We have speed limits for a reason. Excessive speed is a factor in more than a quarter of automobile fatalities and is particularly deadly when combined with other dangerous behaviors behind the wheel. And yet, the idea that we can drive 5-10 mph over the limit without repercussion is so entrenched in our collective psyche — and so effectively decriminalized in most American cities — that most people hardly think twice about driving 35 in a 30. Behind this normalization lies an unexamined, exceptionalist belief: “This speed limit may be a good idea, but I have the ability to exceed it safely.”

There are a number of behaviors that fit into this category of exceptionalism: I’m the one who can get away with not flossing, I can spend hours on social media without consequence, I can stay cool into my 40s. Narcissism lies at the end of this road, but most of us don’t make it nearly that far. In doses, it’s entirely normal to think that general principles don’t apply to you personally. The contradiction at play is just part of the human experience, and it’s not always unhealthy: from this wellspring comes hope and ambition, among other traits and emotions.

As far as baseball is concerned, a no-hitter is perhaps the most wholesome embodiment of this form of individual exceptionalism. In the modern game, chasing a no-no is a retrograde “screw you,” not only to the opponent, but to the conventions of our time. “Take your third time through the order penalty and shove it,” and all that. Understandably, there was a bit of no-hitter fatigue swirling through the audience earlier this season. For me though, even with the increased frequency, the no-hitter remains a rebellion, and it’s as badass as ever. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski, who will be chipping on Daily Prospect Notes once a week. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Today, we’ll review some live looks, watch at a little video, and head off the beaten path for a bit. It should be fun, and apologies in advance for highlighting a few performances from earlier in the week. Onward!

CJ Van Eyk, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays
Level & Affiliate: High-A Vancouver Age: 22 Org Rank: 10 FV: 40+
Line: ⅔ IP, 4 H, 7R, 1 SO, 3 BB

It was a night he’d like to forget. The line probably oversells how rough he looked — a couple of gork singles extended the inning — but Van Eyk’s primary developmental goal this season is to pound the zone, and only 17 of his 33 pitches were strikes on Tuesday night. He often missed badly to his arm side with his fastball and curve, and a lack of competitive pitches limited him to just one true swing and miss.

Mechanically, Van Eyk has a loose arm, clean arm swing, and still head, all of which should help him throw strikes. His landing spot is very inconsistent though, and that seems to affect his ability to throw strikes. Sometimes he lands in a clean fielding position; on other occasions his left foot lands so awkwardly that he practically falls off the mound toward the first base dugout (you can see footage of that in action in Tess Taruskin’s notes from a few weeks back). Up to 94 with a curve that flashes plus, there’s good stuff here if he can find a delivery that facilitates more strikes. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, MLB umpires began (re-)enforcing Rule 3.02, the clause that bans pitchers from applying foreign substances to the baseball. While we didn’t have any ejections, umpires conducted plenty of searches and managed to do so without needlessly delaying games. Much digital ink has been spilled on this topic since MLB announced the crackdown; just last week, Ben, Jay, and I all weighed in, and comments from the players themselves have run the gamut from measured and reasonable to wildly implausible.

As we enter this new period, the obvious and immediate impulse is to try to measure the impact the rule change is having on the game. We know the teams will: Clubs have paid good coin for elite spin in recent years, and you can bet they’ll be paying close attention to who does and doesn’t lose RPMs as trade season approaches. Fans and writers will surely do the same. Whether assessing league statistics or individual performances, the temptation to compare spin rates against performance will be very powerful in the coming days.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, MLB announced that it would begin enforcing one of its rules. Following last week’s owner’s meetings, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that the league instructed umpires to begin checking pitchers and their equipment for foreign substances. While pitchers have long lathered up the ball with pine tar or sunscreen, the concoctions applied to baseballs have become more sophisticated recently, and they appear to have had a role in dampening offense league wide.

Cracking down on foreign substances is a defensible choice on the league’s part. In 2021, we’ve seen record-breaking strikeout totals and record-low batting averages, a continuation of trends that had already spawned discussions on how to get the ball in play more often. There’s no shortage of ideas on how to best do that and controlling the substances pitchers can use to doctor the baseball has a couple of advantages.

