The Phillies are in a unique position this trade deadline. Young talent they’re leaning on, like Maikel Franco and Vince Velasquez, haven’t supported them. Veterans they brought in to stabilize the roster and perhaps become trade chips for this very moment have faltered, too, leaving them to fall without grace to baseball’s basement.
And then there’s Pat Neshek, journeyman side-armer. He offers one of the brightest glimmers of hope they have. Not only do they need to trade him -- he was recently ranked the 3rd most valuable trade chip by MLB Trade Rumors -- but it can’t be for whatever they can get simply because he’s set to be a free agent. Shutdown relievers matter too much as the season goes on to get anything less than a top 50 prospect.Â
Neshek has been one of the best in the game this year by fWAR. And look at all the guys ahead of him -- the only one likely to be moved already has been, with Tommy Kahnle going from Chicago to New York. (Kahnle’s old teammate, Anthony Swarzak, hasn’t been mentioned much in rumors to this point.) And what did Kahnle help fetch for the White Sox? Blake Rutherford, the fourth-best Yankees prospect and 49th-best in baseball, according to Baseball Prospectus.
It’s not just about Kahnle, who was a part of a larger deal, though. Look at last year. Cleveland traded Clint Frazier to the Yankees for Andrew Miller. At the time, BP felt Frazier was the 26th best prospect in baseball. He’s already making an impact in the Yankee outfield.
A week before moving Miller, the Yankees traded Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs for Gleyber Torres. Torres was ranked by BP as the 36th best prospect in baseball. The Chapman trade is particularly relevant to Neshek’s case because Chapman, too, was slated for free agency after the season.
Neshek does not have the track record of either pitcher in these deals or the control of Miller, but it’s not necessarily about those things right now. It’s about “what have you done for me lately?” And Neshek has locked down the opposition this year about as well as one could want.
The Yankees didn’t just catch desperate clubs in these deals, either, even though that argument could probably be made and supported in favor of the Phillies’ trade landscape. They also showed that they’d buy at a price similar to what they sold for when they acquired Kahnle and company.
The question now for the Phillies is who might be looking to boost their World Series hopes with a relief ace like Neshek? Five Thirty Eight’s Neil Paine just published the site’s trade deadline guide, using what he and Nate Silver created and call the Doyle Number. It ranks all teams and categorizes them into Solid Buyers, Cautious Buyers, and Sellers. A score of 1 means the team might want to hold; higher means they should consider buying and lower means they should probably be selling.
Focusing on the Solid Buyers gives the Phillies five potential suitors for Neshek: the Dodgers, Astros, Nationals, Red Sox, and Indians. Every other team has at least one reason to hold back on making a move for Neshek despite his dominance in 2017, be it the context in which they currently sit or their general nature.
Combined, these teams have 11 prospects in BP’s Midseason Top 50. Now, remember, the highest ranked prospect in any of the trades mentioned above was Clint Frazier, at 26. That means we can probably cut half the list, unless Washington gets really desperate to continue improving their bullpen.
The Dodgers front office might be considered too smart to deal a long-term asset for a short-term acquisition, but maybe not. Their system is stacked beyond the players on this list and postseason success has been elusive for them. They might mimic the Cubs of this year, in that they’re a dominant force looking for a topper to round out the roster.
Maybe Cleveland lets the sting of last year’s 3-1 lead over the Cubs in the World Series and failure to seal the deal get under their skin, and they pull the trigger on another deal for a relief ace. Boston might not want to give up on the pitcher they drafted at 12th overall just a year ago, but they could be compelled by the Yankees having just pulled the rug from under them in their trade with the White Sox.
And then there’s Houston, who is pacing the Dodgers in the AL. And, like LA, they have a stacked system that could afford the risk of dealing for an older, uncontrolled asset like Neshek. Derek Fisher didn’t place on BP’s midseason list but he’s still a top prospect. He hasn’t worked his way into the Astros lineup despite mashing in AAA and could make sense for both teams.
These might not be the only options the Phillies have, but they might also be the best ones, based on consensus and recent history. A top young talent from the outside could provide the next step forward that their in-house players haven’t been able to provide this year.Â
Even if they have to add to Neshek, they have to find a way to get a deal done. Settling for anything less than a top 50 prospect would be another underwhelming moment in season that’s had far too many.
We’re onto another day without baseball as the All-Star Break comes to an end, and I’ve got another update on an offseason piece. As happenstance would have it this time around, it’s on the recently traded Jose Quintana.
Back in December I wrote about Quintana’s rather distinct excellence, while also finding that there might yet be another way for him to improve: throw more front-door two-seamers. He’d gotten nearly 60% strikes when doing it in 2016.
The front-door two-seamer is a thing of beauty. It’s crafty and layered. It can freeze a hitter or generate weak contact. It’s a pitch that can be equal parts aiding whiffs and abetting barrels, making it a tremendous weapon.
Quintana ranked in the top 20 for lefties using front door two-seamers/sinkers in 2016, but they only made up a shade over 11% of his total pitches. Other notable southpaws, like Dallas Keuchel who ranked 6th and former teammate Chris Sale who ranked 2nd, threw them upwards of 20%. For 2017, Quintana’s throwing the front-door two-seamer less than last year but generating a nearly identical amount of soft contact as last season. That tells us he’s still keeping up with getting hitters to cut at low percentage pitches.
And, given the nature of his up-and-down 2017 to date, it might also suggest an under-utilized tool is sitting there, waiting for him to take advantage of it. If Quintana is maintaining his soft contact rate from last year while throwing less sneaky pitches like front-door two-seamers, then he could add them to the mix and might be able to freeze guys more often.
