There haven’t been a lot of bright spots in St. Louis this year. The Cardinals are 14 games below .500, owners of the second-worst record in the NL. The bottom has fallen out for the franchise in a way that hasn’t happened in 30 years. I’d hardly blame fans for being a bit checked out; it’s hard to look for silver linings when the rain cloud is this dark.
If you’re so inclined, though, there are always things to be optimistic about. The obvious one: the Cardinals’ offense has performed at a high level despite the poor results. They have an aggregate 111 wRC+ on the year, the fifth-best in baseball, and underlying statistics that match that. As always in St. Louis, it’s an ensemble affair, but three stars stand out atop the WAR leaderboard: Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, and Lars Nootbaar.
Wait, Lars Nootbaar? I know what you’re thinking: I’m the chairman of the Nootbaar Nutbar fanclub, and my preposterously biased take should be ignored. But the leaderboards don’t lie: He’s tied with Arenado for the most WAR on the team, and that’s despite a 100-PA deficit caused by early-season injury issues. He has the best wRC+ on the squad. It’s not just smoke and mirrors; Statcast thinks he deserves the vast majority of his production.
In fact, let’s take it just one step further. Nootbaar has flown under the radar on a lot of broad sweeps of the best players in baseball because of two things: he’s not playing at a best-in-game level, and he’s missed a lot of time with injury. That puts him in the vicinity, WAR-leaderboard-wise, with guys who play more but aren’t as good on a rate basis. He’s tied with Luis Arraez, Christian Walker, and Bryson Stott, just to name a few, for 2023 WAR, but he’s played less than any of those guys. So let’s ignore health, just for a minute. Read the rest of this entry »
Another week, another chance to look around baseball and see something that amazes you. That’s part of what I love about the game: weird and wonderful things are always happening. As always, I noted a few that particularly tickled my fancy, and now I’m going to write a bunch of words about them in the hope that you like them too. Shout out, per usual, to Zach Lowe, who came up with this idea for a column years ago and became my favorite basketball writer as a result. Let’s get going.
1. Cavan Biggio’s Instinctual Brilliance
When the Jays’ trio of legacy-admission prospects were breaking into the majors, I was highest on Cavan Biggio relative to industry consensus. I’ve definitely been wrong in that assessment. Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. turned into stars, but Biggio is more of a luxury backup. He can play a lot of defensive positions, but none of them particularly well, and he’s a league-average hitter. That’s a perfectly serviceable addition to your team, but it’s hardly going to set the league on fire, and he’s been worse than that in 2023.
But my Biggio crush is still around, and you better believe that I’m going to highlight his fun plays. Let’s set the scene: Monday night in Cleveland, a scoreless game in the top of the eighth. Biggio drew a start at second base, and with Daulton Varsho on first, he clubbed a no-doubter to dead center to give the Jays a 2–0 lead. Hey! Biggio heads, unite, he’s back in business. Read the rest of this entry »
How in the world can you explain a team like the Rays? There are a lot of strange and seemingly magical things going on there, but let’s focus on just their starters. They churn out top-of-the-line dudes like no one’s business. Shane McClanahan is nasty. Tyler Glasnow looks unhittable at times. Jeffrey Springs went from zero to hero and stayed there. Zach Eflin is suddenly dominant. They can’t seem to take a step without tripping over a great starter.
They’re also always hungry for more. Whether it’s bad luck, adverse selection, or something about their performance training methods, the Rays stack up pitching injuries like few teams in baseball history. Of that group I named up above, only Eflin hasn’t missed significant time in 2023, and both McClanahan and Springs are out for the rest of the year. The Rays not only have all these starters, but they also traded for Aaron Civale at the deadline, and they’re still short on arms.
