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Jorge Soler Brings His Giant Bat to San Francisco

Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports

Jorge Soler is getting nearly as far away from Miami as he possibly can. The 6’4” power hitter has agreed to a three-year, $42 million deal with the San Francisco Giants. Susan Slusser broke the news of the deal, and Mike Rodriguez reported the terms.

Soler, who debuted with the Cubs in 2014 and also played for the Royals, Braves, and Marlins, opted out of the third and final year of the deal he signed with Miami, capitalizing on the second-best season of his 11-year career both in terms of health and overall production. Soler ranked 19th on our Top 50 Free Agents list, and his deal is just $1 million per year below the three years and $45 million that both Ben Clemens and MLB Trade Rumors predicted for him. The deal also nets Soler $1 million more than this year than the $13 million he would have made had he stayed with the Marlins.

There’s plenty of risk here. Soler was an All-Star in 2023, the World Series MVP in 2021, and the American League home run champ in 2019. He obliterates four-seam fastballs, and he’s the kind of player who can go on a tear and put a team on his back. He’s also about to turn 32, and he missed half the 2022 season due to back and pelvis injuries. The 1.9 WAR he put up in 2023 was not only the second-best mark of his career, but just the second time he even surpassed 0.7, the total he recorded as a 22-year-old rookie in 2014. Soler has appeared in 100 games only four times in his 11 years in the big leagues. It’s encouraging that three of those four seasons came over the past five years, but players (and humans in general) don’t usually see their health improve as they transition into their mid-30s.

Moreover, Soler doesn’t contribute on the bases or with the glove, and he’s best suited for a DH role. Soler spent just 42 games in the outfield in 2023. That might not sound like much to you, but the defensive metrics agreed that it was way, way too much. Over the course of Soler’s 11 seasons, the four major defensive metrics — DRS, DRP, OAA, and UZR — have been unanimous in their contempt for his glove. Combined, those four systems have evaluated Soler’s defense 42 times (11 seasons tracked by DRS, DRP, and UZR, plus nine by OAA). Of those 42 ratings, 38 were negative, three gave Soler a rating of exactly 0, and just one was positive — when DRP credited Soler with 0.8 runs prevented in 2019.

Despite Soler’s dreadful defense, San Francisco will use him at times in the outfield, likely as a way to spell Michael Conforto and Mike Yastrzemski against left-handed pitching. Under former manager Gabe Kapler, the Giants mixed and matched out of necessity, but also by design; even with a new skipper, Bob Melvin, that trend is likely to continue to some degree considering the personnel on their roster. Over the past three seasons, San Francisco has had just six players qualify for the batting title and eight total qualified player-seasons. (Yastrzemski and Thairo Estrada each have qualified twice in the last three years.) Only three teams have had fewer qualified seasons, and half of the major league clubs have had at least 12 in that span. But no matter how frequently Melvin makes him wear a glove, Soler will slot into the lineup nicely by providing real production from the right side of the plate, something the team sorely lacked last year.

For now, though, let’s set our reservations aside for a minute and admire the stylistic fit. It’s hard to think of a team that needs power more than the San Francisco Giants, and it’s hard to look at Jorge Soler and think of anything other than power. If you peruse other articles about this signing, you’ll come across multiple variations of the word slug. Depending on your outlet of choice, the Giants have variously signed up for three years of “slugger Jorge Soler,” “veteran slugger Jorge Soler,” “Free-Agent Slugger Jorge Soler,” “former Miami Marlins slugger Jorge Soler,” “slugging outfielder Jorge Soler,” and even “slugger and former World Series MVP.” All of these descriptions are apt. He’s not up there to hit Soler flares. Soler slugs.

The Giants could use some of that. Famously, no Giant has had a 30-homer season since a 39-year-old Barry Bonds hit 45 in 2004 (unless you’re counting Jeff Samardzija and Madison Bumgarner, who allowed 30 homers in 2017 and 2019, respectively). In fact, over that same time frame, Soler has the same number of seasons with 27 or more home runs as the Giants do: three. The difference is that only four times has Soler been healthy enough to accrue 400 plate appearances in a season, whereas the Giants have had 109 different player-seasons reach that threshold over the past 24 years.

