The ability to stay on the field is a critical component of a player’s value, though much of it is out of their hands. Players do their best to stay healthy and game-ready, but the wear and tear of the season on a body is a significant challenge. Injuries of all kinds and severities emerge unwelcome; performance slumps necessitate days of rest or warrant other players’ chances; and illnesses pass through the petri dishes that are clubhouses.

With so many unpreventable interventions, it can hardly be held against a player that he isn’t able to suit up 162 times in 185 or so days. It’s a remarkable thing to ask of anyone, let alone a professional athlete; I’ve never done that in any job I’ve worked, and my career hasn’t involved trying to hit a round ball with a round bat, squarely, as Ted Williams once put it. But those who do are reaching an achievement seemingly unmatched across professional sports and are deserving of a little extra recognition. Read the rest of this entry »

Last season’s rookie class introduced us to some instant stars. Julio Rodríguez and Adley Rutschman became the first pair of rookies to reach 5.0 WAR in the same season since Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki in 2001. Teammates Michael Harris II and Spencer Strider were just shy of 5.0 WAR themselves, with the latter’s 4.9 the highest total by a rookie pitcher since Hideo Nomo in 1995. Rodriguez, Rutschman, and Harris were all top-25 position players in baseball by WAR, with Steven Kwan not far behind at 30th, and Strider finished eighth among pitchers despite spending the first two months of the season in the bullpen.

This year, an arguably more impressive barrage of talented youngsters has arrived in clubhouses across the league. Corbin Carroll currently ranks eighth in WAR thanks to a .376 wOBA and the most baserunning value in the league at 11.0 runs above average; he’s running away with the NL Rookie of the Year Award. James Outman is helping the Dodgers out with a productive (if streaky) bat and centerfield defense worthy of his name. Gunnar Henderson shook off a slow start at the plate with a productive summer, clearing 3.0 WAR before the calendar turned to September and positioning himself as an award candidate in the AL. Matt McLain (who is battling an oblique injury at the moment) and the Giants’ Patrick Bailey didn’t even arrive until mid-May, but both have reached the 3.0 WAR mark in under 100 games. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the Rangers and Diamondbacks played a classic at Chase Field. It started as a pitcher’s duel between Jordan Montgomery, who pitched beautifully over eight scoreless frames, and a cadre of Diamondbacks pitchers led by bulk man Slade Cecconi, who allowed the only run of the first eight innings on a solo shot off the bat of Adolis García. Then, things got chaotic. From the ninth inning on, the game swung from an 88.4% chance of a Texas win to an 81.3% likelihood for Arizona, then back to 95.1% odds in favor of the Rangers before a final swing back to the D-backs on a Tommy Pham walk-off double. Not to be confused for the heart rates of each team’s fans Monday evening, the win probability chart came out looking like this:

Last week, Ben Clemens wrote about how neat Win Probability Added is, and its merits as a part of the MVP discussion. While Ben’s piece made the great point that WPA is not “just a storytelling statistic,” lobbying for its use in measuring value over a season, its storytelling powers are indeed pretty remarkable. So much of the drama within Monday’s game was made quantifiable by measuring the shifts in win probability. Ketel Marte’s game-tying homer in the ninth was worth .467 WPA, or 46.7 percentage points of win probability; Nathaniel Lowe’s go-ahead double was worth .454; Tommy Pham’s walk-off was worth .754, the 11th-highest WPA value for any single play this year. That’s three hits that turned the game on its head, and then back on its feet, and then back on its head again. Read the rest of this entry »

Among all 30 big league franchises, the Guardians have one of the richest recent histories of developing pitchers. Dating back to the days of CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee, Cleveland always seems to be churning out young pitching from a stockpile of talent acquired through the draft, international free agency, and the trade market. Coming into the 2023 season, the team’s rotation already featured four former Guardians draft picks — Shane Bieber, Aaron Civale, Zach Plesac, and Triston McKenzie — and the onslaught doesn’t show signs of stopping.

