Jacob Misiorowski didn’t just flummox the Cardinals. Sure, when the 23-year-old right-hander made his big league debut in front of 26,687 very pumped Milwaukee fans last Thursday night, he confounded the St. Louis lineup until a leg cramp and a lightly rolled ankle ended his evening after five no-hit innings. But he also baffled Statcast. “Sinker,” read the graphic at the bottom of the screen when Misiorowski rocketed a 100-mph four-seamer into the bottom of the zone for the first pitch of the game. His changeup often went down as a sinker, his curveball went down as a cutter, and his slider was sometimes classified as a cutter and sometimes as a four-seamer.

The classifications were working perfectly by the end of the game, but even early on, you can’t really blame Statcast here. For one thing, it didn’t have a baseline expectation to work from because this was Misiorowski’s debut. For another, all of these pitches really did look like fastballs. I don’t just mean that in a jokey way. I mean it very, very literally. Nearly every pitch Misiorowski throws really does look like a fastball; I was planning on writing about it before I even learned about the Statcast side of things. “That’s how I throw,” he said after the game. “Every pitch is trying to throw 100%.” Read the rest of this entry »

If you played baseball as a kid, you’re familiar with the phrase “a walk’s as good as a hit.” Your coaches probably shouted it at you. You probably shouted it yourself when your friend was at the plate with a three-ball count. Shouting a bromide is one thing, but believing it is another. We didn’t really buy it as kids, and for a while now, we’ve been able to quantify the difference. This season, hits have a wOBA of 1.129, while walks have a wOBA of .694. A walk, it turns out, is 61.5% as good as a hit. All of our coaches were liars.

On Wednesday, I was checking to see where Alejandro Kirk’s wOBAcon – his wOBA when he makes contact – ranked in relation to the rest of the league. The top of the list caught my eye. It couldn’t help but catch my eye. Aaron Judge is so far ahead of the pack he may as well be playing a different sport. He’s currently running a .685 wOBAcon. The difference between Judge and Cal Raleigh in second place is the same as the difference between Raleigh and Brandon Lowe in 47th place. Here’s the most shocking way I can find to express just how absurd Aaron Judge’s wOBAcon is right now: When Aaron Judge puts the ball in play, he’s nearly as good as a walk.

I know that may not sound particularly sexy, but that number is remarkable. A walk is a sure thing. It’s a bird in the hand. Putting the ball in play is a gamble. The league as a whole has a .362 wOBA on batted balls. A walk is nearly twice as valuable. This is why every couple years we write a whole mess of articles about how if batters were really smart, they’d just stop swinging. But there’s Aaron Judge, so, so, very close to having his batted balls be as valuable as a walk. He’s just nine points of wOBA away. That’s nothing. It’s the value of a popup to the second baseman.

If all this talk about Judge and the value of a walk is giving you déjà vu, that’s because just about a month ago, Ben Clemens wrote a whole article about when it makes sense to walk Judge intentionally. We’ll circle back to that point, but the first thing I did when I saw that number was try to figure out just how special it was. Turns out it’s pretty special.

I checked the pitch tracking era first. Since 2008, Judge is the only player in baseball to break a .600 wOBAcon. He’s done it three times, going .600 in 2017, .602 in 2022, and .617 in 2024. Mike Trout’s never done it. Shohei Ohtani, Yordan Alvarez, no one but Aaron Judge has done it, and this season he’s surpassing his 2024 mark by, at present, 68 points. Judge will likely cool off at some point, and over at MLB.com, Mike Petriello has addressed how much of his sky-high BABIP is the result of luck and how much is just coming from the fact that it’s really hard to field a ball that’s been hit at the speed of sound.

Still, this made me really curious. I started wondering whether anyone had ever been as valuable as a walk when they put the ball in play. That meant a lot of math, because wOBAcon isn’t readily available for players who preceded the pitch tracking era. I wanted to go all the way back to 1901, so I had to reverse engineer it by myself (and when I say “by myself,” I mean “with the help of Ben Clemens because he’s good at math”). I pulled the stats for every qualified player-season since 1901, so I had everybody’s wOBA and counting stats. I split each player’s plate appearances into three sections: balls in play, strikeouts, and walks/hit by pitches. To calculate the number of balls in play, I took at-bats, subtracted strikeouts, then added the number of sacrifices. Then I got to the algebra and set up an equation that looked like this:

Total wOBA = (BIPwOBA x BIP%) + (BBwOBA x BB%) + (KwOBA x K%)

(Since strikeouts have a wOBA of zero, I didn’t actually need the third part. It would always equal zero.) At that point, my numbers didn’t look quite right, so I went to Ben, who taught me that for arcane reasons, hit by pitches have a different wOBA from walks and intentional walks don’t count toward wOBA at all, so I had to rework my calculations some.

