Does Sean White have any Minor-League Options left?

On a side-note: now that the Mariners DFA’ed Gaby Hernandez and got picked-up by Boston and was DFA’ed by the Red Sox a month later has a deal for Gaby been made yet? What are the odds that he gets signed to a minor league deal by the M’s if he gets unconditionally released after the 10-day DFA waiting period?

Here’s a recent piece from Dave Allen, whom you may know from Fangraphs or from his great piece on Cliff Lee in the Mariners Annual.

Wow, you’re right. That IS counter intuitive. But still interesting.

Not that I think we can take any grand conclusions to it yet; with more data, we might find a grander principle that this fits into (not that I have any idea of what they could be….)

Great question – this is something that’s pretty new, so I’d imagine we’ll see a lot of work on this in the future. Here’s a recent piece from Dave Allen, whom you may know from Fangraphs or from his great piece on Cliff Lee in the Mariners Annual. This is looking at a small group of pitchers with a limited pitch mix, but the results are counter-intuitive to me. This is a limited study, but I like the approach – we’ll probably see expanded versions of this soon.

I fear that this isn’t getting at your question specifically – how a given type of pitcher can optimize his pitch mix strategy – but it’s something anyway.

The obvious question arises: if Littleton couldn’t get ANY swinging strikes with his sinker/FB, how was he posting above-average K rates in the minors? How was he getting any Ks in the majors?
He’s actually got a pretty good change. While he’s nothing at all like Fernando Rodney, but it may be time to adopt Rodney’s change-heavy pitch mix and see if that helps.

This gets me to a question I have about breaking down the effects of a pitcher’s physical attributes (speed, break, command, repertoire) and his mental attributes (his strategy, etc.). We’ve seen how pitch selection affects Felix. Is there a general rubric or study on this? It’s obvious that not all pitchers have optimal strategies on the mound; is there a study or two that summarizes good strategies for different types of pitchers?