Sveum Prepares for Lefty-Heavy ChiSox

Cubs manager Dale Sveum gives his thumbnail sketch on the top two college pitching and hitting prospects and pretty much nails the hard choices teams are going to face.

On the college front the top pitchers are Appel - Gray or Gray - Appel. The top college hitters are Bryant - Moran or Moran - Bryant. The top HS hitting prospects appear to be Frazier - Meadows or Meadows - Frazier.

The only real area up for speculation are HS pitching prospects where Indiana's Trey Ball may be the top prospect given that some like his athleticism enough to make him a two-way prospect. After Ball, it should be interesting to see where the run on HS pitchers leads.


from Bleacher Report:
Sveum Prepares for Lefty-Heavy ChiSox:

Looking way ahead: Sveum doesn’t get much input on which player the Cubs pick first in the annual First-Year Player Draft, scheduled this year for June 6, but he has studied several of the players the team appears to be most interested in. Among them are two pitchers, Stanford’s Mark Appel and Oklahoma’s Jonathan Gray of Oklahoma. 

“They’re pretty special arms,” Sveum said. “They’re two different guys. Appel is so advanced as far as his secondary pitches, and Gray can just power you away with easy life on the fastball. It looks like it’s showing 85 (miles per hour) and it’s 100. They’re both pretty good. I don’t know if one separates from the other one.” 

Sveum also has seen video of two third basemen -- San Diego’s Kris Bryant and North Carolina’s Colin Moran. 

“He is another polished-type hitter at that age already,” Sveum said about Moran. “He has a Robin Ventura-type swing and presence at the plate. He has really good plate discipline and not really the power numbers that Bryant can put up. Bryant is a big 6-foot-5, some kind of leverage at the plate. Two different hitters, one’s (Bryant) right, one’s left. It’s fun to watch them.”

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http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/draft/y2013/order.jsp

First Round

• 1. Houston Astros
• 2. Chicago Cubs
• 3. Colorado Rockies
• 4. Minnesota Twins
• 5. Cleveland Indians
• 6. Miami Marlins
• 7. Boston Red Sox
• 8. Kansas City Royals
• 9. Pittsburgh Pirates (M. Appel - unsigned)
• 10. Toronto Blue Jays
• 11. New York Mets
• 12. Seattle Mariners
• 13. San Diego Padres
• 14. Pittsburgh Pirates
• 15. Arizona Diamondbacks
• 16. Philadelphia Phillies
• 17. Chicago White Sox
• 18. Los Angeles Dodgers
• 19. St. Louis Cardinals
• 20. Detroit Tigers
• 21. Tampa Bay Rays
• 22. Baltimore Orioles
• 23. Texas Rangers
• 24. Oakland Athletics
• 25. San Francisco Giants
• 26. New York Yankees
• 27. Cincinnati Reds
• 28. St. Louis Cardinals (K. Lohse)1
• 29. Tampa Bay Rays (B.J. Upton)2
• 30. Texas Rangers (J. Hamilton)3
• 31. Atlanta Braves (M. Bourn)4
• 32. New York Yankees (N. Swisher)5
• 33. New York Yankees (R. Soriano)6

1 Signed with the Brewers, who forfeited their first-round pick (No. 17 overall)
2 Signed with the Braves, who forfeited their first-round pick (No. 28 overall)
3 Signed with the Angels, who forfeited their first-round pick (No. 22 overall)
4 Signed with the Indians, who forfeited their Competitive Balance Round B pick (No. 69 overall)
5 Signed with the Indians, who forfeited their second-round pick (No. 43 overall)
6 Signed with the Nationals, who forfeited their first-round pick (No. 29 overall) 

Competitive Balance Round A

• 34. Kansas City Royals
• 35. Miami Marlins (from the Pirates)
• 36. Arizona Diamondbacks
• 37. Baltimore Orioles
• 38. Cincinnati Reds
• 39. Detroit Tigers (from the Marlins)

Better Sports Vision: It's Not About What You See | STACK

Sports Vision has been touted as the last frontier of coaching for some time now yet I'm still not sure if the balance between the teaching of mechanic skills versus visual skills has moved as much as we thought it would in the last decade.