In 2023, the Giants ranked 19th in home runs, 23rd in ISO and exit velocity, and 27th in slugging. Some of that has to do with Oracle Park, which, according to Statcast’s park factors, ranks as the 27th-worst park for home runs for both left-handed and right-handed batters. But that’s why you go get someone as powerful as Soler (or, for that matter, Arson Judge), who hits moonshots that would be no-doubters anywhere. According to Statcast, if he’d played all of his games in San Francisco last year, Oracle Park would have cost Soler just four of his 36 home runs. Moreover, after spending two years at loanDepot park — one of the three stadiums that make it even harder for righties to leave the yard than Oracle — there’s little chance that he’ll be intimidated and a much better chance that he’ll be the first player to launch a ball into that giant baseball mitt above the left field bleachers. Or maybe Soler, who has hit six opposite-field home runs with an estimated distance of at least 400 feet, will become the first right-handed player to send a ball into McCovey Cove.

Still, Soler alone is not going to solve San Francisco’s problems on offense. According to ZiPS, Soler’s projected SLG of .441 ranks 101st in the majors, and the second Giant doesn’t come until Wilmer Flores checks in at 170th, with a mark of .423. The lack of slug is a problem, of course, but it isn’t as much of an issue as the team’s overall lack of offensive production, and Soler can’t fix that on his own, either.

ZiPS projects newcomer Jung Hoo Lee as San Francisco’s best hitter, with a 112 wRC+, one spot above LaMonte Wade Jr. That ranks them 84th and 85th overall, and they’re the team’s only players in the top 120. The only teams with less representation in the top 120 are the A’s and the Rockies. ZiPS projects a 106 wRC+ for Soler, which is understandable when you consider that before last year, when he posted a 126 wRC+, he had not recorded a single-season mark above 107 since 2019, when his wRC+ was 136. Even if Soler exceeds his projections, San Francisco’s lineup could still use some help, and there aren’t that many bats left out there.


Which Ballparks Make It Easiest to See the Pitch?

Thomas Shea-USA TODAY Sports

For a while now, I’ve been having fun analyzing how accurate umpires are when calling balls and strikes according to the Statcast strike zone. Honestly, I might be having too much fun. It’s just that there are so many variables that might affect the way the umpire sees a pitch. Today we’re looking into the most literal one: the ballpark. Every stadium is different, and that can affect how easy it is to track the baseball. This is a well-established issue, which is why every ballpark has a batter’s eye, a dark background that’s supposed to ensure that the batter is able to see the ball out of the pitcher’s hand. Those backdrops vary quite a bit, from evergreen trees and ivy in Colorado, to a painted wall in Texas, to tinted glass in the Bronx.

When Drew Smyly nearly threw a perfect game last April, it helped that it was a day game at Wrigley Field, and his left-handed release point was so wide that the ball appeared to be coming not from the batters eye, but from the bleachers in right-center. Last September, in response to multiple public complaints from players, the Astros effectively extended Minute Maid Park’s batter’s eye several feet farther into right field, awkwardly repainting part of a formerly red section of brick and signage green. “It’s like night and day,” one player told The Athletic after the paint job:

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Has Anyone Ever Hit the Target Field Target?

When Carl Pavano threw the first official pitch at the brand new Target Field on April 12, 2010, there was no Target logo on the mound. Mind you, there were Target logos aplenty all around the ballpark — on the wall behind home plate, just below the press box, up above the bleachers in right and center field, on the signs the fans brought and the hats they wore, and on the video boards on the façade of the upper deck, which often displayed rows of alternating baseballs and Target logos, hundreds of them wrapping around the entire stadium — just not on the pitcher’s mound. Later that year, the interlocking T and C of the Twins logo began appearing in the dirt behind the rubber; the Target logo didn’t start gracing the mound until 2016.