In April, the Guardians promoted a pair of top-100 prospects to their starting rotation in Logan Allen (No. 63 on The Board at the beginning of 2023) and Tanner Bibee (No. 74). In June, Gavin Williams (No. 76) made his big league debut. With Bieber, McKenzie, and Cal Quantrill missing time to injury and Civale traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline, a full 47 starts have gone to this trio of 24-year-old rookies – plus another 17 to less-highly touted prospects Peyton Battenfield, Hunter Gaddis, and Xzavion Curry:

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After a frantic trade deadline with an excess of buyers, a few committed sellers fielding offers, and a handful of in-betweeners on the cusp of contention, the month of August is doing its best to separate the real contenders from the rest. Ten days in, five teams — the Angels, Yankees, Guardians, Reds and Diamondbacks — have seen their playoff chances slashed by more than half, and a sixth (the Red Sox) has gone from 24.6% to 13.8%. Meanwhile, the Rangers responded to a late-July skid with an eight-game winning streak, the Cubs doubled their playoff odds with series wins over the Reds and Braves, the Phillies played their way into the top Wild Card spot in the National League, and the Mariners swept the Angels and Padres to leapfrog New York, Boston, and Los Angeles in the AL Wild Card race. It’s been quite the shuffle for a ten-day stretch.

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The Atlanta Braves made another fine-tuning move on Tuesday, bringing in veteran left-hander Brad Hand from Colorado in exchange for minor league right-hander Alec Barger. Hand joins his ninth big league club – his seventh since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season – where he’ll factor into a righty-heavy bullpen stocked with veterans. (With his latest relocation, Hand is a lock for the Immaculate Grid Hall of Fame, though Rich Hill was not to be outdone and found himself yet another team Tuesday afternoon.)

The Braves, who are just 7-8 since the All-Star break, already had significant pitching help coming by way of the injured list. They activated lefty A.J. Minter on Monday and stand to get Max Fried back soon, with Dylan Lee and Kyle Wright hopefully returning in the coming weeks as well. But Hand gives them another veteran option with just about every type of experience a relief pitcher can offer. After acquiring backup infielder Nicky Lopez – the third Lopez to get dealt at this year’s deadline – for the recently-acquired Taylor Hearn on Sunday, the Hand deal is another low-cost upgrade to a team that is fully intent on making a run at a championship this October. At season’s end, Hand and the Braves have what is now a $7 million mutual option for 2024, with a $500,000 buyout.

Hand’s 2023 isn’t particularly shiny, but some of that is the result of one particularly bad outing. He’s given up 18 earned runs in 35.2 innings over 40 outings, but four of those came on July 2, when he walked three and gave up a grand slam to Jake Marisnick in Denver. Take that line off his game log and he’d have a 3.63 ERA instead of his actual 4.54 mark (next to a 4.03 FIP and 4.07 xFIP), while his walk rate would drop from 10.2% to 8.7%. He’s pretty clearly not the same pitcher he was during an elite 2017-19 run that sent him to three straight All-Star Games, but he hasn’t lost much velocity since those days. His sweeper has been less effective than in previous years and is breaking less, though some of that difference may be a result of an uptick in velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins and Marlins traded veteran right-handed relievers on Wednesday, sending 2020 World Series champ Dylan Floro to Minnesota and 2022 All-Star Jorge López’s talents to South Beach. It’s another big-leaguer-for-big-leaguer trade for a pair of familiar trade partners. In January, Kim Ng and Derek Falvey exchanged 2023 All-Stars Luis Arraez and Pablo López (along with minor leaguers Byron Chourio and Jose Salas). They can only hope this deal goes half as well for both sides.

Neither the Twins nor the Marlins were getting the production they’d hoped for this season from López and Floro, respectively. In Minnesota, the 30-year-old López — acquired from Baltimore at last year’s deadline for four pitchers, including All-Star Yennier Cano — hasn’t had the same stuff he brought to the Twin Cities last year. In 37 outings, he’s posted a 5.09 ERA, 5.94 FIP, and 4.84 xFIP, striking out just 6.88 per nine innings, down from 9.13 last year. He’s fallen to the 14th percentile in average exit velocity and the 17th in xERA, both of which were in the 70s last season. Home runs have been an issue; he’s giving up more contact in the air, and more of that contact is finding the seats, as he’s gone from an 8.3% HR/FB rate to a gaudy and probably unsustainable 21.9%, the ninth-highest mark among pitchers with 30-plus innings. Read the rest of this entry »

The road has been long for Adbert Alzolay. Signed as an international free agent out of San Felix, Venezuela in 2012, the right-hander worked his way diligently through the Cubs’ minor league system as a starter, making homes everywhere from Eugene, Oregon to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and eventually rising as high as second on the Cubs’ prospect list as a 22-year-old in 2018, Wrigley squarely in sight. Since then, injuries have plagued him: first a lat injury ended his 2018 season that May, then more core complications that delayed the start of his 2019 campaign, and most recently, another lat issue that cost him nearly all of last year, limiting him to only six late-season outings out of the bullpen.