We know the importance of it in the timeless wisdom of breaking down hitting into it's simplest component when we tell hitters to just "See the ball, hit the ball" whenever they struggle. Most breakdowns in swing mechanics are the result of or the after-effect of bad visual mechanics. Hitters simply do no track the ball into the hitting zone as well when they struggle. There is a visual breakdown in the hitting process that leads to the mechanical breakdown.

When hitters go well, they rarely talk about how well their mechanical issues are going. They mention how big the ball looked and how they could see the spin or the trajectory of the ball better and that led to a good result. Even comments like "I was able to stay back on that pitch.." is a manifestation of good visual skills leading to a positive hitting result.

The following article from STACK.com magazine highlights some of the sports vision issues.

from STACK.com
Better Sports Vision: It's Not About What You See | STACK:

Ever noticed how elite athletes seem to know what's about to happen before it actually does? Like Abby Wambach's last-minute goal in the 2011 World Cup, one of the hallmarks of successful sports is knowing what to do at precisely the right time.

It's not about having better vision, but knowing what to see and when, and most important, how to act based on what you see.

Cognitive psychologist Anders Ericsson believes that greatness can be achieved through intense practice aimed at learning and improving, or what he calls "deliberate practice." To get "better vision," you have to practice in a way that helps you learn what to see, what to do, how to do it and why to do it. Through this kind of intentional, intense practice, you gain a better understanding of situations and how to act when they occur, becoming more successful and developing expertise.

Two Tips for Sports Vision Training

Train your decision making

In sports, expertise is all about the decisions we make, when we make them, understanding why we make them, and thinking about how to make even better decisions next time. One way to train your decision making is to do what's called after-action reviews. After practice or a game, analyze what you did, why you did it, and how you could improve your actions next time. Video review is extremely helpful. When you are watching game film, focus on analyzing the decisions you made.

Train your perception

Making effective decisions requires you to focus on the right things at the right times. This helps you understand what decisions you have to make and when you have to make them. More important, it helps you better anticipate these decisions so that you can act more quickly and effectively.

Think about what you need to see, when you need to see it and what you should do with what you see. Include perceptual training drills in your practices. For example, in tennis, if you need to focus on the ball, use different colored balls and call out the color of the ball when you are supposed to be looking at it. Or, in soccer, if you need to be looking at the rotation of an opponent's hips, use different colored Velcro attached to the hips you need to be looking at to direct your focus to that spot.

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San Francisco Giants - Team Report - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

Aaron Hern, 12, from Martinez, Calif., who was injured in the Boston Marathon bombings, throws out the ceremonial first pitch before the Oakland Athletics' baseball game against the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday, May 28, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. Hern was released from Boston Children's Hospital on April 24. Photo: Eric Risberg



His stuff was good, his command was not. Perhaps the adrenaline got to him, but I think he showed enough for another shot. He has to go more than 2 2/3 innings though or the bullpen is toast. He has a little funk in his delivery -- more Bumgarner-like funk than Zito cool-jazz, smooth delivery -- but Kickham showed he has the stuff to get it done. He just has to harness it better and pitch from ahead in the count more often than from behind. That's true at almost every level.

from Yahoo Sports:
San Francisco Giants - Team Report - MLB - Yahoo! Sports:

"I thought he had tremendous stuff. Sometimes the adrenaline of your first major league start can get the best of you, but I thought he threw the ball pretty well. He didn't look like he was just slinging stuff up there. It looked like he had some good action on his stuff."

—A's C Derek Norris, on Giants LHP Michael Kickham, who lost his major league debut to Oakland on Tuesday.

