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I’ve got good news for you, Padres fans. Manny Machado is hitting the ball as hard as nearly anyone in baseball*. Seriously! Take a look at this leaderboard:

Yeah! There’s our guy, fourth in the majors, absolutely pummeling the ball. No Aaron Judge on this list. No Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani or Gunnar Henderson. Machado’s outdoing them all. Never mind that pesky asterisk up above. He’s totally fixed. Though speaking of, what is that asterisk about?

*: Exit velocity on groundballs only

Oh. Huh. I guess that’s why the list is missing all those great hitters, and instead has dudes barely hanging on or getting demoted to Triple-A. Thunderous power doesn’t mean much if you’re hitting the ball straight into the infield grass. That explains this confusing trend:

If you just looked at his average exit velocity, you’d think Machado was surging this year. Even if you looked at the average of the top half of his contact, it’s better than the last two years. But he’s not hitting the ball any harder when he elevates, and he’s elevating less than ever. The result? Fewer homers and doubles, and a lower ISO. Read the rest of this entry »

Injuries are an ever-present factor in baseball. They lurk everywhere, just at the periphery of the game. They pop up seemingly at random, when things couldn’t get any worse and also when they’re going incredibly well. They strike without rhyme or reason. But if you’re an Astros fan, none of that is going to make you feel better at the moment, because Houston’s sudden injury flare-up couldn’t be coming at a worse time.

The most recent deluge of bad news on the Gulf Coast isn’t about the team’s inconsistent play, though that’s surely worrisome. They’ve gone 5-5 over their last 10 games, and they didn’t have a lot of runway to play with in the first place. They’re seven games out of first place in the AL West. Even worse, recent injury news has them reeling at the time they can least afford it.

José Urquidy started the year on the IL, part of a planned wave of reinforcements the Astros hoped would give them a rotation buffer in case of unexpected news. But that plan hit a snag when Urquidy left a May 24 rehab start with pain in his forearm. Today, the Astros confirmed a report from earlier in the week that Urquidy will undergo Tommy John surgery. He’s out for the season, and most of the next one too. Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Bummer is one of the best pitchers in baseball at one of the most important skills in the game. He’s reached two-strike counts against an impressive 67.8% of opposing batters. That’s among the best marks in the majors – seventh among pitchers who have faced 50 or more batters this year. It makes perfect sense; his sinker is so nasty that hitters take it for strikes or foul it off all the time, so he’s ahead in the count if he’s in the zone.

Knowing that, you might be surprised that Bummer’s strikeout rate is roughly league average. He’s one of the best pitchers in the game at getting to two strikes, but he’s actually in the bottom quarter of baseball when it comes to converting two-strike counts into strikeouts. He only does it roughly 35% of the time. The things that get him ahead simply don’t work as well with two strikes. No one’s taking a two-strike sinker low in the zone because they don’t think they’ll be able to do much with it; there are two strikes! Foul balls don’t work to Bummer’s benefit either.

Naturally, Bummer adjusts. He goes sweeper-heavy in two strike counts. But it doesn’t work well enough to turn his huge early advantage into enormous strikeout totals. His sweeper misses bats at a league-average rate, largely because batters don’t often chase it. None of that means he’s a bad pitcher – I think he’s great, and was surprised the Braves were able to acquire him for relatively little – but imagine how much better he could be if he struck batters out at a reasonable clip after getting to two strikes.

That got me thinking about The Strategy, caps intentional. That’s not any strategy; it’s the one that Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller discussed all the time on Effectively Wild after the Yankees changed pitchers in the middle of a plate appearance. When reporters asked why manager Joe Girardi had made the switch, he simply said “strategy.” Thus, the name was born, and Ben eventually documented how the tactic was starting to catch on at the collegiate level.

It still hasn’t caught on at the major league level – sorry, Ben and Sam. But I think it should, and Bummer is half of the reason why. Every time I watch Bummer pitch, I’m struck by how easily he gets ahead. If he’s around the plate, there’s almost nothing hitters can do. They make a ton of contact against him, but it’s all topped grounders. That’s just how Bummer works. Hitters are okay going to two strikes if it means avoiding one of those rally-killing double play balls. And he’s been intermittently wild throughout his career, so trying to wait him out has merit.

Pierce Johnson, meanwhile, really only has one move. It’s a great one, though; he throws his curveball 80% of the time and still gets a ton of outs with it. He’s running a glorious 32.1% strikeout rate so far this year. But he’s doing it very differently. Bummer gets to two-strike counts better than almost everyone else in baseball. Johnson is above average, but not hugely so. After reaching two strikes, however, he’s automatic. He’s 15th in baseball when it comes to converting two-strike counts into strikeouts. The reason is obvious – he only throws curveballs, so he must have a pretty good curveball – but that doesn’t make it less true.

