The Pirates are off to a surprisingly hot 13–7 start, tied for the fifth-best record in the majors, and they have a burgeoning offense to thank. At the close of play on Thursday, after scoring 37 runs over a four-game stretch, they rank second in the National League with 103 runs scored, are tied for fourth in the majors with 27 home runs, and are third with a .446 team slugging percentage and eighth with a .339 wOBA. They’ve managed to limit strikeouts — they’re seventh among major league teams with a 20.6% strikeout rate – and have improved their walk rate by two percentage points since last year. Pirates pitching has handled their side of business well enough — their 12th-ranked 4.03 ERA represents a significant improvement from 2022 but looks a little cleaner than their 17th-ranked ​​4.30 FIP and 22nd-ranked 4.55 xFIP — but the real bright light has been that offense.

We’re already getting to the appropriate time in this piece to repeat FanGraphs’ April refrain: it’s early. But when looking for answers this early in the season, I like to follow a general rule of thumb: the more granular the data, the better. As Russell Carleton wrote in this 2011 piece, “The way to increase reliability of a measure is to have more observations in the data set.” This early in the season, we can often learn more reliably from statistics that are based on every pitch a hitter sees or every swing he takes — something like swing rate or contact rate — than metrics with at-bats or plate appearances in the denominator. This makes plate discipline and pitch selection a good area to explore looking for answers in April.

In the case of the Pirates, improved pitch selection has been a great triumph so far this year — and it’s not that they’re necessarily being more patient, but more that they’re making better decisions. The team is swinging at 45.5% of offerings this year, down just a tenth of a point from last year, but far more of those swings are targeting pitches in the zone. Pittsburgh ranks second in the majors with a 27.9% chase percentage, an improvement from 31.7% last year. After finishing dead last in 2022 in zone swing percentage at 65.3%, the Pirates are all the way up to sixth this season with a 69.3% rate. The improvements have been nearly universal, but even as their depth has been tested with injuries to Oneil Cruz and Ji-Man Choi, a few picky Pirates are leading the way. Read the rest of this entry »

After I wrote about Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran last month, consider this the next installment of my highly unrelated, only-for-the-joke “Duran Duran” series; today we take an entirely separate look at 25-year-old Twins closer and velocity king Jhoan Duran. This Duran was one of baseball’s best relievers as a rookie in 2022; this year, he returned to the Twins’ bullpen with a lot less to prove after his impressive rookie campaign. Nevertheless, he has made some significant tweaks to his already devastating arsenal, and he’s bringing more heat in his sophomore season than ever before.

Duran arrived on the scene in Minnesota last year at a rather uncertain time in his prospect journey. After registering on our Top 100 prospect lists as a high-velocity starter in 2020 and 2021, a forearm strain (and a global pandemic) limited the right-hander to all of five appearances across the river with Triple-A St. Paul in the last two years. The uncertainty around his health obscured his future outlook and called his potential as a starter into question. But he did enough in just seven Spring Training innings last season to show he was healthy and earn one of the final spots in the Twins’ bullpen, then made the absolute most of his first big league opportunity. In 57 relief outings, he allowed just 14 runs and limited hitters to a .251 wOBA, .187 xBA, .269 xSLG, and .232 xWOBA, all of which were in the top 10% of the league. His 34.7% whiff percentage was in the 94th percentile, and his 33.5% strikeout rate was in the 96th. Thanks in part to the trust he quickly earned from Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, he finished second among big league relievers with a 4.56 WPA. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Vierling’s 2022 with the Phillies was a mixed bag. He started off slowly enough to merit an option to Triple-A Lehigh Valley in May before rejoining the club with a bang in June in the form of a game-winning pinch-hit home run off Josh Hader in Milwaukee. Over the rest of the regular season, he struggled to develop much of a pattern of offensive production while splitting center field duties with first Odúbel Herrera and then Brandon Marsh, and filling in in the corner outfield – and even in limited action at first, second, and third – as needed.

