Have you seen all the technological advances taking over pitching in recent years? High-speed cameras, pitching labs, weighted ball training, wind tunnels – maybe the reason we haven’t sent anyone to the moon for decades is that we’re using all the technology to strike batters out instead. Clearly, the arms race (get it?) favors technological savvy and complicated, inscrutable mathematical modeling.
Here’s a counterpoint, though: Maybe you should just throw a fastball and a slider and laugh as batters flail at both. Case in point: Randy Rodríguez has been the best reliever in baseball this year, and there’s nothing fancy about his game. He throws a 98-mph fastball. He throws a tight slider. That’s it – and that’s really all he needs anyway. Through eight appearances this year, he has 13 strikeouts, zero walks, and zero runs allowed.
Oh, two paragraphs don’t make an article? Well then, I guess we should expand on everything a bit. First, his backstory: Rodríguez signed with the Giants in 2017 out of the Dominican Republic and then slowly climbed the minor league ranks. He was a reliever right from the jump, with only occasional dalliances with short-burst starts, and he got a taste of Triple-A in 2022, where he got shelled. He tried it again in 2023 with better results, and by 2024 he looked like he belonged. That was his first year in the upper minors with a single-digit walk rate, and that’s all the Giants were waiting for; they called him up midseason and plugged him into the bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »
For the past half decade, Logan Webb has been one of the game’s premier starters. He churns out 30-start seasons with ERAs in the 3s like clockwork; that’s almost exactly his seasonal average since switching to a full-time sinkerballer in 2021. In that span, he’s averaging 4.4 WAR per year, and he’s topped 200 innings in each of the past two seasons. This year, he’s atop the leaderboards again, with a 2.63 ERA and 2.25 FIP through four starts. But there’s something new to see here, and it’s a change I thought Webb would make for years before he actually did, so I think an updated look is in order.
Webb’s approach was simple and yet effective. He threw three pitches to righties: sinker, sweeper, changeup. Against lefties, he threw fewer sweepers and more changeups, and he also mixed in a few four-seamers in lieu of sinkers. For the most part, though, he alternated his three best pitches, weighted to suit the batter he was facing. Here’s a great graphic, courtesy of Baseball Savant’s player pages, that shows Webb’s movement profile. I picked 2023 for reasons that will become obvious shortly:
This shows a few things about Webb’s game in one image. His sinker and changeup move very differently from the league-average versions of those pitches. His four-seamer, rarely thrown, is effective not because of inherent shape, but because it’s different from his primary fastball. His sweeper is the only thing he throws that breaks glove side, and it breaks that way by quite a lot. If you’re facing Webb, you’re either going to see something that tails hard arm side (sinker or changeup) or something that shoots hard glove side (sweeper). It’s like facing Clay Holmes or Blake Treinen for 100 pitches at a time. Read the rest of this entry »
This spring, the Angels banned the use of cell phones in their clubhouse. I read that news with great interest, since like so many people these days, I have a love/hate relationship with the little screen in my pocket. I really do feel like looking at it less often could help me out. What better laboratory to test the wholesome effects of less screen time than a high stakes sport?
Then I thought a bit more about the situation and laughed. Could cell phone usage bring the Angels to the playoffs? Signing Shohei Ohtani for a pittance couldn’t bring the Angels to the playoffs. Drafting Mike Trout, one of the greatest players in the 21st century, and then twice signing him to contract extensions has only taken the team to October once in Trout’s career. Maybe this was the wrong team to pin my hopes to. But fast forward three weeks, and who sits atop the AL West but the Los Angeles Angels, in the first year where they banned cell phones. Coincidence?
I mean, yeah. Thanks for bearing with me for that extended introduction, but this isn’t an article about the evils of technology. Instead, it’s about what’s gone right in Anaheim so far this year, and whether that should change our view of the team going forward. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) In Baseball This Week. I was at a wedding this past weekend, a generally fun event for a baseball writer. That’s because strangers ask me what I do, and then I get to say, “I’m a baseball writer.” That plays a lot better than, “I work in accounting/finance/tech,” no offense to any of you in those fine fields. But this weekend, someone inquired deeper. “Oh, like sabermetric stuff?” “Yeah! Kind of. Also I make GIFs of dumb and/or weird plays. And bunts, lots of bunts.” Yes, it’s a strange job being a baseball writer, but also a delightful one, and this week delivered whimsy and awe in equal amounts. So unlike guests milling around at a wedding, let’s get straight to the point – after the customary nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the inspiration for this article format.
