Slade Cecconi must have been nervous. Staring down the first batter of his big league career, the 24-year-old couldn’t quite get on top of a 2-2 curveball. The looping pitch floated harmlessly past LaMonte Wade Jr., well above the strike zone for ball three. Wade called time out, and Cecconi used the respite to take a few calming breaths before returning to the rubber.

For the sixth pitch in a row, catcher Jose Herrera set up on the outside corner. For the sixth pitch in a row, Cecconi overthrew it, yanking a four-seamer toward the left-hand batter’s box. Wade had no time to react as it screamed in toward his hands at 94.8 mph. Only after the ball had made contact did he recoil, leaning away so far and so fast that he had to start jogging backward toward first base just to keep from falling over. Then things started to get stuck. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies and Tigers are at it again. After a five-player swap back in January, Dave Dombrowski is making another trade with his former club. With the top five teams in the NL wild card race currently separated by a grand total of one game in the loss column, the Phillies, currently in command of the second wild card spot by a whopping half a game, decided to grab a reinforcement for the rotation and bullpen, trading prospect Hao-Yu Lee to the Tigers in exchange for right-hander Michael Lorenzen. They also designated veteran utility man Josh Harrison for assignment to make room for Lorenzen on the 40-man roster. And at least one Phillies player is very excited about this trade:

Brandon Marsh, who played with Michael Lorenzen in 2022 with the Angels, says he is a “great pitcher, an incredible teammate, and has big biceps.”

“He’s gonna be a great fit here. I’m super excited to see him again and give him a hug. I hope he picks me up. He’s strong.”

— Alex Coffey (@byalexcoffey) August 1, 2023

The 31-year-old Lorenzen, who will be a free agent this winter, is in the midst of his best season since 2020, running a 3.58 ERA and a 3.88 FIP. That improvement has largely come via limiting walks: after averaging a 9.9% walk rate from 2017 to ’19, he’s at 6.5% this season. He’s done that not by increasing his chase rate, but simply by throwing more pitches in the zone, with his zone rate rising from 39.8% in 2022 to 45.7% this year. Lorenzen throws four pitches more than 10% of the time — four-seamer, slider, changeup, and sinker — and is throwing all of them in the zone more often this season than last. In doing so, he traded some whiffs for some called strikes, a swap that has so far paid off. He’s also improved dramatically against lefties, with a .279 wOBA against them this year, down from a career mark of .323.

There’s a troubling trend worth noting, though. Lorenzen’s 4.80 DRA is higher than his 2022 mark of 4.32. His average exit velocity and barrel rate are at career highs, and while his .323 wOBAcon is right in line with last year’s .329 mark, his .362 xwOBAcon is the highest since his rookie season in 2015. Lorenzen might be getting a little lucky on balls in play or getting a little extra help from his defense. Both of those tricks will be harder to pull off at Citizens Bank Park than they were at Comerica Park. Still, it might help your wOBAcon just a bit when the center fielder is willing to run through a brick wall for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Two former Mets are on the move from one playoff contender to another, with the Guardians trading Amed Rosario to the Dodgers in exchange for Noah Syndergaard and $2 million. The Dodgers receive a shortstop who, despite having a down year, adds a much-needed right-handed bat to their lineup. The Guardians receive a pitcher who had a 7.16 ERA before he landed on the IL nearly two months ago. In all, it makes for a seemingly lopsided challenge trade. Imagine going back to the fall of 2018 and explaining to yourself that a straight-up trade of Syndergaard for Rosario would seem a little light for the team receiving the former, but don’t actually do it, because your 2018 self’s head would explode, and you’d alter the space-time continuum.

The deal came into public consciousness on Wednesday evening piecemeal, via a flurry of tweets from several of baseball’s leading bombardiers. Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers reported that a deal for Rosario was approaching, Ken Rosenthal confirmed it, and Pat Ragazzo reported that Syndergaard would be the corresponding piece from Los Angeles. Jon Heyman was the first to indicate that the Dodgers were sending money to the Guardians, and Zack Meisel reported the amount. If you’re a news-breaker who didn’t get to announce the terms of at least one part of this trade, it might be time to get out of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

It was the third inning of the All-Star Game, and John Smoltz and Joe Davis were marveling at Freddie Freeman. That part’s not particularly surprising. Who among us hasn’t marveled at Freddie Freeman? The Dodger first baseman worked a full count off Sonny Gray, then resisted a tempting fastball at the letters for ball four.

