The Nats win and... that's it!
This is the hardest part of the first few weeks of the year. Unlike Spring Training data, these stats aren't meaningless. It's the best players trying their hardest to win. The question, though, exists every season. What do these stats mean? Are they signs of a trend that is new to this season? Or are they only as meaningful as X number of games pulled from any point in the year?
We all set our timelines for deciding when to pay attention to these stats. For me I wait about 3 weeks. That feels right to me. I'm sure we'll talk about it before then but hopefully I can stop myself from putting any real importance on them.
So what happened yesterday that I want to talk about? I have a couple things that I noticed.
On the negative side, I don't like Werth striking out three times. While he's not afraid to swing and miss he generally only strikes out 3 or more times a little more than once a month. To start the year with it, against at best a fair strikeout pitcher, bothers me. I'll probably be watching Werth a little more closely the rest of the series.
On the positive side, there was the whole Lind PH home run thing. There's actually two positives here. The first, and obvious one, is that the Nats have a true lefty power option on the bench now. Lind can't do much else but he can hit and he has hit for most of his career. Drew, Lind, Heisey, and Turner make up a great combination of players to have on a bench featuring some D, some speed, some power. All that's lacking is a true contact hitter but I'm not going to fault Rizzo for not having a perfect bench.
The other positive is the flaw in one of the teams they'll face 19 times this year. The Marlins have no lefites in the pen. I looked it up yesterday and while Lind can hit, Lind can't hit lefties. That isn't surprising. Most lefties have trouble with LHP and Lind wasn't brought in here to hit lefties. But the difference, especially in power, is stark. Only 11 homers in 693 PAs over the course of 7 seasons. He's Roger Bernandina's bat in Adam Dunn's body facing lefties. But the Marlins couldn't counter. Instead they had to leave out a RHP and Lind, as he does, crushed it. The Marlins will eventually correct this and bring in a LHP, but the Nats don't have just one good lefty bat off the bench. They have Bryce and Murphy sitting at the top of the lineup and competent hitters in Weiters at catcher and Drew on the bench. The Marlins will have trouble matching up with the Nats in late innings all year long. As good as I think their pen may be (and I still think that) this is a serious flaw that almost negates that talent.
On to game 2!
I also liked the swings Zimm was getting. Yeah, 2 K's but one of them was in that ugly first inning, and the other he had 3 strikes looking (with a foul thrown in there). He's still got too much movement in his swing for my liking, but if he puts the ball in play, and continues getting those hard hit balls, I like him for a bounceback year to purely average
ReplyDeleteAlso, hate to be that guy, but I think you mean Taylor, not Turner. Unless Trea got relegated to the bench after last night's game and I missed it
Is it wrong that I am thinking, "MAT can't hit either, but at least he can run and field". If Werth is done (I hope not), the Nats have to go there at some point, right? Scary, I know...
ReplyDeleteI know, I know first game, but man Stephen Drew stood out to me as he just had some really strong AB's and his D has always been solid no matter where you throw him. I think Stephen Drew has a lot of success off of the bench this year. Treinen looked really good with real swing and miss fastballs too, I was impressed for sure, but first game, first game.
ReplyDeleteWerth's catch at the wall yesterday looked painful, not sexy cool like Jones' catch in the WBC it looked more like a senior slow pitch game.....painful for him....definitely keeping an eye on him.
For sure, Werth is a potential worry given his age, but I wouldn't write him off based on yesterday. He clearly had trouble picking up Volquez's delivery, and had some awful swings against him. But I've seen him look terrible in 2 or 3 ABs before, and then come back strong. The third K was against Ziegler, a sidewinder who is murder on rh hitters.
ReplyDeleteLike Harper suggests, let's wait 3 weeks or so before declaring that he's done.
One thing that worries me a little (because if I don't worry, what do I have?) is that Bryce was falling toward the dugout on his homer. Yes, he killed the ball, which was in a perfect place to pull, and The Opening Day Narrative and all that, but if he's trying to pull like he did last year, we might be looking at a Bryce more like 2016 than BRYCE.
ReplyDeleteI was listening, not watching, so can anyone give me a scouting report on his swing on outside pitches? I don't want to be a worry wart, but it would help a lot if someone could just confirm that he was staying home on outside pitches and not flying open.
Mets also won. How much trouble will they give the Nats this year?
ReplyDeleteWerth didn't just K three times yesterday - he looked downright awful each time. dc rl has it right that he seemed like he just couldn't pick up Volquez's delivery - these weren't "timing's a bit off" swings; they were "I have no idea what pitch is coming" swings.
ReplyDeleteHopefully he just had trouble reading Volquez.
Josh - Bryce fouled an outside pitch into the stands on the 3rd base side in his first at bat. He did seem to be falling away to the pull side more than in ST, but not as dramatically as last year. Keep an eye on it, but I wouldn't worry yet.
Well, pretty much a perfect win. No errors, no injuries. Stras starts the year 1-0. Bullpen scoreless in relief. Turner solid in the field, on the basepaths, and at the dish. Treinen looks great as a closer. He get homeruns from our best player and a new guy on the block. Eaton stole a base and got a hit. Even Wieters got a hit too.
ReplyDeleteThe negative? Other than Werth's hat trick, I have to bring up Stras only notching 3 K's on the day in 7 innings. It seems he is committed to pitching from the stretch full time and ditching the wind-up. The results? Although just one game, he threw 63 strikes on on 85 pitches. 74% is a great clip, so his control was great. Also, 12 ground-outs to 4 fly-outs which is great too. So is Stras turning into a Doug Fister with a 97mph heater? I like him to have more swing and miss stuff, but maybe him pitching to contact will have even better results?