1. Not Reaching Home
The third time a runner was tagged out at the plate in Wednesday’s Cardinals-Pirates clash came at a pivotal moment. Locked in a scoreless tie in the bottom of the 11th, Pittsburgh finally looked like it would break through when Joey Bart singled to right. But, well:
That was a good throw by Lars Nootbaar and a clean catch by Pedro Pagés, and that combination turned a close play into a gimme. I mean, how often are you going to be safe when the catcher already has the ball in his glove and you’re here:
Some days, we analyze all of baseball here at FanGraphs, and maybe come up with some tools that will help predict all of future baseball. Injury-aware depth charts, payroll matrices, top prospect lists: You get the idea. Today, however, is not one of those days, at least not for me. That’s because after watching some videos of Tyler Soderstrom being very strong, I tried to figure out whether his early-season success will continue.
Being very strong is a valuable skill, at least when it comes to hitting a baseball. People don’t ooh and aah over Aaron Judge because his name makes for a fun fan section; they do it because he hits the ball so far. There are countless different ways to be good at hitting, but let’s be honest with each other: Being really strong is one of the best ways. Chicks don’t dig the well-placed opposite field sinking liner, you know? Or, if they do, no one made t-shirts about it.
How strong is Tyler Soderstrom? Well, watch this swing:
I’m sure you’ve heard of taking what the pitcher gives you, going to the opposite field when the ball is away rather than trying to pull it. I’m fairly certain that the people giving that advice don’t mean that you should flick your wrists and smash the ball over the fence at 100 miles an hour, though. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, David Appelman and I set about injuring a ton of players. Wait, that doesn’t sound right. Let’s try this again. Last year, David Appelman and I developed a method to use our depth charts projections to simulate how much injuries to the league’s top players might affect each of the teams in baseball. Today, we’re updating that article for the 2025 season. I’ll also present some research I’ve done into how these injury-aware depth charts compare to actual historical seasons.
First, a review of the methodology is in order. If you don’t need an update, or if you simply want to get right to the data, you can skip ahead; the results section is clearly labeled below. We decided to simulate depth by first removing the top X players from a team’s depth chart and then reallocating playing time to fill in the missing plate appearances or innings pitched. We then created a number of rules to make sure that these new depth charts were generated in a reasonable way, at least to the greatest extent possible.
Let’s use the 2025 Phillies as an example. As of the time of our run on April 7, we projected the Phillies for a .545 winning percentage against league average opposition. That projection comes from allocating playing time to each Phillies player according to our depth charts, using blended projections from ZiPS and Steamer to estimate the talent level of those players, and then plugging those projections into the BaseRuns formula to estimate runs scored and runs allowed. But those projections have an obvious weakness: they’re static. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to this season’s first edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m never more excited to watch baseball than I am at the end of March. The winter feels endlessly long, even for me in pleasant San Francisco. Spring training doesn’t quite scratch the itch. A series in Tokyo? Eh, everyone was asleep. But then comes Opening Day, and suddenly there’s baseball everywhere. Hats at the grocery store. Announcers on television and on the radio. Crowds filling bars and stadiums, TVs broadcasting the soothing sounds of my favorite sport. I’m all fired up. You only get one opening week a year, and this one’s been excellent. So after the customary nod to Zach Lowe (now of The Ringer, congrats Zach) for the format, let’s get right to the things that made me jump out of my seat this week.
1. Mookie!
I’ll admit to being a little skeptical about how the start of Mookie Betts’s season would go. It’s not because of any doubt about his skill – at this point in his career, I think he’s earned the benefit of the doubt there. But we’re not talking about how Betts would look at full strength. In fact, the reason I was skeptical was because he’s specifically not at full strength after losing nearly 20 pounds during a bout with norovirus.