Still, in the early years of 2016 and 2017, the mound was often completely targetless. Even today, there are games where there’s no logo whatsoever — and not just nationally televised games, when the advertising rights can change. Sometimes it’s just the pitcher all alone up there (aside from the rubber, the cleat cleaner, and a couple rosin bags):

I don’t have any good guesses that explain the logo’s occasional absence, but I have so, so many bad guesses. Maybe the grounds crew is hiding the target somewhere else on the field and we’re supposed to be looking for it. Maybe Target leases the space on a per-game basis, and sometimes whoever is in charge of delivering that day’s check gets lost during the half-mile walk from Target Plaza Commons headquarters to Target Field. Maybe — and hear me out on this one — maybe the grounds crew just gets busy sometimes. I don’t know why it’s not always there, but if it’s supposed to be there every game, I hope this paragraph doesn’t get anybody in trouble. Read the rest of this entry »


Jakob Junis Joins the Brewers as a Starter

Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

On Monday night, just four days after the Brewers traded perennial Cy Young candidate Corbin Burnes to the Orioles for a package of promising young players and a competitive balance draft pick, Milwaukee signed a pitcher with an even better FIP to take his spot at the front of their rotation.

Sorry, that was misleading. Let’s try this again: After spending five years in Kansas City and two years in San Francisco, right-handed pitcher Jakob Junis has agreed to a one-year, $7 million deal with the Milwaukee Brewers. Kiley McDaniel reported the signing, which according to Ken Rosenthal includes a $4 million salary in 2024 along with a $3 million buyout on a mutual option for the 2025 season. While the Giants moved Junis to the bullpen in 2023, the 31-year-old is expected to join Milwaukee’s starting rotation. After the team non-tendered the injured Brandon Woodruff and traded Burnes, the rotation was looking particularly threadbare, relying on Freddy Peralta and a series of other pitchers with question marks surrounding their health, stuff, age, or some combination of the three.

Peralta, who was worth 3.0 WAR over 30 starts and 165.2 innings in 2023, had excellent stretches last season, including taking home NL Pitcher of the Month honors in August. Still, his 3.86 ERA, 3.85 FIP, and 1.41 HR/9 were all the worst marks he’d put up since the shortened 2020 season. Wade Miley, back on a one-year deal, has been fantastic over the last three seasons, but the Brewers will need him to continue his contact suppression sorcery at age 37. Colin Rea put up 0.8 WAR in 2023; the Brewers are hoping he can post back-to-back seasons with a sub-5.00 ERA for the first time since 2015 and 2016. DL Hall, who came over in the Burnes trade, is a truly exciting young pitcher, but he’s also dealt with injuries over the last two years and ended up in Baltimore’s bullpen in 2023. After a shoulder injury, Aaron Ashby pitched just seven minor league innings last year, while Joe Ross, coming off his second Tommy John surgery, threw 14 minor league innings and hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2021. Read the rest of this entry »


Byron Buxton Deserves a Chance

Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

In a more just world — in a world without injury — Byron Buxton would need a lot more shelf space in his home. A five-tool player with a name that sounds like it should belong to a superhero, Buxton was drafted second overall in 2012, spent some time as our number one prospect, debuted at age 21, and went on to average nearly 4.6 WAR per 162 games. By all rights, he should have spent his 20s challenging Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani to a game of hot potato with the American League MVP trophy. He should be on magazine covers. He should be a worldwide megastar nicknamed Lord Byron.

Instead, Buxton is a one-time All-Star who owns a Gold Glove, a Platinum Glove, and a Wilson Overall Defensive Player of the Year, all three awarded in 2017. He’s never finished better than 16th in the MVP race. You know the reason for this as well as I do. Buxton has never put up 4.6 WAR in a season because he’s never come close to playing in 162 games in one. He’s surpassed 92 games just once and he’s qualified for the batting title just once: in 2017, the year of the glove-shaped trophies. Over the nine seasons of his career, Buxton has played in roughly 4.5 seasons worth of games. The injury section of his Baseball Prospectus player page borders on some sort of macabre literary pretension, listing a blazon of injuries to his head, face, shoulder, back, ribs, wrist, hand, thumb, finger, hip, groin, hamstring, knee, shin, foot, and toe. There are fractures, hairline fractures, concussions, contusions, lacerations, dislocations, strains, sprains, soreness, inflammation, and tendinitis.

