sveumrules

Rays, White Sox, Astros, Brewers, Dodgers & Giants look like locks for six of the ten spots. Remaining contenders with their odds from the various sources... NYY: 76.7% FanGraphs | 54% 538 | 74.7% PECOTA BOS: 57.0% FanGraphs | 69% 538 | 65.5% PECOTA TOR: 51.9% FanGraphs | 52% 538 | 40.6 PECOTA OAK: 10.7% FanGraphs | 14% 538 | 15.0% PECOTA SEA: 5.6% FanGraphs | 13% 538 | 5.6% PECOTA ATL: 82.3% FanGraphs | 84% 538 | 63.7% PECOTA SDP: 44.5% FanGraphs | 32% 538 | 61.7% PECOTA CIN: 39.2% FanGraphs | 47% 538 | 28.4% PECOTA PHI: 21.6% FanGraphs | 25% 538 | 33.1% PECOTA STL: 7.9% FanGraphs | 8% 538 | 2.3% PECOTA NYM: 4.5% FanGraphs | 4% 538 | 10.8% PECOTA

Garrett got it going to the tune of a 359/508/620 triple slash at Wisconsin with 12/1 SB/CS. Sure, the injuries are frustrating, but even making it to AA (where he is 2.5 years younger than the average player) in his first pro season is a pretty significant accomplishment. MLB had Mitchell at #65 & BA had him at #91 entering the season. I would guess he ends up in the same range entering 2022, so more of a hold serve season than a wasted one.

Yeah, the FV is more important than the ordinal ranking. Ashby is a 50 FV. There are only six pitchers on their board with a 55 FV and just one with a 60 FV.

The Brewers have 10 position players with at least 1.0 WAR per FanGraphs. The 11th best position player is Eduardo Escobar with 0.6 WAR. The Brewers have 11 pitchers with at least 0.9 rWAR per FanGraphs. Their 12th best pitcher is Brent Suter with 0.5 rWAR.

FanGraphs had Ashby as the #1 prospect in the system entering the season & currently has him at #103 in their overall rankings.

Brewers Gold wins 8-5. Jesus Chirinos (2-4 | 2B | HR) and Eduarqui Fernandez (2-4) lead the way on offense while Keon Broxton DH'ed going 0-4 with a BB and 3 K. Fernando Olguin (2 IP | 2 K) and Phili Silverio (1 IP | 2K) put up zeroes on the pitching ledger. Brewers Blue wins 4-2. Jheremy Vargas (3-4) had the lone multi hit game while Brannon Jordan (2 IP | 1 K) and Leoni De La Cruz (2 IP) registered scoreless outings.

Carolina loses 17-5. Micah Bello (2-4 | 2B | HR) had a big game with Darrien Miller (2-4) and Noah Campbell (2-4) also chipping in multi hit efforts while Eduardo Garcia (1-3 | BB) got on base a couple times in his Carolina debut and Wes Clarke went deep. Pitching? Never heard of it. Wisconsin wins 8-7. As noted above Joey Wiemer stays on fire (4-5 | 2B) while Freddy Zamora (3-3 | BB) posted a 1.000 OBP for the day. Nash Walters (1.1 IP | 2K) and Harold Chirino (2 IP | 4K) put up zeroes out of the pen. Biloxi wins 4-2. Mitch Longo (4-5 | 2B) lead the way with David Hamilton (2-5 | 2B) and Gabe Holt (2-4) posting multi hit games while Alexander Palma made Earl Weaver proud blasting a three run bomb. Pretty good pitching all around with Jesus Castillo making a solid start (5 IP | 2 ER | 5K) before the bullpen shut things down with Peter Strzelecki (2 IP | 3K), Leo Crawford (1 IP | 1K) and JT Hintzen (1 IP | 3K) all putting up zeroes. Nashville wins 9-7. Turang (3-5 | 2 2B), Jamie Westbrook (3-5 | 2B), Dustin Peterson (3-5), Matt Lipka (2-5) and Mario Feliciano (2-4) were busy on the bases while Tim Lopes chipped in a pinch hit HR. Kyle Lobstein (1 IP | 1K) and Luke Barker (1.1 IP | 2K) put up the only scoreless appearances on the pitching side.

Thanks for getting things started, damuelle. I copy/pasted the usual header into your opening post.

Would guess with Wiemer that he maybe showed the big power projection in BP, but the wonky swing mechanics made it difficult to get to in games & now that he has toned his set up down a little bit it's starting to show up with more consistency. It's a small sample, so its probably mostly noise, but he's already boosted his FB% from 35.8% at Carolina to 39.7% at Wisconsin while his HR/FB% has exploded from 18.8% in Carolina to 36% in Wisconsin.

SIERA (Skill Interactive ERA) does include batted ball type in their formula & I believe the year to year correlation is slightly higher than FIP. Among 126 starters with at least 80 IP here's how the Brewers stack up in SIERA.... Burnes 2.68 (2nd) Woodruff 3.34 (13th) Peralta 3.50 (16th) Anderson 4.34 (78th) Lauer 4.47 (89th) Houser 4.75 (106th)