As Freeman jogged to first, Smoltz shared some of the wisdom he picked up during his Hall of Fame career: “The biggest thing pitchers want to find out with all the information that’s given: Where is the guy more likely to chase? And rarely do they chase up and down. It’s usually down or up. And then you try to pitch accordingly to the strength. And where Sonny Gray’s strength is, is down. He’ll surprise you up, but he wants to get you out down.”

Whenever I hear Smoltz articulate a hypothesis about the game, I find myself torn. The man has seen an awful lot of baseball, and I don’t want to discount that experience, but he’s also made some pretty outlandish-seeming claims before. Best to be a bit skeptical and double check his math, as it were. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Anderson’s game has always been a high-wire act. He never walks, he chases constantly, he’s completely BABIP-dependent and allergic to hitting the ball in the air, and his defense at shortstop has never quite been great enough to cover for a down year at the plate. Over the last four seasons, as projection systems crunched the underlying numbers and predicted that he’d plummet to the earth, Anderson refused to look down, putting up a 123 wRC+ and 13.6 WAR. Factoring in the time he lost to injuries and a global pandemic, that’s a 4.1-win pace per 500 PAs, or a 5.9-win pace per 162 games. Despite all the time he missed, Anderson was the 27th-most valuable position player in baseball over that span; only one of the 26 players ahead of him appeared in fewer games.

Anderson’s ability to shoot singles into right field and spray line drives across the entire diamond won him a batting title and a Silver Slugger, and earned him berths in the World Baseball Classic and two All-Star Games. It also made him fun to watch, a throwback who put the ball in play and used his legs, but also had the pop to blow a game wide open.

This season, the wire has snapped. The homerless Anderson has been worth -0.9 WAR, and his 49 wRC+ is the worst among all qualified players. After running a .347 BABIP last year, right at his career average, Anderson’s BABIP is .294. Maybe gravity was always going to kick in this fast when Anderson’s Wile E. Coyote routine stopped working, but it feels awfully sudden for a player who put up a 110 wRC+ just last year:

Read the rest of this entry »

Before this season, Nick Madrigal had spent just one inning at third base. It was in a showcase game; he was a high schooler. Madrigal played a fair bit of shortstop at Oregon State, but he has always primarily been a second baseman. Then in December, the Cubs signed Dansby Swanson, bumping Nico Hoerner over to second and Madrigal into a utility role.

Madrigal took the change in stride. He started a long toss regimen to improve his arm strength, and said all the right things to the press:

Bench coach Andy Green even flew out to Arizona to spend a week helping him get up to speed at the hot corner. All of that work seems to have paid off. So far this season, Madrigal has spent 53 innings at second and 303.2 at third. As a third baseman, DRS and OAA both have him at +4, DRP has him at +1.1, and UZR has him at -0.1. Again, that’s after exactly playing exactly one inning at the position when he was a teenager.

It looks like Madrigal’s regular playing time at third is coming to an end, though. Patrick Wisdom is returning from the IL, and Madrigal just started his own IL stint due to a right hamstring strain. It’s a disheartening development for many reasons: Because he needed season-ending surgery on that same hamstring in 2021; because it makes his spot on the Cubs’ roster even more precarious; because he was on pace to have the most productive season of his young career; and because he does something really fun when he plays third base. I’ve been struggling with how to put it into words, so before I make my attempt, let’s see if you can spot it for yourself.

I don’t have a good sense of whether or not you’ll notice what I want you to notice. Maybe you saw it right away. Maybe you’re a Cubs fan and you already noticed it earlier this year. Or maybe it’s the kind of thing that you don’t notice until someone points it out, and then you can never not notice it. To make it a little easier, I combined two frames from that clip: I took the moment when Madrigal fielded the ball, then I added the moment when he threw it over to first.

