November 23, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. Most Recent Comments
Introducing Visual Baseball (1)
HR/FB Park Factors (8) Why Baseball Needs a Visual Facelift (5) Building a Retrosheet database, the short form (4) Is peak at age 29? (7) 
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Tuesday, August 04, 2009Matusz makes his big league debut
Evan Brunell already took a brief look at Matusz' rise through the minors, and it was impressive. In 113.2 innings between two levels in the minors this year, Matusz had a 3.12 FIP and was allowing just 10% of his balls in play to be hit on a line. His tERA (Statcorner's tRA scaled to ERA) was just 2.26. Okay, so with all of the hype out of the way, how did Matusz actually look in his debut? The results were pretty good: he completed 5 innings, allowing 6 hits and 1 run. He also struck out 5, walked 3, and didn't allow a home run. You can watch highlights of the game here, including his strikeout of Miguel Cabrera on a very good changeup. It's also worth mentioning that Matusz faced all righties in his debut, which makes his strong results all the more impressive. Let's see what Pitch f/x had so say about his stuff:  As you can see he was able to get the fastball up in the low 90's, topping out at 94 MPH, with a wide range of movement to it. His changeup mirrored the fastball in terms of movement, but was thrown about 10 MPH slower on average. Based on some twitter evidence, that it his favorite pitch to throw. His slider was also all over the place, sometimes looking like a cutter, and other times looking more like a curve. Overall, he showed good stuff, especially from a lefty. Now let's see how he located, first organized by pitch type:  As you can see, he pounded the strike zone with all 3 of his pitches, while offering no clear pattern of location. In total, he threw 66% strikes, which makes the fact that he walked 3 hitters seem strange. Now let's take a look at what hitters were able to do with his stuff:  The first thing you may notice was that the Tigers' hitters were very pesky, fouling off a lot of pitches. In fact, they spoiled a little over 19% of his pitches tonight compared to a league average rate of about 17% (thank you Statcorner). That's likely the reason for his high pitch count despite hitting the strikezone pretty well. He also appeared to fall victim to a tight strike zone. He was also able to generate swinging strikes in over 11% of his pitches, which is well above the league average rate of about 7%. His fastball was a hit or miss pitch, literally, as it yielded 6 swinging strikes but was also tagged for 5 base hits. Overall, this was a very impressive debut, both in process and results, especially given the fact that he faced all right handed hitters. He was able to pound the strike zone, and miss bats at a high rate, and that manifested itself in a 5 strikeouts and a sub 3 FIP for the game. Evan already mentioned this earlier today, but the Orioles look like a stacked team in the not to distant future. You just got a glimpse at one of the reasons why. Matusz joins Tillman in the majors
Matusz throws from the 3/4 arm slot and as I type this is showing some deception during his start against the Detroit Tigers. At a listed 6'5", 200 lbs, he is very wiry and could stand to pack on some pounds, something that should eventually happen as he settles into a major league routine. Matusz needed less than one year to prove he belonged in the bigs. Starting the year out with High-A Frederick, he started 11 times and posted a 2.16 ERA. An eight-gamer in Double-A Bowie did nothing to dispel the myths that he was one of the best left-handed prospects in the game, checking in at a 1.55 ERA. All told, he averaged 2.5 walks per nine innings while whiffing 9.6. He has the potential to reach those numbers at the major league level, but it will likely take a couple years to do so. Together with Chris Tillman, also recently recalled, the duo should pair up to provide one of the most devastating 1-2 punches in the major leagues over the next five years. Next year will be a year in transition for the Orioles, who will get a full year of Matusz and Tillman while also breaking in Jake Arrieta and Brandon Erbe to give the Orioles a light at the end of the tunnel to all their pitching woes of recent years. With a young, dynamic outfield offense and Matt Wieters behind the plate, the next one and a half years should be extremely exciting