So why is he throwing it less this year? The short answer, via tasty Statcast pie chart, is it’s simply not performing as well. Quintana is only generating a strike on front-door two-seamers 47.6 percent of the time so far in 2017. Less success with it could be a clear reason to throw the pitch less overall, and that’s especially true when he’s generating such a similar contact profile.Â
As Craig Edwards detailed in June, Quintana has also been giving up more homers this year than ever before. He found that there may have been some strange and unfortunate luck that contributed to a higher homer-to-flyball rate. Quintana’s also giving up more walks this year than we’ve come to expect. Between more dingers and additional free passes, it’s possible he’s been less willing to throw front-door two-seamers because of how they’re designed to get takes from hitters. Maybe it’s in his head that he can’t help out a batter more than he already has been.
But I wonder if the move across town will give him a shot of confidence to throw more front-door pitches that wiggle. Wrigley has been neutral to pitchers this year while Guaranteed Rate Field has favored hitters, and coming into the defending champions’ clubhouse certainly can’t hurt. With Quintana going to the Cubs, the second half of 2017 just gained a whole lot of intrigue.
6 Things You Shouldn’t Wait Until Tax Season To Do
Tax season is right around the corner. With nearly three months to file, you may wonder why we’d spend time talking about it now. But the reality of owning a small- or medium-sized business means record keeping year-round, so there might not be a better opportunity.
While it’s important to remember that each business and its according problems are unique, there are some things that will be true no matter what. Below are six critical small business accounting tips you shouldn’t wait until tax season to take advantage of.
Hire an accounting professional. Sometimes it seems like the tax code is an entirely different language. But accountants speak it fluently. A good one will show you how most savings occur between January 1 and December 31, and not when you file. They’ll also teach you best practices for keeping yourself organized year-round, which reduces confusion and worry come filing season.
Find out how to speak your accounting professional’s language. It’s to your benefit to learn key record keeping terms. It will help you understand your business more thoroughly. Having this knowledge also helps turn your accounting professional into a true small business consultant. Waiting to take this step until after the tax year could quickly constrict your cash flow and limit your options for growth.
Understand your business type and structure. Finding out your business is incorrectly structured during tax season means you’ve missed a large opportunity for savings and may have to pay stiff penalties. Equally important is how your business structure could be negatively impacting you as an owner and be putting you behind for the coming tax year. Understanding the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, is a good place to start when it comes to determining how your business should be structured.
When to update your books. Small business accounting and bookkeeping is a matter of priorities. It might sound convenient to update your books for the tax year as filing season arrives. However, it should be done on a daily basis. That way you’re not trying to determine the reason for deposits from months ago, or whether expenses were business related or personal. Consistently monitoring your cash flow can reduce the trouble caused by sudden, unforeseen problems.
Learn specific rules and regulations. The sheer volume of responsibilities you have as a small- or medium-sized business owner means you could mistakenly overlook IRS regulations. Knowing the ins and outs of those regulations can keep you from haphazardly estimating taxes. Seemingly small details, like whether you hire someone as a contractor or employee, or what to call the money you might take out of your business through the year, are critical to sound record keeping.
Embrace user-friendly software. At first, incorporating small business accounting software into your operation may seem intimidating. But these programs are actually designed to streamline your record keeping so it’s easier now and long-term. Software also adds value by providing a common tool for you and your small business consultant to readily understand the company’s margins and cash flow through the entire tax year.
Tax season provides you an opportunity to get to know the exact issues your small- or medium-sized business faces, as well as the solutions it needs. However, it shouldn’t be the reason you learn about them all at once.
Creating a relationship with a quality accounting professional who has a wide range of knowledge and experience means you’ll be in the best position possible all year long. And with that, every decision you make through the tax year can truly be geared toward helping your business grow. Â
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This piece was crafted for a demo client. I worked from a given title, target audience, and four talking points from the client’s perspective.
The client wanted as many of the following terms used for search engine optimization: small business accounting, record keeping, estimated tax(es), cash flow, small business consultant, tax year, IRS regulations.
The All-Star Break brings a chance to reflect on what’s happened so far this season. For me, that means going back to examine a series of offseason pieces on various players. It’s fun to see what I might have been right or wrong about.
The first such piece was on Jimmy Nelson. This one checks in on Jaime Garcia, on whom the Braves reasonably gambled by giving up three lower ranked prospects. I felt that if he could get on pace to be worth three-ish wins that Atlanta could flip him at the deadline for better prospects than they gave up.
But to do that I thought he’d need to do something about the movement of his slider, which had become a sweeping, lateral thing. I also thought he could benefit by closing the velocity gap between that and his sinker. Certain findings didn’t bear that out for pitchers overall, but I still felt it could help Garcia, in particular, given the way his offerings moved on hitters and considering the same gap in his most successful seasons. Before we get to that, it’s worth digging into his contact profile this year, compared to last year.
Overall, Garcia is generating more swings while hitters are making less contact. The numbers aren’t eye-popping but they’re enough that they should be contributing to a difference. His 11.6% swinging strike rate is 17th in the majors right now, and he’s inducing more soft contact than he has since 2011.
And yet, Garcia is putting up an ERA almost identical to last year and an xFIP that’s half a run-per-nine worse. He’s striking out less and walking more. He’s been worth less than one win and is on pace for just under two for the season.
The movement here, per Brooks Baseball, tells us two things: the horizontal run on the ball is moving in on righties and away from lefties slightly less than it did last year, and the vertical drop on the ball is even less. It’s actually performing like a cutter.