The first is that it’s likely to yield at least a modest result. In recent years, we’ve learned how different substances can affect a ball’s spin rate, and thus it’s trajectory. We’ve also seen how increased spin rates lead to nastier pitches and thus more strikeouts. With the right recipe, a pitcher can enhance his spin rate significantly, and certain spin-gainers have been rewarded handsomely for doing so. While nobody is arguing that a few hundred extra revolutions per minute is the difference between the All-Star game and the scrap heap, the consensus within the league is that the extra spin has given pitchers a leg up against the hitters. Removing that advantage could help restore balance to the sport.

The second benefit is that there’s historical precedent for something like this, and that’s a boon for a tradition-minded sport like baseball. In 1920, MLB banned the spitball for similar reasons. Nobody was talking about spin rates back then, but pitchers had figured out that a good hock of phlegm could make a ball dip unpredictably, and the corresponding decrease in spin was giving batters fits. As was the case 100 years ago, a mandate to keep the ball clean is an easy enough policy for all parties to understand: everyone should be on the same page about the league’s directive here. Read the rest of this entry »

Throughout baseball history, starters have thrown fewer pitches and innings than the generation of pitchers who preceded them. The trend dates to at least the early 20th century and has continued almost unabated ever since. Individual throwbacks will occasionally buck league trends — remember when James Shields tossed 11 complete games in 2011? — but history steadily marches on.

While the trend is clear, the curve isn’t linear. Throughout the game’s history, there have been a few accelerating events that have reduced workloads usage much faster than normal. The addition of the designated hitter and new definition of the save rule sent innings per start tumbling in the early 70s, for example.

It’s too early to tell definitively, but we may be on the precipice of another acceleration. We’re only two months into the major league season, and the pandemic and its related fallout are relevant and difficult variables to account for. But while major league starters are approximating the workloads they carried two years ago, minor league starters are not. On any given day in the minor leagues, someone might throw 100 pitches — but probably only one or two pitchers, and they almost certainly don’t reach 110. Remember when 100 pitches was a sort of threshold point for starters? This season, 85 is the new 100.

I went back and looked at every minor league game from May 19 to 24 (these days weren’t cherry picked; it, uh, took me a while to finish this article). In those five days, only four starters — all of whom were Triple-A vets — reached the 100 pitch mark. In that time, there were 12 entire organizations that didn’t have a single pitcher reach even 90 pitches. For the Astros, an organization that won’t let minor leaguers crest 30 pitches in an inning, the high-water mark was 79. For the Phillies, it was 67. In fact, Philadelphia has only had a minor leaguer top 80 pitches once all season.

The pandemic is to blame for some of what we’re seeing. At best, minor league hurlers had a jittery 2020, with intermittent bullpen work and perhaps a bit of summer ball at the alt site, but otherwise nothing between spring training and instructs. After such a weird season, teams are being understandably cautious with their personnel as they ramp back up. Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into the ninth inning of a blowout loss Monday, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli waved the white flag and summoned Willians Astudillo from… wherever he was sitting at the time. La Tortuga already had a scoreless inning under his belt this year, titillating Twins fans and the Baseball Twitterverse with an eephus that limped over the plate at 49 mph. Astudillo’s slow-pitch softball routine was received warmly that first appearance, and in a year where very little has gone right for Minnesota, the locals seemed pleased to see him out there again.

Naturally, we couldn’t get through the outing without an unwritten rules controversy.

With two outs, Astudillo fell behind Yermín Mercedes 3-0. The catcher-turned-hurler boldly stuck with the pitch that he’d ridden to get the first two outs and lobbed another one, this time over the outer half of the plate.

Mercedes hit the tar out of it:

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, the Seattle Mariners promoted Logan Gilbert and Jarred Kelenic to their active roster; both are expected to start in tonight’s game against Cleveland. The joint moves are the latest and most decisive steps to date in Seattle’s rebuild, and mark the next phase in the Mariners’ quest to construct a contender around a nucleus of homegrown talent.

This is undoubtedly a big day for the Mariners and their fans. As you probably know, the team owns the longest playoff drought in major American sports, a streak now in its 20th year. In those two decades of fits and starts, aborted tear-downs and calamitous collapses, Seattle has teased fans with young and talented rosters before. But while there’s never any guarantee that bluechip farmhands will live up to their billing, this era has a different feel to it. The current regime’s player development staff already has a few wins under their belt, and Seattle’s farm system is deeper than in previous rebuilding cycles, particularly when it comes to premium position players: In Kelenic and Julio Rodríguez, the Mariners have a pair of prospects with legitimate star potential.

