Morning Mound Visit: sabermetrics news - 9/8/18

FanGraphs | Craig Edwards: Javier Báez has a lot of traditional baseball skills, like his quick bat and tremendous glove. But he has some unconventional ones, too, like the ability to tag runners, and the one documented here: forcing the issue on the base paths to cause defensive errors.

MGL On Baseball | Mitchel G. Lichtman: Do Statcast speeds affect offensive projections? MGL set out to test this, and showed that for players who showed in increase in Statcast speed from year x to x+1, projections tend to underestimate that player in year x+2. This is largely because they either recover from an injury, increase their fitness, or whatever reason you can think, and that tends to lead to a 31-point increase in wOBA. Projections, however, were more on target for those who did not change or decreased in speed (could be from bulking up to negate the speed).

MLB.com | Mike Petriello: The secret weapon in the already-exceptional Astros bullpen is Ryan Pressly, who features a high-velocity, high-spin rate curve and high-spin rate four-seamer that makes him a formidable tool for October success.