The velocity on Garcia’s slider is slightly up this year, and the gap between that and his sinker is just shy of 9 miles per hour. Compared to last year, it’s decreased by about a half mile per hour -- not a lot. Combine it with less bite and we can see how he’s inducing more soft contact, but also how it simply might not be strong enough to bring down his ability to prevent runs. Â
Despite this, I could still see teams taking a chance on acquiring Garcia at the deadline. The whiffs are up and he’s not getting knocked around a ton overall, even after a rough go in his last handful of starts.
Atlanta will have to make a decision in the next couple weeks. Do they want to try to extend a league average but experienced starter for their young staff, or do they want to try to upgrade on the prospects they gave up for him in the winter? Given the value of a league average starter in the current run-crazy environment, I could see them holding out for a prospect overpay.Â
The All-Star Break brings a chance to reflect on what’s happened so far this season. For me, that means going back to examine a series of offseason pieces on various players. It’s fun to see what I might have been right or wrong about.
One such piece was about the struggles of Jimmy Nelson in 2016. In short, there were too many walks, not enough strikeouts, and too much disappointment. Specifically, I said that if Nelson “was your probable starter it was probable you’d sigh.”
But I also cited Nelson’s propensity to adjust through his career and made two suggestions as to how he could bounce back this season:
Set up on at a different position on the rubber.
Wrangle additional spin he gained from 2015 on all pitches, which could feed into sequencing.
Where a pitcher sets up on the rubber is one of those things that seems so utterly simple that it might not even feel like a real suggestion. But the change does do something fundamentally critical, which is influence the path of the baseball to the plate.
These images come with a caveat: Milwaukee’s camera angle at home was different last year. I had to find one that looked as straight-on as possible, which was a game against the Cardinals in St. Louis. That said, it appears as though Nelson has moved his back foot in to meet the edge of the rubber this year, whereas it hung off a bit in 2016. The difference seems to border on negligible and just enough to matter. Being more centered can help throwing toward the middle of the plate and letting the spin on each pitch speak for the movement.
Jeff Sullivan broke down Nelson’s full motion, though, and found that, regardless of setup on the rubber, he’s driving more directly to the plate. That aids the ball’s path, too -- maybe even more -- and still contributes to letting the spin on his offerings do the talking than trying to command a part of the zone every time.
Like Sullivan, The Sleeper and the Bust posited that Nelson has embraced something new. Paul and Eno focused on his arm angle on his slider, enabling two-plane break that distinguishes it from his curveball. Feeding into the arm angle would be a different grip that accommodates it.
The uptick in slider spin would seem to back all that up. In 2017, Nelson’s added 124 revolutions to it. (Dang!) The truly fascinating detail here is just how little the arm slot and grip changes might be to provide that kind of jump.
Driveline Baseball has detailed how spin could be put on a ball in 6 milliseconds. For perspective, consider that a baseball generally reaches the plate in 400 milliseconds, or four-tenths of a second. The way it moves is determined more than sixty times as fast.
The new break on Nelson’s slider may also better facilitate fastball use this year. Last year, his heat started leaking over the heart of the plate as the season wore on. Sullivan noted how Nelson’s change in motion this season has seen him throw less across his body. By being more direct now he can more readily attack up and down in the zone. Combined with how his new slider bites to the glove side, his mechanics allow his strongest pitch to augment his ability to sequence.
Nelson’s performance isn’t the only reason this is all relevant. After his final start of a miserable 2016, he told reporters that “I know that [pitching coach Derek Johnson] and I are doing the right things.” In the winter I said that may have been true, but that he might not have put it all together optimally.
Sometimes that work can take time to make an impact. His 2017 is a testament to the split-second nature of baseball, and how blinking at the wrong time means you might miss something big. Nelson was close to becoming an afterthought. Now he’s a major reason Milwaukee sits atop the NL Central half way through the year.
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This piece was edited for accuracy in regard to how fast the baseball reaches the plate as the result of a Fangraphs Community member comment, accessible here.Â
This piece initially appeared on The Unbalanced on 3.23.17, and on MLBTR’s “Baseball Blogs Weigh In” on 3.25.17
The 2017 World Baseball Classic is over. To say it was punctuated by moments of purity would be unjust. It was made of them. There was Jose Quintana’s six no-hit innings. Javy Baez’s no-look tag. Nelson Cruz’s dinger he celebrated like both his first and last ever. Adam Jones robbing Orioles teammate Manny Machado of a home run.
Many would say the Jones catch defines the tournament more than any other play, especially because the US won. But it wasn’t that or anything else that happened on the field. Instead, it’s a comment Jones made that characterizes it:
This statement epitomizes the whole WBC experience. Some of the game’s best players opting to sit out the tournament made for a reasonable story line, and maybe even more of a story than the actual tournament before it started. Guys like Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw deciding to stay in their Major League team camps was a sigh of relief to those in front offices, and a sign of indifference to fans.
But what Jones said was true. Everyone who wanted to be at the tournament was. And in that sense one of the most honest guys in the game kept it going by essentially saying, “Why don’t we worry about who’s here?” It’s reminiscent of Herb Brooks saying, “I’m not looking for the best players, Craig, I’m looking for the right ones” in 2004’s Miracle. Such sentiment from Jones and the Disney version of Brooks defines everyone’s participation.
When an event like the WBC rolls around it might be intuitive to put together the “best” team. That isn’t the point, though. The point is to put together a team where everyone shows up with conviction. While it won’t be celebrated accordingly, team USA’s win is a big deal because it’s an opportunity to see the game differently. Instead of baseball being a six month affair so casually grueling that it makes people tune out, we could — and should — view it as what happens when you decide to be hawkishly present.
