Game 150: Braves 3, Marlins 0
September 20, 2012 at 1:01 am by David Lee under Atlanta Braves
Source: FanGraphs
Game MVP: Kris Medlen, 79 game score
Least Valuable Brave: Brian McCann, -.036
Most Valuable Marlin: Donovan Solano, .034
Least Valuable Marlin: Justin Ruggiano, -.121
Big plays:
2nd – (ATL) Jose Constanza RBI single for a 2-0 Braves lead, .096
The Braves won their 21st straight Kris Medlen start, the longest streak since the Yankees and Whitey Ford from 1950-1953 when they won 22 straight. He hasn’t lost a game in 26 starts dating back to 2009.
Of Medlen’s 10 starts this season, five have had a game score of 75 or higher, including tonight’s 79. He recorded seven whiffs on 22 changeups thrown. He gave up just three line drives while getting double-digit ground balls, throwing 32 balls and walking one out of 98 pitches. The Marlins had a .182 BABIP against him.
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Nice work meds!
First!
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5ws8xhtw71qztwte.gif
I absolutely love watching him work. He is so, so efficient. Tonight he got into a little trouble in a couple of innings. And then, watching him get out of trouble is a pleasure. He reminds me of Maddux. Outside of the temperature of the air he works in, I wonder when he ever breaks a sweat.
At what point can you no longer argue SSS for medlen and claim that he is an ace with his plus plus location and plus everything else.
I’d say 30 starts would be a good starting point. I’m talking all he’s had this year, still remaining, playoffs (if he gets any), and the start of next season. 30 starts and we’ll have a good starting off point.
I’m still terrified of that day. Because he’s just defying sabermetrics everywhere, and I’m fearful that he may see a lot of regression. However, I’ve been expecting regression ever since his first start, and he hasn’t given me any reason to believe that he will regress. But I feel like his BABIP is always under .200, and I’m not sure that can keep going even though he’s a master of inducing weak contact, if any at all. I’d say he’s an ace right now. But I have a bad feeling before every start he makes, thinking, “Is this the one where it starts to fall apart?”
The thing working in his favor when it comes to regression is that he is physically different to the Medlen we had pre-injury. He will regress some because eventually he will make a couple of mistakes in the same inning. But it is possible he was one of those individuals who become great pitchers because of Tommy John surgery, although he was pretty good before then.
Very true. Although I think most of the guys that end up having surgery are the flamethrowers. Medlen’s surgery somehow gave him the ability to throw the best changeup in baseball and a Maddux-like 2 seamer. His control is definitely what is getting it done, which isn’t something that will go away, unless he encounters some kind of mechanical slump. It seems like he’s just outsmarting hitters and keeping all of his pitches low and getting weak contact. That’s a gameplan that will ALWAYS work.
A dangerous word saying most without data to back it up. Medlen, Hudson and Beachy all have had Tommy Johns and I would not classify any of them as “flamethrowers”. He always had a very good changeup that has made him very effective against lefties. But you are definetly right it is his control that is getting the job done. He is throwing with Maddux/Cliff Lee precision/baffling hitters. His approach will always work as long as he maintains top notch control.
Maybe not flamethrowers, but Hudson Hanson and Beachy were all around 94-95 at their velocity peak. Now that the roiding has died down, 94 is pretty quick for a pitcher these days. I don’t remember what Medlen was hitting in 2009 or before his surgery in 2010, but I don’t think he has ever in his life been a power/stuff pitcher like the other 3 once were.
His BABIP as a starter this season is actually .260, which is below average but not “Omar’s comin’” low, like Beachy’s .200 (where he ended his season).
CK had only one swinging strike last night, I was surprised.
Saw this on ESPN thought I would paste it here.
Atlanta Braves pitcher Kris Medlen is 8-0 in his last 10 starts with a 0.76 ERA and 9.2 strikeouts per 9 innings. FROM ELIAS SPORTS BUREAU: Medlen is the first pitcher since earned runs became official in 1912 to have at least 8 wins, an ERA of 0.76 or lower, and average at least 1 strikeout per inning over a 10-start span.
