Most often, there’s a specific topic that bugs us enough that we need to share. Today it’s a whole bunch of little things that have been piling up on Post-it notes.
Just was running through a bunch of stats and recent news items. Some are about the Atlanta Braves specifically and some are just things about baseball. Hopefully you’ll find something of interest in here.
Funny that while “pace of play” was the mantra last year, nobody’s saying a word about it here in 2019. That despite the fact that game times are up by 3 minutes on average this season… giving back much of the 5 minute reduction from 2018.
Not uncoincidentally, run-scoring is up by a full 1/3rd of a run per game over 2018 (7%). Home runs are up by 0.21 per game (an 18% increase!).
You think that extra run-scoring makes people forget about the length of games?
You might also think that the practice of “frequent pitching changes” might fuel longer game times, but there’s a conundrum here in recent years:
- 2019: 3:03 game times, 4.24 pitchers per game
- 2018: 3:00 game times, 4.36 pitchers per game (more pitchers, shorter games)
- 2017: 3.05 game times, 4.22 pitchers per game (fewer pitchers, longer games)
Crazy News in the East
In the span of just one week – June 16-22 – the following things happened in the NL East:
- The Mets fired 2 pitching coaches
- The Mets shut down Brandon Nimmo (neck) and put Jeurys Familia on the IL (shoulder), while Noah Syndergaard started rehabbing a hamstring injury early this week.
- The Mets manager had a dust-up with a reporter and was fined by the team. He also had to apologize. He then had to really apologize.
- This on the heels of getting a “vote of confidence” from the GM after the pitching coaches were dumped.
- The Phillies failed to win a game, and their manager was just fined for soiling an umpire’s shoes.
- Their center fielder is still suspended and their left-fielder is still done for the year.
- Oh, and manager Gabe Kapler also got the dreaded ‘vote of confidence‘ from his boss.
- The Nationals managed to win 1 game at home against the Braves, but they released Trevor Rosenthal at the end of the week… eating approximately $3.75 million in the process.
- The Nationals didn’t exactly rule out the possibility of trading Max Scherzer. To be fair, most of the noise on that topic seems to be coming exclusively from Yankee fans.
- The Nationals put Kyle Barraclough on the IL.
- The Marlins? Actually had a winning week. It was pretty quiet down in South Florida.
No wonder the Atlanta Braves built up a 6.5 game lead (now 5.5) as of this writing).
Baseball-reference.com now pegs the Braves’ playoff odds at 92%.
The Braves’ record entering play on Wednesday was 47-33. That’s exactly 1 game ahead of where they were after 80 games in 2018 (46-34).
At that point, Atlanta was also in 1st place, though Philly was only 3.0 games behind.
The Braves had the 3rd best record in the NL, but the teams in front of them were Milwaukee (48-33) and Arizona (47-35). Right now, they are 2nd in the NL behind the Dodgers (55-26).
So Ya Wanna Beat the Dodgers?
Barring something surprising, all NL playoff roads to the World Series go through Los Angeles.
Longtime readers will recall that I have recognized a simple metric that generally identifies teams as being of ‘playoff caliber’.
This happens whenever a club amasses 40 fWAR from both their pitchers and hitters.
The Dodgers? They already have 20.0 WAR from their position players and 12.3 from their pitchers. Both of those numbers lead all other teams in the majors… and that was just after their 81st game (Tuesday).
The Braves aren’t exactly slouches here: 13.8 from the hitters (2nd in the NL; 4th overall), though 4.7 on the pitching side (23rd in the majors).
This 18.5 WAR total actually puts them on pace to miss that 40.0 threshold, but it’s pretty clear that things are trending in the right direction… though it also suggests strongly that more pitching help could assist that as well.
Other NL teams that will need to be reckoned with because they are on-or-near a 40-WAR pace are:
- Chicago: 21.3
- Arizona: 22.0 (too bad about the division they’re in)
- Brewers: 19.7
- The Mets, oddly enough, are at 18.4
- Nationals: 17.0
Teams you might think are still in the thick of things – but the numbers suggest otherwise – are:
- Cardinals: 14.4
- Phillies: 12.9
- Rockies: 11.7
The worst team? In the NL, it’s the Giants at 3.1; in the AL: the Orioles with +0.1. Wow.
That’s enough from the notebook for now… Go Braves/VOTE Braves!