For the most part, this just isn’t important. It doesn’t matter how you trace a path to outs; it just matters how many you get overall. Bummer is much worse than Johnson after 0-2 counts, but he suffers much less when falling behind 2-0. His game tends towards grounders, regardless of counts; Johnson’s is about making hitters swing through three curveballs before they take four out of the zone. That 2-0 count hurts more when you’re trying to avoid contact than when you’re betting on it. But at the end of the day, Johnson has allowed a lower wOBA than Bummer so far, and the way they get there doesn’t matter.

What if it could, though? There’s no rule that prevents Brian Snitker from waiting for Bummer to get ahead 0-2 or 1-2 in an important spot and then replacing him with Johnson. A pitcher who got to two-strike counts with Bummer’s frequency and converted them with Pierce’s would have a 39.2% strikeout rate. And that might understate things, honestly.

Imagine getting down in the count against Bummer’s heavy lefty sinker, then hearing time called. You wait two minutes for a pitching change, standing awkwardly on the field or maybe reading some iPad scouting reports, and then bam, you’re facing an over-the-top curveball from a righty. Also, if you miss once, the plate appearance ends. It’s a tough spot to imagine, let alone live through.

That additional strikeout rate is hardly a game-breaking edge. But it’s a non-zero advantage, and baseball teams famously like to take those. And it’s not just limited to Bummer/Johnson pairings, either. Every high-leverage reliever on the Braves puts away hitters more efficiently than Bummer. None of them reach two strikes as frequently. This is a tailor-made spot for the strategy, resilient to who the specific batter is (someone hits curveballs well would be a bad spot for Johnson) and which relievers are unavailable on a given day. It’s not resilient to the requirement that pitchers face three batters during their outings, but Bummer has faced four or more batters in 14 of his 20 appearances this year, so it’s at least technically available to Atlanta in the majority of his games. Johnson, too, is subject to a three-batter minimum. You might not use him if he had a particularly bad matchup due up next. But he has neutral platoon splits for his career, and the Braves have other options as well. The minimum is more of an inconvenience than a dealbreaker.

There’s no indication that the Braves are trying the strategy. There’s no indication that anyone’s trying it, really. Caleb Ferguson looks like a candidate for the Bummer role, though to be fair the Yankees don’t have an obvious hammer to bring in after him. Luke Weaver might make the most sense – the problem is that he’s also better at getting to two strikes than Ferguson. Likewise, Anthony Bender is probably the best overall fit – Tanner Scott and Calvin Faucher are nice strikeout anchors – but I can’t quite see the Marlins trying something so strange.

No, we’re probably doomed to see no uses of the strategy in the majors, even as it continues to happen in high stakes college baseball. As an eagle-eyed listener pointed out to the Effectively Wild crew in Episode 2169, TCU manager Kirk Saarloos brought in a new pitcher in the highest-leverage position imaginable this season: late innings, tie game, full count, bases loaded. That’s the kind of initiative I’d love to see in the majors, and only partially because I’ve heard Ben and Sam (and Meg and Jeff) talk about it so much over the years.

Maybe, like me, you find this whole pre-two-strike vs. post-two-strike split fascinating. Maybe you’re wondering who’s the best at each. Here’s a leaderboard, but really, the answer is just Mason Miller. Unsurprisingly, he’s nearly the best in the business at turning two-strike counts into strikeouts, at a ridiculous 68.9% clip. Only Fernando Cruz (70.4%) has done better. But wait, there’s more: Miller is also the best at reaching two strike counts, at 74.8%. That’s ludicrous. The hybridized Bummer/Johnson strategy can’t even recreate Miller’s brilliance.

In the end, that’s probably a good thing. “The Strategy” is interesting because of its rarity, and because it seems like a free upgrade. But the magnitude of that upgrade is tiny – the best way to manufacture a strikeout is to have Mason Miller pitching, not to strategically swap your guys in and out. This plan probably isn’t coming to a stadium near you – but the Braves should do it once or twice all the same, because there’s rarely a situation that calls out for it this clearly.

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Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m not sure that Zach Lowe, the progenitor of this format and an incredible NBA writer, ever thought that it would get spun off into baseball. I’m certain that he didn’t think it would get spun off into baseball by someone who likes both popups and bunts an unhealthy amount. But here we are. Speaking of which, I know what you’re thinking: What does Ben think about the two catcher’s interference infield flies from this week? I thought they were more annoying than amusing, and that’s not what we’re about here at Five Things. So let’s talk about a far more delightful popup, plus some infield hits, pretty pitches, and exciting series.