This weekend, we learned of 22-year-old stud closer Roberto Osuna’s anxiety and how it’s keeping him from taking the field. Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports stepped back and humanized the concept of a quality professional not feeling suitable for work because of something like this. It’s a thought that too often feels foreign because of the status we give pro athletes. Â
Dominant on the field, Osuna appeared to be overwhelmed in his quotes about his well-being. From Brown’s piece (emphasis mine):
“I really don’t know how to explain it,” he said. “I just feel anxious. I feel like I’m lost a little bit right now. I’m just a little bit lost.
“This has nothing to do with me being on the field. I feel great out there. It’s just when I’m out of baseball, when I’m not on the field that I feel just weird and a little bit lost.
“I wish I knew how to get out of this, but we’re working on it, trying to find ways to see what can make me feel better. But, to be honest, I just don’t know.”
In a single sitting, Osuna says “just” five times. And it might be the most dangerous word that could be used in this context.
Though we’ve made strides in accepting anxiety as a legitimate medical concern there is still a stigma that surrounds it.  But because it doesn’t inherently come with a fever or cast it’s often looked at as something that someone just needs to deal with. Meanwhile, symptoms can mimic a heart attack.Â
It’s not even strictly a mental obstacle. It’s chemical. Anxiety is tied to cortisol levels in the body. Cortisol is regarded as the stress hormone and is critical to our natural fight-or-flight instincts. It is adrenaline’s tag-team partner. It’s triggered by high leverage situations with a lot on the line, which happen to be the kind from which Osuna makes a living. So when he says his current state has nothing to do with him being on the field, it’s probably fair to say that’s actually highly unlikely.
The body doesn’t release these chemicals like a faucet. There is no convenient handle to portion out the amounts one might receive at any given moment. It’s possible that Osuna gets into games and simply can’t turn off the very thing that makes him so damn good on the mound once the game is over; that cortisol floods through his system unchecked.
And why would he know how to turn it off? What background might he have to keep it in check? We’re generally not a culture that prepares for the come down. At 22, he’s already got two-plus years experience in the Bigs. But dealing with anxiety? That’s probably not a focus through the developmental process in baseball operations, even though there are well-vetted methods that can easily be implemented.
The brain loves patterns and automation. For the most part, it wants you to be able to go about your day without having to stress too much. But danger may arise quickly when the stress response it’s equipped with for protection gets folded into patterns of automation that are designed for comfort. That’s why “just” can be an alarming word to pair with statements about feeling “weird” and “a little bit lost.”
How Osuna and the Jays handle this is ultimately their business, and only their business. But I fear an announcement in the coming days saying he’s fine. He’s already been back on the mound. Osuna may not be out of the woods for some time, though, and if it’s stopped him from entering games it could be severe for him. It can take years of practice and strategy to appropriately address anxiety.  I only hope that he and the team comes to that conclusion on their own. If they don’t, the situation could get much worse.
How Players Might Distinguish Risk in New Contracts
Player contracts can be fascinating because of how we tend to examine them. We can do it through a micro lens, figuring how each one impacts the shape of the team and its ability to compete; or we can look at them with a macro perspective and see how they do or don’t impact the overall business of a franchise. As fans and analysts, we usually go the micro route.
Part of going the micro route in examining player contracts is questioning whether a player just became overpaid or underpaid upon signing his new deal. Dave Cameron did just that when considering Jean Segura’s recent extension, expanding on how Segura may well have left money on the table when he inked his 5 year, $70 million extension earlier this month:
Perhaps Segura just really likes Seattle, likes the ballpark, likes the organization, and isn’t as concerned about whether he’s on a sustained winner. But 18 months from free agency, it seems like he might have had a chance to earn more money on a team with a more certain future, so him taking an extension now is certainly a risk on his part, as he could end up as an underpaid asset on a team without enough around him to win consistently. That’s not what you generally want.
This is  a fair thought. Players rarely -- if ever -- have the chance to influence what the market will pay them, and where. Signing a deal that potentially pays anything less than maximum value, then, could certainly be regarded as shortsighted and a risk.
It’s at this moment in evaluating new contracts that it becomes worthwhile to ask: on whose behalf might the player be leaving money on the table, and for whom is it a risk? Them, or players down the line?
Players should absolutely push for every dollar the market is willing to pay them. This idea becomes emphasized when we remember how disparate the split in revenue is between players and owners. It doesn’t matter that the dollar amounts on both sides are absurd to most people. Players gain zero benefit by taking less pay.
But if we consider recent economic research, we might see why Segura didn’t necessarily push for every single dollar. Doctor George Simon comments on a study from Christian Bayer at the University of Bonn and Falko Juessen at Dortmund University that details how money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness but that levels of financial certainty do impact our general well-being. And the bottom line is Segura’s new deal still comfortably puts him in a mental place where he is “gaining steadily in [his] overall sense of security. He can put in the same exact work as he did before signing this contract and feel much more at ease.
The real risk in deals like Segura’s, then, may be for other players in the future. The micro approach for him -- the part of his signing that considers only the needs of Jean Segura and his family -- is something he clearly finds satisfying. Otherwise, he probably doesn’t sign. But the macro perspective, or the one that would consider how his new contract could be used as a benchmark for others in the future, is probably left wanting.
Understanding Player Contracts from A Business Perspective
As statistics have become more advanced and public we’ve gained myriad ways to understand baseball more in depth. We don’t just know that Aaron Judge smacks the crap out of the ball; we know that he can it out of the park at more than 120 miles per hour. We don’t just know that Yu Darvish’s pitches can dive all over the zone, but that they have an average spin rate of more than 2500 revolutions per minute.