They did what anyone would do: point at a random reliever in the bullpen and tell him he’s now an excellent starter. Wait, that’s not what anyone else would do? Only the Rays do that? You’re right, at least a little bit; surely you recall the Drew Rasmussen experiment from 2021. That one was a big hit until Rasmussen tore his UCL this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Wednesday night in Philadelphia didn’t start off as a celebration of Michael Lorenzen. Making his first home start after joining the team at the trade deadline, he struggled to get comfortable on the mound. The first batter of the game, CJ Abrams, smashed a pitch to the warning track in the deepest part of the field. The next three batters worked full counts, with one walking. Keibert Ruiz worked another walk to lead off the second inning. Lorenzen threw 53 pitches in the first three frames. Through four, he had three strikeouts and three walks.
Luckily, he didn’t need to be the focus, because a celebration in Philly was happening one way or another. Weston Wilson smashed a home run in his first major league at-bat. Nick Castellanos popped a two-run shot in the first and followed up with a solo shot in the third. The Phillies were romping over the Nationals on a glorious summer evening. And that’s leaving the best part for last: Ryan Howard was in the booth to celebrate opening a new chicken and waffles stand in the stadium.
I won’t lie to you; those waffles looked good. John Kruk was nearly rapturous as he contemplated them. At one point, he openly begged Alex Call to finish an at-bat quickly so the booth could go to commercial and he could eat. Howard seemed happy, too, and the Phillies continued to pile up runs while he recapped the genesis of his foodie vision. After four innings, the Phillies led 6-0, and the celebration was in full swing.
Obviously, though, you aren’t here to read about Howard’s chicken and waffles, or to learn, as I did, that Kruk avoids spicy food. You’re here because a funny thing happened in the back half of this game. Lorenzen, staked to an enormous lead, started attacking the strike zone. He dared the Nationals to swing – four-seamers middle-middle and belt-high sinkers, calling out to be swung at. When he fell behind in the count, he fired one down the pipe and said “hit it.”
This being the Nationals, they mostly didn’t hit it. Calling their offense punchless might be going too far, but they’re towards the bottom of the league in every offensive category, and that doesn’t account for the fact that they traded their best hitter at the deadline. Abrams is coming on, and Lane Thomas has been good all year, but we’re not quite talking about Murderers’ Row here.
Suddenly it was the seventh inning, and the Nationals were still hitless. Lorenzen pulled his secondary pitches back out; he buried Jake Alu under a pile of changeups for his fourth strikeout and then mixed four-seamers high with changeups low to coax a groundout (smashed, great play by Rodolfo Castro) out of Ildemaro Vargas. Seven innings, 100 pitches, no hits – was this happening?
That last out of the seventh inning awoke the Philadelphia crowd from its post-homer lethargy. They’d been enjoying a casual demolishing of the little brothers of the NL East. Now, they might be witnessing history. A roar broke out, and the crowd rose to its feet to collectively cheer Lorenzen as he strode off the field. Six outs, six measly outs – surely he could do it.
Lorenzen came out sharp in the eighth – by which I mean, he threw some good pitches when the count made that possible and otherwise made the Nationals beat him by putting the ball in play. It was a brilliant plan all night; the Phillies recorded 15 outs in the air, few of them threatening to be anything more than cans of corn. Most importantly for Lorenzen, that eighth inning took only 11 pitches, which gave him enough runway to come back out for the ninth.
I’ve spent a lot of this writeup talking about Lorenzen’s ability to adapt his pitching to the situation, and that was on display in his last inning of work. The strike zone widens when no-hitters near the finish line. Hitters’ pulses rise – you don’t want to be on that highlight reel, you know? Lorenzen aimed for the corners to get ahead, then snapped off ridiculous breaking balls whenever he had the chance, hoping for a miserable flail from a desperate opponent.