Please drop the ban hammer on jack dan for saying first. Thanks
*Like*
banhammer for that? You’re an idiot, my post is more about the braves than yours, if you actually look at it. I was 1 am and I had a few brews, so sorry one word bothered you so much.
Back to the game from last night, while it will be hard for meds to keep repeating games like he did at washington and I expect some regression in the future. Not anything major, but as Spence said above it isn’t sustainable to be this dominating for so many starts. Hopefully the regression doesn’t start when fredi has him starting the one game playoff…
Agreed.
Bleh, still hate the way these comments show up. Im agreeing with the OP. Dont want to see this place turn into AJC with the “first” donkeys.
My man crush has officially transfered from Brandon Beachy to Kris Medlen.
Can’t we have both?? http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9efy9oiYG1rum9t0.jpg
Meds should be in the discussion for Cy Young Award. Especially if Kimbrel and Chapman are being discussed. He came out of nowhere to being the most dominating pitcher in baseball down the stretch. The Braves are 12-6 this month. That is 8-6 without Medlen.
Also from August Medlen went 5-0. The Braves went 15-14 in August, 10-14 without Medlen.
I think he should get some votes, but I’m not sure he should win it. He hasn’t been in the starting rotation for the entire season.
I think Tommy Hanson should next year slide into the role that Medlen occupied for the first half of this year–a righty who can give you three innings out of the pen or be used for matchups late. Sure, that’s a little disappointing considering his “ceiling”, but we have to face the fact that he’s a replacement level starter at this point. He could give legitimate value in a relief role.
Tommy Hanson (2012):
vs R: .240/.317/.378
vs L: .298/.368/.517
pitches 1-30: .233/.301/.383
pitches 31-60: .319/.391/.539
Innings 1-3: .244/.330/.386
Innings 4-6: .291/.359/.521
Hard to do much else with that…
Here’s what concerns me: We have had three promising young pitchers battle major injurie, and when they come back two of them have had a serious slip in performance. Jurrjens has gone from being an All-Star to pitching himself off the team, Hanson is nowhere near as good as he used to be, and Beachy is yet to be determined. Is this just a case of bad luck? Poor handling of pitching talent from a health standpoint?
I think with Jurrjens, he could never regain his comfort with his mechanics, and he was just leaving balls up. He never had the kind of stuff that gave him an excuse to leave a ball up.
Hanson had TJ and shoulder surgery as well, right? I think he relied heavily on a 93-94 fastball to set up his offspeed pitches, and now that it’s at 88, he has no out pitch. It’s pretty safe to assume his fastball will never get back to where it was, and since he’s spent his whole life as a power pitcher, 26 may be a little too late to completely change your approach.
Jury will still be out on Beachy. He didn’t rely on stuff as much as command so hopefully that’s still there when he gets back.
Hanson didn’t have Tommy John. He may need it to regain his velocity. Frequently declining velocity early in the career is a sign of damage to the UCL.
A large percentage is bad luck, I think. It’s very controversial whether innings should be limited and how for young pitchers. The fact that the Venturi study wasn’t scientific/statistically rigorous doesn’t mean that some such relationship between pitching load or increase thereof and injury rate does not exist.
I think we’ll be able to predict these things better in 10 years with better metrics (torque, joint rotation, etc). Personally, I think Tommy was way overpitched in his 22 and 23 yo seasons (195 IP and 202 IP, respectively, not counting spring). He also made 5 starts in the AFL in 2008. For reference, he logged 130′s IP in his 20 and 21 yo seasons. Hanson’s arm trouble started in his 24 yo season. No causative relationship can be proven as it stands, but it’s hard to imagine increasing IP by 50% in one year for a 23 yo doesn’t significantly increase injury risk over a more moderate increase (15%, for example).
Jurrjens threw 215 innings in his 23 yo season. He has fought injuries each year since.
Beachy is a tough case because he was a reliever-turned-starter. He threw 134 innings at age 23, but this was a jump from 76 IP the prior year. His injury problems also started in his 24 yo season, and of course resulted in TJS in his 25 yo season.
