The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the entire baseball world into a cataclysmic shake up, expediting consequential change industry-wide. Organizations have been forced to re-prioritize financial assets in the midst of spring season cancellations, leading to large-scale layoffs and furloughs. Scouting departments were reduced substantially, both in numbers and availability to players. With the 2020 amateur... Continue Reading →
I like Devin Williams. Devin Williams does not like opposing batters. There are plenty of monikers that can apply to Williams. Jake Mailhot of Fangraphs dubbed him a Unicorn. He's no Aang, but PitchingNinja's nickname of Airbender fits him pretty well. Me? I call him a mystery. A puzzler that Fenton Hardy can't even solve.... Continue Reading →
Something is in the water in Miami. With the Marlins making an improbable push for the 2020 postseason, the rebuild is finally starting to pay off early for the fish. The success of this turnaround has been built on the backs of the young Marlins pitching staff, featuring exclusively home grown and developed arms. What... Continue Reading →
This is part 1 in a series where I will attempt to better understand what causes the Times Through the Order Penalty. Part 2 of this series will take focus on individual pitchers in an attempt to better understand the causes of the TTOP. If you've spent time watching baseball you are probably at least... Continue Reading →
Primer Sixto Sanchez has taken the baseball world by storm. The twenty-two year old right hander has been as dominant as a rookie can, having blanked the likes of the Braves and Rays already in two of his four career starts. Sixto’s K/BB ratio is otherworldly (29/5 in 32 IP); with fantastic sequencing, and a... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oSpYKGOswc Luis Castillo's slider has averaged 0.0 inches of horizontal movement in 2020. This video breaks down why that number can be a little misleading. It can also be found on Johnny Asel's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnvnQkFJpR5WubOr-xplBsQ
Baseball has clearly had technological and analytical improvements over the last few decades. Pitching and hitting advancements have led the way, and defense has lagged behind. In the much more recent past, more accurate defensive metrics have been created, and the older ones have been updated. Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), and... Continue Reading →
Last offseason, Tom Tango and the geniuses over Baseball Savant created Statcast Swing Take, a metric that computes a player's production by analyzing his contributions in different zones of the plate. This metric helps determine how much value a player contributes to his team's offense by swinging or taking at a certain pitch. Simply put,... Continue Reading →
While Cleveland has what one can confidently call the best starting rotation in all of baseball due to the fact that they lead the league in ERA, FIP, xFIP and K% among other statistics, the success of the pitching staff may come as a surprise to many. What makes their success this year particularly surprising... Continue Reading →
The launch angle revolution is the anti-thesis to Eric Hosmer’s existence. From 2011 to 2019, Eric Hosmer hit a lot of ground-balls. That's not exactly what you want to see from a first baseman playing on a contending team. As baseball has embraced the launch angle revolution, Hosmer shifted towards a ground-ball heavy approach. Playing... Continue Reading →
This fall BaseballCloud is having our very first batch of interns solely focused on producing content for the BCBlog and social media. After having Johnny Asel (Twitter: @JohnnyAsel) produce a multitude of awesome articles for us over the summer, and our R&D interns also posting about their research, we realized that we needed to have... Continue Reading →
This fall BaseballCloud has the privilege to work with a few very talented R&D interns that will focus on different fields in baseball analytics and player development. We look forward to working with this group of young men as they look to further their careers in baseball, as well as help grow the BaseballCloud brand.... Continue Reading →
The Padres have not had top offenses in the MLB over the last few years, and they certainly have not been in playoff contention. Last year, only two of their hitters, Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr., finished above league average in expected weighted on base average (xwOBA). This year has been a very different... Continue Reading →
On the heels of Lucas Giolito’s no-hitter, the unspectacular happened. Dallas Keuchel toed the rubber and gave the White Sox a solid six inning performance. It was his seventh outing this year and his seventh time pitching 5.1+ innings allowing three runs or less. He stands as the rock of the rotation; the robin to... Continue Reading →
Below is a scatter plot of Brendan McKay’s 2019 release points. What do you see? His release point is slightly higher than most left-handed pitchers and toward the third base side. Combined with a good extension, the Release Score metric rates it an above average release point in deception. Then again, that is only utilizing... Continue Reading →
Ayush Arora
Brooks Robinson
Chase Seibold
Eric Sexton
John Asel
Kellen Brown
Matt Mancuso
John Moore
Paul Sirena
Ryan Holland
Sam Starosciak
Will Stern
Wyatt Kleinberg