While those stats represent single facets of a player’s game, there’s one that incorporates everything they do to give a sense of their overall value: Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. Depending where you find your stats -- there’s fWAR from Fangraphs or bWAR from Baseball Reference -- there will be subtle differences in how it’s calculated. But the point is the same: to tell you who the best and worst players are compared to anyone who could replace them.Â
WAR is the type of stat that enables us to react in real time, and with relatively sound reason, to newly signed contracts. It’s how we can say Kevin Kiermaier’s deal is probably a notable win for the Rays and why Ryan Howard’s last extension was premature at best.
The reality we shape as observers and fans often looks at these contracts under a microscope, and only under a microscope. When a guy strikes out looking to end a rally, or gives up the hit that sparks one, that’s when we notice. And, fair or not, those moments craft the narratives we often carry throughout the life of a player’s contract.
Zooming out is helpful, though. In certain context, there might not be such a thing as a bad contract.
Owners have been raking in the money for a long, long time. They’ve pretty much always taken home more than the players and in recent years that difference has only grown. When you consider that there are only ever as many owners as there are teams, and that the players’ share is split hundreds more times, the disparity becomes emphasized.
If we want additional perspective, we can look at how the percent of overall revenue accounted for by player salaries has decreased almost annually like clockwork.
Revenue data goes beyond that which fans and analysts use to justify a point of view on a player’s worth to their team. Those trains of thought spur additional conversation about how a given contract can influence the team’s composition and ability to compete for championships. And these points may well hold water. But they probably don’t provide much influence on the business perspective.
No matter how good or bad a contract is, a team is likely still profitable and operating within a relatively certain margin of error that isn’t dramatically different than if they didn’t have that deal on the books.
That’s not to say owners don’t care about a bad contract. It’s just that, at an operational level, they have to concern themselves with the bottom line first and foremost because it’s what allows them to persist. Sure, the big deals that go sour are disappointing to them, but they’re not damning.Â
Injuries are something that pronounce their impact differently on every player in the game. Some guys have freakish bodies and recover faster naturally. Others push themselves to accelerate their return. But recovery from some injuries can’t be sped up. Maladies like inflammation are plainly matters of time.
JA Happ went on the 10-day DL on April 18 for having it in his elbow. He’s finally back on the mound in the Majors after being out for more than a month.
Kendall Graveman just hit the DL for soreness in his throwing shoulder and is “taking anti-inflammatory medication and resting,” per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. Manager Bob Melvin says he’s been through this before, that it’ll take longer this time, and that the team is going to “let this thing calm down” before trying to build up his endurance again. The passivity in his words is telling.
And if you have the heart to remember the end of Roy Halladay’s career, you’ll remember inflammation in his throwing shoulder cost him time on the DL amidst his body simply telling him, “please, no more.”
Inflammation is a general response from the body that results from cell agitation. It can occur from normal use -- “normal” being a relative word. It intends to clear out damaged cells but the process causes pain, discomfort, and inherently imbalanced levels of certain proteins in our bodies. And the things a ballplayer does every day, the extreme motions they constantly put themselves through for more than half a calendar year, make them prime candidates to become victims of it.
Enter yoga.
There’s no causal relationship between yoga and reduced injuries. But as I researched its impact on ballplayers for a job I couldn’t help but think of the benefits. And I did find that it has been connected to balancing the proteins that can get whacked out in players’ bodies through the course of a season.
Researchers have studied a particular form called Hatha yoga, which combines poses (asanas), breath control (pranayama) and meditation. They explored its ability to help aid in recovery from the regular wear-and-tear we put our bodies through. “Regular” is another relative term -- think of the twist and torque your favorite hitter exhibits on each swing and how that could eventually cause a dreaded oblique strain.
The study’s trippiest finding centers on epinephrine levels in the brain, which are fueled by the adrenal gland and play a large role in maintaining both physical and emotional stress. In focusing on the differences between novices and experts, experts experienced higher levels of epinephrine on a regular basis. That surprised even the researchers.
Common sense might tell us that the more we have of something, the more we get used to it, and then the less impact it has on us. It’s why a person going skydiving for the first time can find it exhilarating while it’s just another day at the office for the instructor they’re attached to. It’s the same when a pitcher isn’t excited about his velocity inching up through the spring. He can expect it because of what he’s thrown in the past.
The study found the opposite with yoga, though. The body adapts to the poses, breathing patterns, and meditation in Hatha yoga and the person gets better at it; but chemically, they don’t get used to it. It doesn’t become old hat. Instead, the practice becomes invigorating and those who practice it build up what becomes an expandable physiological embankment of wellness.
What’s more is that, based on the study’s parameters, a player could approach expert level at yoga over the course of a single season. A few hours a week could help keep their protein levels balanced through the summer and avoid the fickle complications of inflammation. And beyond even that, it offers a fresh, low impact way to optimize their body that could pay long-term dividends.
Vince Velasquez Needs A New Approach, and He Knows It
When the season started I said that Vince Velasquez would be the future of the Phillies...if he could wrangle his fastball usage.
He hasn’t. And after only the first quarter of the season, that might not seem quite newsworthy. His last start was pretty much exactly what we’ve come to expect from him: 6 strikeouts, 2 walks, and 5 earned runs in 5.1 innings. But after the game Velasquez said, “I don’t know. I’m just clueless right now. I’m just running around like a chicken without a head.”
