The strike zone doesn’t exist. Not physically, at least; it’s a rough boundary that varies based on how each umpire looks at it and how each batter stands. Catchers influence the shape, too; smooth hands can turn balls to called strikes, while cross-ups tend to do the opposite.

This year, the zone seems particularly amorphous — maybe it’s just my imagination, but I feel like I can’t turn on a broadcast without hearing about an inconsistent zone. Of course, hearing isn’t believing, and there are botched calls every year. Just because there have been some memorable ones this year doesn’t necessarily mean the overall rate of missed calls has changed. Let’s find out if it has, or if it’s merely imaginations running wild with the backdrop of fan noise.

For a rough idea of ball/strike accuracy, I went to Statcast data. For every pitch, Statcast records a top and bottom of the strike zone, as well as where the pitch crossed the plate. Armed with that data as well as some constants like the size of a baseball and the width of home plate, I measured how far out of (or into) the strike zone each pitch of the 2021 season was when it crossed the plate.

This data isn’t perfect. The top and bottom of the strike zone are approximated, and the plate isn’t a two-dimensional object, despite the fact that our data on it is represented that way. We aren’t considering framing. But we have previous years of the same data, which is great news. We can use the previous years to form a baseline, then see if this year’s data represents a meaningful change. And because we have a huge chunk of data, we can at least hope that framing comes out in the wash. Read the rest of this entry »

Julio Urías is only 24, but it feels like he’s been in the big leagues for a decade. Called to the majors at only 19 in the 2016 season, he’s been a part of the Dodgers’ future and present for a half-decade. When you start that young, much of your development happens at the major league level. In Urías’ case, that means all kinds of changes. Today, though, I want to focus on one: a curveball that has shape-shifted over time before arriving at a tremendously interesting final form.

When Urías came up, he threw a curve with two-plane break, something between a curve and a slurve. As you can see on our handy Pitch Type Splits, it featured 7.4 inches of horizontal break and only 2.9 inches of drop. In his next three seasons, all injury-affected, he turned the pitch into more of a classic curve — more drop than horizontal movement. 2020 saw a return to his original curveball shape. 2021? Well, it’s weird:

Is it a return to his old form? Is it an acceleration of his old form? Is it something else entirely? Let’s delve too deeply into some gifs and math and find out. Read the rest of this entry »

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On his 110th pitch of the night, Carlos Rodón hit 99 mph on the radar gun. It was a wasted pitch, a ball that evened the count to Jordan Luplow at 2-2. Four pitches later, Rodón slowed it down, dropping in a changeup that Luplow rolled harmlessly to third base. Yoán Moncada fielded it cleanly and fired to first for the last out of the game. Rodón had thrown a no-hitter, the first of his career.

Don’t worry, we’ll get to that momentous event. I want to talk about that fastball first, though, because it’s also remarkable. That pitch was the fastest pitch a White Sox starter has thrown this year — tied, actually, with a Dylan Cease offering. Cease is a flame-throwing 25-year-old with a 70 fastball grade — a plus-plus pitch that anchors his entire game. Rodón hadn’t crested 93 mph in average fastball velocity since 2017. He pitched only 7.2 innings last year, and hasn’t topped 150 since 2016. In an increasingly young man’s game, Rodón seemed somehow past his prime at only 28.

In last year’s playoffs, he made the roster as an afterthought. He faced three batters, as a last resort in the team’s disastrous playoff exit — all three reached, the third on an intentional pass that fulfilled the three-batter minimum, and it would hardly have been a surprise if that was his last pitch in black and white. In a money-saving move, the Sox didn’t tender him a contract after the season.

He signed a one-year deal in February to return to the team, but his rotation spot was anything but guaranteed; the team held a more-or-less open competition for its fourth and fifth starter spots this spring. An offseason workout regimen and some rare but welcome good health helped him secure a spot, and a successful first start against the Mariners — 95 pitches and nine strikeouts in five scoreless innings — cemented it.

That brings us back to Wednesday night. After an uneventful top of the first, the White Sox offense did their best to remove all drama from the game. They pounced on an ineffective Zach Plesac, chasing him from the game after seven hits and six runs. Rodón, whose first fastball of the night left his hand at 91.1 mph, sat in the dugout and watched. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Justin Choi published an examination of the new ball. The results were — well, you should read it for yourself, but they were muddled, to say the least. Home runs are down! Exit velocity is up! Liners got better, fly balls got worse. It’s enough to make you wonder whether we’ll ever know the answer. It’s also catnip to analysts, and so today I’d like to present some supplemental evidence that only makes me more confused.