This morose lede is just a preamble though, because Buxton is back. Earlier this week at TwinsFest, he told everyone just that: “Oh yeah. I’m back.” After undergoing offseason surgery to excise a plica from his right knee, he is ready to play center field for the first time since 2022. “What makes me so sure? My body tells me that,” Buxton said. This is wonderful news. Anyone who loves baseball is rooting for him to get a shot at a full, fully healthy season. Anyone who loves baseball is excited to watch him roam center field once again, a human being so perfectly suited to that environment and the task before him that you can’t help but feel for just a moment like maybe the whole world makes sense after all.

Anyone who loves baseball is also tempering their expectations. Buxton is 30 and coming off a second straight season that ended with knee surgery. His offseason routine right now is equal parts physical therapy and baseball activities. The Twins have been honest about the fact that “back” might not mean exactly what we might want it to mean. They’re hoping that Buxton will be able to play 80 games in center field. For his part, Buxton chose not to put a number on it. “My body will tell me that,” he said.

Bodies are the worst. What the hell are you supposed to do with your hands? The same body that gives you the coordination and grace to play the game in such a way that it transcends the realm of sport and becomes art can then decide to break down frequently — so frequently that the fleeting chance to perform on that plane of existence serves as nothing more than a wistful reminder of what could have been.

How much health is a person entitled to? Everyone on earth has had their life limited to some degree by their health, and everyone knows people who have had it much worse. Injuries are a part of sports and a part of life. No one deserves to be injured, or to feel sick. In a more merciful world, we would all live healthy lives, achieving our potential (or not achieving it for all the other reasons that we don’t achieve our potential), and then one day the grim reaper would give us a friendly tap on the pristine shoulder and ask us to follow him, please.

It gets weirder when you’re a talent like Buxton. It’s his life, and he must be acutely aware of how differently things could have gone, of how much more he had to offer over the last nine years. But the rest of the baseball world feels robbed too, both on his behalf and on our own. We want to see his greatness for ourselves and for baseball as a whole.

How much health is a ballplayer entitled to? With the exception of Cal Ripken Jr., every baseball player alive could argue that they would have had a lot more to offer the game if only their body would have cooperated.

Buxton, though, is a different, more extreme case. Keep in mind that his 19.0 WAR during his nine major league seasons rank 60th among all position players. Keep in mind that every single one of the 59 players ahead of him has played in more games than his 670 in that span. (Ronald Acuña Jr. has the next fewest games played in the group, at 673, but he debuted three years after Buxton and has recorded 545 more plate appearances.) Keep in mind that 39 of those 59 players have made at least 1,000 more plate appearances than Buxton’s 2,487. Keep in mind that even when he has been on the field, Buxton hasn’t been at 100% all that often. Keep in mind that despite that fact, on a per-game basis, Buxton has been more valuable than 31 of those 59 players.

In 2023, battling through a rib injury, patella tendinitis, and a hamstring strain that combined to limit him to 85 games, Buxton ran a 98 wRC+. It was his worst offensive performance since 2018, when he played in just 28 games. Buxton was more aggressive on pitches in the zone and he made more contact, but that didn’t stop his strikeout rate from rising by a percentage point. His average exit velocity fell last year, and his EV50 (the average of the top 50% of his hardest hit balls, which Baseball Savant formerly referred to as best speed) has dropped in each of the past three seasons, from 104.7 mph to 103.8 to 102.5.