Those are the comments of a player worn down by his own consistent, tepid performance like running water does to the sides of a canyon. Manager Pete Mackanin had his own thoughts after the game. Per Corey Seidman of CSN Philly:
"He just has trouble commanding his secondary pitches," Mackanin said. "He needs to command his secondary pitches. Once he does that, hitters can't sit on his fastball. He's got a real high swing-and-miss percentage on his fastball. I think he's second to (Max) Scherzer.
"Players don't square up his fastball but when you can't command or show the command of your secondary stuff, then they just keep looking for the heater. And if you make mistakes with it, it gets hit. So his challenge is to start gaining better command of his breaking balls.
"If he throws a slider to a hitter and he swings and misses at it and it's out of the strike zone, he's got to have the ability to throw another one in the same location instead of just throwing a fastball."
As of this writing, the Phillies have lost 19 of the last 23. They’re in the middle of a rebuild; a phase where they’re expecting the first wave of the next generation to start producing. Velazquez is a critical piece. With how the big picture and current moment are swirling, Mackanin’s comments are worth examining.
Yes, Velasquez needs to throw less fastballs. His approach is nearly identical to last year. In fact, with two strikes, he’s throwing the heater more often. Given that, even having command of his secondaries may not influence his results much. Â
And we may not be in a position to say he’s not confident in his secondary offerings because he’s thrown them so irregularly. He’s employed his fastball at least four times more than all of his secondary pitches in two strike counts this year.
The relaxed environment built by the team seems to have enabled certain guys to grow into, or maybe even outgrow, expectations. Freddy Galvis, Odubel Herrera, and Cesar Hernandez all fit that description. But Velasquez could require additional structure. There might already be a successful player in the league to use as a template, too: Chris Archer.
Archer is mostly a two-pitch pitcher. His fastball (used 47.4% of the time this season) and slider (45.1%) account for nearly every pitch he’s thrown in 2017. He sprinkles in a changeup (6.6%) as the game goes on to keep hitters honest when they see him a second and third time. He’s used his slider in two-strike counts this year just about as much as Velasquez has used his fastball, so there’s already some semblance of a formula Velasquez knows that could help him transition his mental approach.
By movement, Velasquez’s slider is basically a flatter, faster version of his curveball. It hasn’t been effective. He’s thrown it less this year than last, but further reducing its use would leave him with an electric four-seamer, a sharp curve, and a solid changeup.
The repertoire would be different than Archer’s, and the effectiveness of its differences could be debated, but the goal would be straightforward: simplify Velasquez’s game, so that when he does find himself in a two strike count, his fastball could play up like Archer’s slider. Get him out of his head and let his stuff do the talking because it is capable of speaking for itself.
Once he feels comfortable with this strategy, Velasquez could add to the velocity gap between his fastball and changeup, which could provide some much needed guile to his game. And while it might seem foolhardy to think of step two of a plan for a struggling player before they even start step one, it’s vital because he’s never had more than one step to his approach.
It’s been apparent for some time that Velasquez throwing only the fastball wouldn’t be enough, no matter how good it is. Now we know he knows it, too, and we’re all waiting for the next step.
Stating exactly what Luis Severino would be at the start of the season was a puzzle. He flashed such different versions of himself over the previous two years that there was no telling if he’d stick in the rotation or be relegated to the bullpen, whether because of his own lacking presence or a less deniable one amongst other in-house competition. But after six starts, he’s given us -- and the Yankees -- an emphatic answer.
Luis Severino is a starter. And maybe more.
We’re at the point where the basis for these numbers has largely become reliable for what we could expect moving forward. There are a couple key components. Austin Yamada explains how two-plane movement in Severino’s slider has been giving hitters fits. Matthew Mocarsky forecasted at the season’s start that Severino’s changeup could be critical to balancing his line drives and grounders, which is exactly what’s happened.
Pitches are rarely distributed dead equally. Acknowledging each one’s weighted value as if they were can provide a solid picture of just how much impact a certain pitch is having in a guy’s repertoire. And for Severino, his changeup has been crucial.
The caveat with weighted pitch values is how the amount thrown directly dictates how often a hitter has the chance to knock it around. Severino hasn’t thrown a ton of changeups and that certainly contributes to the offering’s weighted value. But the numbers suggest that when he has thrown it, he’s paced play with it.
We could wonder what would happen if he started throwing it just a little more and his fastball just a little less, but let’s zoom out. Let’s regard what Luis Severino is showing us in 2017 as his first well-planted foot in the majors. He’s already shown he can make adjustments, so let’s also consider he’s got one or two more in him that elevate his game.
What would that mean for the Yankees?
Severino could represent a home-grown anchor in their rotation and that’s something they haven’t had in a long time. Chien-Ming Wang’s best work was a flash in the pan that wasn’t completely supported by his peripherals. Andy Pettitte was more impressive for his steadiness than his dominance. And before that? You’re going back to at least the 70s.
It would be interesting to see how the Yankees would approach Severino’s contract if he continues on his current course. They haven’t really been in a position to sign a young star to a sweetheart deal like, say, the Rays. They also have the financial wherewithal to not feel such pressure.
But the fact remains that he could be more important than any other player in their young core, and how they decide to go about keeping him in New York could have sizable implications for the franchise.
We can say it’s only six weeks into the 2017 season but Luis Severino is a big reason the Yankees have one of the best pitching staffs in baseball. And he’s a big reason it could stay that good, too.
By now you’re likely aware of Mets pitcher Matt Harvey having not shown up to the park last Saturday, and how he instead opted to stay home because of the worst headache of his life.