to watch the team develop and come together. Don't rule out a run for the postseason in 2012. It'll be difficult in what promises to be a brutal AL East for the forseeable future, but the Orioles are stacked with young players sure to be legitimate stars. Take a look at what one projected rotation and lineup in 2012 could be: SP Matusz, Tillman, Arrieta and two of Erbe, Radhames Liz, Jeremy Guthrie, David Hernandez, Brad Bergesen C Matt Wieters, 1B Brandon Snyder, 2B Brian Roberts, SS (the one big hole), 3B Josh Bell, LF Nolan Reimold, CF Adam Jones, RF Nick Markakis, DH Luke Scott. That's a pretty scary team. Invest in a solid, league-average shortstop and I could see the Orioles in the playoffs for an appreciable length of time. Once baseball returns in Baltimore, they could see themselves returning to their big-market ways and here to stay. Beating the YankeesI try to be fair and unbiased when I write here, but for all those who don't already know: I'm a die-hard Yankees fan. So I'm watching tonight's Yankee game against the Blue Jays, in which the pitching matchup is grizzled veteran Andy Pettitte versus grizzly-bearded Roy Halladay. During the broadcast, the announcers came up with an interesting little tid-bit about Roy Halladay's place in Yankees history. Roy Halladay has a career record of 16-5 versus the Yankees, which is a .762 winning percentage, in 223.1 innings. That winning percentage is good for second-best all-time against the Yankees (minimum I don't know how many starts...it was on TV). You know who has the best ever winning percentage against the Yankees, according to Elias? None other than George Herman Ruth. The Babe went 17-5 (.773 W%) over his career pitching against the Yankees. Who knew? (My source for this information was the YES Network broadcast. I would love to cite it, but I can't) W: Felix CespedesLast week, Felix Cespedes, an 18-year-old pitcher for the DSL Phillies, threw nine perfect innings, striking out 14. For that, he got a no-decision, leaving him at 0-4 on the season. As I noted last week, Cespedes has been dealing all season, but the run support just hasn't been there. Finally, after another fantastic outing, Cespedes landed in the win column yesterday. Seven innings, one hit, one walk, and nine strikeouts. Making it all the more impressive, he did that against the DSL A's, whose offense was responsible for his one bad outing of the season. Cespedes's ERA is now a solid 3.02, but it pales in comparison to his FIP, which is below 2.00. 82 strikeouts in 66 innings will do that for you. Drew Stubbs ready for a call-upDrew Stubbs, Cincinatti's first round pick in 2006 from the University of Texas, is working towards a September call-up with the Reds. Stubbs is an athletic and skilled centerfielder with speed to burn. This season he has stolen 42 bases in 49 tries (good for an 86 percent success rate) and his defense rates as among the best of all minor league outfielders. According to Jeff Sackmann's recent post on TotalZone ratings for minor league prospects, Stubbs has a saved 19 runs above the average centerfielder, which is extremely impressive. Stubbs is batting .281/.370/.375 this year in Triple-A. While his strikeout rates have remained high (27 percent in his minor league career) so too have his walk rates (12 percent over his career). Stubbs also has the potential to hit for a very high average. His career BABIP is .355, yet his batting average during that span has been just .269. If he can manage to keep his strikeouts down and but the ball in play his speed could generate plenty more hits. The knock on Stubbs is his power, or lack there of. When he was taken 8th overall he projected to hit for some power; however, in his parts of four minor league seasons he has never hit more than 12 home runs. His career slugging percentage is just above .400 (.403). This year he has just 27 extra base hits in 360 at bats. The Reds are currently starting Willy Taveras in center. Taveras sports a miserable .258 wOBA and has even less power than Stubbs with 13 extra base hits in 346 at bats. Taveras plays solid defense, but his bat is such a detriment to the Reds lineup that he is actually 3.8 runs below replacement level this year. Clearly Stubbs cannot be much worse than Taveras has been this year, and unlike Taveras, Stubbs is just 25 years old has the potential to develop and improve into a productive player. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
