How Many Wins, Strikeouts Will Indians Pitchers Get This Year?
This weekend marked the 81st game of the Cleveland Indians’ 2011 season, meaning that, if you’re not worried about things like changes in skill, luck, or playing time, you can just double each player’s counting stats to project what his numbers will be at the end of the season.
Yesterday, I offered these doubling projections for each Tribe position player. Today, we take a look at the pitchers.
Here’s how many wins, losses, saves, and the like that each hurler is on pace to accumulate over a full season:
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Asdrubal Cabrera, Chris Perez to Represent Indians in All-Star Game
Two Cleveland Indians players were named to the 2011 American League All-Star team on the All-Star Game selection show today. (more…)
Nine Cleveland Indians Would Qualify for Free Agent Compensation Picks
It’s way too early for the Cleveland Indians to be thinking about free agency—only four Tribe players are not under team control for the 2012 season, and there will (hopefully) be a pennant run at Progressive Field between now and November. But the latest updates of the Elias free agent rankings are still noteworthy.
Every offseason, the Elias Sports Bureau designates the top free agents on the market as either “Type A” or “Type B.” If the Type A or B player’s team offers him arbitration after his contract expires and the player rejects, his former team is compensated for its loss in the coming year’s amateur draft.
In every case, the team that unsuccessfully offered arbitration to a ranked free agent gets a “sandwich pick” between the first and second rounds of the draft. In addition, whoever signs a Type A free agent must give its first-round pick to the player’s former team (unless the signing team has one of the first 15 picks, in which case they lose give up their second-round pick).
According to MLBTradeRumors.com’s latest Elias Rankings Update, nine Cleveland Indians players would qualify as either Type A or Type B picks if their contracts expired tomorrow. (more…)
Can’t Get No Relief: The Problem With Manny Acta’s Bullpen Usage
Manny Acta is a great manager. In addition to representing the intangible ideals of traditionally minded analysts, Acta knows his game theory. Even if he doesn’t always show it, his strategy is based on reason and logic, not the unwritten rules of managing.
Common sense is an uncommon thing. Dusty Baker thinks slow players drawing walks is “clogging the bases” and Ozzie Guillen loves “small ball,” but Acta preaches cautious baserunning, batting high on-base players second in the lineup, and not bunting “unless the pitcher is up or it is real late in the game.” He knows what he’s talking about.
But there’s one area of the game where Acta’s decisions are orthodox and troubling: his use of relief pitchers.
One of the cardinal sins of baseball management is using your team’s best relief pitcher exclusively in save situations. The most important situation in a game (i.e., the one you want your best guy on the mound for) is sometimes the ninth inning when your team is ahead, but not always.
A shutdown “relief ace” would be put to much better use with the bases loaded in the seventh inning of a tie game than with the bases empty the last inning when his team has a three-run lead. If you forget that the “save”—perhaps the most arbitrary of all mainstream baseball statistics—exists, the argument for the archetypal closer’s role looks pretty flimsy.
On May 5, Acta found himself in the perfect situation to test his bullpen philosophy. With the Indians tied with the Oakland A’s in the bottom of the 10th inning and current pitcher Tony Sipp tired, he called to the ‘pen for a new reliever.
The smart choice would have been closer Chris Perez. There was no use saving him for later—if the A’s scored, the game would be over. If they didn’t, the Indians would be in the same boat the inning later. Unless they scored in the top of the 11th, in which case the bottom of the 11th would be a lower-leverage situation.
Acta went with Chad Durbin. (more…)
2011 Fantasy Preview: Which Cleveland Indians Pitchers Are Worth Drafting?
Yesterday, we took a look at the Cleveland Indians position players who could have fantasy relevance in 2011. Today, we turn our attention to the pitchers you should keep in mind when you head into the draft.
