Morning Mound Visit: sabermetrics news - 9/15/18

FanGraphs | Jay Jaffe: Team Entropy is a yearly tradition, whereby you are not only rooting for close September races, but races that cause chaos by forcing last-day ties and tiebreakers. Currently, there are eight NL teams in contention, and one scenario where they all tie at 90 wins. That’s improbable, but there are at least a few scenarios where multiple teams could be tied on game 162, so fingers crossed!

Baseball Prospectus | Matthew Trueblood ($): The Indians should know from the 90s that any chance in the postseason may be your last, even if your core has Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez. It’s funny because they’ve had such an easy road to the postseason that they’ve flown under the radar this year, but they have two weeks until their story is at the forefront of baseball.

The Athletic | Mark Simon ($): Pitching results aren’t just pitching results, it’s also indicative of the defense behind. That’s why a few pitchers have been severely hurt by their defenses. Nick Pivetta has lost 24 (!) runs because of poor defense, followed by Noah Syndergaard at 17 and CC Sabathia at 14. Defense matters, and you won’t see that in ERA or RA9.

Bill James Online | John Dewan: Michael Kopech and Shohei Ohtani are undergoing Tommy John surgery, but the procedure has actually been in a slight decline over the past three years. Dewan also shares some other info on the latest details on the surgery: the median return time is 16 months, 20% do not return to the majors, and about 61% saw a velocity decrease upon return. Younger pitchers, on the other hand, had a higher share where the pitchers saw their velocity increase on return.