The Toronto Blue Jays are contenders. They are currently four games above .500, two games out of first place, and their positive run differential of 81 is first in the American League by nearly 30 runs. The FanGraphs playoff odds give the Jays a roughly one-in-two chance to qualify for the playoffs. The Jays offense has been the key, scoring close to five-and-a-half runs per game. The Blue Jays are 60 runs above average on offense, first in major-league baseball, and their 115 wRC+ for non-pitchers is second to only the Dodgers — and those two teams have a 25-run gap on the bases. Their Base Runs record is four games better than their actual record, indicating the team easily could have better results than their current record indicates. The problem for the Blue Jays has been the pitching staff, both in the rotation and in the bullpen. The easy answer is to trade for outside help, but deploying internal solutions in different roles could prove helpful as well.

Before moving to the pitching, a final note on the offense. The offense has carried the team thus far, but it is unlikely to continue to be as great over the course of the rest of the season. The graph below shows every team’s actual runs per game so far this season compared with their Base Runs, which should be a better representation of how a team’s offense has performed.

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The Miami Marlins are about to get a lot better as a baseball team. Jose Fernandez, one of the most exciting and superlative pitchers in major-league baseball, is set to return next week. Martin Prado and Michael Morse should be back shortly. Henderson Alvarez, who has made just four starts all year, is progressing in his rehab. Mat Latos, who struggled mightily to begin the season, is beginning to show signs of life as the velocity on his fastball continues to creep forward. The Marlins should soon have the team they expected to enter the year with — the team that some, this author included, thought would make the playoffs as a wild card. The problem for the Marlins is that it is already too late this season, and the team needs to start thinking about next year.

The Marlins began the season as a .500 team and the Fangraphs Playoff Odds gave them a 27% chance of making the playoffs. As they were missing their best starter at the time, but his return was factored into those odds, it is fair to assume that the team was not going to be very good to start the season and that they would actually be a below .500 team for the early part of the season. They started the season poorly enough that they fired their manager and replaced him with the general manager. Often times, a team that fires its manager makes that move because the team is underperforming, and the managerial change appears to work as the team tends to play up to its talent level. For the Marlins, the team’s record has not improved with the managerial change. Read the rest of this entry »

Since Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart took over baseball operations for the Arizona Diamondbacks last year, their moves have come under considerable scrutiny. Questions have been raised about the Diamondbacks plan, but not with as much regard to its execution. The questions surrounding the Diamondbacks’ moves have been confusing enough that some wondered if the Diamondbacks had a plan in mind at all. The club looked to be attempting a quick rebuilding process. How they plan to achieve that goal is finally becoming a little more clear.

When the Cubs and Astros took bad teams and completely deconstructed their rosters, choosing to lose for a while and re-stock the organizations, their plans were easy to see. After a full offseason, multiple in-season trades, and the recent major-league draft, the Diamondbacks’ plan, or at least their goal, has come into focus. The Diamondbacks are not interested in a long, drawn out rebuilding process. Their main interests look to be cutting salary and adding players who are ready to contribute now or will be ready to contribute in the near future. They might not be ready to win now, but they appear to be attempting a swift rebuild to make the team competitive.

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Joc Pederson and Kris Bryant are ahead of the pack when it comes to the National League Rookie of the year race, but perhaps lost among many other intriguing promotions, Maikel Franco is having himself a solid rookie season in Philadelphia. Franco has been up just over a month and received 150 plate appearances, but he has already hit nine home runs after two more cleared the fences against the Yankees last night. The 22-year-old does come with some questions, particularly with regard to his plate discipline, but his power is clearly major league-ready. His line on the season is an impressive .312/.353/.574 with a 154 wRC+ that outpaces Bryant thus far, and he provides some hope for the future in a dismal season for the Phillies.

Franco signed out of the Dominican Republic for $100,000 in 2010 without a lot of bulk, but he has beefed up considerably since that time and made a power bat his ticket to the majors. He was noticed as a prospect in 2013 when the 20-year-old Franco tore up High-A and Double-A pitching, hitting 31 home runs with an on-base percentage above .350 despite taking very few walks. Baseball America put Franco at No. 17 on its prospect list entering 2014. Franco was young for the level and struggled with the transition to Triple-A hitting just .209/.267/.318 the first three months of the season before posting excellent numbers in July and August and earning a promotion to Philadelphia in September. Read the rest of this entry »

Watching all-time great baseball players age is both a frustrating and fascinating experience. Albert Pujols will never be able to recapture the dominance that gave him one of the greatest first decades in MLB history, as the aging process is unkind and irreversible. Even Barry Bonds with his late-career surge into the record books was a much different player than he was earlier in his career. Albert Pujols has seen something of a revival in 2015, hitting his American League-leading 21st home run of the season on Sunday. The 35-year old Pujols will never be able to get back to the form he had a decade ago, but he is hitting better than he has at any time in an Angels uniform.