Those two Nick Madrigals are in very, very different places. The first one is fielding the ball in a normal position roughly 15 feet behind the bag. Somehow the second one is way over on the right, about to make his throw with a foot on the infield grass. That’s a whole lot of infield to traverse right in the middle of a routine groundout. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes there’s a difference between returning and being back. After tearing his right ACL in July of 2021, Ronald Acuña Jr. returned on April 28, 2022. He put up a solid 2.1 WAR over 119 games, a 2.9-win pace. Think of him as Paul McCartney in 1970, releasing the solid but uninspiring McCartney on the heels of a regrettable rupture. This year, Acuña is back. He’s Paul McCartney in 1971, authoring an all-time classic in Ram. Please don’t examine this metaphor any further because it can’t stand up to scrutiny (but please give Ram a listen because it can).

Acuña has put up 4.9 WAR and a 166 wRC+ and racked up outfield assists on throws beautiful enough to make an angel cry (or a Cardinal, or a Padre).

Acuña is slashing .335/.412./.589, and for what it’s worth, his 166 wRC+ might be the result of a bit of bad luck. His .459 xwOBA is 34 points higher than his actual wOBA. It’s also the highest in the league, even higher than You Know Who. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know if this happens to my colleagues, but I get attached to the players I write about. I can’t help it. Cormac McCarthy once wrote, “Things separate from their stories have no meaning,” and I’ve found that learning a player’s story, even if it’s just the story of why they need to lay off the slider, is enough to imbue them with an extra layer of meaning. Last year, I wrote about Jose Altuve after both the ALDS and the ALCS. It made me feel more connected to him, and during the World Series, whenever he came to the plate when my fiancée was in the room, I’d say, “That’s my little guy!” I really said that (and she really married me anyway).

Back in spring training, I wrote up our Positional Power Rankings for third base. It was a real crash course. We had projections for 149 different third basemen, and I needed to learn enough about each of them to articulate an opinion on what they’d do this year and why. I learned a lot about what I value when it comes to player performance. The exercise also informed the way I’ve watched the game this year. Diving deep into a league of third basemen, I formed attachments to all these players, especially the young ones, as I read prospect evaluations and beat reports and thought about their potential. Now that we’re nearing the halfway mark, here’s an update on the rookies I’ve been rooting for. Read the rest of this entry »

So here’s what happened. I was watching the MLB game highlights of Tuesday’s Marlins-Blue Jays matchup. I like MLB’s game highlights; in order to keep all the quick cuts from feeling disjointed, they kind of just plop some music on top everything unceremoniously, and sometimes the music can really color your perception of the game. This Mets-Padres game from April is a great example. It was a nailbiter, but it lost some of its nerve-wracking heft thanks to a soundtrack that’s a cross between John Coltrane, Kool & The Gang, and Super Mario 3.

Two on, two out, bottom of the ninth, and it sounds like the monologue is about to start on Saturday Night Live. Anyway, I was watching Tuesday’s Marlins-Jays highlights (the soundtrack for which sounds like The Living End on their union-mandated lunch break), and I noticed this single from Luis Arraez.

Normally, a single from Arraez is about the least remarkable thing in baseball. He is the game’s preeminent singles hitter (and depending on your worldview, perhaps the game’s preeminent hitter, period). What caught my eye was how quickly Daulton Varsho managed to cut this ball off, considering that Arraez slashed it just a foot inside the left field line. Varsho gets fantastic jumps, but I figured he also had to be playing extremely shallow. It occurred to me that maybe every outfielder is playing right on top of Arraez this year, seeing as dumping liners right in front of the outfielders for singles is his superpower. Read the rest of this entry »

If we’ve written it once, we’ve written it a hundred times: Pirates third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes is a solid player, but if he could just figure out how to hit the ball in the air, he’d be a star. Well, here we are in June 2023, and it appears that Hayes has finally started elevating the ball some.

For the second season in a row, Hayes has knocked at least five percentage points off his groundball rate, increased his hard-hit rate and average exit velocity, and more than doubled his launch angle. And for the second season in a row, his overall performance at the plate has stayed almost exactly the same. Let me say this very clearly: We were wrong. We are so sorry. We will work to do better in the future. Let’s take a look at what exactly Hayes has been doing to make liars out of us. Read the rest of this entry »