That plan dealt with Thomas and Joey Meneses, the latter a victim of a called strike three that was both clearly outside and clearly a pitch you have to swing at in the ninth inning of a no-hitter. That left only Dominic Smith, but he wasn’t going down easily. After falling behind 1-2, he took and fouled his way back to a 3-2 count. Lorenzen looked gassed. “One more pitch,” Kruk breathed on the broadcast, almost a mantra. And Lorenzen left it up to the gods of contact one more time. He threw a slider right down main street at 85 and dared Smith to do his worst:
After the momentous end to the seventh inning, Citizen’s Bank Park had turned raucous. That energy carried right through to the end of the game. The place positively shook when Meneses struck out, and erupted even more when Johan Rojas squeezed Smith’s fly ball for the final out. Sorry Weston, and sorry Ryan; it was Lorenzen’s night now, and the crowd bathed him in applause as he exulted in his achievement.
If you didn’t know he hadn’t allowed any hits, Lorenzen’s line wouldn’t turn any heads. Five strikeouts, four walks; it’s not exactly the stuff of aces. But Lorenzen has never been an ace, and he wouldn’t tell you otherwise. He’s never been a high octane strikeout pitcher, and now that he’s transitioned from the bullpen to the rotation, he’s leaning more than ever on his savvy. Tonight was the crowning achievement of that style.
As the stadium roared and Lorenzen’s mom beamed from the crowd, the team mobbed him. What a glorious feeling it must be to combine the pinnacle of individual achievement with your first real taste at team success. Lorenzen has played for a winning team exactly twice in his major league career – the 2020 Reds went 31-29 and the 2021 edition finished 83-79.
This year’s Phillies are a cut above that – the defending National League champions, near-locks to make the playoffs and another run at the title. And he’s one of them now, indelibly linked with this team, this city. You won’t be able to tell the story of the 2023 Phillies without mentioning this night, which means you won’t be able to tell it without mentioning Lorenzen. How wonderful that must feel after nearly a decade in the wilderness, hoping to start, then getting your wish only to toil in obscurity.
Baseball is about a lot of things. It’s about the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd, the beauty of close plays and the shocking speed and strength of grown men wearing ridiculous pajamas. Increasingly, it’s about numbers too – teams are getting smarter and smarter about separating what seems important from what is important. But regardless of the numbers, tonight was important. Baseball isn’t just about who wins the trophy at the end of the year. It’s about nights like these, and players like these. What a glorious night for Lorenzen, and what a wonderful celebration of baseball.
Monday night, my wife posed a baseball question I couldn’t immediately answer. As the Angels and Giants went to the eighth inning with the Halos up by a run, she had a simple question: How often does a team that’s losing after seven innings come back and win? I guess I could have gone to our wonderful WPA Inquirer, a fun little tool for hypotheticals. That tells me that the Giants had around a 25% chance to win heading into the eighth. But I took her question as a broader one, concerned not just with that specific game, but with all games. How likely is a comeback?
I didn’t know the answer offhand, and I couldn’t find it on Google either (secret professional writer tip: use Google). So I did what anyone in my situation would do: I said “I don’t know, but now I’m going to write an article about this.” Two days later, here we are.
I’m hardly the first person to do research on comebacks. Russell Carleton has been looking into comebacks for a while. Rob Mains has too. Chet Gutwein investigated comeback wins and blown saves here at FanGraphs in 2021. Everyone loves to write about comebacks. Baseball Reference even keeps a list of the biggest comeback wins. They’re memorable games, and fertile ground for investigation. Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone likes an inspiring story. They don’t call it a Hollywood ending for nothing; people love it when the hero wins before the credits roll. Over innear near-ish the center of American film-making, it looked like the Angels were setting up for another iteration of that classic arc. They were down and out, deciding whether they could stomach trading the best player in the game before losing him forever. The previous best player in the game was out with injury, and the ship was taking on water. Then, a classic mid-story twist: they ripped off an 8-1 run in the latter half of July and decided to go for it one last time.
Yeah, about that. Since trading for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López to lean fully into this year, they’ve gone 2-9, slipping back below .500. After their playoff odds reached 22.7% on July 27, the Halos have crashed down to 1.3% in short order. That’s a seasonal low for their chances of making the postseason. Things are decidedly non-magical in the land of Disney these days.