With 10 home runs in June, Pujols already has his first double-digit home-run month since August 2010, when he hit 11 homers. His 149 wRC+ is higher than his final season in St. Louis, although the season did not begin as Pujols would have liked. After going 0-for-4 with a strikeout against the Rangers on April 24, Pujols was hitting just .177/.261/.355 in 69 plate appearances. In the 210 plate appearances since, Pujols has been on a tear, hitting .301/.352/.622 with a 173 wRC+ providing Mike Trout a worthy partner in an otherwise punchless Angels’ offense.

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Throwing a no-hitter can seem like a random occurrence. Edwin Jackson has a no-hitter. Dallas Braden has a no-hitter. One of Bud Smith’s 24 starts in the majors was a no hitter. Philip Humber has a perfect game. Tim Lincecum threw zero no-hitters in his incredible prime, and has thrown two since entering his decline. Pedro Martinez never threw one. Steve Carlton never did, either. No-hitters in major-league baseball require incredible skill, opportunity, and some luck. Thousands upon thousands of pitchers have had all three of those things, but fewer than 300 pitchers in MLB history have thrown a no-hitter. Chris Heston is now among that rare group.

Tidbits using the Baseball Reference Play Index:

• Chris Heston is only the 13th pitcher in MLB history to throw a no-hitter within his first 15 games in the majors. The last pitcher to match that feat was Clay Buchholz in 2007.
• Heston’s no-hitter was only the third in history in which the only hitters to reach base did so by means of a hit-by-pitch (HBP). The other two were Kevin Brown in 1997 and Lew Burdette in 1960.
• Heston’s three HBPs are the most in any no-hitter.
• Only ten pitchers have thrown a nine-inning no-hitter with a higher Game Score than Heston’s 98. Clayton Kershaw’s 102 mark from last season remains the top score.
• Of the 24 pitchers to throw a no-hitter within their first 30 games, Heston is the fifth-oldest at 27 years and 60 days. Bobo Holloman was the oldest at 30 years and 60 days when he threw his no-hitter in 1953 for the St. Louis Browns. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last calendar year, there are 139 qualified major-league hitters. Prorating their plate appearances to 600 per person, one finds that Mike Trout has the highest WAR at 7.2, followed by Russell Martin, Buster Posey, and Anthony Rizzo. None of that should come as much of a surprise, but the hitter right behind that group and just ahead of Josh Donaldson, Andrew McCutchen and Bryce Harper could provide a bit of shock. Over the last calendar year, Kevin Kiermaier has been worth six wins per 600 plate appearances.

Kiermaier, who has worked to improve his offense, is incredibly reliant on his fantastic defense for his great WAR numbers. While Kiermaier is a valuable player, it is possible that his WAR total is inflated by defensive numbers that are likely to come down over time. Kiermaier has logged roughly 1200 innings in the outfield and has a UZR/150 of 42.1, but only six active outfielders with at least 2,500 innings have a UZR/150 greater than 15, with Lorenzo Cain, Ben Zobrist, Peter Bourjos, Brett Gardner, Josh Reddick, and Jason Heyward falling between 16 and 22 — that is, roughly half Kiermaier’s current rate. Although he’s been good, Kiermaier is probably not the fifth-best player in baseball over the last year, and his defensive numbers should serve as a reminder that defensive statistics take some time before they become reliable.

Yesterday, I covered some players whose current WAR was potentially undervalued due to lower than normal defensive numbers in an article titled Heyward, Pedroia, and Your Annual Reminder About Defense. The present article renders yesterday’s title false as the articles together are now daily reminders, but this post should be the final one in this series with few, if any, more reminders coming in the near future. The caveat regarding small sample size from Mitchel Lichtman and our FanGraphs library is quoted more fully in yesterday’s piece, but to summarize: use three seasons of UZR when being conclusory about the defensive talent of any given player.