The numbers still weren’t perfect, sometimes because of rounding issues, but more often because we don’t have all the data, like intentional walks and sacrifices, for older players. With the help of Stathead’s Katie Sharp, I incorporated intentional walk data from Retrosheet to the players in the top 20. The Retrosheet data isn’t official, but it made the numbers more accurate, and I care more about that. So keep in mind that this isn’t iron-clad, but here you go, the highest wOBAcons ever recorded in a qualified season:

Eight of the top spots belong to Aaron Judge and Babe Ruth; Ruth’s 1927 Murderer’s Row season also ranked 11th at .589. Judge is only one point above the all-time record, so he’ll almost certainly lose it at some point over the next 97 games, but he’s still 50 points above the third-place entry and 90 points above 10th place. He’s staying on this top 10 list unless something horrible happens.

More importantly, the answer to our question is “no.” Nobody’s has ever been as valuable as a walk when they put the ball in play. As a matter of fact, Judge is closer this season than anyone else has ever been. He may not beat Ruth in terms of overall wOBAcon, but keep in mind that wOBA is a seasonal constant. It changes every year based on the run-scoring environment. Back in 1920, walks had a wOBA of .741. This season, Judge’s wOBAcon is 98.7% the value of a walk. Ruth was at 92.3% in 1920, and that was the only season when anyone had ever reached 90%. If we look at things that way, Judge has two of the top three seasons of all-time, plus his current campaign, which is in first place and will likely stay there even after his BABIP luck runs out:

Judge still has a shot at reaching the magic number, though he’d have to hit even better to do so. I don’t think that’s really something we can ask of Judge right now. It’d kind of be like if you were an Athenian and Pheidippides had just run all the way from Marathon and shouted, “We win!” and collapsed and died, and then you started nudging him with your sandal and saying, “That’s great buddy, but now that you’re back, could you run and get me a sandwich?”

Still, let’s get back to Ben’s article. Ben combined Judge’s stats over the last four seasons with a run expectancy matrix and win expectancy numbers to figure out when it was smarter to put Judge on than to let him hit. Ben allowed for a wider range, but the math indicated that the answer was very narrow: in the ninth inning of a one-run game, with two outs and a runner on second or third. That’s it. Other than that situation, it’s smarter to pitch to Judge than to walk him. A lot of this discussion is centered around risk aversion. It’s scary to give up a 500-foot homer to Aaron Judge, and that makes you overreact, giving him a free base when the numbers say that’s not the smart move. But maybe we’re right to be scared of Aaron Judge. First of all, he’s run a ludicrous 239 wRC+ since that article came out. That’s somehow worse than the comical 248 mark he had at the time, but it also represented an improvement on the numbers that Ben was running. Those numbers went back to 2022, when Judge ran a pathetic 206 wRC+. It makes more sense to walk Judge intentionally now than it did back in May.

Knowing all this, I’d like to run a quick scenario by you. Say you’re a pitcher facing down Aaron Judge. First of all, I’m so sorry. No one deserves to be in this position, and you should check and see whether you have any legal recourse against whoever got you into this mess. Second, take a moment to ask yourself a question: Can I strike out Aaron Judge? Seriously. Judge strikes out at a roughly average rate, which means that nearly 77% of the time that he comes to the plate, he doesn’t strike out. So be honest with yourself. Do you have it today? Is the slider biting? Does the ball feel good in your hand, or are the seams a little flatter than you’d like them to be? Did you sleep OK last night? If your answer to any of those questions is something other than, “Hell yeah, let me at him,” then it’s a very firm “no.” If you can strike out Aaron Judge, then by all means, pitch to him. You’ve got a 51% chance of getting him out and just a 15% chance of giving up extra bases. But if you don’t feel like you can strike him out, if your choice is either a walk or a batted ball, then you should probably just put him on. He’s 99% as good as a walk anyway.

Something weird is happening with Alejandro Kirk. It’s not that he’s having a great season. That’s not weird at all. Kirk ranks third among catchers with 2.4 WAR and 21st among all players. He’s also hitting much better than he has in the past two seasons, but that’s not necessarily weird either. After combining for a wRC+ of 95 in 2023 and 2024, Kirk has a 129 wRC+ this season, the same as he ran in 2022, when he was an All-Star and won the Silver Slugger. He’s always been great with the glove, and it now looks like his bat is back. His .370 xwOBA and 119 DRC+ are also his best since 2022.

What’s weird is that he’s hitting the ball harder – much, much harder – but he’s not necessarily hitting for more power. Let me show you what I mean with a table. Below are a bunch of contact-quality metrics for the five full seasons of Kirk’s career. On the far right is his isolated power. Usually, contact quality and power are pretty much synonymous. If you hit the ball hard, you’re going to end up with doubles, triples, and homers. Usually.