You’re also likely aware he was purportedly out until closing time celebrating Cinco de Mayo the night before and golfed Saturday morning; that the Mets suspended him for three games without pay; that he’s considered filing a grievance; and that this is not an isolated instance of confusion and mismanagement around the Mets.
Harvey says it was a miscommunication. The team very clearly has said otherwise:
“There are rules here that weren’t adhered to, and we took a stance.”
“We had to do something. We have a policy here and we had to do something.”
“I know it’s dramatic, but I think any team in baseball probably would have reacted very similarly.”
Those are all quotes from manager Terry Collins who, for better or worse, can’t seem to speak about anything frustrating without actually being frustrated -- like he’s agitated he has to talk about an issue at all.
The team had a miscommunication of their own earlier that week when they alerted Harvey that he’d be starting a day before expected, was sore from lifting, had no time to adjust his routine, and got blown up in 5.1 innings against Atlanta.
I’m not trying to absolve Harvey of his behavior when I say this -- his teammates didn’t exactly back him and he’s since apologized at length -- but can we really blame him in the first place? Regardless of whether you believe him or the Mets in any of the nonsense recently surrounding the team, has he been put in a position to act better?
The Mets have created a faultless environment. No one’s been responsible for a long time. That means no one has had to listen. No one has had to pay attention to what someone else is doing. No one has had to process what it is to be on the same page. There’s a perception that they’ve succeeded as much as they have in spite of management, not because of it. And, again, whether you believe it or not isn’t really the point. It’s that the perception is out there.
Reshaping one’s image is a long haul task the Mets aren’t prepared to embrace right now. In fact, they completely punt each chance they get. It’s not on Matt Harvey. He’s simply an attempted product from an imbalanced equation.
Jacob deGrom struck out 10 batters in his fourth start of the 2017 season. He also walked six and gave up three earned runs on eight hits. The statline alone might tell you it was his weirdest game of the year, and maybe his worst. Â
Before that, in his third start, he went seven innings and struck out 13. Â He allowed back-to-back dingers early and then took control of the game, allowing only three more baserunners the entire night. His pitches were humming like a barbershop quartet. That statline makes it sound like his best start of the year.
But it wasn’t.
No, that would be his second turn, on April 10 at the Phillies, where he only struck out three. He also walked two and gave up six hits in six innings. That sounds terrifically pedestrian until you realize how he did it.
We can start with his fastball, which was a big reason he labored through 31 pitches in the first inning (he only threw 96 all night). Compared to where he’s located it through his career (left), it was all over the place that night (right). It contributed to six men reaching base in the opening frame. He also gave up both walks then, one of which came with the bases loaded. And then Brock Stassi came to the plate and worked a 2-2 count. DeGrom threw a changeup, induced an inning-ending double play, and transformed for the rest of the night.
We can start with his fastball, which was a big reason he labored through 31 pitches in the first inning (he only threw 96 all night). Compared to where he’s located it through his career (left), it was all over the place that night (right). It contributed to six men reaching base in the opening frame. He also gave up both walks then, one of which came with the bases loaded. And then Brock Stassi came to the plate and worked a 2-2 count. DeGrom threw a changeup, induced an inning-ending double play, and transformed for the rest of the night.
Equal pitch distribution is always interesting. It can speak to a lack of predictability and according effectiveness. But seeing it so even among the slider, curveball, and changeup in this way is more than interesting; it’s relatively unprecedented. Historically, I couldn’t find anyone whose pitch mix has broken down that way for their career.
That’s significant for a few reasons. First, it could explain why Phillies hitters ended up struggling when deGrom seemed to be on the ropes. I could hardly believe they didn’t do more damage as Stassi hit into the double play. But the rally faltered because deGrom had already started to adapt, and in a way that hitters simply aren’t exposed to. In that context, and considering the Phillies aren’t exactly Murderer’s Row, it’s not so strange.
The slider-change-curve pitch mix also speaks to the importance of an effective fastball. With an unreliable four-seamer, deGrom basically ignored his two-seamer. Maybe he did that because if he couldn’t locate the straight one, he figured the alternative that has four to five more inches of movement was no good, either.
But more than anything, deGrom’s adjustment that night was compelling because we’re in an age of sport where we constantly hear about guys unleashing their egos to achieve eminence. And he went the other way.
Alec Fenn of BBC delved into ego’s place in sports. He spoke with confidence coach Martin Perry, who tells how some of the most exceptional players “don’t see risks; they have a bulletproof certainty they’ll produce and [with that] supreme level of confidence, magic can happen.”
Perry compares ego to the stuff of Harry Potter and Disney World, around which entire entertainment universes have been built. For all the mystique ego can produce it’s no wonder we speak about it so lustfully and embrace it so openly.
A pitcher is provided more opportunity to drive a game with his ego than any other player because of his involvement in every play. On that night in Philadelphia, Jacob deGrom was determined to assert himself and beat the Phillies by establishing his fastball, as any pitcher would try. When it didn’t work he walked away from his ego but maintained bulletproof certainty. He went with the flow. He didn’t get the win but was a huge reason the Mets did, and gave us a glimpse at an alternative route to success in the process.
Major League Baseball’s 2017 season opened on Sunday and the second game, featuring the Giants at the Diamondbacks, was full of fireworks.
Madison Bumgarner had a perfect game through 5.1 innings. He fell short of the perfect game and no-hitter (you can feel free to blame me). He ended strong and ultimately went seven strong innings and striking out 11 batters.