This spring, having played just one full season since his 2019 debut, Alzolay’s health was his “only goal” for 2023. For the first time, he was preparing to work out of the Cubs’ bullpen, an assignment that some former high starting pitching prospects don’t take favorably. But he was firmly on board. “I really wanted to be in the bullpen,” he told reporters. “I feel really comfortable, just bringing the best I have right away.”

His enthusiasm for the role has shown. In 34 relief outings, Alzolay has posted a 2.63 ERA, 2.66 FIP, and 3.17 xFIP with 10.10 K/9 and 1.54 BB/9, racking up 1.0 WAR in just 41.0 innings. His Savant percentile rankings have surged in the bullpen; from 2021 to 2023, he’s gone from the 56th percentile to the 91st in HardHit%, 36th to 88th in xBA, 23rd to 95th in xSLG, 32nd to 98th in xERA, and 15th to 93rd in barrel percentage. His .270 wOBA against is 54th among 370 pitchers qualifying for Statcast’s leaderboards, but that seems to be underselling him; his .245 xwOBA against is ninth. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite kinds of baseball trade is the one that sends major league talent both ways, between teams ostensibly interested in being competitive, each giving from surpluses to meet immediate needs. It’s certainly the safer option for a front office just to take the passive route and stick with the guys you’ve got, but I appreciate the boldness of swapping a player who’s poised to contribute to your club for one you think might give you more, solve some piece of the positional puzzle, or be able to be a more significant part of your plans down the road.

Such was the case for the Marlins and Twins in January when Luis Arraez (who seems poised to defend his title) was dealt to Miami in exchange for Pablo López and prospects Jose Salas and Byron Chourio. This wasn’t a straight big leaguer-for-big leaguer swap, but both teams were trading for the present. López, 26 at the time, had been the Marlins’ second most productive starter in 2022 and a stalwart of their rotation for the better part of five seasons; the 25-year-old Arraez was coming off a batting title and had been one of the game’s truly elite contact hitters over four seasons of his own. The Twins needed pitching, the Marlins an offensive jolt, and a deal was struck.

If it weren’t a fun enough swap to begin with, it got better when López and Arraez represented their new clubs at the All-Star Game, with Arraez staying true to form with a 2-for-2 night on the winning NL side and López throwing a scoreless ninth inning for the AL. In doing so, the duo became the first pair of players to be dealt for one another and make the next season’s All-Star Game since Josh Hamilton and Edinson Vólquez, who were swapped by the Reds and Rangers in 2007 and emerged as All-Stars the following summer. Read the rest of this entry »

There comes a time in many a Red Sox pitching prospect’s life when he is likened to Pedro Martinez, which must be every bit as intimidating as it is flattering. His name was invoked when the Red Sox acquired six-foot-flat Dominican fireballer Rubby de la Rosa — whose grandmother nannied the Martinez boys back in Santo Domingo — in the blockbuster 2012 deal that sent Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto to the Dodgers. Martinez was again floated as a lofty comp for small-framed Venezuelan right-hander Anderson Espinoza when he emerged as the team’s most promising pitching prospect in 2015 and ’16. Across the league, countless others have drawn the hopeful comparison, sometimes of the Hall of Famer’s own accord.

For 24-year-old Red Sox starter Brayan Bello, the comparisons started at least a couple of years ago. The diminutive Dominican right-hander was also overlooked for his smaller frame in his youth, and while he favors a two-seam fastball over his four-seamer — both register in the mid-90s velocity-wise — it’s the changeup that is perhaps most reminiscent of the pitcher he calls an idol. In May 2021, Peter Gammons quoted a team official noting that Bello was “up to 97 with the best changeup I ever seen, at least since Pedro.” For Bello, the comparison hasn’t exactly been unwelcome; in May of last year, upon his promotion to Triple-A, he said through a translator that he ”would eventually like to be better than him,” reflecting a kind of unabashed confidence that itself is not unlike the former Sox ace. Read the rest of this entry »