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I’d like to think that I’ve become a more “enlightened” baseball watcher over my years as a writer. I’d like to think that I understand the game’s nuances and know how to look for what really matters instead of getting distracted by the superficial, and that I know how to focus on the big picture rather than getting swamped by small-sample noise. But for all that fancy schmancy talk, one thing gets my blood boiling as much as it used to: uncompetitive pitches in hitters’ counts.

I’m pretty sure you can picture it. There’s a runner on first in a close game, and a 2-0 count with a slugger at the plate. Your team’s high-octane reliever peers in for the sign – a fastball. He takes one or two deep breaths, maybe flutters his glove a few times to calm the nerves, then winds and delivers. A foot outside, ball three. Even Javy Báez wouldn’t swing at that thing. Ugh, this inning is already spiraling away.

There might not be a more maddening experience in all of baseball. Come on! Buddy! Just throw a strike! How hard can it be? You know the hitter isn’t going to swing if you can’t at least get the ball near the plate. A lot of the time, baseball is a game of inches, with fine margins separating success from failure, but not when a pitcher misses by a ton in a count where they should have been trying to throw a strike.
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In retrospect, of course he was going to do it. On Thursday, Shohei Ohtani became the first player in history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season, and he did it loudly. His 6-for-6, three-homer, two-steal game would be among the best single-game lines by any player all year even if it hadn’t simultaneously helped him achieve a feat that no one has ever done before. Sometimes you just have to marvel at the greatness.

Ohtani wasn’t supposed to be at his peak this year. He’s rehabbing from UCL repair surgery and thus not pitching. His two-way prowess has always been part of the Ohtani mystique, and 2024 felt like a warmup for next year, his first fully operational campaign with the Dodgers. But instead, Ohtani reached new heights as a hitter this year. He’s already set career bests for every counting stat imaginable. He’d have highs in every rate stat too, if it weren’t for his offensive breakthrough in 2023 (.304/.412/.654 for a 179 wRC+).

Ohtani always felt like a threat to hit 50 homers – he hit 46 in 2021 and 44 last year — but 50 steals felt like a pipe dream; he’d swiped only 86 total bases in 716 games before this year, and even with last year’s rule changes that increased stolen base attempts and success rates, he swiped only 20 bags in 135 games.
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Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. September is a magical time for baseball. Half of the games are mostly for fun, with teams playing out the string and competing for bragging rights. Those games produce some delightful nonsense, because teams are often more willing to engage in tomfoolery when the stakes are low. The other half of the games (using half very broadly here, of course) are far more important than any games from earlier in the season; they determine playoff berths, home field advantage, and statistical milestones. Those games have all the intensity missing from the other half, right down to electric crowds and locked-in benches. That duality is a ton of fun. This year, we’ve even got a truly historic statistical chase going on to add to the excitement. Zach Lowe’s NBA column, which inspired this series, always hits its stride when teams are building up for the playoffs. I think that baseball trends in the same direction. Let’s get right to it.

1. When the Ball Doesn’t Lie

This is just outrageous:

The umpire is part of the field of play. That’s just how the rule works. Umpires do their best to get out of the way of batted balls, both for self-preservation and for the integrity of the game. John Bacon wasn’t trying to insert himself into the play; he was in foul territory and focused on getting the fair/foul call right, and there was simply no way to avoid this rip. Bryson Stott couldn’t believe it:

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If you’re a major league hitter, you’ll reach a two-strike count. Not every time – baseball isn’t an every time game – but frequently, consistently, inevitably. In those two-strike counts, you’re going to see sliders. Again, not every time, but frequently. A quarter of two-strike pitches in the majors this year have been sliders of some variety. Pitchers are no dummies, and they know where their bread is buttered.

The worst thing that could happen with those two-strike sliders you’re bound to face? A strikeout, obviously. But bad news: There are going to be strikeouts. Again, not every time, but strikeouts are just a fact of life in baseball these days, and 21% of two-strike sliders have resulted in strikeouts this year. Not in the plate appearance – on that pitch specifically. No wonder pitchers throw so many of them.

With all that in mind, here’s a statement I’m sure you’ll agree with: A good way to get better at hitting is to stop striking out on two-strike sliders. I mean, this isn’t rocket science. Striking out is bad. Doing it less is good. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Oh, right, I guess I still have to tell you what this article is about. Let’s talk about a player who made a heroic change. Early in his career, he did a fair job protecting against sliders with two strikes (15.4% putaway rate on two-strike sliders). In 2023, though, things took a turn; he struck out on 20% of the two-strike sliders he saw. This year, however, he’s defending against them better than ever. No player in baseball has gone down less frequently against two-strike sliders than our mystery man’s 8.6% clip. Pitchers simply can’t get him out. He’s putting up a glorious 118 wRC+ and striking out less often than last year.
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Relief pitching is hard work. More than that, it’s work whose difficulty builds on itself. If you’re covering a single inning in a single game, you can use your best reliever. Second inning? You’ll need your second-best guy, and so on. Second day in a row? Now your best relievers are tired. Third day in a row? Now maybe everyone is tired. And relief work never stops; through Monday’s action, there have been 4,322 starts in baseball this year and 26 complete games.

There’s an inherent tradeoff between how much teams rely on their bullpen and the average quality of the relievers who come in. No one does this anymore, but a team that was only asking its bullpen for a few innings a game could use its best arms for a high proportion of its overall innings. A team full of five-and-dive starters has to go much further down the depth chart; covering four innings per game with relievers requires more contributors.