Even so, there were positive signs last season, too. His sprint speed was still a nearly elite 29.3 mph. He was still worth 4.8 runs on the bases, tied for 29th best in baseball among players with at least 300 plate appearances and his highest total since 2017. Although his power was down overall, Buxton was still capable of top-end exit velocity. He ripped three of the four hardest-hit balls of his career in 2023. That includes a career-high 116.9 mph double on Aug. 1, his last regular season game of the season.

Buxton has also made it clear that he’ll be more comfortable when he’s playing on both sides of the ball again. “I’m 29, I’m DHing, and I know I’m not supposed to be DHing,” Buxton said at TwinsFest. “You’re not buying into DH.” There’s bias in these numbers, because Buxton was usually relegated to DH when he wasn’t healthy enough to play the field, but since 2019, he has a 111 wRC+ as a DH and a 136 wRC+ as a center fielder. “What excites me? I’m going back to center,” he said. “As simple as that. Nothing makes me happier than playing the outfield.” He’s not alone. The Twins have been encouraged by videos of Buxton’s progress, seeing him move better than he has in years, watching him get into his legs at the plate and make the thunderous contact that he’s capable of making.

One of the joys of sports is that we get to witness greatness. Somewhere out there, at every human pursuit, someone is the best. If you’re one of the greatest accountants in the world, that gift will probably allow you to carve out a nice life for yourself, maybe even a luxurious one. But your gift will likely go unrecognized to some degree. How exactly do you judge that someone is the best in the world at accountancy? In sports, greatness shows up in the numbers, but it’s often obvious. It knocks you over the head. It’s miraculous to behold. Sometimes you see Shohei Ohtani at the plate, looking completely fooled by a pitch yet still able to reach flick it over fence, and you can’t help but laugh, because no other reaction seems appropriate. Buxton, too, is that type of player when he is on the field.

It would be truly magical to see Buxton at his best, and best health, for a whole season. He certainly deserves the chance. The rest of us will be hoping he gets that chance, too. But at the same time, we should not confuse hope with expectation. The sanguine quotes may have gotten the headlines, but Buxton gave another that summed up the situation a little more completely. “It’s different, I can feel it. It feels good,” he said. “Things feel back to … as close to normal as it’s going to get. You take the positive and run with it.”


Strike Three?! Let’s Check in on Umpire Accuracy

Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

About a year ago, I wrote about how umpires have improved at calling balls and strikes throughout the pitch tracking era. They have gotten a whole lot better, especially at identifying strikes. While everyone appreciates a more consistent and accurate zone, that has made things a bit harder for hitters overall. More importantly, their progress didn’t seem like it was showing any signs of slowing down. With the 2023 season in the books, it’s time to check in on whether that’s still the case. The methodology here is simple: check to see if Statcast agrees with the umpire’s decision for each called ball and strike. This isn’t a perfect method, as a pitch right over the heart of the plate is a much easier call than one right on the edge, but the enormous sample sizes (there were 376,635 takes in 2023) mean that things even out over time.

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Ground Control to the Pentagon: Assessing the Names of MLB’s Proprietary Databases

Erin Bormett/Argus Leader via Imagn Content Services, LLC

A couple of weeks ago, Alex Coffey of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a profile of Ani Kilambi, the assistant GM who heads up the Phillies’ R&D department. Reading it, one detail immediately jumped out at me: Coffey published the name of Philadelphia’s proprietary database. It’s called Rocky. That’s a fun name, and it follows the league-wide trend of clubs giving their databases names that are both adorable and specific to either their team or city. It was the first time I’d come across the name, even though the article indicated that it had been around for years.

Like many people, I first learned about team databases when it was reported that Chris Correa, then the Cardinals’ scouting director, had illegally accessed Houston’s database in 2015; Correa later pled guilty to five criminal charges related to his unauthorized access. Even before that, though, teams were understandably secretive about the information they used. Milwaukee’s sports science wing is known as The Lab, and the Brewers have made it very clear that they don’t want anyone coming near it. The photos below are from an MLB.com article about The Lab in 2020.

