Currently viewing the tag: "Andrew Chafin"

The Fickle Nature of Bullpens

On August 25, 2017 By

Things have tightened up a bit lately. Much has been made of the Diamondbacks’ shrinking wild card lead as the Brewers sit just 3.5 games out, the Cardinals are 5 games back and the Marlins just a half game further behind. It’s hard to imagine the Brewers willing their way to the postseason — they’ll likely need some help. The …

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The Diamondbacks’ Bullpen Has Exceeded Expectations (So Far)

On April 18, 2017 By

The Diamondbacks just took two of four from the Dodgers in Los Angeles, which is really like taking two of three because facing Clayton Kershaw shouldn’t count. The D-backs now head to San Diego for a three-game slate with the Padres (as co-leaders of the NL West, nonetheless) at 9-5 for series that feels extremely important. It’s great that the …

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2017 Spring Preview: A Wide Open Bullpen

On March 6, 2017 By

My goodness, there are a ton of relief arms in camp this spring. I know, I know. This isn’t exactly unheard of as relievers, especially those not slated for late inning duty, are probably the most fungible assets in the game. They’re also the most volatile. With performances fluctuating wildly and sample sizes small, evaluating relievers is difficult in the …

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2017 Preview: Pitcher Forecasts

On January 30, 2017 By

How do you know if something is broken? Usually, you give something a go and don’t get the desired effect. Maybe you try again and still get an error. Other times, after a second try, everything works just fine. There always little blips on the radar of life. I mean, we all have to cycle our routers once in a …

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Raising the Bar for Relievers

On January 3, 2017 By

A new year provides an opportunity for reflection. I was doing a bit of that recently, thumbing through some old episodes of The Pool Shot while being delayed at the airport again. The experience was fun and while I’d like to think we were right more than we were wrong, the episodes help harken back to a time that the …

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D-backs Pitching Through the DRA Lens: Our Cleanest Look at Talent

On August 3, 2016 By

One of my favorite debates within the baseball analytics community is how to evaluate pitching. We’ve collectively moved on from ERA since it has some obvious problems. The first is the most glaring: ERA tells most of the story of what happened, not how talented a pitcher is. We don’t really care what happened, we care mostly about how good …

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Some D-backs Season Notes, in Graphics

On May 27, 2016 By

Happy Memorial Day, folks, and enjoy the weekend. Here at Inside the ‘Zona, we’re getting an early start. The idea was to post some graphics in lieu of a post, and maybe add to that as the mood strikes later today, and over the weekend — I wouldn’t have written any kind of explanation here at all, but I need …

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Double Plus: Earliest Season Velocity Reports

On April 8, 2016 By

It’s a magical time of year, the time in which mountains are made of molehills, common sense proves evasive and The People generally freak out. The Diamondbacks have sunk below .500 for the first time in 2016 as of this writing (hopefully they’ve “surged” to even in the standing by the time of this reading) and we’re all basically doomed. …

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Double Plus: D-backs Calibrating Their Reliance on Sinkers

On March 25, 2016 By

Not long ago, we worked through some research that betrayed a general principle: the more horizontal the movement on a pitch, the more susceptible to large platoon splits it was likely to be. The converse — that when the movement of a pitch was more or mostly horizontal, the bigger the platoon splits — clashed with the D-backs’ sinker …

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D-backs Relief Pitcher Arsenal Scores

On February 10, 2016 By

On Tuesday I previewed arsenal scores, a metric created by Eno Sarris at RotoGraphs. The idea is simple: evaluate each pitcher’s pitches based on swinging strikes (good) and ground balls (also good). Sarris was kind enough to share his data with Inside the ‘Zona I’ve used it already to showcase D-backs starting pitchers. Now it’s time to highlight the …

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2015’s Best & Worst Pitches by D-backs Relievers

On December 3, 2015 By

Earlier this week, we had some fun looking at the best and worst pitches from Diamondbacks starting pitchers in 2015. There were some really good pitches on disply there, even considering the struggles that the staff had last year. This time around we’ll position the microscope on the relievers, but there’s something notable to include here: relief pitchers have …

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Arizona Bullpen Much Better Than Advertised

On August 24, 2015 By

Last week in setting a benchmark for wins needed from the rotation, I used a placeholder for wins we could expect from the bullpen: about 2.5 above replacement. It was intended to be conservative, but if this season is any guide, the bullpen could be quite a lot better than catch-all statistics like Wins Above Replacement would indicate. As …

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Andrew Chafin’s Effectiveness May Have Staying Power

On July 9, 2015 By

The D-backs are pitching differently this year. The trend showed up early: the staff was re-designed to become much more ground ball oriented, it seemed. Several pitchers are throwing more sinkers than they have in the past, and the grounders have continued. But more than anything else, as Jeff examined yesterday, the team is pitching down in the …

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D-backs Pitching Staff Prioritizing Ground Balls Again?

On June 17, 2015 By

A funny thing happened at the start of the season: even though the rotation was to be manned by three fly ball pitchers, by the end of April the D-backs staff was fourth in the majors in ground ball percentage at 49.1%. It wasn’t all Brad Ziegler. Archie Bradley was a big part of the sharp change in the …

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Daniel Hudson’s Very Best Fit

On March 31, 2015 By

It’s one week until the Diamondbacks take the field for Opening Day. Of course, that will be their second game of the season for them since they play on Opening Night against the Giants, but baseball’s right around the corner. Finally. And, with this being the final week without real baseball, everyone’s releasing their final predictions. The trend for …

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Andrew Chafin Leading Race to Be Only Real Bullpen Lefty

On March 25, 2015 By

When the Diamondbacks opened camp, they had a handful of lefties competing for spots in the bullpen to open the season. Oliver Perez was the only one with a firmly entrenched spot on the active roster. Robbie Ray, Vidal Nuno and Andrew Chafin were brought in to work as starters, but all have been considered for bullpen slots. Recent …

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