http://www.padresfanproshop.com/authentic-brad-hand-jersey , January 29, 2019"Happy Tuesday, everyone!Tribe newsEach club’s projected closer for 2019 | MLBWith Cody Allen now in California, the Indians will need another arm to turn to at the end of games. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your view), the Indians traded away Francisco Mejia and obtained Brad Hand last year. Hand is now positioned to take on the role of closer barring any major acquisitions.Around the Horn: Indians’ rotation still dominant | MLBAs of now, neither Corey Kluber or Trevor Bauer have been traded, meaning that one of the top rotations in baseball is intact for another season. Now let’s stay healthy, gentlemen.Around the leagueShawn Kelley has a new 1-year deal with the Texas Rangers.Ryan Braun is doing what most older baseball players refuse to do, and that is use analytics to adjust his swing in the later years of his career.The Caribbean Series has a new home in Panama at Rod Carew Stadium.Jarrod Saltalamacchia has called it a career after 12 years.It looks like Baseball Tonight won’t be a daily occurrence in 2019.Please let Bryce Harper announce his signing via video game tweet. Please, please let this happen: "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln ?""WhiteFanposts Fanshots Sections Diamondbacks Farm TeamsGameday ThreadsDiamondbacks NewsDiamondbacks Game ReportsFang Food2018 Diamondbacks Player Reviews #19: Andrew ChafinNew Cory Spangenberg Jersey ,32comments“Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln ?”2014-2017 Andrew Chafin threw 163 MLB innings, posting a respectable 3.65 ERA,3.31 FIP, and 119 ERA+.So on the surface, his 2018 ERA/FIP and other numbers shown above look like a considerable improvement. However few relievers elicited more groans when he entered the game in a tight situation than Chafin.So why the disconnect ?In a word:Leverage. Andrew struggled most when it counted most, and specifically struggled with throwing strikes in the most important situations and to first batters.Time and time it seemed like he was brought in to face a batter and that runner got on base by walk or hit, and Torey had to go get another reliever to try to shut things down. There are stats and splits for showing how well a player did inHigh, Medium, and Low Leverage situations available at both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference. I’ll be using the FG version for this part of the article.Most are familiar with the Win Expectancy graph and theWPAheroes and goatsthat are highlighted at the bottom of each game recap. If you are not familiar with WPA, and Win Expectancy Eric Hosmer Jersey , then please readHERE. Simply puteach play is assigned a numeric value for how much it added or subtracted to the odds of winning that specific game.That value is assigned to the player and added up. Players that did well in high leverage situations have positive numbers, and those that did poorly have negative numbers.In 2018,Anrew Chafin’sWPA was -0.88. That was the 11th worst number among 94 NL Relievers with 40 or more IP. Table Link Here. Don’t forget to check out number 9 by the way.Also if you click on the WPA column header it will sort again from best to worst as well.Here is the summary for Chafin’s career in High Leverage:As you can see, the inability to throw strikes in high leverage situations has been there for most of his career.He gets plenty of K’s, and doesn’t give up homers, but he simply walks too many batters, and when he’s not walking them, he’s falling behind in the count and then grooving pitches that get hammered, hence the high BABIP.When he is in medium leverage situations, his walk rate is 4.5/9,which is still not great Jose Pirela Jersey , but better than the 7.4 BB/9 he has in high leverage.When he is in low leverage, the BB/9 drops all the way down to 2.8/9.Medium Leverage StatsLow Leverage StatsNow these may all be small sample sizes, however the trend has been so pervasive from year to year, that it’s pretty hard to deny that Andrew has a problem throwing strikes in high pressure situations.His first batter efficiency especially was extremely poor.I asked Torey Lovullo about that during one of the post game interviews, and he was quite frankly somewhat exasperated...(either by Chafin, the question, or both).He made it clear they were well aware of the problem and had tried various measure to address it, but clearly none were effective. Chafin has great stuff.There is plenty of swing and miss in his game. He doesn’t allow homeruns. He induces a lot of groundballs.“Other than that.......” were it not for this one singular flaw in his game, he would be a borderline elite reliever.But it’s a huge flaw that can’t be overlooked.Whether or not he can overcome whatever it is that causes him to be so wild in tight situations will be the key for his 2019 season and beyond.