Point Blank – July 19
Spagnuolo and the Giants "D" now have a toolbox…’Jake Blues’ may still be hanging around Chicago after all…Rick Porcello is comfy in Fenway; Jake Peavy likely won’t be…
And now tonight it gets extra tricky on the MLB Diamonds, the usual Day #5 after the All Star break circus – there are a dozen pitchers going that were not in their teams original starting rotations this season, including the debut for Reynaldo Lopez; the second start for Tyrell Jenkins; the first start for Brian Flynn as a Royal, and first for any team since 2014; Jose Urena’s first MLB start of the season after 16 relief appearances (he has had 10 AAA starts); and yes Vance Worley getting the nod for the Orioles after throwing 16 pitches over 1.2 innings in relief at Tampa on Sunday.
Even the guys you want to believe you can trust – Jake Arrieta and Noah Syndergaard, have been held back to last for their teams because of issues heading into the break, and I will get to them in a moment. But first a little football…
Item: Steve Spagnuolo finally has a toolbox to repair the Giants defense
As team #2 on the one-a-day trek across the NFL enters the arena the NY Giants also enforce one of the key notions discussed on Monday, that of tossing out the 2015 statistics of the Dallas Offense. Yes, I know how much many of you like “clean” data sets, those lovely 16-game compendiums that you can compare to the official NFL compilations to see that your charts are not in error.
And, of course, it means that you don’t have to necessarily keep them yourselves anyway if using every play of every game – just follow the official sets that are out there. But it is the wrong thing to do, and in fact a big part of the success you can have across the gridirons is in taking advantage of the “official” statistical gibberish that gets out there, much of it used verbatim across the Sports Mediaverse. Such as the utterly useless numbers from the 2015 NY Giants defense…
The Giants were terrible at stopping opponents last year, which would seemingly be a bad reflection in DC Steve Spagnuolo, who had returned to the role where he once won a Super Bowl ring. But Spagnuolo never really had a chance, which was a focus point across this very page last August.
Take a unit that was #26 on the Football Outsiders charts in 2014, strip them of some key players, especially during training camp when the new system was supposed to have been installed, and there wasn’t much chance of anything good happening. That turned out to be the case, the Giants finishing #31 on the FO charts last year. But that #31, with the various ugly individual components that led to it, is of almost no value whatsoever in terms of projecting the 2016 unit.
Now many of the walking wounded are healthy from the start, including Jason Pierre-Paul, who will be joined up front by Damon Harrison and Oliver Vernon. Keenan Robinson and Kelvin Sheppard have been added at LB. CB Janoris Jenkins comes on board to pair with Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie for a solid CB tandem, with rookie Eli Apple ready to step in to the nickel packages. Landon Collins now has a season under his belt at safety, which means that Spagnuolo can throw so much more at him.
That last element really matters – for much of last season the Giants were about as vanilla as it gets. Collins is the only returning player that started all 16 games in Spagnuolo’s scaled-back schemes, but his starting as a rookie was not necessarily something they wanted anyway. The playbook was kept limited because the faces were changing week-by-week, and there was almost nothing at all left over the last three games, when they allowed 122 points and 1,283 yards as 6-7 collapsed to 6-10. It wasn’t just that they were under-manned, but that they were under-manned in a way that left them tactically vulnerable as well.
This is not going to be a great defense, but there is a chance to be at least average, and perhaps even a step or two on the ladder above that. That is a major difference from how the head stone of their 2015 season reads, and it will be interesting to see how quickly the markets react.
Item: Is Jake Arrieta wearing down, are hitters waiting him out, or is it a combination of both?
Things have been rather “Jake” in Chicago since a pitcher named Arrieta made his way to the Windy City from Baltimore, but now a different meaning has set in – over the last couple of outings a guy that was rivaling Clayton Kershaw for NL supremacy since the start of the 2015 has been more like Jake Ellwood. It has been a 1-3/6.75 run for Arrieta over his last four starts, and in this case it has not been a case of baseball’s dice rolling against him – there have been legitimate struggles.
