki….

They can’t hit either.

The next time the guy you like, isn’t hitting, remember the company he keeps.

And remember that hitting a baseball in the big leagues is much, much harder than Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, and Justin Upton make it look.

All names pulled from the fangraphs leaderboards. 

I kept saying the same thing “Please, give me a reason to watch.” And lo and behold, they did. First game in Tampa, and Mark Buerhle survives the Inning Of The Damned, giving up 7 runs, but keeps on pitching 3 more scoreless… and the Jays score 8 to lock down a comeback.

Then game 2 is a comeback victory in Tampa again. There are breaks in the Jays favour, but Ricky Romero flames out in game 3, and the Rays win in extras on a Brad Lincoln walkoff walk in game 4 (embarrassing). Then the Jays roll into Boston and get 1-hit by John Lester.

So, it’s getting painful again. The sun comes up after a rain delay in Boston on Saturday, though, and the resurrected Mark Buerhle throws a bunch of zeroes up on the scoreboard. Even the bullpen surrendering the tying run in the 8th doesn’t sound death knell for the Jays. Adam Lind homers when it counts, and Casey Janssen lowers his ERA to 0.69 with a sweet little 9th inning. Sunday, the fresh face of Chad Jenkins steps onto the Fenway mound and capably handles one of baseballs best offenses for 6 innings, while the lineup smashes pitches around to support him… when the dust settles, the score is 12-4, Blue Jays the victors.

These are the ups and downs of a baseball season. This is the natural flow I might have expected coming into the year. Win a couple, take advantage. Then you lose a couple, that’s just how it goes. Coming around and finding a way to put a couple more wins together, that leads to a sense of confidence.

I don’t know if the Blue Jays are going to make a real run at the division. I really avoid predictions like the plague, but the team I saw for the last 7 games, I could enjoy watching this team for the rest of the season.

Thousands of games later, and I’ve come to realize that comebacks, especially those from a deep deficit are very, very rare. Possible, yes, but rarer than I even imagined. Which makes them all the more significant to me. Baseball is a monotonous 162 game grind, punctuated by small bouts of insane activity. When one of those moments comes, I’m not going to miss an opportunity to romaniticize it. And the best way I know to turn baseball into poetry, is with a line graph.

Yeah, I must be a real hit with the ladies, getting all mathy and chartish when something gets me feeling good. For those of you not familiar with the Win Probability system that Fangraphs is illustrating here, it’s pretty simple. The line represents the chance of either team winning, Tampa’s chances are best when the line is at the top of the graph, Toronto’s are best when the line is near the bottom.

How do we know these odds? Well, luckily, there are thousands of games that have been recorded over the years, and each out is like a tick of the clock in the game. We look at the ‘clock’, say at the start of the fourth inning, and check the score. In this case, 7-0 Tampa. We then look at all games in the records that had a score of 7-0 for the home team at the start of the 4th, and then check the final score for the winner. In this case 98.1% of the games with that score in that situation resulted in a win for the team that was ahead.

98.1% is a really high number, isn’t it? To put it differently, if there had been an opportunity to replay the remainder of this game 1000 times, starting with the Jays batting in the top of the fourth, they would have lost 981, and won 19 of them. That’s one win for every 50 losses. When I see a 7-0 deficit on the scoreboard, I feel as if a team is in really big trouble, but my brain just doesn’t assume that the chances are actually 50:1 against, less than halfway through the game.

Even with all the chipping away at the lead, the Blue Jays were still in a very tough spot in the 9th inning. They were still down 7-6. With 2 outs, and a runner on third, J.P. Arencibia represented the final out that Fernando Rodney needed. This guy:

A guy who reaches base, let’s see, 27% of the time. That means that Rodney is looking at getting an out 73% of the time, all things being equal. At this point the game, 2 out, up by a run in the 9th, at home, the Rays are still set to prevail 88 times out of 100.

J.P. gets himself into a 2-2 count. The Blue Jays are down to their last strike.

Down to their last strike. One of my favourite baseball phrases. It reperesents a moment o near certainty. If you miss this next srike, all is lost. But ‘last’ is a relative term. If you reach base, then the next batter starts off with 0 strikes. That means that your last strike is not always your last strike, and it kind of feels like you’ve just turned back time, just a little bit, to some time a couple of pitches earlier than before. Now where else in life can you nudge the clock backwards like that?

The other thing about strikes, is sometimes, when everything is going your way, you only need one.

In numbered order, here are the pitches Rodney threw to Arencibia.