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The next Giants #1 Pick? - Mock Draft 2.0: Shades Of Gray - BaseballAmerica.com

Another LHP, just what this organization needs. JK, looks like he would fit in nicely. This is the guy that Baseball America seems to feel is heading to the Giants.

from Baseball America:
Mock Draft 2.0: Shades Of Gray - BaseballAmerica.com:

25. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS: Krook has been inconsistent but has shown frontline stuff, and San Francisco knows how to refine young pitching. Balog, another local product, also would fit here. The Giants have been linked to several other pitchers, including Gonzales, Chris Anderson and Marshall righthander Aaron Blair.

PROJECTED PICK: Matt Krook (Unchanged).

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SF Giants Pick Prospect Kickham to Start Tuesday

Kickham gets the call. It wouldn't have surprised me if it was Heston, but Kickham has earned it as well. If he gets a half-dozen starts in while Vogie is down, it's going to help his development enormously. I'm glad they were able to stay within the organization for the replacement.

from SFgate.com
http://blog.sfgate.com/giants/2013/05/26/danger-looms-for-sf-giants-after-win-against-rockies-4-2-homestand/

UPDATE, 5:40 p.m.: Michael Kickham, a 24-year-old left-hander who has thrown five excellent games in a row for Triple-A Fresno, will take Ryan Vogelsong’s spot in the rotation and start Tuesday night’s game in Oakland, manager Bruce Bochy just announced.

“He’s been throwing the ball as well as anybody down there, better, really,” Bochy said. “He’s really pitching well with all his pitches. He had another good outing his last start.”

Bochy said there was a lot of debate over this decision, but ultimately the brass wanted to keep the bullpen intact, ruling out Chad Gaudin.

Kickham is 3-4 with a 4.33 ERA in 10 starts for the Grizzlies, but those overall numbers are not as relevant as what he has done in his past five starts. He has allowed six earned runs in 31 1/3 innings with nine walks and 29 strikeouts. He is a big left-hander, at 6-4, 220, and becomes the first player from the Giants’ 2010 draft to reach the majors, beating the likes of Gary Brown and Heath Hembree. He was taken in the sixth round.

Buster Posey caught him in a bullpen session or two in spring training and said, “He’s got good stuff. That’s all I remember.”

“He’s a left-hander we think a lot of,” Bochy said. “He was in major-league camp. I look forward to watching him. He needs to go out and pitch the way he’s been pitching, and he’ll be fine.”

No corresponding moves have been announced.

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Happy Memorial Day

.....o'er the land of the free.....and the home of the brave

Remember today that we are only able to do the things shown above, and call ourselves free and brave, entirely because somebody -- actually many somebodies -- were willing to do what is illustrated below.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.-- John 15:13

Never forget the sacrifice made by those who are no longer around to enjoy the fruits of their work.
And never forget the reasons they were willing to make the sacrifice.

This is the debt that this nation can truly never repay -- the debt of gratitude.

According to this graphic, military personnel make up less than 1% of the total US population. For their service and their sacrifice this is the 1% we should be honoring the most in this country. And on more days than Memorial Day and in more ways than we do now.

 

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who died in service to their country. The holiday was officially proclaimed in 1868 to honor Union and Confederate soldiers and was expanded after World War I to honor those who died in all wars. Today, Memorial Day honors over one million men and women who have died in military service since the Civil War. This infographic compiles statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Defense to honor our men and women who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Mark Twain once said "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."  Hopefully people remember the wisdom of that quote a bit more when one of the adventures the military is asked to engage on our behalf goes awry.

Maybe spit on a politician or two instead of a soldier (or 535 of them if you can spare the spit).

That's all I ask.

Happy Memorial Day. 

The most exciting play in baseball....you decide

from MLB.com

If, as some have said, a triple is the most exciting play in baseball, how exciting is an inside the park home run? How about a walk-off, inside the park HR?

from Bleacher Report:
Rockies vs. Giants Video: Watch Angel Pagan Hit Walk-Off Inside-the-Park HR | Bleacher Report:

San Francisco Giants center fielder Angel Pagan raced around the bases for an inside-the-park, two-run homer to boost his team to a 6-5 home victory in 10 innings over the Colorado Rockies on Saturday.