He also walked once and socked two dingers, giving him 16 total for his career and the most in Giants franchise history. His first homer went out of the park at 112.5 miles per hour, the hardest hit ever for a pitcher in the Statcast era. And while his line is one you won’t often see from a pitcher and should applaud, he got a no-decision and the team lost.
We don’t have 13th floors in hotels, walk under ladders, or pick up coins facing tails-up because all of these things are bad luck. People knock on wood when they talk about the future. They say “God bless you” if you sneeze, for fear of your soul escaping.
And as if those habits weren’t odd enough, ballplayers and baseball go and take superstition to a whole new level of silly and agitating.
The worst is the concept of the jinx during a no-hitter. Under what circumstances does uttering some passing phrase about a pitcher’s no-hitter suddenly doom it? Even if it’s deliberate, how does that change a guy’s ability to paint the black or shoot a blooper? Maybe it’s some cosmic understanding that goes over the head of simpler folks. But baseball is a game that is constantly relying more and more heavily on numbers, odds, and percentages. A no-hitter is one incredible thing we can accurately acknowledge in the moment and without in-depth analysis. Doing so is no foible.
A pitcher’s team not talking to him during a no-hitter is just fine, though. It makes a single game something special, and how often does that happen during the regular season? That pitcher is on a mission that has been accomplished only 252 times since 1901. Currently, there are nearly 2,500 games in a single season. If a guy’s doing something that’s only been done a fraction of a single percentage in all the games in modern history, there’s no reason to goof with him like it’s just another day at the park. To that point, it hasn’t been.
Other superstitions have become prominent because of the volume at which they occur. Guys skip over the chalk at the start and finish of every inning on the way out of and to the dugout. It’s okay to think, “Couldn’t they walk on it just once? No one is going to get hurt. It isn’t going to break a teammate’s mother’s back like stepping on a crack.” Remember, though: the inning is over. Commercials are about to start. That silly moment is an easy one to tune out, so we’d be best off doing just that when we find ourselves fixated on it.
But when the game is back, and a player’s getting ready to pitch or step into the box, we’re paying attention. And we notice those ridiculous, idiosyncratic tics that turn into superstition which so many guys maintain. They work them into their mechanics and if they don’t perform them they’re thrown off. I’m looking at you, Matt Garza. Your little glove twitch has been the visual equivalent to a throw-up burp. It’s unpleasant and nobody needs it, and they’ll take a drink of the nearest beverage just to forget it.
Though he’s retired, Nomar Garciaparra remains the king of batting glove love. Each time he stepped to the plate he might as well have played pat-a-cake with himself. It’s nothing compared to Moises Alou, though, who refused to wear batting gloves and would pee on his hands to toughen them up. What the hell, dude?
In all this strangeness, through all this exercised peculiarity, there might be some logic even though the very definition of superstition tells us there isn’t.
In an episode of Fresh Air titled “Habits: How They Form And How To Break Them,” we learn about something called the habit loop from Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. There are three steps to it: a cue, a routine, and a reward. The cue enables the brain to let a behavior happen, while the routine is the actual action, and the reward is the brain enjoying it all and making it easier to remember.
That process becomes automated rather quickly. Scientists attribute it to the basal ganglia, which “plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition.”
None of this speaks to the actual decision of players to do quirky things like skip over foul lines or fiddle with their equipment a certain way. That’s because the part of our brain that makes decisions — the prefrontal cortex — checks out once a behavior becomes automatic. In many cases it appears that once someone starts a habit, they’re not actually choosing to continue it.
Habits do provide comfort, though. And habits held in the belief of good fortune are why we get silly baseball superstitions that we can laugh at or hate. Whether they’re rare or regular occurrences, they’re one more way the game gives back to us.
With the weekly routine of going to get comics comes a subtle, taunting silver lining: what if they’re out of your book?
It’s a reality you don’t think about until you’ve scanned the shelf once, twice, three times for good measure, just to make sure you’re not missing it. You’ve probably given yourself plenty of scares before that turned out to be nothing. But now -- today, of all days, and with one of your monthlies for which you already wait weeks -- it’s happening.
You think how there are ways to go about this, ways to make sure it never happens again. “Pull list, dummy. Create a pull list. Add it to a pull list. Never be a dummy again, dummy.”
Not always so easy, though.
Maybe your shop utilizes an online pull list you go to on a weekly basis. Maybe the site was busted up when you went to put in your order over the weekend, and again on Deadline Monday. Maybe you cursed under your breath and thought, “well, I’m getting to the shop on Wednesday this week, so…”
And then you get there and the book is absent, as it was for me this week.
It emphasizes the importance of having multiple shops to rely on. Or, in my case, multiple zip codes and family members willing to make pit stops.
For the second month in a row, I’m asking a brother to stop at the shop I used to go to when I lived in Philadelphia for the newest Foolkiller, because they’re always reliable. And even though it’s out of stock there, too, they’re getting a copy from their other location.
That’s not to disparage the shop I go to now, which is almost as fun and impressive. However, let’s recount the roadblocks: busted pull list, empty home shop, empty backup shop, empty backup shop calling a second location.
The silver lining here is the delay in immediate satisfaction. While we’re inundated by it most everywhere else, and almost certainly appeased by it with the very format on which comics are built, immediate satisfaction was not attainable for me this Wednesday. I have a theory that it makes me more engaged when I do read the elusive book, and that I’m willing to find ways to enjoy it in the art and story that maybe I’d be quicker to glance over at otherwise.
Maybe that’s not my theory. Maybe it’s my mom’s from when I was seven. But the point stands: waiting makes you wait, but waiting makes it more worthwhile. And if that damn pull list site is working, you’ll be able to read the next issue on time!