Difficult to study this and know what is the right way to bring along a young pitcher. Some top orthopedists think these guys actually develop ligament injuries in their teens and they don’t fully manifest until their early 20′s when workloads increase. It might be that the 21-24 yo seasons don’t matter nearly as much, and we should be focused more on limiting pitches in high school.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8369941/history-shows-washington-nationals-shut-stephen-strasburg-too-soon
Really good article about how the problem has pretty much fixed itself in the last 20 years, mainly focusing on the Strasburg situation. But the point is, people are afraid to let young guys pitch for reasons that are extremely outdated.
@Spence, that’s a nice read, but I think it might be more accurate to say the problem has been partially alleviated. The problem has not been fixed, because lots of young pitchers get injured. Nor has it fixed itself–it took lots of injury stories to get baseball people to take heed and start limiting pitch counts. Case-by-case analyses like mine or the author’s can’t prove anything. Looking at “survivor rate” can’t either because the samples are too small. We think that limiting pitches has helped reduce debilitating injuries to young pitchers, but we can’t be sure the reduction in injury rate isn’t mostly due to chance. Even if pitch count <110 lowers injury rate, we can't be sure how much more (if anything) we should be doing to further reduce injury rates in general. It certainly doesn't say anything about how to handle the specific case of Strasburg. The fear of letting "young guys pitch" is not at all due to "outdated reasons", nor does the article say that. In fact, the article draws the conclusion that these "fears" are valid, since limiting pitch counts have been effective in lowering injury rates *in general*. The author reasons that pitch counts are more important than inning counts, but most baseball people believe this anyway. It does not mean that inning counts are unimportant, nor does it prove that limiting Strasburg's innings wasn't a reasonable strategy.
Hanson’s 1.1 WAR and 8.32 K/9 would like to speak with you about this replacement level claim you make. Is he the ace we had hoped? no, but he’d find a spot in most teams rotation as a #3 or 4. It’s not like he’s giving up 8 runs a game or something.
Tommy has a 1.1 fangraphs WAR and a -0.4 BBR WAR. Dunno whose pitching WAR formula is better, but for practical purposes, Tommy is replacement level. The fact that the Braves have lots of replacement level talent that’s ready or close to ready (Delgado, Gilmartin, Teheran) doesn’t help Tommy’s case to take a rotation spot next year.
If Hanson isn’t going to be in the rotation, he shouldn’t be on the team. I assume that his arbitration salary will reflect his early career dominance as well as the recent injury concerns and declining performance, which means that he will probably make a bit less than he would receive on the open market but considerably more than a fringe 5th starter/long reliever. Add to the that the fact that he is represented by Scott Boras, extremely competitive and unlikely to handle a demotion to the bullpen well, and now lacks both the control and pure “stuff” needed to escape tough jams, and it simply isn’t a wise use of resources from a financial or competitive standpoint to relegate him to the bullpen. We can probably assume that Medlen, Minor, Hudson, and Maholm will begin next season in the rotation. If the team prefers Delgado/Teheran to Hanson, at least until Beachy can return, then Hanson should be traded, even if the return is minimal.
On the Cy Young discussion for Medlan, if you think back a couple years when CC Sabathia was traded to the Brewers at the trade deadline. The numbers he put up are very similar to the ones that Medlan has put up since he became a starter this season, and he received many NL Cy Young votes. So i dont see why Medlan would not get some, even if he does not win it
Long time reader, first post on CAC.com.
What Medlin has done has been simply incredible. He’s close to being the central star in a 60 year old record and has pitched just as well, if not better, than anyone over a 10 game span in 100 years. Being in Libya much of the past year, I haven’t been able to see the Braves play on tv, but listen to them every now and again when internet allows. I have to tip my cap to Medlin and SSS be damned – YOU GO MAN!! He has to start the wild card playoff game.
Hanson + Boras = no more playing in Atlanta. Probably. And when you think about it, with the additions of Maholm, Minor, and potentially Delgado, it’s not really that great a loss. plus, it’s probably saving us a pretty penny.