Over those four outings Arrieta posted a 5.1 BB/9, and allowed four home runs across 21.1 innings. Prior to that it had been 3.0 BB/9 over 14 starts, with three homers over 93 frames. While the major workload of 2015 never did quite catch up to him, might that be the case now? The fact that the Cubs gave him an extended break, making him the last of the starters to be fitted back into the rotation (this will be his first start since July 8), does make a statement.
Here is where the focus goes tonight – there is a major shift in Arrieta’s walk rate from his dynamic run of last season, and through the first two months of this campaign. But how much of that is his control falling off, and how much do we attribute to hitters reading him better? When you pitch as well as he did for as long as he did, you do come under study from the rest of the league.
Arrieta Walk Rate
2015 1.9 BB/9
2016 3.4 BB/9
That is a rather striking difference, but it is not just about the number of pitches missing the strike zone, it is also the decline in getting bonus strikes as hitters chase his slider out of the zone –
Arrieta O-Swing%
2015 34.2
2016 29.8
When batters are more patient it becomes a combination of better efficiency for them, and it also builds up pitch counts. Since June 1st Arrieta has been forced out to an 18.3 PPI, and the only time he saw the seventh inning across those seven outings was vs. the lowly Braves, who are last in the Major’s in OPS.
Is a little time off to get fresh enough to turn Arrieta from that recent slide? Or is there a new reality at play, that brilliant run having gone about as far as baseball logic would allow? There is plenty to see here, from both sides of the equation…
Item: And keep the microscope focused in Wrigley when Noah Syndergaard pitches as well
Perhaps lost amidst the slacking off of attention spans in the final weekend before the break was Syndergaard walking off the mound in the 5th inning of a game vs. Washington with his tank seemingly empty. So let’s go back to some quotes that were filed at the time, which come front-and-center now –
From Terry Collins - "He just said his arm went dead. Just got tired on him and stuff went away. He just said, 'I've lost it.'"
From Syndergaard - "I think it's just that time of the year. My first full season in the big leagues. I've thrown a lot of pitches, thrown a lot of innings so far. I just think it boils down to just a little bit of fatigue. There's no pain, there's no discomfort in my elbow regarding the bone spur. It felt like I could still go out there and pitch through that. It just really all boils down to a little shoulder fatigue."
Keep in mind that as is the case with Steven Matz, who has gone 0-3/4.44 since being diagnosed with a bone spur in his elbow, Syndergaard has a similar bone spur issue, though considered less serious. He bears watching closely tonight – there was enough downtime to get physically fresh, but is he going to have the confidence level to cut the ball loose?
In the Sights…
Back in late May there was a take here on baseball having been a little unkind to Jake Peavy in the early part of the season, and he went under the magnifying glass much as Arrieta and Syndergaard will be tonight. As it turns out so often, what baseball takes away it often gives back – Peavy is on a 4-2/2.60 run over his last nine starts, with the Giants going 7-2 across those games. But it is through watching that correction take place, and seeing his particulars for this stage of his career, that a vulnerability comes up, and with an underdog return available it is #976 Boston Run Line (7:10 Eastern) in play tonight. The early markets have taken a nibble already, but at a plus price there is enough value to stay in play.
Peavy is a crafty veteran, and is also in the right place on many nights, a home ballpark that is forgiving of fly balls, and that matters because these days his pitches are producing a lot of contact in the air – a 35.9 GB% is the second lowest of his career. Peavy has survived those fly balls at a 7.4 HR/FB rate, hence FIP showing him at being an average pitcher at 4.00, but xFIP understands that tight-rope better at 5.02. And here is how it breaks out – that 4-2/3.98 from the home mound at China Basin stems from a 0.5 HR/9, but on the road it has been a 1-5/6.64, with a 1.6 HR/9, more than triple the home rate. It makes Fenway in particular a difficult place for him.
Meanwhile there hasn’t been a stronger combination this season than Rick Porcello and the Red Sox offense in their Boston home games – it has been a perfect 9-0, with a +42 run differential, Porcello getting the win eight times, and only one of those outings not covering a -1.5. You can see the confidence growing in Porcello as each positive result in Fenway plays out, with only seven walks in 57 IP from this mound this season, and over the last four home starts it has only been a lone BB over 24.1 frames.
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