What’s gone wrong for the Angels? Well, one thing’s for sure: it’s not Shohei Ohtani. He’s started at DH for all 11 games of the stretch and has hit a ludicrous .405/.542/.649, even better than his seasonal line. He left his lone start in that span early with hand cramps, but pitched four scoreless innings before departing. To the extent that one player can power a team, Ohtani is doing his best. Read the rest of this entry »
Was that as fun for you as it was for me? It’s been a busy month, both personally and for baseball. The All-Star game, the draft, the Trade Value Series (okay fine, that one’s just me), the deadline; it’s been a mile a minute since the Fourth of July. Now we’re slipping back into normal baseball rhythms, with a month’s lull before the September playoff chase heats up again. I’m taking advantage of that break to get back to what I love: paying homage to Zach Lowe and talking about five things in baseball that tickled me. Despite the title, I’m casting a slightly wider net than “this week” – we’ve missed a lot!
1. Patty Bailiff Patrick Bailey got the nickname Patty Barrels for his switch-hitting home run feats in college, but I’m officially revoking that one after he posted a 15 wRC+ for the entire month of July. It’s okay, because he’s not here to hit (though I think his bat is perfectly acceptable and will rebound the rest of the year). He’s here to keep the defense in order and grind opposing running games to a halt.
You think you can run in his courtroom (I’m stretching the analogy here, I know, but I like the sound of it)? He’ll shut you down as quickly as you can say “Rickey Henderson.” Since he debuted, he’s comfortably atop the throwing leaderboard; he’s caught 19 runners stealing, six clear of Shea Langeliers over than span. He has a cannon arm, pinpoint accuracy, and balletic footwork. He’s somehow always in a good throwing position despite also being a superlative receiver. This is what 80-grade catcher defense looks like.
To celebrate being clear of that terrible July, Bailey put on a show Tuesday night against the Diamondbacks. He started the game on the bench for a well-deserved rest, but entered the game as a defensive replacement when the Giants took a slim 4-3 lead into the eighth. He got things going right away by giving Jace Peterson a rude welcome back to the Bay:
That’s outrageous. No time to collect himself, no time to get out of his crouch, no time to even think; he gunned Peterson down remorselessly anyway. That looked like a clean steal when the ball reached home plate despite the failed bunt attempt, but Bailey is just too good:
That right there is a great day for a defensive replacement. How many catchers come in and immediately erase a baserunner? He wasn’t done, though. In the ninth inning, Arizona put another baserunner on, but Bailey wasn’t having any of it:
That’s absolutely incredible. Two innings, two baserunners erased, and one of them a game clincher. Just perfection. Take a look at it from another glorious angle:
I don’t really have anything else to say. Bailey might be the best defender in baseball right now. He’s winning games with his throwing arm, which is what pitchers are supposed to do, not catchers. The Giants wouldn’t be nearly this good without him.
2. The Versatile Reds
Cincinnati is in a pitched battle for the top spot in the NL Central. I’ve written about them frequently this year, largely because they’re so dang fun. It’s not just the sheer youthful exuberance of the Reds that draws me in, though. I also love their avant-garde approach to lineup construction, enabled by an embarrassment of middle infield riches and a few versatile corner types.
Here’s an example off the top of my head. On July 6, they pulled out a narrow victory over the Nationals, 5-4 in 10 innings. That’s not particularly notable; the Nats aren’t what you’d call “good” this season, even though they’re not the complete laughingstock that some feared before the season. No, what I loved about this game was that Cincinnati used multiple players at every defensive position.
Take a look at this delightful chaos:
That’s right: Kevin Newman, of all people, started at first base. He got replaced defensively by Spencer Steer, then Joey Votto, then Steer again after Votto himself got replaced. Newman got pulled from the game because the Reds pinch hit for Luke Maile with TJ Friedl, then left Friedl in the game in center field. That meant they needed a new catcher, and Curt Casali subbed into Newman’s lineup spot. Easy peasy.