This season, Kirk is running the highest average exit velocity, 90th percentile exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and slugging percentage of his entire career, and not by a little bit. These are huge jumps. Everyone’s favorite 5’8” catcher is in the 97th percentile in hard-hit rate! Yet his ISO is merely the third best of his career, a mere nine points above last season’s mark. I’m curious about why Kirk is hitting the ball so much harder all of a sudden, and I’m curious about why it’s not resulting in a massive power spike. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been writing about Cal Raleigh a lot lately, as we should. He’s currently on pace for 9.9 WAR, which would constitute the greatest season of all time for a catcher. Although his defense has taken a step back from its previous heights, Raleigh is running an absurd 182 wRC+ and leading baseball with 26 home runs. He’ll have to come down to Earth at some point, but he’s all but certain to lead all catchers in home runs for the third straight season. He’s nearly doubled the second-place Logan O’Hoppe’s 14. Raleigh has a real shot to break Salvador Perez’s record of 48 home runs by a catcher – if he keeps up his current pace, he’ll break it by 16 homers!

On May 19, Ben Clemens wrote about how well Raleigh’s new, more selective approach was working out. Even though Raleigh was taking more pitches over the heart of the plate in hitter’s counts (a trend that has continued in the ensuing weeks), the patience has allowed him to get ahead more often and do damage. “Does all of this mean that Raleigh is going to maintain his 170 wRC+?” Ben asked. “No way.” That was the only answer he could have given. To suggest otherwise would have been sabermetric malpractice. But, uh, Raleigh didn’t exactly regress back to the mean from there on out. From May 20 to June 8, Raleigh was the best hitter in baseball, slashing .348/.427/.894 with 13 homers for a 267 wRC+. His average exit velocity was 97.2 mph! That’s what it takes to – barely – hit better than Aaron Judge. Read the rest of this entry »

The wait is over. On Monday, the Red Sox called up Roman Anthony, the consensus top prospect in baseball. He batted fifth and played right field against the Rays, going 0-for-4 with a walk, an RBI, and a costly error. After spending the last few seasons absolutely torching the minors, it turns out Anthony just needed to smash a 497-foot grand slam – the longest ball hit in either the majors or the minors this season – in order to earn his spot in Boston.

What really brought Anthony to Boston was a left oblique strain to Wilyer Abreu, whom the Red Sox placed on the IL when they announced Anthony’s promotion (though the 497-footer certainly couldn’t have hurt). The team designated Ryan Noda for assignment to open a 40-man roster spot.

After all the anticipation, the promotion happened at the very last minute; there were no tear-jerker undercover boss videos. Although Abreu showed discomfort during Friday’s game against the Yankees, the team wasn’t sure until Monday afternoon that he’d actually need to go on the IL. The Triple-A Worcester Red Sox were on the bus about to head to their next series in the Lehigh Valley when the big club called and asked them to wait. Everybody piled off the bus, but the team’s gear was already en route to Pennsylvania. So Anthony drove up the Mass Pike after getting the news and played the game in borrowed cleats. Luckily, teammate Marcelo Mayer already had one of Anthony’s bats.

The Red Sox could certainly use a savior right about now. At 32-36, they’re in fourth place in the East, nine games behind the Yankees, and 4 1/2 games out of the final Wild Card spot. We currently have them with a 15.7% chance of making the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »

I humbly request that you watch the following home run three times. During your initial pass, I merely ask that you permit yourself to marvel at the power of Pete Alonso. Exclaim, should you feel so moved. This level of ferocity certainly merits stiffer punctuation than a period can provide.

The second time you take it in, allow yourself to focus on the reactions. Catcher Dalton Rushing and baserunner Brandon Nimmo offer an illuminating interplay. Nimmo cranes his head toward the heavens and prepares to tag up on the play in spite of the fact that the ball goes on to land some 900 feet past the left field wall. Rushing recognizes at once that the ball has attained escape velocity, and he reacts by lifting his hands with enough suddenness and precision to send you searching the web for the phrase “rude Italian hand gestures.” A couple behind the plate provides a master class in the Long O sound:

SHE: Whoa.
HE: [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Nooo.
SHE: Ohhhh!

On your third pass, please focus exclusively on pitcher Ryan Loutos as he crumbles into dust. The young pitcher’s delivery is a study in contrasts. He’s all elbows and knees as he drops and drives, but he finishes with such rotational force that his follow-through twists him all the way around toward first base, torso first, arms and right leg swinging forward in neat arcs to catch up. He’s linear then rotational, angled then curved, herky-jerky then smooth. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not the results. I mean, it’s not not the results. Nobody feels good about an 0-4 record or a 5.68 ERA. But while the top line numbers are reason enough to worry about Spencer Strider, changes to his delivery and pitch shapes point to deeper concerns. The 26-year-old right-hander has made just four starts this season, but it’s reasonable to ask whether he’ll ever regain the form that just two years ago made him one of the most dominant forces in the game.

