As of Thursday night, the Mets’ starting rotation featured Marcus Stroman, Taijuan Walker, Tylor Megill, and a sentient ball of string who showed promise in Low-A. Fine, I made up the last one, but if you told the Mets front office about this ball of string, they’d at least ask you for its Trackman data. A seemingly unending string of injuries left the team grasping for pitching — any pitching at all. Enter Rich Hill, in a trade with the Rays:

We’ve acquired left-handed pitcher Rich Hill from Tampa Bay in exchange for right-handed pitcher Tommy Hunter and minor league catcher Matt Dyer. https://t.co/P24Fo2HoYd

— New York Mets (@Mets) July 23, 2021

At a very basic level, the Mets had to make this trade. Jacob deGrom is on the shelf. David Peterson broke his foot walking around. Carlos Carrasco and Noah Syndergaard aren’t ready. Joey Lucchesi tore his UCL. Robert Stock, who was already 10th or so on the depth chart, strained his hamstring. Forget replacement level — Hill represents an upgrade from subterranean level. To some extent, any trade at all would be a win, in that it would leave them able to field a roster.

But Hill isn’t merely roster depth. He’s one of the most interesting pitchers in baseball, a curve-and-fastball machine who has spent years pumping sub-90 mph gas past hitters while bamboozling them with a dazzling array of breaking balls. Heck, earlier this year he was named the AL Pitcher of the Month (it’s not the most prestigious award, but it’s an award) in May, when he posted a 0.78 ERA over 34.2 innings.

Of course, there are other months in the year, and the rest of Hill’s 2021 hasn’t gone nearly so well. In total he sported a 3.87 ERA and 4.55 FIP with the Rays, both of which are the highest marks he’s posted since bursting back onto the scene in 2015. His 9.9% swinging strike rate is better only than his abbreviated 2020 season, and he wasn’t exactly great then either. There’s a strong chance that Hill’s 2021 season will be his last stand. Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s the best catcher in the NL Central? Before the season, this was a good way to start an argument between Cardinals and Cubs fans. Was it Willson Contreras, the cannon-armed, cannon-batted Chicago backstop who has worked hard to improve his framing of late? Was it Yadier Molina, the stalwart St. Louis lifer with legendary defense who continued to hit long past when most thought he’d fade?

Neither! The best catcher in the NL Central this year is Omar Narváez, and it hasn’t been particularly close. By WAR, his 3.0 mark is nearly double Contreras, and that undersells it; he’s played in nine fewer games and has 64 fewer plate appearances. His 137 wRC+ is the second-best among catchers, trailing only Buster Posey’s incandescent season. He’s sixth in baseball in framing runs and third in total defensive value for catchers. A year after his worst offensive season, he’s turned it all around, and the Brewers are reaping the rewards.

Narváez came to Milwaukee with a reputation as a defensive butcher who could hit. He popped 22 homers in 2019 in only 482 plate appearances, his lone season in Seattle. Not only that, but he also struck out only 19.1% of the time — with a walk rate of nearly 10%. More walks than average, fewer strikeouts than average, plus power … he sounded like a match made in heaven.
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We probably don’t write enough about the Giants. That’s not to say that we don’t write about the Giants here — we do, quite frequently. Back in May, Kevin Goldstein looked into their complicated future. Jake Mailhot and Dan Szymborski wrote about the starters. Jay Jaffe and Luke Hooper talked veteran hitters.

So yes, we write about the Giants quite a bit here. But to my eyes, it’s still not enough. This team is the biggest surprise in baseball this year. We’re nearly to the All-Star break, and they’re leading the NL West, the toughest division in baseball. All those articles above focused on Giants exceeding expectations, but I’m more interested in another group: the bullpen, which has been one of the better units in baseball despite a pedigree that could best be described as mixed.

This isn’t a case of spending money and trading players to assemble a monster bullpen. It isn’t a case of prioritizing relievers in the draft and getting it done that way. It’s a motley crew of arms that have turned into far more than we expected — we pegged them 18th in our preseason positional power rankings, and they’ve DFA’ed the player we pegged for the most WAR. This group feels like it came from a script, so let’s treat this like a heist movie and assemble the squad. Read the rest of this entry »

You’re not as good at your job as Jacob deGrom is at his. That’s no knock on you — I don’t even know who you are, much less have access to your performance reviews or job history. But deGrom is one of the very best, in all of history, at the thing he does. I’m sure you’re a great accountant or whatever, but you just don’t stack up.

There’s good news, though. As it turns out, deGrom is actually relatable at times. Last Thursday, deGrom came into the office and had an absolutely miserable hour of work. He got smacked around the park and gave up three runs before recording three outs. And if one of the best of all time at a job can have an off day, then anyone can.

What does a deGrom off day look like? Like anyone’s, kind of. It starts with being a little sloppy, making a silly mistake that you know, even as you make it, isn’t right. For example, don’t leave a fastball, the second pitch of the game, here:

That’s not where pitches are supposed to go. It was a 100 mph fastball, but middle-middle is still not a good look, and Ehire Adrianza laced it past Dominic Smith and into the corner for a leadoff triple. Two pitches in, nothing was going right for the best pitcher in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees are in a precarious position; at 41-39, they’re 8.5 games back of first in the AL East and 5.5 games out of the second Wild Card spot. Sometime soon, they’ll have to decide whether they plan on adding major league talent for a playoff push this year or retooling for the future. Today, they made a trade that doesn’t really do either, but is still a ton of fun. As first reported by Lindsey Adler of The Athletic, the Yankees acquired Tim Locastro from the Diamondbacks in exchange for minor league pitcher Keegan Curtis.