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You decide.

Pagan combined the top two entries on this list.

from Rounding the Bases Blog:
http://roundthebase.blogspot.com/2011/08/top-ten-most-exciting-plays-in-baseball.html

2. Inside the Park Home Run- Inside the park home runs involve both luck and skill. The skill portion comes when the player is running and the luck portion usually comes from a defensive miscue. Any player can hit an inside the park home run at any moment. Chase Utley hit one a few days ago. Mark Teahen hit one to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth against the Twins a couple years ago. Prince Fielder, the giant first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers, has two career inside the park home runs. Usually the defense suffers from a mistimed dive or a bad bounce off of the wall. That’s when the fans get to stand up and watch the batters run out of gas circling the bases.

1. Walk Off Home Run- And finally, the most exciting play in baseball is when a player wins a game with one swing of the bat. Every young child’s dream is to come up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth, down three, with the bases loaded, two outs and a full count. The dream come true is to hit a home run to win it. Ken Harvey hit a walk off home run against Detroit in 2004, a meaningless game. Bobby Thompson hit “the shot heard round the world” to clinch the pennant for the New York Giants. Bill Mazeroski and Joe Carter won World Series championships for the Pirates and Blue Jays, respectively. Many players’ most memorable moments come when they won a game with a walk off home run. The adrenaline and energy that comes from the fans and the team is unrivaled by any other occurrence in baseball. The walk off home run is the most exciting play in baseball.

Fresno Grizzlies' Mike Kickham continues strong audition for Giants call-up - - Fresnobee.com

MARK CROSSE/THE FRESNO BEE

Grizzlies starting pitcher Mike Kickham, after a strong last five starts, could be getting a big-league call-up soon in the wake of the injury to Giants starter Ryan Vogelsong.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/05/23/3312052/fresno-grizzlies-kickham-continues.html#storylink=cpy

Kickham is in the middle of a turn-around at just the right time it seems. The Vogelsong injury creates am opening in the starting rotation and Kickham may be able to fill it. His K/BB ratio is about 2.5 ( 54K's and 22 BB's) which is not too shabby. Anything over 2.0 is a pretty good marker for success.


from the Fresno Bee:
Fresno Grizzlies' Mike Kickham continues strong audition for Giants call-up - Fresno Grizzlies - fresnobee.com:

But Kickham has come on strong and has won three straight for the first time in his career after Thursday's performance.

In his past five starts, Kickham owns a 1.72 ERA and is holding batters to a .214 average. He also has struck out 29 and allowed just nine walks in that stretch.

 In fact, Kickham's strikeout-to-walk ratio has been solid all year: 54-22 in 54 innings for the season.

'via Blog this'


In fact, Baseball Digest recently published a list of pitchers with the best K/BB ratios with a minimum of 2,000 K's. Granted this is going to give you a list of solid starters by definition. You have to be good to hang around long enough to log 2,000 K's in a career.

Pitcher               Ratio
Curt Schilling        4.38
Pedro Martinez     4.15
Roy Halliday         3.78
Mike Mussina       3.58
Greg Maddux       3.37
Javier Vasquez      3.32
Randy Johnson     3.26
Dennis Eckersley   3.25
Juan Marichal        3.25
Fergie Jenkins       3.20

That would be a pretty solid staff. That's why I like that ratio > 3.0 as a prospect identifier for the minor leaguers. San Jose starter Clayton Blackburn has pretty solid numbers here and Fresno RHP Chris Heston does as well.  It's just a basic, quick and dirty metric that shows a pitchers efficiency in controlling / dominating AB's whether it be via power pitching  (high K's) or control / finesse pitching (low BB's).

As the list above shows, a nice mix of power arms and crafty pitchers.

Game theory is the next Moneyball

Fascinating, just fascinating. And in all this time I've been involved in baseball I thought there would be no math.