There’s no obvious correlation between relief innings pitched and quality, for various reasons. Teams aren’t passive observers here; the teams that expect to need more relief innings tend to acquire more relievers, because they know they’ll be needed. Front offices are always on the lookout for innings eaters to lighten the bullpen load. But increasingly, this is just a cost of doing business. Teams and starters are both of the opinion that their best work is done in short bursts. If that’s the case, there will be more relief innings. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last week, I modeled Shohei Ohtani’s chase for 50 home runs and 50 steals to predict when he might reach that historic dual milestone. That prediction isn’t static, though. Every time Ohtani plays a game, the likelihood of his getting to 50/50 changes. Good news, though: Updating the model is as easy as hitting a few keys and listening to my computer hum for a bit.

This isn’t going to be a long article. It is, however, an updated set of probabilities, which is the whole point of this exercise. Ohtani hit two homers in his weekend series against the Guardians, which leaves him only four home runs and four steals short of a half century in each statistic. His odds of reaching 50/50 are up to 61.3% in my simulations – they were 55.6% before this series.

As a quick refresher, I’m simulating the likelihood of his hitting 50 of each statistic with a Monte Carlo simulation that takes his talent, his opponents, and the stadiums where he plays into account. I also introduce a random fluctuation in his home run talent: Sometimes he’s hot, sometimes he’s not, and sometimes he’s in between. I then simulate the season a million times and note whether he hits 50/50, and if so, in which game he does it.

The two homers in the weekend series have slightly moved up the most likely date for when he’ll reach the 50/50 threshold. Before his series against Cleveland, my simulation suggested that the single game most likely to see Ohtani either steal the base or hit the homer that pushes him over the line was the Dodgers’ September 27 game in Colorado. That’s still the case – but it’s now dead even with the previous game, September 26 in Los Angeles against the Padres. Furthermore, the Padres series has overtaken the final Rockies series as the three-game set in which he is most likely to set the mark.

Here’s the complete set of game-by-game probabilities:

I think these projections do a good job of handling a tricky problem. But I do want to make one point about their limitations: Steals aren’t quite as easy to model as home runs. Pretty much every time that Ohtani comes to the plate, his ideal outcome is a home run. He swings to hit home runs, and pitchers do their best to prevent them. The past does a great job of predicting the future here, because intent doesn’t change from one plate appearance to the next. Steals don’t work quite like that. Sure, Ohtani’s speed is a consistent and important input; the same is true for his baserunning instincts, the opposing pitcher’s ability to hold him on, the catcher’s throwing arm, and so on. But how much he wants to steal is also crucially important. He’s attempting to steal more frequently in the second half of the season than he was in the first, and his desire to run presumably will only accelerate if he’s sitting on, say, 50 home runs and 49 steals. I’m modeling a steady-state true-talent world, but I think it would be reasonable to tilt the distribution slightly earlier if Ohtani hits the homer plateau before the stolen base one, which looks more likely today than it did last week.

In any case, some takeaways: The last six games of the season are the most likely time to see history. The series against the Padres is now the best bet despite San Diego’s excellent pitching staff. The last series of the season, at elevation against a bad pitching staff, is the next most likely. The likelihood of Ohtani’s getting to 50 during both series is higher now than it was on Thursday, and I might even be underestimating it given that he might decide to attempt more steals as he nears the border of history.

There’s only one playoff race this year. That might not sound right to you. The Yankees and Orioles are deadlocked in the AL East. The Guardians are holding the Twins and Royals at bay in the Central. The Padres are looking menacingly northwards toward LA. But those aren’t playoff races, because everyone involved is making the playoffs either way. The only race where the winner is in and the loser is out is the one for the last NL Wild Card spot, and it’s taking place between divisional rivals: the Mets and the Braves.

It’s weird seeing so little actual drama in September. Those two teams are the only ones with playoff odds between 20% and 80% right now. That’s rare for this time of year. There were seven such teams last year, six in 2022, and three in the top-heavy 2021 season. Even if we go back to the 10-team playoff era, the years from 2015-2019 averaged four teams in that 20-80% range with a month left in the season. Despite no truly dominant teams, the playoff races are abnormally set in stone this year.

That only makes the last race more exciting, though. In one corner, we have the Braves, who came into the year as the best team in baseball. They were so good, in fact, that we used them as a model when delving into some new depth chart data this spring. What might the Braves look like if they lost Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. to injury? Our model thought they’d be a .551 team. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of great baseball storylines to keep tabs on this month. Aaron Judge is on yet another historic tear. Bobby Witt Jr. and the Royals are crashing the playoff party. The Brewers and Guardians are showing the league that you overlook the Central divisions at your own peril. But it all pales in comparison to Shohei Ohtani’s pursuit of 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases, at least for me.

The 50-50 club doesn’t have any members. Ohtani is alone in the 44-44 club, the highest current rung he’s attained, and it doesn’t look like anyone else will be joining him anytime soon. Ohtani himself probably won’t repeat this; this is a career high in steals by a mile, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s happening in a season when he isn’t pitching. Next year, I think that he’ll rein himself in more, but right now, we’re seeing what it looks like when a fast player decides that they really do want to steal all the bases they can. Of course, it helps that he’s also one of the most powerful hitters in the game – both to aim for the 50-50 target and because opposing pitchers walk him quite often.

Will he make it? I’m not sure, but luckily I have a method that lets me estimate the odds. When Judge hit 62 homers two years ago, I built a little tool to estimate the likelihood of him hitting that milestone, as well as the chances of it happening in any particular game. That method works pretty well in general, so I redid it with a few modifications to handle the fact that we’re looking at two counting statistics instead of just one. I’ll start by reviewing the methodology, though if you’re not into that, there are some tables down below that will give you an idea of when and where Ohtani might hit (or run into) this momentous milestone. Read the rest of this entry »