From Brooks Baseball

Pitch number 5 was a fastball, and it was probably supposed to jam J.P. Instead, it ended up in his happy place, and, to his credit he didn’t miss it, even at about 97 mph. It left the yard, and in doing so, took the Jays chances of winning from 12 percent to 84%. One swing, and the Jays had the odds in their favour for the first time in 3 hours.

Madness in Jays land. Just like we all dreamed it could be.

Now, the next 50 times they find themselves down by 7 runs, I won’t blame them if they don’t claw and scratch their way to victory. My blood pressure can’t stand that kind of treatment any more often, anyway.

Manager John Gibbons was victimized by unexpected efforts from bench players Rajai Davis and Mark DeRosa, both of whom contributed on the offensive side well beyond expectation. Melky Carbera also threw off the team’s plans, homering for the first time this season. Gibbons was asked about the end of the four game losing streak in the post game scrum. He was subdued, as usual.

‘We were on a good roll there, the last four in a row, it looked like we were set to continue this run. It’s not easy to be this consistent, game after game. If you want to be known for your losses, you have to make it work out day after day. Today just wasn’t our day.’

The Jays, expected to contend before the season started, had swept away those expectations, and spun inconsistent starting pitching, poor defense, and an anemic offense into a team with its sights set clearly on a different kind of goal. Scoring only three runs in the first four days of May, the team looked focused on making a run at the historic consecutive loss mark.

Starting pitcher Brandon Morrow was asked about his 8 strong innings, and how they contributed to the team’s winning effort, “I had everything working pretty well, which was unusual, and as I tried to adjust to that, the Mariners racked up a lot of outs. I managed to really get messed up in the fifth, and I thought that the four walks would be enough to let them back in the game. It was pretty crazy, but then suddely there were three outs. You never know in this game, sometimes the balls find gloves no matter what you do. I tried to stay out there as long as possible, develop a pattern Seattle could exploit, but then the offense kicked in for us. You can’t control that, and you can’t obsess over an L or a W there.”

Mark DeRosa contributed to the broken streak, the 38-year-old had three hits, including a 3 run home run in the bottom of the 5th. ‘I thought I was pretty rusty. I thought I could give the team what it needed from the bench to keep this thing going. I feel like I let the guys down, even if I could have popped up one of those balls on the infield, maybe it would have turned out differently.’

Gibbons was asked what he had expected of DeRosa, playing him over Lawrie. ‘I know Mark is a veteran, I know he can get in there, take some hacks, maybe pound a couple balls into the dirt. He’s a couple of steps worse on defense right away, so you have to factor that in. That pitcher, though, Joe Saunders, you gotta tip your cap. He’s not just going to let you have a 1-2-3 inning. You’re going to have to earn it.’

Edwin Encarnacion put in the kind of effort that Gibbons was expecting, going 0 for 4 with a walk. Edwin still drove in a run with a groundout, however, so even he wasn’t able to have a clean contribution in the loss column. He showed his dedication by tripping over the pitchers mound trying to field the ball late in the game, but by then things were out of reach.

Gibbons final statement was about heading into Tropicana Field, where the Jays have racked up most of their road losses over the past five years, ‘You’ve got a lot of guys on this team who can make a sloppy play in the field, and then strike out with runners on the next inning. Our starting rotation is banged up a bit, and Buerhle hasn’t been able to locate well this year. With things shifted that way already, I think we can focus and get back to what we’ve been doing all season. These guys are professionals, they know that a bad team can still win 60, 70 games sometimes. We’re not gonna focus on that, we’re just gonna focus on getting this thing going in the same direction as it was for most of April and the first few days in May. I’m pretty sure we can leave Sunday behind us pretty quickly.’

The Blue Jays play Monday night at Tropican Field, 7:07 start time.

The Toronto Blue Jays, team that I love, is about to finish April, and in the season in which they were to realize the dream of rising to the top, they have begun by sinking to the bottom. Hard. They may finish the month at 9-18 or 10-17. It will be their worst April since 2004, a year in which they finished 67-94, and finished dead last in the AL East.

The best OBP in the lineup belongs to a platoon player, Adam Lind. The best OPS to a shortstop who was the offensive table-setter for this team until he sprained his ankle and began a 2-3 month stint on the DL. The best everyday hitter has an OPS of .824. he has walked twice and struck out 37 times.

The starter with the lowest ERA is J.A. Happ, the man who didn’t have a major league job until Ricky Romero lost the strikezone so badly that he landed in Florida A Ball games rebuilding his delivery. The other four starters have the four worst ERAs on the team.