There were two key conflicting findings in Justin’s research. First: home runs are down, and fly balls aren’t carrying as far, on average, as they did last year. Second, overall exit velocity is up league-wide, whether you care about broad averages or the hardest-struck balls. The two effects — harder hits, less carry — benefit line drives over fly balls, because line drives both spend less time in the air and depend less on distance for their value.

I wasn’t really sure what to make of the fact that fly balls are carrying less. There are so many confounding factors — weather, new humidors, angle, stadiums, the list goes on and on — that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to disambiguate them all, but I took a crack at it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Did you know that Tyler Glasnow was once a Pirate? Yes, like every other baseball writer in existence, I’m contractually obligated to point that out in any article I write about him. Good news, though — I promise that’s the last time I’ll mention them in this article, because I want to talk about something that Glasnow has done this year to add a much-needed wrinkle to his game.

The Glasnow of the past few years was a two-trick pony, if such a thing exists. Trick one: a fastball that sits around 97 mph and touches 101 when he needs it. It doesn’t stand out for exceptional rise or transverse spin efficiency, but it doesn’t need to. Glasnow’s velocity and extension make for a flat-planed, dynamic pitch that both misses bats and induces weak contact.

You already knew that, because you can’t watch a Glasnow appearance without marveling at the graceful explosion of the pitch, seemingly catapulted by his smooth delivery. Here, watch him overpower J.D. Martinez:

Ah, what a joy to watch. Read the rest of this entry »

Dylan Bundy’s career has hardly flown under the radar. He was arguably the top pitching prospect in baseball when he debuted, and his subsequent injury troubles made the next part of his career a well-known cautionary tale. When he returned to effectiveness in the second half of 2019, then broke out in 2020, it was a story arc we’ve all seen before: the post-hype prospect makes good.

While you might know that, you probably don’t know the secret skill that’s powering Bundy’s resurgence. It’s not a high-octane fastball — he’s lost that since his prospect days. It’s not a gaudy swinging strike total — he’s no slouch in that department, but nor does he excel. What Bundy does best is loop breaking balls through the strike zone and coax batters into taking them. He might be baseball’s best at it, and the piles of free strikes he racks up power the rest of his game.

Want a quick visual before we dig into the numbers? Tim Anderson is a free swinger, but even on 0-1, he couldn’t unlock his bat against this slider:

Want it with a curveball? Watch Bundy demonstrate the low and away boundary of the strike zone to Adam Eaton:

Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Gallo is a walking archetype. You know the rough outlines: strikeouts like you wouldn’t believe, gobsmacking power, and the walks that accompany those two. When he’s good, he’s blasting his way to success; the park almost doesn’t matter when he gets into one, so titanic is his power.

If you knew only that about Gallo — and to be clear, it’s the most important thing — what would you think about his BABIP? It could be sky-high; he whiffs quite a lot, but that doesn’t matter for BABIP, and when he makes contact, it’s the loudest contact there is. He’s barreled up a fifth of his batted balls, and hit 50% of them 95 mph or harder. That makes it easier to find a hole — or make one.

It could be low, though! Many of those hard hit balls leave the park. What might be doubles in the gap or smoked line drive singles for another player might be home runs for Gallo, and singles and doubles are the bedrock of BABIP. Grounders and pop ups are no good; the real juice is in line drives and low fly balls, and he might simply hit his too hard to keep them in the field of play.

The answer is depressingly pedestrian. Gallo’s career BABIP stood at .270 entering this year, below average but not atrocious. That’s 40th-worst in baseball over that time period, in the same general area as many homer-happy sluggers. Mike Moustakas, Kyle Schwarber, Rhys Hoskins, Chris Davis — basically, hitters who get a disproportionate amount of their value by putting the ball in the air and over the fence. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring games are a blast, a return to baseball after a starved winter of boring transaction rumors. They’re the first chance to see major league players in their natural environment, and the pinnacle of baseball talent facing off against each other (and, inevitably, against some overmatched minor leaguers getting their first taste of the big time). One thing they are most assuredly not, however, are tactical masterpieces. The highest-leverage decision a manager makes is whether to bat their veterans at the top of the lineup so that they can duck out early. In the majors, though, tactical decision-making started when the regular season began. Almost immediately, a neat situation came up, and I’m excited enough to talk tactics that I’m going to give it far more coverage than it deserves.

In the second game of the season, the White Sox were in a pickle. After busting out to a 7–1 lead over the Angels, they’d frittered most of it away. A three-run shot from Albert Pujols here, an Adam Eaton three-base error there, and it was 7–6. A laugher had turned into a struggle for survival.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Angels were again threatening. After Mike Trout led the inning off with a walk, manager Tony LaRussa went to Evan Marshall. Marshall started strong, inducing a pop up from Anthony Rendon and a groundout from Justin Upton. But wait! LaRussa intentionally walked Pujols, putting the go-ahead run on base. What the!?
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