A lot of this stuff is somewhat intuitive, "No Duh" type of stuff. Like the guy who won a Nobel prize for proving that employers would move jobs to places where they could pay labor $0.25 per hour rather than $25.00 per hour. Something like that.

Hey, that's the guy right there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Lewis_(economist)

Actually, it's a bit more involved than all that and maybe I'm confusing this guy with Ross Perot, but you get my point regarding all this baseball stuff, right?

Plus, I still have a little old-school bird tweeting in my ear that whenever I ask if this stuff helps whispers "It helps if you can play".


from the Hardball Times:
Game theory is the next Moneyball:

"In one presentation, Middlebury sophomore Kevin Tenenbaum (subbing for Dave Allen, who is now a professor at Middlebury after several years of publishing PITCHf/x analysis) applied game theory to pitchers and batters and used complicated mathematical models to determine where pitchers should locate pitches in 0-2 counts. I thought the presentation was excellent and the fundamental conclusions made sense, but the math was beyond me. I'm not going to try to explain it here.

There is an easier way to become comfortable with game theory in baseball. Last December at THT, Matt Swartz published a five-part series on baseball and game theory. I considered them the most important sabermetric articles of 2012, though I admit that I'm biased. In the series, Matt laid out an entirely new way of thinking about what pitchers should throw on specific counts."

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from The Hardball Times:
Game theory is the next Moneyball:

"The presentations I wanted to go to all the presentations, but many were scheduled against each other. I did see Graham Goldbeck present some really interesting data regarding how deep in the strike zone batters tend to hit the ball. It turns out that the optimal place to hit a ball for a home run is about a foot in front of the plate and that a couple of batters, such as Alfonso Soriano and Alexei Ramirez, typically hit the ball nearly two feet in front of the plate.

It also turns out that pitchers can be measured by how deep in the zone batters make contact (hint: in general, the faster the fastball, the deeper in the zone the ball is hit), though there are some notable exceptions—enough exceptions to make us want more data. Alas, this was HITf/x data (I think. Maybe it was the FIELDf/x data?) and it will be hard to come by."

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With a quarter of the season in the books, time to review

From one of the coolest baseball sites out there coolstandings.com we are beginning to see how the MLB races might shape up.


from coolstandings.com
http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_standings.asp?i=1

2013 AL Standings What are these?
East	W	L	PCT	GB	RS	RA	EXPW	EXPL	DIV	WC	POFF
New York	27	16	.628	-	184	159	92.7	69.3	34.2	26.4	60.6
Boston	27	17	.614	0.5	217	179	93.2	68.8	35.5	27.0	62.5
Tampa Bay	23	20	.535	4	210	197	87.4	74.6	17.9	24.0	41.9
Baltimore	23	20	.535	4	213	195	84.3	77.7	12.0	19.4	31.4
Toronto	17	26	.395	10	177	222	67.2	94.8	0.4	1.7	2.1
Central	W	L	PCT	GB	RS	RA	EXPW	EXPL	DIV	WC	POFF
Cleveland	25	17	.595	-	208	173	92.6	69.4	39.0	22.0	61.0
Detroit	23	19	.548	2	222	175	93.0	69.0	40.7	21.7	62.4
Kansas City	20	20	.500	4	171	157	83.0	79.0	13.0	15.5	28.5
Chicago	19	23	.452	6	155	170	74.8	87.2	3.7	6.3	10.0
Minnesota	18	22	.450	6	180	191	74.5	87.5	3.5	6.2	9.8
West	W	L	PCT	GB	RS	RA	EXPW	EXPL	DIV	WC	POFF
Texas	29	15	.659	-	212	158	100.9	61.1	83.1	5.7	88.8
Oakland	23	22	.511	6.5	207	204	82.1	79.9	11.1	14.0	25.2
Seattle	20	24	.455	9	160	180	76.3	85.7	4.2	7.4	11.6
Los Angeles	17	27	.386	12	189	227	70.3	91.7	1.5	2.7	4.2
Houston	12	32	.273	17	173	261	54.0	108.0	<0 .1="" td="">	<0 .1="" td="">	<0 .1="" td="">