Betts doesn’t weigh a lot to begin with – he’s officially listed at 180 pounds, but he checked into spring training this year at 175, according to Dodgers announcer Joe Davis. Losing 20 pounds from there is a big deal. Betts hits for a ton of power given his stature, but reducing his body weight by more than 10% makes that an even greater challenge. When he missed the Dodgers’ two games in Tokyo and then came back to play on Opening Day while still clearly affected, I mentally marked down my expectations for him early on.
Betts still isn’t back to full strength. Per a Dodgers broadcast last week, he’s back up to 165 pounds, and still hoping to gain more weight sooner rather than later to deal with the rigors of the season. That lack of oomph shows in the batted ball data; it is, of course, very early in the season, but Betts has barreled up only a single ball, and the hardest he’s hit one all year was a mere 100.8 mph. (For context, his max exit velo last season was 109.4 mph.) His bat speed is down. It shows on Betts’s body, too; he’s always been slight, but he looks smaller this year, because he is.
One place it hasn’t showed up? His batting line. He’s hitting .300/.364/.750 to start the year, and that’s with a .188 BABIP. He has more home runs (three) than strikeouts (one). Every single one of those homers gave the Dodgers the lead. And every single one of them had juuuuuust enough power to clear the wall:
How much distance did those balls have to spare? Maybe 10 feet combined? I think we need to look into the possibility that Betts is a magical being unconstrained by the rules of reality. I don’t know how else to explain his incredible performance even as he’s so focused on recovery that he eats meals during games to try to regain muscle mass.
If you’ve followed his career, you know that Betts is prone to white-hot streaks where he hits everything out of the park. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. But doing it when he’s visibly weakened by illness? Doing it while playing shortstop full time? Doubt Betts at your own risk. The Dodgers are impressive in a million ways – but right now, I can’t stop watching Mookie and giggling with delight.
2. Follow the Bouncing Wall
Ever heard of a strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out single play? Jeremiah Estrada managed that trick over the weekend, and in a way I’ve never seen before:
It’s not unheard of for a pitcher to retrieve the ball after a dropped third strike. Here’s another from the first week of the season:
But that’s how they happen, with balls that bounce back toward the field of play, and bounce far enough that the catcher can’t reach them. After the ball gets behind the plate, it’s the catcher’s ball for better or worse. Unless you’re playing with the wall bumper settings turned up to maximum, that is:
The ball hit a solid railing perfectly, flush and angled back into the field of play. A fraction of an inch in any direction would have made it completely unplayable. But throw enough fastballs off the wall behind the plate, and apparently one will kick back perfectly for some pitcher fielding practice. I’ve never seen anything like it – and that feeling, that I’ve never seen anything like what just occurred, is exactly why I’m so happy to have regular-season baseball back in my life.
3. Genius Defenders and Oblivious Baserunners
If you played baseball or softball growing up, you probably have the same instincts as me: When you see a rundown, you get giddy. Maybe, like me, you even say “Ooh! Pickle!” before you even notice that you’re talking. At the youth level, turning a pickled runner into an out is anything but a sure thing, and both the defenders and the runner have a lot to say about how things go. In the big leagues, the defenders are just too good for that. Escaping a rundown is getting tougher every year, because with perfect execution by both the runner and the defense, the runner is always out.
Here’s a classic one for you, a grounder to third base that hung Dairon Blanco out to dry on the basepaths:
You can quibble with having Blanco run on contact there, with no outs and Bobby Witt Jr. on deck. After the ball was in play, though, he didn’t have a lot of options. Catcher Bo Naylor came up the line aggressively and gave Blanco nowhere to hide. So Blanco went for the classic “break toward the thrower after he releases” plan; he didn’t execute it perfectly, but even if he did, it probably wouldn’t have worked. José Ramírez is fast, Hunter Gaddis and Carlos Santana were both covering home plate for reinforcements if the rundown continued, and like I said, it’s nearly impossible to escape a rundown conducted by major league fielders.
Why am I showing you this standard play? Because it wasn’t a standard play, and didn’t end there. Ramírez wasn’t just bluffing to third with that post-tag pivot:
It’s fun to watch a baseball genius at work. Ramírez made a string of great decisions on this play that equaled Kansas City’s string of bad ones. First, he took off down the third base line even before Naylor’s throw was in his glove. Blanco might be faster than him in a footrace, but he was already accelerating homeward when Blanco planted and changed direction. Rundowns are about quickness, not speed, and Ramírez is preternaturally agile.