Only, they pinch hit for Casali too (with Votto). That meant that DH Tyler Stephenson had to surrender his DH duties and don the tools of ignorance. But that meant the team needed to put a pitcher into the lineup. Sure, no problem; Jonathan India made the last out of the inning where Votto pinch hit, so the team simply pulled him for the pitcher’s spot.
But wait, who plays second base? That would be Matt McLain, who shifted over from shortstop. Naturally, then, Elly De La Cruz moved from third to short, and Steer, who had started the game in left before moving to first base, slid over to third with Votto replacing him.
Following so far? Good, good. Things were pretty much standard from here until the bottom of the 10th, when the Reds brought in their defensive replacements. Steer moved back to first, Nick Senzel moved from right field to third, and Jake Fraley took over in right. Just your standard LF-1B-3B-1B line for Steer.
If you’ve been following along, you’ll realize I left two positions unmentioned. After Friedl pinch hit, he stayed in the game as a center fielder, but the Reds didn’t remove their original center fielder from the game. Senzel merely slid from center to right, which meant Will Benson had to move from right to left, which was the impetus for moving Steer from left field to the infield in the first place. It all makes sense when you follow through on it, but no one is making these kinds of hockey-style bulk substitutions in the universal DH era. No one except the Reds, that is.
3. Miguel Rojas, Savvy to the End Miguel Rojas was never much of an offensive threat, and he’s been outright awful this year. Honestly, “awful” might be too kind to him. He’s hitting .223/.275/.285. He hit his first homer of the year on Wednesday, and it’s August. That’s not when you’re supposed to hit your first home run. The Dodgers went out and traded for Amed Rosario, and they have to be hoping to ease Rojas out of the lineup sooner rather than later.
That seems like a reasonable plan to me, but I want to give a quick nod to his career before he’s relegated to the dustbin of history. I loved watching Rojas on a series of awful Marlins teams, and it wasn’t because of his uncanny ability to rack up one to two Wins Above Replacement year in and year out. In one specific phase of the game, and one specific phase only, he resembles Mookie Betts. That phase? Self-assuredly smooth actions on defense.
I’m mentioning this not to say that the Dodgers should keep playing him, but rather because a play he made a few weeks ago made all my old memories of Rojas come rushing back. It wasn’t exactly a highlight reel play. You might miss it if you weren’t looking for it. But his footwork and instincts are smooth like creamy peanut butter:
There are a ton of ways to get that play wrong. You could charge the ball; in double play situations, it’s generally a good idea to go and get the ball to save precious fractions of a second. But that wouldn’t work here, because there was no chance of turning two if multiple throws were needed. Charge this one, and you’re looking at one out maximum. You could angle your body wrong; to make this play, you need to catch the ball with your weight carrying you towards first base. You could get the footwork wrong; the timing was so tight that the foot that hits second base needs to be your plant foot for the throw to first.
All of that was automatic for Rojas. The Orioles broadcast isolated Rojas on a replay that really drives his skill home:
Those choppy steps are all part of the plan. Even the way he fields the ball is deliberate; the footwork means there’s no need for a barehanded stab, but the transfer needs to be immediate, and Rojas dropped down on the throw to accommodate that and also to avoid a sliding Colton Cowser. He did it with no time to spare whatsoever; it was a bang-bang play at both bases. If his internal clock was even slightly off, the Dodgers might have ended up with no outs instead of two. But his clock wasn’t off. It’s never off.
Modern baseball statistics are really good at measuring how valuable Rojas’ defense is, and it’s not valuable enough to offset his anemic offensive skills. But they can’t measure the sheer joy I get out of watching his defense. Even Betts himself just sat there and admired it from a front row seat. I hope we get plenty more plays like this from him before his offense plays him off the field.
4. Manny Being Manny
This probably won’t surprise you given my general taste in baseball players, but I love Manny Machado. I love his defense and his easy power. I love his mannerisms on the field. I loved when he sulked performatively every time the Padres shifted him into shallow right field. I love his 80s-TV-villain demeanor at the plate. As it turns out, I also love watching him take pitches.