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We all know, entering the season, that the WAR leaderboards in the early part of the year reveal less about the players contained within them than those same WAR leaderboards at the end of the year. That knowledge doesn’t stop me, personally, from compulsively looking at the leaderboards just as soon as the season begins. Remember Freddy Galvis? He was tied for the National League lead among shortstops with 0.9 WAR — and “on pace” for a great season at the end of April. A month of replacement-level production has placed him considerably lower among major-league shortstops. What about Devon Travis? At the end of April, his 1.4 WAR was sixth in all of baseball. Unfortunately, an injury slowed him down and he has been unable to add to his impressive April totals.

Now that we have reached the second week of June, the leaderboards begin to look a little more familiar. Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson, and Paul Goldschmidt have continued great runs of production. Bryce Harper has emerged and Jason Kipnis has returned to form after a poor 2014 season. There are still surprises at this point, though. The production of Harper and Kipnis was not expected to reach these levels, Joc Pederson has been far more impressive than anyone could have expected, and Dee Gordon is still slapping and running his way into the top ten. We will see more changes as the season wears on, providing a more accurate depiction of player value as more games are played. However, since we are all looking at the leaderboards now, it might be worthwhile to point out a few anomalies in WAR totals due to the small sample sizes we have with defensive statistics.

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Major League Baseball might be incredibly healthy in terms of attendance, television ratings, and finances, but the league has a perception problem that will not go away anytime soon. Baseball’s biggest challenge is, and always likely will be, creating new fans. This is not a challenge unique to baseball or sports in general. All sports continue efforts to draw in new fans just like Coke and Pepsi use marketing campaigns to lure in a new generation of soda drinkers. Rob Manfred has made one of his goals to increase childhood participation in baseball as he believes that children who play baseball turn into baseball fans as adults, continuing the generational chain that has allowed baseball to thrive for more than a century.

While getting more youths to participate in baseball is hardly the only initiative MLB will undertake to grow the sport, getting new fans to attend games is very important for baseball’s future. The Angels’ most recent public-relations mistake, discouraging fans from lower socioeconomic levels from attending because they do not spend as much as other fans once they get to games, is a shortsighted strategy that could hurt baseball in the long run.

In his story for the OC Register, Pedro Moura discussed the Angels’ declining attendance with Robert Alvarado, a Vice President with the team. Alvarado dismissed targeting fans looking to pay for lower-priced seats because they do not make as many purchases once they are inside the stadium. This somewhat callous disregard for “discount buyers,” as Alvarado calls them, might work for short-term revenue, but the team has seen one of the bigger drops in attendance in MLB and the plan is a questionable one long-term.

Since we looked at attendance last month, there have not been too many big changes at the top or bottom of attendance rankings. The Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants, and New York Yankees are still the highest-drawing teams, and the Cleveland Indians, rebounding on the field and in attendance, passed the Tampa Bay Rays in seasonal attendance over the past month. The Angels do boast decent numbers compared to all teams. (All attendance numbers below from Baseball Reference.)

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Aroldis Chapman has struck out more than one-third of the hitters he’s faced this season, a phenomenal number for most pitchers. For Chapman, however, that number represents a major drop from his incredible 2014 season when he struck out more than half the batters he faced. When he gave up a game-tying three-run home run to Philadelphia Phillies rookie Maikel Franco last night, it represented the first home run he’d given up in more than a calendar year. Now is hardly the time to panic over one of the best relievers in the majors, but there are some concerns over his most recent performances. Chapman is still throwing the ball hard (although not quite as hard), and he got off to a great start in 2015. Over his last half-dozen appearances, however, he hasn’t been able to get the ball in the strike zone. Hitters have picked up on his lack of command and since taking a week-long break in the middle of May due to a Cincinnati losing streak, Chapman’s performance has suffered.

Relievers are constantly under a microscope due both to the limited number of appearances they make and the relative importance of those appearances, but it can be difficult to decipher problems over the course of the whole season due to limited innings, let alone a couple weeks. Chapman could be pitching just as he always has and gotten a few bad results. He could be going through a tiny rough patch in an otherwise great season. Something could be seriously wrong, and we are seeing glimpses of its beginnings. Knowing precisely what Chapman’s problem has been over the last few weeks is near impossible. We’re picking up bread crumbs in an enclosed room. We can glean information from those crumbs, but we do not yet know where those crumbs lead. It’s too early.

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