When all was said and done, the righty managed only a .246/.297/.351 batting line, good for a meager .285 wOBA and 81 wRC+; Vierling’s 110 wRC+ off lefties was negated by a 63 mark against same-handed pitchers. The defensive metrics don’t agree entirely, but he graded as below average – to different degrees – by DRS, UZR, and OAA. He ultimately came in at -0.1 WAR. His versatility, 97th-percentile sprint speed, success against lefties, and ability to defend more capably than Kyle Schwarber or Nick Castellanos, though, did not go unappreciated, and Vierling earned himself a spot on each of the Phillies’ postseason rosters, eventually even starting two World Series games. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, the Padres announced a seven-year extension with two-time All-Star Jake Cronenworth, a deal that will begin next season and is valued at $80 million over what would have been his final two years of arbitration and first five of free agency. For Cronenworth, a relative late-bloomer (at least among the crowd that goes on to sign $80 million contracts) who didn’t debut in the majors until he was 26 years old, it’s a day he admits he couldn’t have seen coming two or three years ago before distinguishing himself with a solid COVID-shortened rookie season, consecutive 4-WAR campaigns in 2021 and ’22, and a postseason resume that includes the hit that sent the Dodgers home last October.

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It’s also likely the only way that Cronenworth was going to find himself with a deal of this size and length in his career. While a younger player might be hesitant to sign an extension and surrender an opportunity at free agency, Cronenworth is already 29, and this contract buys out five free-agent years he would have been selling at the age of 32. During the last four offseasons, the only players to sign five-plus-year deals at the age of 32 or older have been DJ LeMahieu in 2021 (coming off consecutive top-five MVP finishes) and Freddie Freeman in 2022 (coming off four straight top-ten MVP finishes) — which is to say, it isn’t easy.

For the Padres, it’s the latest in a series of long-term commitments to core members of their current club: Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Robert Suarez, and now Cronenworth. Despite handing out all those extensions, San Diego has left enough on the books (or maybe just set those books on fire) to bring in Xander Bogaerts, Michael Wacha, Seth Lugo, Matt Carpenter, and familiar face Nick Martinez. It’s a combination of the Braves’ readiness to commit to players within the organization who have proved to be a good fit and the Mets’ willingness to go longer and deeper into their pockets than their market competitors.

How has that worked? In the short term, it’s enough to give the Padres our second-highest odds of winning the World Series and make them the title favorite of our staff. The long term is a question mark, but find me a fan who wouldn’t want to spend a half-decade with the above group, not to mention MVP favorite Juan Soto, whose name you have to assume is at the top of the to-do list on A.J. Preller’s office white board. Read the rest of this entry »

With baseball’s time of game issue resolved (I say with just a hint of hyperbole), MLB’s battle with sticky substances is back to being a top priority for the league offices, or so we can gather from the latest league-wide memo on the subject. After the first crackdown mid-season in 2021, we saw a pronounced dip in spin rates and spin-to-velocity ratio across baseball, an apparent sign that pitchers were responding to the league’s concerns. When the league renewed its commitment to inspecting pitchers at the start of the 2022 season, this impact appeared to persist through the early spring. But as the season went on, it was well-reported that league-wide rates began to creep back up, nearing pre-crackdown levels by August of last season.

While in 2021, two pitchers were issued the 10-game suspension MLB had promised in the event of a transgression, there were no such violations in 2022, only this weird moment between Madison Bumgarner and umpire Dan Bellino and this high-profile ear massage for Joe Musgrove courtesy of Buck Showalter in the deciding game of the NL Wild Card Series. But the league has taken note of the elevated rates and now means business: umpires are being empowered to check pitchers randomly and at will, urged to increase their scrutiny in “frequency and scope.” The memo seems to say: “no, seriously, please stop doing that.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the last week, over 300 MLB-affiliated players have started to leave camp to join their countries’ teams for the first World Baseball Classic in six years and the fifth in the tournament’s history. For some veterans and well-established big leaguers, a hiatus from Grapefruit or Cactus League action isn’t something to be concerned about. Playing in the Classic won’t cost them a chance to hit quality live pitching, or pitch to quality live hitters, and while any game action comes with some risk of injury, these types can afford a two-week sabbatical without jeopardizing their job security. Other players, though, are in the midst of big league roster battles, trying to distinguish themselves during camp and earn a spot come Opening Day. As much as we discount the stats generated in spring exhibitions, for some players, this time represents much more than a chance to get into game shape – it’s also an opportunity to change the course of their career.