Not starter has thrown a pitch in the 8th inning of any game.

Josh Johnson has triceps tightness, R.A. Dickey can’t quiet his barking neck and back, Sergio Santos is on the 15 day DL. Casey Janssen can’t be used on back to back days except in extreme emergencies.

Emilio Bonifacio appears to be playing with spring-loaded glove and a noodle tied to his shoulder. Maicer Izturis spent 3 weeks playing third looking like there should be a cutoff man to help with long throws. Mark DeRosa and Henry Blanco both turn around when you shout ‘Hey, old man!’ and both do it as slowly as they turn on a fastball.

So yeah, feels like the playoffs are just around the corner….. mocking the team and their fans.

I’m sure I’ve missed some other gory details, feel free to remind me of what I’ve blocked out in the comments.

Brett transitioned to the bullpen in 2012, after trying, and failing to find a way to be effective with an 89mph fastball as a starter.  When he switched to relief, he picked up some speed on his fastball. His hardest pitch on that night was a 2-seam fastball at 92.81 miles per hour, as per Brooks Baseball.

Pitch f/x also classified a pitch at 88mph as a changeup. Brett’s average changeup in 2012 was 82mph. His average changeup in 2011 was 80mph. I’m inclined to think that this is actually one ‘not very fast’ ball, which confused the classification algorithm. If I’m right, the average fastball velocity for this outing is even lower than 91.5 mph.

That’s the old Brett Cecil. Over the winter, Brett took a shot at Delabarization, to see if it would help his arm strength. Now 173 pitches in to 2013, were looking at a whole different guy.

From a long outing against the Yankees, 37 pitches, the velocity chart:

Even with two innings to tire him out, Brett averaged 92.8 mph with the fastball. He peaks at 95.3 mph. His changeup is at 86.4, a 4mph jump.

Suddenly, Cecil can step on the gas. Two other things have also changed. I’m not sure whether the velocity increase caused the change in release point, or if it’s the other way around, but Cecil has been dropping his arm slot quite significantly over the last 2 years.

That’s a 7 inch drop, which is fairly significant. The other result of changes is more waek contact. Batters have a 13.6% line drive rate in 2013 (per fangraphs) compared to a 21.7% rate in 2012, and a career LD rate of 18.7%. With more frequent use of his 2 seam fastball, I would have assumed that it was coming from better ‘sink’ on the ball. I would have assumed wrong. Brett’s pitches have pretty much the same, or less vertical break than before. And his flyball/ground ball ratio is about the same as his career level, at .90.

So he’s not turnign into a ground ball pitcher. Brett has reduced the hard contact by throwing harder, dropping down, and getting more horizontal movement on his pitches.

Apparently, a couple extra inches of sideways slide is enough to keep the ball off of the sweet spot on the bats.

Could Brett Cecil have changed his arm angle and managed to get more break without going through the conditioning program he did? I do wonder about that a little. I’m more inclined to believe that all these factors are interdependent, and the arm angle, velocity and pitch movement are all playing off of one another to result in a much more effective Cecil.

And that’s all the Blue Jays really wanted all along, isn’t it?

As always, props to Brooks Baseball and Fangraphs for making all the pitcher data available an understandable. Cecil’s pages here and here, respectively. Other theories as to what has transformed Cecil into the new guy he seems to be… are welcome in the comments.

Of course, this also happened:

(GIF via Paul Sporer)

As of this writing, nobody knows exactly how long Reyes will be out, but here’s what we do know, via the numerous beat reporters (let’s give credit today to non-Rogers man Scott MacArthur) and just some plain basic facts:

• Reyes heard something “pop”
• Best case scenario, Reyes is out for a month. Worst case, three months.
• General manager Alex Anthopoulos has already been talking with other GMs about trading for some infield help
• Reyes is the best. Him getting hurt is the worst.
• Mike McCoy is likely to get called up and see too much playing time.
• Brett Lawrie can’t come back fast enough.
• Reyes, usually an outstanding baserunner, slid late because he thought the pitch had been fouled off

I know I haven’t been active on the blog or on Twitter much lately, but I’m all too aware of the panic a lot of fans have been feeling because of the team’s slow start. I’ve been doing my best to talk sense into as many people as possible. “The Giants started 2-8 last year and won the World Series,” I say.

But right now, I feel the panic. It’s ridiculous, especially since there’s no real word on what’s wrong with Reyes, but this could hurt. Losing Reyes for three months could be a lot worse than a slow start. And seeing him cry? That’s worst of all.

Here’s hoping it’s not that bad.

And a quick update because the man himself tweets