Locastro is a deeply strange player. He’s one of the few true oddities left in a game that’s increasingly moving towards multi-position mashers and fluid-role strikeout pitchers. His two standout skills are getting hit by pitches and stealing bases successfully, which is about as weird of a combination as it sounds. But they work together quite well — or at least, they did until this year, when everything has gone south in a hurry.

Getting hit by pitches doesn’t feel like a skill. If you needed any confirmation, just look at the way we describe it — it’s something done to you, rather than some great feat. You draw a walk, or hit a double — but you get hit by a pitch. Year in and year out, though, Locastro gets hit at a ludicrous rate. In the minors, 6.2% of his plate appearances resulted in a HBP. In the majors, he’s been hit in 7.5% of his plate appearances — the highest rate in league history.

That’s mostly hilarious — how can this guy be so good at something that seems so out of his control? — but it’s also real value. Across the majors, batters get hit in roughly 1.1% of plate appearances. That’s an additional 6.4% of the time that Locastro gets on base for free! His career 6.3% walk rate plays more like a 12.7% walk rate, which is downright elite.

The Yankees could use a center fielder who can get on base. With Aaron Hicks on the 60-day Injured List, they’ve given the majority of their starts to Brett Gardner, and his .318 OBP would be the lowest mark of his career. The daily rigors of playing center also aren’t optimal for a 37-year-old — he’s held up well defensively so far, but he can’t play every day, and using Aaron Judge to soak up some of the defensive innings isn’t a great solution either. Read the rest of this entry »

The Blue Jays are roughly where they planned on being heading into the season: 40-36 and on the periphery of the Wild Card chase. They’re doing it roughly the way they expected — with big seasons from their young boppers (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is an MVP front runner, Bo Bichette has been excellent) and timely contributions from their opportunistic offseason spending spree (Marcus Semien has been excellent, Robbie Ray looks solid).

Despite those bright spots, however, the team has plenty of room for improvement. The outfield, which looked like a potential strength coming into the season, has been hamstrung by a quad injury to George Springer; he’s made only 39 plate appearances so far this year. Teoscar Hernández has played the field in his place, and while he’s hitting well, he’s a better fit at DH. He’s also right-handed, a trait the team’s four primary outfielders share. The bullpen has been disappointing as well; Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza have impressed, but that’s about it.

To address this concern and simultaneously shore up the bullpen, the Blue Jays made a trade with the Marlins. Adam Cimber, Corey Dickerson, and an undisclosed amount of cash are headed to Toronto (well, to Buffalo at least) in exchange for Joe Panik and Andrew McInvale, as Craig Mish and Jon Heyman first reported. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last Wednesday, Trevor Bauer had a rough start. In six innings, he struck out 10 Padres, but that’s where the highlights ended. He walked four and gave up three home runs, pushing his season total to 17 homers allowed. They were all solo shots, which limited the damage, but still: three home runs isn’t a good day’s work. After the game, Bauer was understandably defensive:

"I have the worst home run luck in the league. Every time I make a little mistake it leaves the yard." — Trevor Bauer on his 3 solo shots allowed tonight. #Dodgers

— Michael J. Duarte (@michaeljduarte) June 24, 2021

Now, “little mistakes” are hard to measure. Consider this titanic Manny Machado blast, for example:

Mistake? Maybe. But how do you define a mistake pitch? That was an 82.6 mph slider, roughly two ticks faster than Bauer’s average for the pitch. Per Statcast, it had 16 inches of total break (against spin-less movement), roughly 1.5 inches less than his average slider breaks. He left it over the plate, but not excessively so; five inches above the bottom of the zone. He doesn’t locate sliders there often, but the previous three had resulted in two swinging strikes and a pop out.

So was this a sublime effort by Machado or a bad pitch by Bauer? I’d lean towards the former — though Bauer would have a better argument on his pitch to Victor Caratini later in the game. But that’s hardly a scientific way of looking at it, and I wanted to do at least slightly better. Otherwise, how will we evaluate Bauer’s claim that he’s the unluckiest man on the planet, at least when it comes to home runs? Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know the pitcher with the highest swinging-strike rate in all of baseball this year? Well, it’s Jacob deGrom, no surprises there; it’s such an obvious answer that I probably didn’t need to ask. But do you know the pitcher with the second-highest swinging-strike rate? It’s Raisel Iglesias, and the Angels’ closer has been impressive so far this season, even if his run prevention numbers don’t quite show it yet.

If I could see only one pitching statistic, I’d choose swinging-strike rate. That’s not to say that nothing else matters; that’s decidedly not the case, and there are easy examples of both pitchers who miss bats but aren’t effective and pitchers who are effective without missing bats. But as a first pass, swinging strikes are great. Everything else is contextual. Called strike? That’s because the batter didn’t swing. Foul? It’s not always worth a strike. Groundball? The batter could hit it through the defense or find a gap. A swing and miss is absolute.

You probably don’t need to hear that. Whiffs have been the premium currency of pitching for a long time, long before we had the pitch-level data to track them accurately. I merely thought I’d mention it, because wow does Iglesias miss a lot of bats.

Most closers operate with a common template. Throw a really good fastball — a really good fastball — and spot an unhittable secondary pitch off of it. It’s not always about velocity, though it often is. But it’s almost always about a fastball and one pitch spotted off of it — a guessing game for the hitter with two bad answers.

Iglesias is that pitcher, kind of. Against righties, he relies on a four-seam fastball and a devastating slider. He mixes in a smattering of two-seamers and changeups, but mostly for show; more than 80% of his pitches are fastballs or sliders. Against lefties, Iglesias also relies on two pitches: his fastball and changeup. He throws each of them roughly 40% of the time, with sinkers and sliders comprising the remainder of his offerings.
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