< Previous Day

2013 NL Standings
East	W	L	PCT	GB	RS	RA	EXPW	EXPL	DIV	WC	POFF
Atlanta	25	18	.581	-	186	152	97.0	65.0	76.2	6.9	83.0
Washington	23	21	.523	2.5	155	172	81.5	80.5	14.3	13.9	28.2
Philadelphia	21	23	.477	4.5	156	190	74.7	87.3	6.0	5.8	11.8
New York	17	24	.415	7	174	202	70.8	91.2	3.5	3.4	6.9
Miami	12	32	.273	13.5	117	190	51.7	110.3	<0 .1="" td="">	<0 .1="" td="">	<0 .1="" td="">
Central	W	L	PCT	GB	RS	RA	EXPW	EXPL	DIV	WC	POFF
St. Louis	28	15	.651	-	201	150	98.2	63.8	50.6	30.5	81.1
Cincinnati	26	18	.591	2.5	210	161	94.0	68.0	32.6	36.7	69.3
Pittsburgh	26	18	.591	2.5	176	157	86.9	75.1	14.2	30.0	44.2
Chicago	18	25	.419	10	173	176	74.1	87.9	1.9	8.2	10.1
Milwaukee	17	25	.405	10.5	177	207	69.3	92.7	0.6	3.7	4.3
West	W	L	PCT	GB	RS	RA	EXPW	EXPL	DIV	WC	POFF
Arizona	25	19	.568	-	180	155	89.5	72.5	37.1	18.2	55.3
Colorado	24	20	.545	1	221	189	89.6	72.4	37.5	18.3	55.7
San Francisco	24	20	.545	1	202	207	82.8	79.2	16.7	14.7	31.3
San Diego	20	23	.465	4.5	176	188	76.6	85.4	7.4	8.2	15.6
Los Angeles	17	25	.405	7	142	180	66.9	95.1	1.3	1.7	3.1

Baseball statistics

x: Clinched Division   y: Clinched Wild card W: Wins  L: Losses  PCT: Winning percentage GB: Games Back (Number of games behind the Division leader) RS: Runs Scored  RA: Runs Against

Baseball "coolstats"   What are these?

EXP W: Expected season Wins  EXP L: Expected season Losses DIV: % chance of winning the Division  WC: % chance of winning the Wild Card POFF: % chance of making the Playoffs

In the AL it's back to the Yankees and the Sawks, with the Rays and the Orioles battling to see who will be the 3rd wheel. Toronto invested miserably in the ex-Marlins (TREND ALERT) and are about to have an early fork stuck in them.

The Tigers and Indians are battling it out for the AL Central with the Royals battling the Chi-Sox for third wheel status. The Twins have fallen on hard times.

In the AL West the Rangers have adjusted to life without Josh rather nicely and Oakland is doing it's usual thing. The Angels invested lavishly, but not well (2ND REFERENCE). The Astros are battling to not get relegated to AAA.

In the NL East, the Braves are threatening to run and hide from the Nats. The Phillies are battling the Mets for most mediocre status and the Marlins should be relegated to AAA status.

In the NL Central, the Cardinals are doing what the Cardinals always do, WIN. The Reds and Pirates are battling to stay in view. The Cubs and the Brewers are AAAA teams at best right now.

In the NL West. the D-Backs, Rockies and Giants are playing footsie with the 1-3 spots. San Diego and the Dodgers are battling for the basement and the Dodgers are furiously calculating how they could spend so lavishly and get so little in return (3RD REFERENCE). I guess even with all the Harvard MBA's and SABR-metricians on staff that Magic's money can buy, a negative Return on Investment (ROI) is possible.

You can put that in your SABR pipe and smoke it. Round two goes to the Hawk-eroo.