For these players, the WBC is perhaps not ideally timed. If you’re trying to secure the final bench or bullpen spot, departing camp for a while isn’t exactly a surrender, but these are valuable weeks to make your abilities known. Tony Andracki of Marquee Sports Network has reported that a number of Chicago Cubs on the roster bubble are forgoing participation in the WBC in order to continue their efforts to make the club, and they likely aren’t alone. Here I’ll also note that the absence of some big league regulars opens the door for prospects and other fringe roster types to make a strong impression on their club with more trips to the plate and batters faced. Still, the WBC is a well-appreciated opportunity to represent one’s country, and that so many players jockeying for a roster spot choose to take the time to do so is a testament to what that opportunity means. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring Training stats mean nothing, right? We all know better than to take the sample size of a couple of plate appearances and declare a position battle won, or a starting rotation slot solidified. That being said, these first few weeks of live baseball are our first real chances to see glimpses of the work that’s been done over the winter, to try to pick apart new swings and arm slots and mechanical tweaks that may unlock a next level of play. A few Grapefruit League home runs won’t turn a quad-A non-roster invitee into a Silver Slugger, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from the exhibitions.

This spring, Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran has been among those making a little noise early in camp. Duran showed up to Fort Myers with a lot to prove after a frustrating 2022 spent bouncing between Boston and the Triple-A WooSox. For the most part, he was unable to reproduce his minor league success in the majors, slashing .283/.349/.491 in 68 Triple-A games but .221/.283/.363 in 58 contests with the big league club, good for a .284 wOBA and a 78 wRC+. To go along with the troubles at the dish, he struggled to get comfortable in center field. He’s always had the raw speed to play any outfield position, and his reaction times were above average, but his arm is a weakness, and his route-running was among the worst in the league according to Statcast’s Route metric, which indicates that Duran lost 1.4 feet on outfield plays as a result of his route. Overall, that was enough for him to measure as well below average defensively.

What’s worse is that some of Duran’s more flagrant miscues came at particularly conspicuous times. The narrative nadir of the Red Sox’ disastrous season may have been a July 22 home game against the Blue Jays: Boston gave up a franchise-record 28 runs that night, four of which came around on a two-out pop fly off the bat of current campmate Raimel Tapia, which Duran lost in the lights, resulting in an inside-the-park grand slam. It was a perfect image of a bad team’s rock bottom. Read the rest of this entry »

With players and team personnel reporting to their spring camps, the 2023 season is almost upon us, with 30 teams set to play over 2,000 games in an effort to qualify just for a chance to reach the ultimate goal of a World Series. It’s a marathon of unparalleled scale in American professional sports, and when all is said and done, some of those teams may be separated by as little as one or two wins — or, though it hasn’t happened since the tragic assassination of Game 163 last winter, any of a series of tiebreakers buried somewhere in the season standings.

That such a long race can come down to the final days is part of what makes our sport brilliant, like some amplified version of Monday’s UAE Tour cycling photo finish my colleague Michael Baumann shared on Twitter. It is part of what makes us all tune in so faithfully for this marathon; over a long summer, the margins between the playoff-bound and the homebound can be paper thin. Just ask last year’s 87-win Phillies and 86-win Brewers, who finished their seasons with extremely different tastes in their mouths.

All this to say: competitive balance is, well, a delicate balance, and with the debut of our 2023 playoff odds last week, there’s no time like the present to evaluate the state of the league from a parity perspective. Competitive parity in MLB has been a hot topic for the better part of a decade as we’ve started to see megateams like the Dodgers and Astros routinely eclipsing 100 wins, and others getting more comfortable with finishing somewhere around 60. In the five full seasons since 2017, 17 teams have reached 100 victories; just five did so in the previous 11 years. On the other side of the standings, prior to 2019, there had been just one season in which as many as four teams lost 100 games; then four clubs did so in each of the 2019, ’21, and ’22 seasons. With that in mind, here’s a look at the disparity in team winning percentage at the end of each season since 1960:

A few things are clear: measures of parity are pretty susceptible to swings in either direction, and as for right now, we are playing through a particularly disparate era. After a seven-year low in 2014, disparity spiked over the next five years to a peak standard deviation of .098 in 2019 before effectively leveling out around .090 in the last three. Left unchecked, this could pose a risk to the delicate balance of maintaining an exciting and marketable 162-game regular season. A wider spread means fewer tight playoff races and more teams with known playoff fates in the latter months of the regular season. Read the rest of this entry »

During free agency, baseball fans have a tendency to throw out terms like “upside,” talk about players’ “ceilings” and “floors,” and do their best to evaluate the “risk and reward” of any given move. When teams make offseason additions, it’s impossible not to imagine not only what level of production can be expected, but also what might happen if everything clicks and, as the case may be, what might happen if things don’t. This becomes the basis of endless debate: what kind of heights can the prospect just traded for reach? Should that last spot in the rotation go to the reliable veteran or the young flamethrower who has yet to put it all together?

Teams have to make these evaluations themselves when considering roster construction. Say, for instance, that Player A was expected to contribute 2.0 WAR, but a team’s projection models indicate that he could be as valuable as 4.0 WAR or as unproductive as replacement level. Player B, on the other hand, is also projected for 2.0 WAR, but the models expect him to end up somewhere between 1.3 and 2.7 WAR. It’s not necessarily inherently better to choose one player over the other; it’s ultimately a matter of the club’s priorities at the time. This could depend on all sorts of factors: the size of the investment in the first place, where this player is expected to fit on the roster, how much the team anticipates competing for a title, maybe even player development insights that the front office or coaching staff thinks might help push the player toward the top of his projected spectrum.

As this winter’s free agency was unfolding, I was curious if there were insights to draw from how the disparity of players’ varied outcomes were playing out on the market. A handful of players with relatively uncertain futures (let me stress “relatively”) like Robert Suarez, Zach Eflin, and Masataka Yoshida were commanding larger — and longer — contracts than projected. Meanwhile, some relative knowns — veterans like Jean Segura and Noah Syndergaard — were coming in under their projections, and players like Elvis Andrus and Brad Hand are still out there looking. There are counterexamples, to be sure, but it made me want to explore whether there was particular interest in (and resources being allocated to) players that offered a high ceiling, even if that meant taking on the risk of a lower floor. Read the rest of this entry »

When a pitcher throws the third ball of a plate appearance, it can start to feel like his back’s against the wall quickly. First base starts to seem awfully close without any more pitches to spare and a walk lingering. The batter knows this, too, and he’s digging in looking for a juicy pitch, thinking about doing more damage than just a walk if he sees it. It’s a stressful position for any pitcher: aim for the edge of the plate, and you risk a miss and a free pass; catch a little more of the plate, you risk getting clobbered by the barrel of an increasingly comfortable and aggressive hitter.

In 2022, the Guardians didn’t get the memo. In plate appearances that reached three balls, opposing hitters posted a .197/.500/.311 batting line, good for a best-in-baseball wOBA of .397. There’s a big difference between production levels on 3–0, 3–1, and 3–2, but Cleveland handled each about as well as anybody else; its .336 wOBA on 3–2 counts and .512 mark on 3–1 were each second in baseball, and its .630 clip on 3–0 ranked fourth. The club’s starters were even better, limiting opponents to a .165/.464/.289 line and a .371 wOBA. With all unintentional walks coming on three-ball counts, these are still ultimately pretty productive lines — ask (almost) any major leaguer if he’d sign up for a .371 wOBA next year — but by comparison with staffs across the league, Cleveland’s was able to limit damage in these tight spots better than any of its peers.

Baseball Reference carries a nifty splits statistic they call sOPS+, which compares a player’s OPS (or in pitchers’ cases, opponent OPS) under the conditions of a certain split to his peers, with 100 representing league average. It’s a helpful way to contextualize splits — that Trea Turner had a .601 two-strike OPS in 2022 is less intuitive than his 137 sOPS+ with two strikes, which tells us he was 37% more productive with two strikes than the league average. By sOPS+, Guardians pitchers were again the strongest in the league with their backs against the wall. In three-ball counts, they had an sOPS+ of 75, the seventh-lowest in 300 team seasons over the last decade. Read the rest of this entry »