He had the runner at second on his mind the entire time, too. You can see him waving Naylor toward him to hurry the play up. By the time he received the throw, he was already thinking about second base. Then, as he turned that way, he gave Kyle Isbel enough of a deke to freeze him on the basepaths. He even managed to re-insert himself into the rundown, though he wisely stepped aside when he saw his teammates had it under control.
Isbel, on the other hand, didn’t cover himself with glory. On this snapshot, the play should essentially be over:
Look at how far down the line Ramírez had already gotten, with Blanco still trying to change direction. That out was as good as made, Isbel had a perfect view of it, and he was close enough to second base to get back easily. But with the ball still right near third base and a fast and accelerating player holding it, Isbel inexplicably decided to take off:
Here’s how bad that decision was: Between Isbel deciding to run and Ramírez tagging Blanco out, Isbel took exactly two steps. He was maybe 20% of the way to third when Ramírez made the tag, and Ramírez was maybe 20% of the way from third to home.
Poor Jonathan India. He seems to know his way around a rundown. While the rest of the Royals were finding ways to create outs, he played everything perfectly. He tore down the line to first. When the defense abandoned him to cover the rundown, he went partway to second. And when Isbel got caught too, India did the right thing and went all the way to the second base bag. Just to put the cherry on top, rewatch the clip of Isbel getting tagged out. India didn’t step on the bag until the tag was applied. That’s because he was trying to start a rundown of his own; if Isbel had just sprinted back to second instead of stopping, India would have retreated to first, hopefully allowing Isbel to reach third or maybe even getting out of the rundown without being tagged given how many fielders were down near home plate. It’s amazing how good baseball players are at these little things. Well, how good they usually are, at least.
4. Lunging Practice
Double plays are a frequent feature of this column, because a well-turned double play, particularly if the degree of difficulty is high, is one of the most exciting plays in baseball. It features so many people operating in unison, there are usually close plays for at least one of the outs, and acrobatic pivots at second are just visually pleasing, period. And then you’ve got the double plays that aren’t perfect but are satisfying nonetheless:
What happened here? First, Mark Vientos made a difficult pick on a short hop. Then he judged that he had enough time and threw to second:
You can tell that something is wrong with the throw even in that abbreviated clip. The angle looks wrong, and so does his arm action. Good hands, yes, but bad throw:
Luisangel Acuña made that look easier than it was, but that could have been a disaster. His glove actually clipped second base as he went down for that one. How could it not, given the short hop? The ball rattled around in his glove, and he nearly lost his footing on the base while securing it, but he made the tough catch and even kept himself in position to throw to first.
At this point in the play, doubling up Isaac Paredes was far from automatic. Acuña didn’t have the time to baby the throw; he had to rip it and hope for reasonable accuracy. And “reasonable” is about what he got:
Pete Alonso isn’t a heralded defender, but he played this ball perfectly. When he saw the flight path, he went out and attacked the catch point. Stay back, and you have an in-between hop. Paredes might even beat out the throw; it was a really close play. But Alonso cut down the distance with his stretch, and he even got a bit of momentum by pushing on the base with his right foot, making sure to keep in contact until after he’d caught the ball. I love the brace with his right hand, too; that’s a good way to make sure that a collision with the ground doesn’t jar the ball out of the glove.
Honestly, that ball should be a double play every time without the need for anything spectacular. But hey, it was the first day of the season. Everyone was still getting up to game speed. And what better way to do that than by practicing some tough catches?
5. George Springer Still Has It
In the prime of his career, George Springer was a do-it-all outfielder in addition to being a slugger. He played 500 or so innings a year in center, spent the balance in right field, and showed off a cannon arm and fantastic instincts to go with plus speed. At 35, he’s not that kind of defender anymore. His last two seasons have been his worst defensive efforts as a major leaguer. But there’s a big difference between a diminished Springer and your regular kind of bad defender.
You can be a bad defender in many different ways. You can have bad instincts, or no speed, or a scattershot arm. But while Springer’s sprint speed is down, his heady play isn’t. How many below-average defenders can do this?