For Houser his best pitch is his sinker, and it isn't even close. That pitch is devastating to right handers as he throws it 67% of the time to them and right handed hitters really can't do much with this pitch as it has an expected slugging percentage (XSLG) of .244. So essentially right handers know what is coming early in the count and they are pretty much powerless. His sinker is a top 10 pitch in baseball according to run value. What has made him passable vs. lefties this year is his 4 seam is getting way better results then last year left handed batters are slugging just .270 in 2021 vs. Houser's 4 seamer. Last year left handed batters had a .613 slugging percentage vs. the 4 seamer. If we really want Houser's ceiling to go up, he will have to develop a better repertoire vs. lefties. If he can be above average vs. lefties look out. But I also think the above is a cautionary tale on FIP. Houser will never be a FIP darling his best pitch the sinker is not meant to generate swing and miss. Yeah, sinker heavy pitchers will always be at somewhat of a disadvantage for FIP because so many of their outs come on groundballs, though they typically do a better job of limiting HRs so that offsets it to a degree. It's not impossible though. Obviously Brandon Webb was one of the most dominant sinkerballers in recent times & he posted a 77 FIP- for his career as he was still able to strike guys out at an above average clip (112 K%) and walk guys at a below average clip (91 BB%+) in addition to burning worms. Logan Webb is doing it this year too with a 114 K%+ | 71 BB%+ | 50 HR9+ triple slash adding up to a 70 FIP- even with a higher ground ball percentage than Houser.

FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) takes the three outcomes that pitchers exert the most control over (strikeouts, walks, home runs) and synthesizes them to scale with ERA. Since ERA includes a number of factors pitchers exert considerably less control over, it is noisier on a year to year basis, whereas FIP correlates much better from season to season. Looking at the top five starters you can see how Houser and Lauer have K% and BB% much closer to league average, which translates to around a league average FIP, where the Big Three have much better K/BB percentages yielding more impressive FIPs... Burnes | 147 K%+ | 55 BB%+ | 26 HR9+ | 37 FIP- Woodruff | 127 K%+ | 72 BB%+ | 77 HR9+ | 72 FIP- Peralta | 143 K%+ | 117 BB&+ | 67 HR9+ | 73 FIP- Lauer | 91 K%+ | 86 BB%+ | 88 HR9+ | 94 FIP- Houser | 76 K%+ | 118 BB%+ | 65 HR9+ | 103 FIP- While Houser & Lauer might be closer to league average by FIP, they rank 20th (Lauer 71) and 48th (Houser 85) by ERA- among 126 starters with at least 80 IP so both are already performing in the range of number two starters by run prevention if not by pure stuff.

Beating JohnBriggs12 to the John Briggs Magic Number #12 punch, bold move. Marked Man, indeed.

Why could this happen to Houser and not to Burnes, Woodruff, or Lauer? Just curious what is different about Houser's status as I think he will be in arby this year for the first time. MLB made a proposal to MLBPA where free agency would be determined by age, not service time. Though apparently the MLBPA "responded very negatively" so it is probably a longshot for this CBA... https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/09/mlb-proposal-to-players-association-included-changes-to-service-time-structure.html If something like that were to go into effect Houser (2/2/93) and Woodruff (2/10/93) were born like a week apart so they would presumably be equally impacted, where guys like Burnes and Lauer are a couple of years younger.

Crazy indeed. The bullpen has a 41 wins (3rd most) & 17 losses (tied for fewest). Big part of that is that the Brewers have done a lot of their scoring in the 6th/7th innings... 1st (78 R | 107 OPS+) 2nd (67 R | 103 OPS+) 3rd (55 R | 84 OPS+) 4th (66 R | 85 OPS+) 5th (60 R | 78 OPS+) 6th (87 R | 109 OPS+) 7th (81 R | 103 OPS+) 8th (62 R | 100 OPS+) 9th (54 R | 126 OPS+)

FanGraphs had a pretty interesting article examining Seattle's clutch performance about a month ago... https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-mariners-are-trying-to-be-the-clutchiest-team-on-record-again/ This paragraph gives a nice tl,dr summation... What’s the driving force behind that high-leverage 135 wRC+? Some of it is good ol’ batted ball luck – the Mariners have the league’s third-worst BABIP in low leverage at .257 against a seventh-best .332 BABIP in high leverage. They also have a HR/FB rate of 11.9% in low leverage and a rate of 21.9% in high leverage; the latter is another league-leading figure. Their strikeout rate also goes down in high leverage moments. The Mariners have been more keen to make contact in crucial moments, and when they do succeed, it has generally led to good results. Something else to keep in mind is the FanGraphs Clutch metric is calculated with each player setting their own baseline, so having a 92 wRC+ as a team makes it easier for the Mariners to put up +7.66 Clutch than say a team like the Blue Jays who have a 111 wRC+ but are -5.11 Clutch.

I wonder if they also had the 1951 Dodgers at 100% too. 1951 Dodgers were up 5.5 with 22 games remaining on September 6th. Brewers are currently 11 up with 24 games remaining. 1951 Giants (105 wRC+ | 88 ERA-) also appear to have been a better team than the 2021 Reds (102 wRC+ | 103 ERA-). Playoff Odds obviously didn't really exist in 1951, but if they did I don't think they would have had the Dodgers at 100% on September 6th.

I'll go Cantrelle with a walk off walk for Biloxi and Hiura with a walk off wild-pitch-run-scoring-strikeout for Nashville.

& again

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!!!!!

Grand Dan Vogel Bomb

Nashville lines it up like this... Lipka CF Turang SS Peterson RF Dahl LF Nunez 1B Hiura 2B Westbrook 3B Feliciano C Bettinger P

Darrien Miller walked it off for Carolina with a grand slam earlier today. Joey Wiemer just hit a three run walkoff HR of his own. See if the Big League club can make it three for three.

Biloxi lineup looks like this tonight... Lujano LF Howell SS Longo CF Dillard 1B Palma DH Lutz RF Diaz C Cantrelle 2B Devanney 3B Erceg P

Carlos Rodriguez doubles & Felix Valerio walks to set up Joey Wiemer for a walk off bomb of his own. Wiemer was 0-5 with 12 LOB before the big blast.