When Machado is taking all the way, you’ll know it immediately:
Nope, probably not swinging at that one. He didn’t even keep his hand on the bat! He’d clearly made the decision to take no matter what, and it was a savvy decision; José Berríos had been wild all inning. But there’s no pretense of standing in at all. He’s up there completely uninterested in the pitch – maybe he’s thinking about the weather, or why the money in Canada is all plasticky-feeling.
With that delightful take out of the way, he stood in for the next pitch and at least looked like he was considering taking action:
Berríos looked befuddled on the mound. Was Machado just not going to swing? There’s something about his languid pre-pitch demeanor that makes it feel like he’s barely deigning to pay attention to what’s going on. But that’s just a cover; throw him something he’s interested in, and it’s go time:
That’s a ferocious hack; the barrel of the bat almost made it to the outfield. Imagine how much force he must have been swinging with to shatter the bat so completely and still muscle the ball for a bloop single.
The dichotomy between rest and action is baseball in a nutshell – Willie Mays described the sport as “violence under wraps.” But no one playing today epitomizes that for me quite like Machado. He can shut it down completely for a pitch, then crank it up to max effort to brute force a ball to the outfield, then take it all the way back down for a businesslike acknowledgement of his success:
5. George Kirby’s Alien Precision
As the saying goes, to err is human. Baseball has a great way of reminding us of that. The best hitters make outs 60% of the time. The best pitchers give up the occasional mammoth home run. Sure-handed defenders make errors, contact wizards whiff, and elite baserunners get thrown out. The sport is hard!
Don’t tell George Kirby that, though. He has otherworldly command – he’s running a 2.7% walk rate! – and it was on full display in his start against the Twins on July 20. Check out this sequence against Alex Kirilloff, for example:
I left out two fishing expeditions on 0-2 and 1-2 to make the GIF a reasonable length, but you get the idea: Kirby has the ball on a string. That slider away/slider down combination is ludicrous; they’re both perfectly located. Then he dots the same corner with a fastball, and has a breaker-for-a-strike wrinkle in his bag too? Come on, that’s overkill.
He had a whole bagful of those perfectly-placed pitches that day. Check out this smash cut of four strikeouts:
That fastball goes where Kirby tells it to. If you’re keeping score at home, he’s perfectly capable of dotting both edges with it, and he can move it up and down as appropriate. Oh yeah – he’s regularly hitting 97 mph. Seems pretty good to me!
When Kirby’s as on as he was in this game, it feels like he’s just toying with hitters. As he chugged towards the conclusion of this seven inning, 10 strikeout gem, he eschewed his secondary pitches and painted with his fastball. First to Byron Buxton to get an easy pop out:
Kirby will probably always give up his fair share of home runs, but that’s a small price to pay for his clinical command. There will be no walks. There will be plenty of disbelieving batters. It isn’t how most pitchers succeed, but it’s undeniably fun to watch.
Here’s a true statement: Luis Medina has not been very good this year. You can say that just by looking at his numbers: a 5.35 ERA and a 4.83 FIP. He’s running a so-so 22.8% strikeout rate and walking a worrisome 10.8% of batters. If you looked up replacement level in the dictionary… well, you probably wouldn’t find anything, because that’s not the kind of thing that dictionaries define. But Medina’s performance has been almost exactly replacement level this year.
Here’s another true statement: Medina is great right now. That’s kind of confusing, what with all the bad statistics I just hit you with in the last paragraph, but I was cheating. Those are Medina’s full-season numbers, but he’s been an absolute beast in the last month. I’m not talking about some small-sample ERA mirage, either, though his ERA is a tidy 2.86. He’s running a 2.23 FIP, and he’s doing it by striking out 30% of opposing batters and walking only 5.6%. In other words, he’s an ace — or at least, he was one in July. Sounds like it’s time for an investigation. Read the rest of this entry »
