When Jordan Montgomery was an unknown quantity as a prospect hurler in the Yankees’ organization, we wondered if his new slider was good enough to make him a back-end starter. Then he showed us the slider, and we wondered how good he could be going forward. But then the league scouted the pitch, and something changed. The good news is that Montgomery has adjusted again, and it all has to do with the batter’s decision to swing.

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There are two types of stories you might be growing tired of reading. This guy figured out how to hit home runs. Well, there are home runs everywhere. And, this guy figured out how to get more strikeouts. Well, there are also strikeouts everywhere. Home runs. Strikeouts. Home runs. Strikeouts. It can feel sometimes like the game is nothing but home runs and strikeouts. It’s not, but it is more than it’s ever been. I’m sure many of you are craving diversity.

But Brad Peacock is leading all starting pitchers in strikeout rate. Not Chris Sale. Not Max Scherzer or Clayton Kershaw or Corey Kluber. Brad Peacock. Yeah, I had to lower the innings minimum, because Peacock hasn’t been starting the whole time, but when he was a reliever earlier on, he got a whole bunch of strikeouts, too. Let me show you a table, including 2016 and 2017 contact rates allowed:

Peacock has a long history of pretty average contact rates. Relatedly, he was essentially a replacement-level pitcher. Now a third of all swing attempts are missing. This can’t not be discussed. Strikeouts might be everywhere, sure, but this is the first time Peacock has managed to find them.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the results of Jeff’s survey about what constitutes a “jam,” Justin Verlander’s comments about the height of baseball seams, and a Mike Chernoff quote about working in baseball, then talk to writer Joe Lemire about his glossary of scouting terminology, the evolution of scouting, and the unbreakable link between baseball and Marriott hotels.

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Clayton Kershaw got the win against the Mets last night. From one perspective, he was fantastic. He faced 25 batters, and struck 10 of them out, issuing but one single walk. He threw more than two-thirds of his pitches for strikes, and he pitched himself into the seventh inning. The problem was that, of the 14 batters who hit the ball fair, four of them went deep. Kershaw was charged with a season-high six runs allowed, giving him a game ERA of just about 9.

Let it be acknowledged right away: Kershaw’s still amazing. Kershaw’s still an ace. He still has one of the game’s highest strikeout rates, and he still seldom issues any walks. He’s near the top among starters in ERA-, and he’s even closer to the top by xFIP-. Kershaw might be literally the last pitcher on the planet you’d want to catch yourself worrying about. There’s just this one thing I can’t get past: Kershaw has coughed up 17 homers. That is, already, a new career high.

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It’s now been six years since Buster Posey lost most of the season due to a broken leg bone suffered in a home plate collision. Two years later, Major League Baseball adopted Rule 7.13 to deal with collisions at home plate, meaning we are now in the fourth year of the rule designed to prevent serious injuries like the one Posey suffered as well as limit the damaging effects of concussions. There are two parts to the rule, one for catchers and one for runners, and together, collisions at the plate have become pretty non-existent. That’s what makes Monday night’s collision–when Anthony Rizzo barreled down the line into Austin Hedges–notable. It’s now a rarity, but Rizzo’s play was in clear violation of the rule.

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Kenley Jansen has never been better.

On Sunday, Jansen threw 12 pitches — 12 cutters — and 11 for strikes to close out the Reds during a 1-2-3 ninth. Video evidence of the simplistic, ruthlessly efficient, Jansen Way: Read the rest of this entry »

After the worst year of his career, including spending time on the DL with shoulder issues, Sonny Gray looks healthy again, posting his best fielding-independent numbers since his rookie year. And with the A’s looking like sellers, Gray is expected to get moved in the next month or so. And according to Susan Slusser, it might be sooner than that, with the Astros reportedly the most aggressive buyer at the moment.

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The last time Athletics infielder Jed Lowrie was playing this well, I had a good talk with him about his injury history. He said part of his good play was due to the fact that he was finally healthy for a good stretch after a string of freak injuries due to collisions. After a three forgettable seasons since, Lowrie is back to where he was back then. And though the story this time is similar — he had two offseason surgeries that are contributing to his good run right now — the differences tell us a lot about what it’s like to be a major leaguer.

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Much of the time, a jam isn’t confusing. What counts as a jam, and what doesn’t, tends to be obvious. The bases are loaded with nobody out in the ninth inning of a tie game? That’s a jam. There are two outs and nobody on in the fourth inning of a blowout? Not very jammy. A jam is a gut thing, and gut things don’t come with explicit rules, but you often know a jam when you see one.

Last week, I asked you, the FanGraphs community, to define what a jam is. Not exactly that, I guess — more like, I asked you to help come up with a jam definition. I presented you with a dozen different situations, and then thousands of you voted on whether the situation counted as a jam, in your own book. I didn’t know what the results might yield, but I figured it would help us in the in-between. Between the obvious jams and non-jams, there are iffy jams. I wanted to try to identify a cutoff.

Let me acknowledge, again, that jams are gut feelings. They’re situation-dependent in more ways than I could include in a poll, and there are presumably elements of momentum and opposition quality that matter to some extent. This is all basically for fun, and for exploration, and nothing is conclusive. We haven’t arrived at a set definition. But we can at least see where the crowd stands. What’s a jam? What isn’t a jam? I have a better idea now than I used to.

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