One picture of a long hallway with a sign that says "NO MEDIA BEYOND THIS POINT", and one picture of a door labelled "Integrative Sports Performance." It has a large NO ENTRY sign on it.

That secrecy often extends to the name of the database. I imagine the thinking is that it’s harder to break into something if you don’t know what it’s called. Still, there was an inconsistency that bothered me. The names of these databases are a closely held secret, yet I already knew a handful of them. I wondered why that was, so I set off on a research marathon to find as many of the names as I possibly could. It took many, many hours, and my list is still not complete. Read the rest of this entry »


Edouard Julien, Are You Gonna Rule Again?

Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports
Edouard Julien had a remarkable rookie season. Called up for good in late May, he knocked 16 home runs and ran a 136 wRC+ over 109 games, finishing seventh in the AL Rookie of the Year voting. Among second basemen with at least 400 plate appearances, that 136 wRC+ ranked third in baseball, behind Mookie Betts and Jose Altuve and ahead of Luis Arraez. That’s pretty good company. Using the same plate appearances threshold, his 17.2% chase rate was the lowest in baseball, which enabled him to run a 15.7% walk rate, good for fifth highest. John Foley recently wrote an excellent breakdown of Julien’s patience over at Twinkie Town.

There are also plenty of non-baseball reasons to enjoy Julien. He’s the bearer of the fanciest name in MLB, and so far as I can tell he’s just the second player in big-league history whose name includes the vowels O, U, and A all in a row. The first was also an Edouard: Joseph Albert Rolland Édouard, better known as Roland Gladu. A French-Canadian like Julien, Gladu played all over the world, homering in the professional leagues of five different countries: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and Great Britain. Julien’s name also flows off the tongue in a pleasing way. Because of the scansion of Edouard Julien, whenever I think about him for an extended period of time, this song gets stuck in my head:

I even wrote a Julien-inspired version of the song — mostly because I couldn’t not write one — which you can listen to at the bottom of this piece.

Back to baseball, there was a bit of helium in Julien’s 2023 numbers. His wOBA outpaced his xwOBA by 18 points, and his .371 BABIP ranked fifth in all of baseball. Understandably, the projection systems see him stepping back to a wRC+ around 115 next year. There are still some holes in Julien’s game. He doesn’t make enough contact, especially on pitches in the zone. Combined with his preternatural patience, that leads to a big, scary strikeout rate of 31.4%. While that did help him fit in with the rest of Minnesota’s roster, it’s not exactly ideal.

Today we’re going to worry about a different part of Julien’s profile: hitting left-handed pitching. To say that it wasn’t a highlight of his rookie campaign would be an understatement. Julien’s splits against righties and lefties were downright historic. In fact, he took home the first annual Scooter Gennett Award for Offensive Asymmetry, which goes to the player with the largest difference between their wRC+ against righties and lefties (minimum 400 PAs). Since 2002, which is as far back as our main leaderboard tracks handedness splits, 4,418 player seasons have met that PA minimum. Gennett became the face of the award thanks to a 2014 season when he put up an excellent 118 wRC+ against righties and a downright depressing -40 against lefties. In 2023, Julien put up a wRC+ of 151 against righties and 22 against lefties, for a difference of 129. Since 2002, only 10 players have had a wider range.

Keep in mind, a lot of this is small sample size theater. There aren’t that many left-handed pitchers, and if your team doesn’t trust you to hit against them, you’re not going to get what few chances are available. This can also create a chicken-and-the-egg situation. You can get fewer PAs against lefties because you can’t hit them, or you can fail to hit lefties because you don’t see them often enough to get comfortable. Julien had just 48 PAs against lefties in 2023. Of the 4,418 seasons in our sample, only 42 of those players faced lefties less often than Julien’s 11.8%. Julien would probably improve against lefties if he ever got regular plate appearances against them, but even if he doesn’t, it would be foolish to assume that a wRC+ of 22 represents his true talent level.

However, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Back in December, Nick Nelson noted Julien’s splits with Double-A Wichita during the 2022 season. Julien slashed .332/.465/.566 against righties and .210/.373/.276 against lefties. If you’re keeping score at home, that works out to OPS splits of 1.031 and 649.

There’s one more important caveat before we dive into the numbers: The splits don’t matter that much. Most pitchers are righties. That means Julien will get to face righties most of the time, and it also means that finding a righty to platoon with him won’t be terribly hard. If his platoon splits were to stay exactly the same, Julien would still be a league-average hitter as long as he didn’t face lefties more than 40% of the time, and that’s not going to happen. Of our 4,418-season sample, only 27 players ever saw lefties that often.

However, none of that made me less curious about what was going on when Julien faced lefties, so I broke down the splits.

Edouard Julien’s Big Ol’ Platoon Splits
Split K% BB% BA OBP SLG wOBA xwOBA
Overall 31.4 15.7 .263 .381 .459 .366 .345
vs. RHP 31.1 17.2 .274 .401 .497 .388 .364
vs. LHP 33.3 4.2 .196 .229 .217 .202 .201
Difference +2.2 -13.0 -.078 -.172 -.280 -.186 -.163

His strikeout rate is higher against lefties, but the walk rate is what really jumps out. It’s 13 percentage points higher against righties than against lefties. That’s an enormous difference! All of our small sample size caveats apply, but in terms of walk rate, depending on the handedness of the pitcher, Julien goes from very nearly Juan Soto to literally worse than Javier Báez. Let’s take a look at what’s going on under the hood:

Edouard Julien’s Big Honkin’ Plate Discipline Splits
Split Swing% Z-Swing% O-Swing% Whiff% Z-Whiff% O-Whiff%
Overall 37.6 61.3 14.3 29.1 22.2 58.1
vs. RHP 36.9 61.1 13.5 28.3 21.7 57.0
vs. LHP 44.3 63.2 21.5 35.1 26.7 64.7
Difference +7.4 +2.1 +8.0 +6.8 +5.0 +7.7
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

Well that’s simple enough. Julien swings a lot more against lefties, especially outside the zone. He’s still patient by any reasonable standard; a 21.5% chase rate is still in something like the 92nd percentile. However, Julien also whiffs more, and not just outside the zone. His zone contact rate is already the most worrisome part of his profile, and against lefties it’s even worse.

Unfortunately, the problems don’t stop there. When he does put the ball in play against lefties, Julien not only hits the ball a lot softer, but he hits it straight into the ground.

Edouard Julien’s Big Freakin’ Batted Ball Splits
Split EV HH% Soft% Med% Hard% LA GB/FB GB%
Overall 89.1 44.9 13.1 54.2 32.7 7.8 2.10 50.2
vs. RHP 89.9 47.3 12.0 51.1 37.0 10.3 1.66 45.4
vs. LHP 84.5 30.0 20.0 73.3 6.7 -7.9 24.00 80.0
Difference -5.4 -17.3 8.0 22.2 -30.3 -18.2 22.34 34.6
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

There’s a big difference if you go by Statcast’s hard-hit rate, but take a look at the soft, medium, and hard percentages, which come from Sports Info Solutions. By their reckoning, Julien’s hard-hit rate is more than 30 percentage points lower against lefties. And then there’s the launch angle. Julien hits the ball on the ground more than would be ideal against righties, but against lefties? That’s not a typo; just one of Julien’s 30 batted balls was a fly ball. That’s how you get a 24:1 ratio of groundballs to fly balls. What does that look like in a heat map? It looks like never hitting the ball out of the infield.

This doesn’t seem to be a pitch location issue. When facing Julien, lefties have targeted the bottom of the zone more often than righties have, but only slightly. The same is true of his swing decisions. Julien swung at lower pitches from lefties, but just barely. It doesn’t seem to be a pitch type issue either. Against lefties, 56.7% of his balls in play against came on sinkers, breaking balls, or offspeed pitches, compared to 48.4% against righties. That’s not an insignificant difference, but it’s nowhere near enough to explain an 18.2-degree shift in launch angle. It just seems to be the way he hit the ball against lefties.