That’s not a great angle from the live broadcast, but I wanted to show it to you first so you can get an idea of how routine everything looked until the slide. Springer was playing far off the line in right when Ryan O’Hearn ripped the ball down the line, so it was a clean double off the bat. With Colton Cowser running from first, the math was pretty easy: If the ball hits the wall, Cowser scores. That’s why the broadcast cut to Cowser rounding second; he was the focus of attention at that point.
In his younger years, Springer might have gotten to that one standing up. But even missing a step or two, he has outstanding defensive instincts. He realized there was little downside and plenty of upside in trying to make a tough play, then pulled it off perfectly:
Every little thing about that is gorgeous. He was into the slide with legs extended by the time the ball hit his glove. He set his feet and lifted his body off the turf without using either hand, which let him complete the transfer from glove to throwing hand more quickly. Check out his left foot as he pivoted into the throw; his toe was pointed in the wrong direction at first, so he gave a quick jab to establish the correct position. Then he ripped the throw, off balance and falling away, hitting the cutoff man on the fly. Cowser had rounded second before Springer even started his slide, and yet the ball was back in an infielder’s hands by the time he stepped on third.
Small potatoes? Sure. He didn’t record an out or even prevent the hitter from getting to second. But keeping a runner from scoring, even with one out, has value. The O’s didn’t score in this inning, and that definitely wouldn’t have been true if Springer hadn’t made the play so seamlessly. And seriously, he was way off the line for that one. Here’s where he started the play:
The Jays like to shade Springer that way against lefties, but it’s nowhere near a straight-up right field position. Look at where he was standing against righties:
Now, did I pick that particular clip to show you that Andrés Giménez can juggle a baseball with his feet? I sure did. But you can see where Springer came into the picture, and he was maybe 20 feet closer to the line than he was against O’Hearn. My point is that it would have been easy for him to play that ball off the wall, or trap it with his momentum going the wrong way, or any number of ways that bad defenders play the ball when it’s not right at them. But Springer still has the elite defensive instincts he showed earlier in his career, and he made the kind of play that he always has. I love it. Even as he ages, you can still see what makes Springer so electric. Oh, and he’s slugging so far this year too. You love to see it.
Programming note: My chat next week will take place Tuesday at 2 p.m. Eastern, as I’ll be out on Monday. Talk to you then, I hope.
Joe Rondone/The Republic/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
They have a ritual out in Arizona. Every three or four years, they repeat it. The team is clicking. The squad is on the rise; the vibes in the desert are good. It’s time to sign their exciting, switch-hitting second baseman to a contract extension. And so, in keeping with tradition, Ketel Marte and the Diamondbacks have agreed to a new extension. The deal is for seven years and $116.5 million, including his $11.5 million player option for the seventh year, but it’s a little more complicated than that, because it replaces four years of an existing deal. Let’s get into the backstory, because as I’ve noted, this isn’t an isolated occurrence for Marte and the Diamondbacks.
In 2018, Marte signed a five-year, $24 million deal. He was a young, talented player still finding his footing in the majors; over the previous three years, split between Seattle and Arizona, he’d hit just .264/.319/.361, good for an 84 wRC+. But he was toolsy and exciting, and a buzzy breakout pick coming into the season. The pact felt like a good one for everyone involved. Marte went from having career earnings of $1.3 million to being rich for life overnight, while the Diamondbacks signed a nice player to a good contract.
Then Marte took off. In 2018, he hit for more power while striking out less. In 2019, he went nova, clubbing 32 homers with a .389 on-base percentage and 150 wRC+ en route to a 6.3-WAR season that garnered him a fourth-place MVP finish. He didn’t quite keep up that pace in the next two years, but from 2019 through 2021, Marte was the 34th-best hitter in baseball per WAR, right around Pete Alonso, Matt Olson, and Manny Machado. A dalliance in center field, where he never quite figured things out, hurt his defensive value. A series of lower-body injuries also hindered both his availability and his explosiveness when he was on the field. But injuries and all, he was the 11th-best hitter in the game by wRC+. We’re talking about a legitimate star, albeit one who played less than a full schedule thanks to his IL stays. Read the rest of this entry »