Josh -
ReplyDeleteBryce didn't look quite right his first two at-bats, but he seemed to lock it in after that. Shortly before the home run, he fouled one into the seats on the third base side. It was solid contact, though - it just happened to be foul. It's way too early, though, to read much of anything into this.
Ole PBN - I wouldn't mind losing the K's, because that'll keep his pitch counts down. Yeah the K's are exciting, but consider his injury issues. According to Pitchf/x, he threw all of 3 sliders yesterday, which he said was planning to cut back on despite it's success last year, and he still had plenty of success.
ReplyDeleteWhat worries me, though, is the quality of contact. If you're going to pitch to contact, you want soft contact. Only 12.5% of his batted balls yesterday were soft. So realistically, Stras was probably getting lucky with a lot of hard hit GBs at people.
It's one outing though, so plenty can change.
@Fries - You have the link for Pitch/FX? The scoreboard in the stadium kept flashing "Cutter" for Stras between like the 87-92 range, and I was almost certain those are either sliders or change-ups. Interested to see how PitchF/X categorized
ReplyDeleteJosh,
ReplyDeleteLooking at clips, Bryce has always had a tendency to lean towards the dugout on full-bore swings. It may have been exacerbated by injury last season, but I think more importantly he was making a concerted effort to change the path/plane of his swing. There's a good YouTube clip that shows him drilling a very downward/choppy swing plane, and you could see it in his finish -- in 2015 he was finishing with his hands high, while last year he was trying hard to finish as low as possible. That (apparently) does a lot of bad things like sapping power, reducing the bat's time in the zone, etc. Not sure why he would be doing that, unless swing coaches are still preaching Ted Williams' "swing down" mantra (which Williams himself didn't really practice).
Looking at clips from ST, though, it looks like he's found more of a middle ground. Hopefully the hard pull off the ball is either a) just a quirk of his swing that doesn't matter, or or b) and holdover bad habit that will work itself out.
elchupinazo,
ReplyDeleteThat rings true to me. I can't complain about his body being a little off balance at the end of a ferocious pull swing. I've re-watched about 20 of his homers today and he always has a bit of a stagger step toward first base at the end of a power swing regardless of where he hits it. When he hits to left or center, his foot only moves a couple of inches, but yesterday's stagger step was pretty much identical to homers to right from 2015. So I'll try not to worry. I'll breathe a lot easier when he sends an outside pitch over the left field wall, though.
@Bjd
ReplyDeletehttp://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php?month=4&day=3&year=2017&game=gid_2017_04_03_miamlb_wasmlb_1%2F&pitchSel=544931&prevGame=gid_2017_04_03_miamlb_wasmlb_1%2F&prevDate=43&league=mlb
based on the horizontal movement plots, the "cutter" classification would fit for what pitchf/x called a slider since it doesn't have a ton of movement, so maybe Stras was indeed working the cutter instead. but the velo would indicate slider to me, i'd have to go back and look at some of his stuff from last year to see how much movement his slider normally gets
I've never known him to have a cutter, as nebulous as that term already is. His 2-seam sits about 94 and his 4 seam like 96-97. Anything around 90mph I've always written off as a changeup until the slider started creeping in last year
ReplyDeleteFries, I agree with you about the quality of contact. If it were July, I think more than a few of the Marlins' fly outs would have cleared the fences.
ReplyDeleteBut it ain't July. So Woohoo, Stras! Let's go Nats!
I think the Mets are the only competition in the east. If their rotation stays healthy, and that is a BIG if, they could be extremely dangerous. Let's not forget they are only 2 years removed from sweeping the Cubbies out of the 2015 playoffs with the same rotation!
ReplyDeleteFP gushed about all the ground ball outs Strasburg was getting, but that's partially because everything hit in the air was crushed over the outfielders' heads (or caught at the warning track). Harper was still pulling towards the dugout a little. All in all it looked like last year to me...which is still great.
ReplyDeleteMaybe even better...I love Turner and Eaton at the top of the lineup. Gives the Nats a 1-2 punch there I don't think I've ever seen them have, ever. The Nats' 1-4 is probably the best in the majors, no?
One thing to keep in mind is that all pitches this year are 1mph faster due to tracking the ball out of the hand using the Statcast method now. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/about-all-these-velocity-spikes/
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, those are sliders.
@cass - Yea I just read that piece too. Which places Stras' 2 & 4 seam right in line with his norms
ReplyDelete@Josh agreed. Plus, he always says his "real" power, when he's really dialed in, is to center/left-center, not right field. Only time will tell I guess.
ReplyDeleteoh how I love cockey odd-year Nats
ReplyDeleteStrasburg was pretty lucky to have the outing he did. There were quite a few rocket ground balls that did not find holes and a handful of warning track balls like yelich to Harper and Stanton to Werth. But even if he gave up say 4 runs, it's his first start, and his stuff looked pretty good. I would like to see his change up lower in the zone (that's a pitch that's obviously good to throw for a strike in certain counts, but it's also his best put away K pitch when thrown low)....if I'm not mistaken he threw 2 Ks via fastball and 1 with the curve against a relief pitcher. Super unusual. So I hope he doesn't come out of this outing thinking that whatever approach he was taking is the way to go in the future. Still, I will gladly take 30 starts of 3.5 ERA Stras over 15-20 starts of 2.5 ERA stras if this is what it takes. (ps the Marlins have a very good offense frankly....in my view easily the second best in the division....vs braves or Phillies or even Mets stras may have thrown a shutout. I think the only adjustment he makes is work on change up command and perhaps don't throw so many first pitch fastball strikes. There is such a thing as being in the zone too often. Makes the AB super comfortably for the hitter.
ReplyDelete