There’s not much I can tell you about Kelenic that Eric Longenhagen hasn’t covered already. We have him as the game’s fourth-best prospect right now, a player who projects as a plus bat and one who may have muscled his way into plus power as well. Mariners fans will find much to salivate over in Eric’s full remarks, but as a brief teaser: “Kelenic rakes. His feel for contact, strength, and mature approach combine to make him a lethal offensive threat… I expect him to come up in 2021 and be an immediate impact player.” We’ll talk more about all of the learning and developing and maturing he did in his six games down in Tacoma later. For now, suffice to say that his spring and Triple-A appearances did nothing to damage his stock. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday evening, Texas’ Hyeon-Jong Yang made his first career start. While a low pitch count and a fourth-inning jam limited him to 3.1 innings, the southpaw still managed to impress: He struck out eight and walked only one while missing 15 bats on 37 swings. This was just a spot start in place of injured Kohei Arihara, but it was almost certainly good enough to warrant another look sooner rather than later.

Yang didn’t arrive with the same fanfare as fellow KBO transplant Ha-seong Kim. The 33-year-old had to settle for a minor league deal; he didn’t even make the Rangers’ Opening Day roster. Still, he’s a legend back home in South Korea. With two KBO Series titles, an MVP trophy on the mantle, and numerous international accolades there was little left for him to prove in Gwangju, and he understandably wanted to test his mettle at the highest level while he’s still near the peak of his powers.

I watched several of Yang’s starts last season. His overall numbers weren’t particularly impressive, but he looked much better once he shook off some early-season rust and got his best fastball back. As a command-reliant starter with a low-90s heater, above-average fading change, and functional slider, he seemed like a big leaguer, if not an impact one.

Across his first three games in Texas, Yang’s results have been pretty good. In 12 innings, he’s struck out 13 hitters while allowing only two walks and 10 hits. But while his start against the Twins was mostly encouraging, it also revealed some limitations in his skillset and highlighted the difference in competition between the KBO and the major leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Jon Sciambi shared a tweet with a few, seemingly impossible stats:

MLB slash into today 232/310/390…BA would be lowest ever…in 2008 about 42% of swings put balls in play, this year 35.4%. In 08 the swing/miss % was 20% and this year it is 27.3%. Yikes.

— Jon Sciambi (@GoGala__Games) April 26, 2021

Yikes indeed. While all of those numbers are concerning on their own, it’s actually the batting average figure that most struck me. If a .232 league batting average sounds absurdly low to you, you’re not wrong. In fact, it’s the lowest since at least the turn of the twentieth century. The .232 mark is five points worse than the league hit in 1968, when Bob Gibson spun a 1.12 ERA, only one American Leaguer managed to hit .300, and nearly a quarter of the season’s games ended in a shutout. It’s also seven points lower than the worst collective batting average of the Dead Ball Era, a year the league slugged .305. And it’s far, far lower than anything in recent memory:

Say what you will about Three True Outcomes baseball, a batting average this low is a bit of a problem. And while the magnitude of the problem may come as a bit of a shock, the “why” is pretty easy to explain.

Much of it can be attributed to strikeouts, of course. Pitchers are fanning their opponents 24.6% of the time, up from 23.4% in last year’s shortened season. Strikeout rates seemingly only go up each year, but it’s worth noting that this is a pretty dramatic uptick even by that standard, easily the largest year-over-year we’ve seen this century. (Hat tip to Marc Webster for noticing.) Read the rest of this entry »

When Jay Bruce debuted with the Reds, he was the top prospect in baseball. Our very own Kevin Goldstein projected him as a perennial All-Star, writing that he could be a “true superstar in the mold of Larry Walker.” He debuted as a 21-year-old and went 3-3 with two walks in his first game. Three days later, he had four hits and scored the winning run. He topped that off with a walk-off homer, his first dinger in the big leagues, the following night. Over the next two days he went 4-7 with two more homers, lowering his batting average to .577. As Bruce’s heroics mounted and his legend grew, you had to wonder how anyone could possibly live up to this kind of start.

Bruce didn’t, of course. His bat cooled considerably over the summer and he ended the year with 0.8 WAR and a fifth-place finish in Rookie of the Year voting, a few slots behind Joey Votto. But while Bruce’s numbers fell a bit short of his prospect league billing, he still blossomed into a very good major-league player. Over 14 seasons, Bruce hit 319 homers, won two Silver Sluggers, made three All-Star appearances, and accrued exactly 20 WAR. Read the rest of this entry »