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The Value of Martin Prado, and How Flexibility Increases that Value

On May 9, 2014 By

As Jeff Wiser showed us yesterday, Martin Prado is among the D-backs position players who have not performed as well as expected so far this season. Jeff pointed out that Prado has started slow before, and so there may be no reason to sound the alarm. He’s certainly more valuable a player than he’s seemed so far in 2014 …

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Projections vs. Reality: D-backs Position Players

On May 8, 2014 By

There have been a lot of complaints about player performance thus far into 2014. Most of those complaints have been warranted and the Diamondbacks’ winning percentage reflects this. The season is more than just underway now, and to keep saying “it’s still early” is doing everyone a disservice. It’s not still early, we’re approaching some pretty serious cutoffs where the …

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D-backs: Solid Hitters with Two Strikes

On May 7, 2014 By

Hitting with two strikes is hard. As if baseball isn’t hard enough already, when down two strikes, the pitcher is generally in solid control of an at-bat. For example, the 2012 league leader in batting with two strikes were the Angels, who happened to lead the majors in total offense (measured by wRC+). How well did the most potent offense …

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Expanding the Zone with Runners in Scoring Position: Is Goldy an RBI Man?

On May 2, 2014 By

Are some hitters particularly well-suited for RBI-likely spots in the lineup not just because of hitting prowess overall or tendency to hit for power, but also because they find ways to get guys in? The saber community has pretty much dispensed with the idea of “clutch” being a skill (which is not to say that some players have not been …

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D’backs Playoff Odds After 30 Games

On May 1, 2014 By

This winter, we evaluated the Diamondbacks and thought it would be a tough season. More specifically, we concluded that the team could be competitive but that they needed pretty much everything to break right for them in order to be a playoff contender. Then came some trades that were perhaps underwhelming from a value standpoint, if not from a …

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The Curious Case of Miguel Montero

On April 30, 2014 By

To say Miguel Montero hit a bump in the road last season would be a massive understatement. I’ve personally never witnessed a player scuffle so badly and so obviously for such an extended period of time. It was tough to watch and one couldn’t help but feel for the heart and soul of the D’backs as he tried to fight …

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Miguel Montero an Excellent Pitch Framer, New Statistics Show

On April 25, 2014 By

Despite two decent starts at the end of the Cubs series, the D-backs rotation is still struggling: last in ERA (5.39) and 26th in FIP (4.27). But don’t lay the blame at the feet of Miguel Montero: new statistics show that he’s been much better than the average catcher at getting pitches called as strikes. A study published by …

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Evaluating Kirk Gibson with Sabermetrics

On April 18, 2014 By

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: no one, and I mean no one, thinks a manager can be evaluated solely with sabermetrics. The game is played on the field, and while General Managers can at least be evaluated primarily on their transactions, there is a ton to the manager’s job that defies statistics and always will.…

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How We Got Here: the Kevin Towers Saga

On April 17, 2014 By

If the book and subsequent film “Moneyball” taught us anything, it’s that there are a lot of ways to build a winning baseball team. When I meet people and they ask about my baseball writing, they usually end up mentioning the prolific work of Michael Lewis and if they were paying attention, they describe it as “the movie where all …

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Lefties Galore in the D-backs Bullpen: Is Current Usage Optimal?

On April 16, 2014 By

It’s been a while since I argued that Will Harris should be treated as the second lefty in the bullpen, someone who could pitch a whole inning with multiple left-handed batters due up while Joe Thatcher could be saved for matchups. When the team broke camp with an unusual thirteen-man pitching staff, the team had not one, but three …

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The Collmenter Conundrum: Underutilized as Reliever, Overutilized as Full Starter

On April 11, 2014 By

On Wednesday, Josh Collmenter had his longest outing of the season to date: four full innings, four strikeouts, and just three hits and one walk. Good, right? But that doesn’t mean he should be moved to the starting rotation, at least not as a normal starter. We’ve learned some lessons from Collmenter’s 35 career starts that stand for that proposition.…

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Velocity Report: D-backs Pitchers Examined

On April 10, 2014 By

It’s early in the season, but we can only tell ourselves this for so long. Eventually, even knowing that there are 150 more games to play becomes discomforting. Obviously, the team as a whole hasn’t been playing well and if you’ve seen and if you’ve seen any D-backs baseball lately, you’re likely all too familiar with this. With that said, …

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Baseball’s Best Hitter, For Now

On April 9, 2014 By

Kevin Towers couldn’t have imagined that Mark Trumbo would start his D-backs days like this. The hottest hitter in the game has done a lot of swinging and not a lot of missing thus far. His five home runs are tops in baseball and through just nine games he’s already amassed 0.6 WAR, accounting for essentially 25% of his pre-season …

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J.J. Putz and Declining Fastball Velocity

On April 8, 2014 By

So far, the Diamondbacks have only brought J.J. Putz into games they have been losing. This seems strange for a man with 189 saves, but the problem is that, in his age-37 season, his velocity has declined. The worries started last April, when he blew four saves. Then he got hurt and missed almost two months. When Putz returned from …

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Handicapping the NL West Race: Beware the Giants

On April 4, 2014 By

We get it: the Dodgers are pretty good, and probably good enough to withstand key injuries. But take a look at projected standings from FanGraphs or the Experts Panel from ESPN, and the D-backs’ chances of beating the other three NL West teams may not be so rosy.

Here are the projected standings from FanGraphs, which use a combination of …

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Gerardo Parra Breaking the Mold in Right Field

On April 3, 2014 By

Gerardo Parra is doing something we haven’t quite seen before: play elite right field while trailing league-average offense for that position. That’s a big reason why it took Parra until his fifth full season to finally cross the 500 PA threshold. But when he did, with 663 PA in 2013, the results were devastating: 4.5 Wins Above Replacement, good for …

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