1. A Schwarbloop
Kyle Schwarber hits majestic home runs. Sometimes they hang in the air for an improbable length of time. Sometimes they get out of the park before you can blink. Not only is there a name for them – Schwarbombs – but Wawa even makes a drink named after them. You can’t get any more Philadelphia than that.
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William Contreras stopped being an unheralded star a while ago. He was merely “the backup catcher” in Atlanta, but he smashed last year as the undisputed starter in Milwaukee and he’s backing it up with another spectacular season. He’s the face of one of Statcast’s new bat speed metrics. He’s a shoo-in All-Star and one of the betting favorites to win NL MVP. So this isn’t a “hey, have you heard he’s good?” article, because of course you have. The real question is, what has he changed this year?

Contreras’ standout skill is his thunderous raw power. He cracked 20 homers in just 376 plate appearances during his breakout 2022 and is one of the hardest swingers in the game. As you might expect, he has swing-and-miss issues, with his 13.4% swinging strike rate the price he pays for trying to crush everything he swings at. But that’s ok. His hard-hit rate, barrel rate, maximum exit velocities, and HR/FB rate are all gaudy.

Here’s the thing, though: While power might be his most obvious carrying tool, Contreras has quietly developed into much more than just a one-note power hitter. You can’t see it in the surface numbers – he’s walking about as much as he always has and striking out as frequently as he did last year – but he’s completely revamped his approach at the plate, and it’s downright sterling these days. In fact, maybe we should be talking less about how Contreras compares to Juan Soto in squared up contact, and more about how he compares to Soto in strike zone mastery. Read the rest of this entry »

I like to make up statistics. Why? Because it’s fun, mostly. There’s so much baseball analysis on the internet these days that without shaking things up, it’s hard to say something truly interesting. Isolated power? You’ve seen it a million times. Strikeout rate, or even strikeout rate implied by whiff rate? Boring. xWhatever, something with BACON in it? We’ve done that before.

Most of my random gimmick stats don’t really catch on. But I’ve used two this year that I think have some real analytical interest to them, and they’re not exactly on the FanGraphs leaderboard page. So I’m going to maintain some Google Sheets with them highlighted, and I’m also going to intermittently highlight the best performers.

Remember whomps per whiff? That one is just fun to say, and particularly fun to hear Vinnie Pasquantino say. Also, it seems like it’s doing something right. Here are the top 10 hitters in baseball by that statistic this year, minimum 500 pitches seen:

Oh look, another statistic that tells you Juan Soto is amazing. What he’s doing this year is truly ridiculous. He’s absolutely clobbering the ball and yet rarely swinging and missing. He’s as far ahead of Ryan O’Hearn in second as O’Hearn is ahead of Taylor Ward in 10th. He has more barrels and 30 fewer whiffs than Shohei Ohtani. Read the rest of this entry »

Statcast’s new public repository of bat tracking data has been out for a few weeks now. Like every number manipulator with a sense of curiosity and middling technical skills, I’ve been messing around with the data in my spare time, and also in my working time, because messing around with data is both my job and hobby.

Mostly, I’ve been reaching some conclusions that mirror what others have already shown, only with less technical sophistication on my part. This article by Sky Kalkman does a great job summing up the biggest conclusion: Pitch location and spray angle (pull/oppo) influence swing length so much that you probably shouldn’t quote raw swing length. But I thought I’d look for something slightly different, and I think I found something.

Here’s the high level conclusion of my search: When pitchers throw harder fastballs, hitters slow down their swings to compensate. It sounds counterintuitive. Shouldn’t hitters speed up their bats to try to get to the faster pitch? But I had a hunch that this wasn’t the case. If you listen to hitters describe their approach against flamethrowers, they focus on shortening up and putting the ball in play. “Shortening up” might sound like it describes swing length, but it also surely describes swing speed. A hitter who is just punching at the ball likely won’t swing as hard as one trying to launch one. If you’re prioritizing having your bat on plane with the ball as long as possible, you probably aren’t focusing as much on raw speed. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. By now, you surely know the drill. I credit basketball genius Zach Lowe for creating the format I’m using, make a few jokes about how much baseball I get to watch to write this column, and then give you a preview of what you can read about below. This week’s no exception! I get to watch a ton of baseball, and this week I watched a lot of birds and a lot of bunts. I also watched a lot of the Pirates, just like I do every week. Let’s get right into it.

1. Reversals of Reversals of Fortune

For most of the 21st century, no one would bat an eye if you told them the Cardinals swept the Orioles. The Cards have been good pretty much forever, and the O’s went through a long dry period. But starting last year, things have changed. The Orioles last got swept in early 2022, and they’ve been one of the best teams in baseball since then. The Cardinals fell on tough times after 2022’s Molina/Pujols swan song season. Coming into their series this week, the O’s had the second-best record in the AL, while the Cardinals languished near the bottom of the NL at 20-26.
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