This is, I swear, the last time I remind you that everything I’ve just said is based on small samples, but seriously, the samples are very small. I’m hoping that we’ll get some bigger samples in 2024, but so far that doesn’t seem likely. He started just seven of the 38 games the Twins faced a left-handed starter with him on the roster, ceding the keystone to Kyle Farmer and Jorge Polanco. Polanco’s current contract ends after 2024, with a club option for 2025. Even if the trade rumors around Polanco turn out to be true, Farmer and the Twins just agreed on a one-year deal, avoiding arbitration, with a mutual option for 2025. It’s a bit disappointing. I would love to see what Julien could do over a bigger sample. If he does turn out to be passable against lefties, it would be extremely fun to watch and it could propel him to another level. And if it turns out that a 22 wRC+ really does represent his true talent level, that would be pretty interesting, too. More importantly, it would lock up the Scooter Gennett Award for Offensive Asymmetry for years to come.


When Are They All Coming?

Davy Andrews

Sometime during the second inning, I climb past a dozen rows of empty yellow seats toward the usher at the top of the section. “¿Cuando vienen todos?” I ask when she looks up. When are they all coming? This is my first Dominican Winter League game, and I was prepared for pandemonium: the energy, the blaring music, the crush of the crowd. Instead, the stadium is desolate.

The usher looks confused by my question, and I worry that my iffy Spanish is to blame. “¿Quién?” she asks. Who?

We look around the empty stadium, and though we say the exact same thing at the exact same time, our inflections couldn’t be more different. Mine is declarative: “La gente.” The people. Hers is interrogative: “¿La gente?” I realize that she wasn’t confused by my grammar; she was confused by the fact that I expected anyone to be here in the first place. My ears are too slow to process the entirety of her explanation, but I catch enough. This game doesn’t matter. The semi-final round of the playoffs begins in a few days and both teams have already clinched their spots. Nadie viene. Nobody’s coming. Read the rest of this entry »


Trading Cheesesteaks for Cheese Curds, Rhys Hoskins Joins the Brewers

Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
The free agent market is finally starting to move. Rhys Hoskins is headed to Milwaukee, finalizing a two-year, $34 million contract with an opt-out after the first year, per Scoop Czar Jeff Passan. You don’t have to squint to see the fit here. Milwaukee needs hitting, Hoskins needs a place to hit, and it’s always nice to feel wanted. The option effectively makes this a pillow contract for Hoskins, who ruptured his ACL in spring training and missed the entire 2023 season. (This seems like a good place to note that the deal is almost certainly still pending a physical.) If he proves that he can still hit like Rhys Hoskins, he can opt out and go after a bigger deal while he’s still a fresh-faced 31-year-old with the world at his feet, rather than a doddering, unemployable 32-year-old. If he needs another year to knock the rust off, well, I’ve heard great things about Milwaukee.

Hoskins ranked 20th on our Top 50 Free Agents. Ben Clemens estimated that he would receive a three-year contract for a total of $45 million, meaning that Hoskins fell short of the estimate in terms of years, but exceeded it in terms of average annual value. Michael Baumann did a lot of the legwork a couple weeks ago, so I’ll leave it to him to remind you of just how good a hitter Hoskins is:

The value that Hoskins brings is obvious. His power can be streaky on a game-to-game basis — a danger of being a three true outcome-heavy hitter — but in the aggregate, he’s one of the most consistent players in baseball. Hoskins is a career .242/.353/492 hitter, with a 13.5% walk rate and a 23.9% strikeout rate. That’s a career wRC+ of 126.

In four full seasons in the majors (discounting Hoskins’ 50-game rookie season and the 41 games he played in 2020), he’s never been worth more than 2.4 WAR, nor less than 2.0. His full-season career low in wRC+ is 112, while his full-season career high is 128. You can like or dislike the total package, but you know what you’re going to get.

Read the rest of this entry »