First and foremost, this stinks. Strider is a charismatic young player who’s easy to root for. When he’s at his best, standing bow-legged on the mound with his muscles threatening to shred his uniform pants, blowing 100-mph heat past anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in the batter’s box, he’s appointment viewing. After a cup of coffee in 2021, Strider burst onto the scene a fully-formed ace in 2022, laying waste to the league with a 98-mph fastball, a wicked slider, and a rumor of a changeup. From 2022 to 2023, his 2.43 FIP was the best among all starters, and his 10.3 WAR trailed only Kevin Gausman’s 10.7. Strider’s 3.36 ERA was 16th-best among starters with at least 300 innings pitched, and he looked for all the world like he would spend the rest of the decade as a true ace. Four games back from the internal brace surgery that wiped out nearly all of his 2024 season, we’re forced to reassess. Read the rest of this entry »

When I wrote a few weeks ago about how Kyle Schwarber deserves to be the first player in baseball history to get not his own bobblehead doll, but rather his own bobble helmet doll, I neglected to mention one thing. Schwarber has been brilliant this season. He’s off to the best start of his entire career. Schwarber is currently running a 164 wRC+, which makes him the eighth-best qualified hitter in baseball. His 19 home runs and 16% walk rate both rank in the top five. That excellent spring is all the more impressive considering that Schwarber is, relatively speaking, something of a slow starter. He owns a career 110 wRC+ in March and April, followed by a 115 mark in May, then a 145 mark in June. This season, he just started out hot and got even hotter. Here’s a table that shows his wOBA in March and April through his entire career:

Schwarber has had plenty of hot streaks like this one before, but never to lead off a season. Moreover, the way he’s doing it is different. With Joey Gallo attempting to reinvent himself as a pitcher, Schwarber stands alone as the game’s foremost practitioner of the Three True Outcomes, but he’s doing his best to abandon one of those outcomes. He’s currently running a 24.4% strikeout rate, which would represent the lowest rate of his career and a drop of more than four percentage points compared to last season. In addition to lowering his strikeout rate, Schwarber is doing more damage than ever when he puts the ball in play. His .499 wOBAcon and .531 xwOBAcon are the best marks of his entire career. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Hannah Keyser, of the excellent Bandwagon newsletter, threw down the gauntlet on Bluesky. She posted a screenshot from MLB Network’s daily research packet and wrote, “I challenge the researches at MLBN who put out the daily stat packet to find a split that makes the Rockies look good.” The screenshot featured a single line of text:

The daily research packet is exactly what it sounds like, a multi-page document that contains tons of research on the day’s slate of games, broken down into bit-sized pieces of interesting information. A team of researchers assembles it each morning, then distributes it far and wide across the baseball media ecosphere. Although you’ve probably never seen this document, it has unquestionably informed your experience as a fan. Each broadcast team has its own researchers, of course, but if you’re watching a game and you hear the announcer casually mention that Mickey Moniak is batting .333 with a .476 slugging percentage when he represents the go-ahead run, you can feel pretty confident that they read that fun fact verbatim from the packet. Read the rest of this entry »

Just over a year ago, the Brewers made the best kind of baseball history: weird baseball history. On May 31, 2024, they hosted the White Sox in Milwaukee, shellacking them 12-5. That part wasn’t weird. It’s hard to imagine anything less weird than the 2024 White Sox losing a baseball game (unless it’s the 2025 Rockies losing a baseball game). The weird part was how the Brewers beat the White Sox. They put up 23 hits, and 16 of those hits came on groundballs. That’s the most groundball base hits ever recorded since the pitch tracking era began in 2008. Would you like to see them all? Of course you would.

That’s what a record looks like. Groundball after groundball finding the various nooks and crannies that made the 2024 White Sox defense so similar to an English muffin. We’ve been waiting until this game’s anniversary to write about it. According to Baseball Savant, since 2008, only one other team has surpassed 12 groundball base hits in a single game. The White Sox tallied 15 against the Tigers on September 14, 2017. And that’s it. That’s the only team that came within three groundball hits of Milwaukee. First, let’s talk about how the Brewers pulled off this feat of worm-burning ingenuity.

As with any record, a fair bit of luck was involved. Balls took crazy hops off the mound and the first base bag. The Brewers hit a perfectly placed chopper and sent a ball hugging the third base line on a check swing. They wouldn’t have broken the record if any one of those balls had bounced another way. But as the saying goes, luck is the residue of design, and there was plenty of design involved here too. Read the rest of this entry »