The Giants have been one of the year’s biggest surprises, leading the National League West for a large portion of the season and holding the best record in baseball since the beginning of June. Their success is due in large part to some unexpectedly resurgent seasons from their veteran core. On Friday, San Francisco rewarded one of those veterans, signing Brandon Crawford to a two-year, $32 million contract extension.

The Tigers haven’t been nearly as good as the Giants in 2021, but they’ve played some really competitive baseball after an ugly 8-19 April. A big reason for their change in fortunes has been some excellent production from Jonathan Schoop. After signing back-to-back one-year deals with Detroit the last two seasons, the team inked him to a two-year, $15 million contract extension on August 7.

Crawford, a Bay Area native, has spent his entire career with the Giants. He was selected in the fourth round of the 2008 draft and has been a fixture at shortstop since his major league debut in 2011. He’s the franchise leader in games played at at the position and was a key contributor to two World Series championships in 2012 and ’14. After the 2015 season, he signed a six-year, $75 million contract extension that would have expired at the end of this season. This new extension guarantees that Crawford remains a single-franchise player at least through his age-36 season, a feat that’s become increasingly rare in today’s game. Read the rest of this entry »

When Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert both went down with serious injuries earlier this season, the White Sox had to scramble to cover for two of their best outfielders. Andrew Vaughn, a corner infielder by trade, was thrown into the fire as their Opening Day left fielder, and when Robert went down a month later, the options were even thinner. To make matters even more complicated, the other member of their projected preseason outfield trio, Adam Eaton, was released by the club right before the All-Star break. Despite all this turnover and turmoil, White Sox outfielders have been worth a cumulative 7.1 WAR this year, the fifth highest mark in the majors. With both Jiménez and Robert back from the injured list much earlier than expected, Chicago suddenly has outfield options to spare.

Amazingly enough, Jiménez has already accounted for 0.8 WAR in just 13 games since being activated a few weeks ago. He’s been used as the designated hitter seven times, with three of his appearances in left field coming during an interleague series against the Cubs. With Robert taking his place as the everyday center fielder, the White Sox have four or five different options to deploy in their outfield corners. When Jiménez lines up in the field, Vaughn has been used as the designated hitter or shifted over to right field. Considering the difficult circumstances Vaughn was thrown into at the start of the season, his 2021 has to be seen as a huge success. The other day, Luke Hooper broke down the swing adjustment he made in late June that has led to a surge in production over the last month and a half. Even though he hasn’t contributed very much in the field, his bat is clearly good enough to stick in the lineup as the everyday starter in left. Read the rest of this entry »

With the July 30 trade deadline come and gone and the August waiver trade deadline a relic of the past, teams are set for the stretch run. Perhaps that’s why the deadline was so frantic; all of the contenders and bubble teams had one last chance to upgrade their rosters before the final two months of the season. We’re only a week into August and the standings in the two eastern divisions have already been shaken up.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking.

Even though the Dodgers added a ton of firepower to their roster at the end of July, the Giants have maintained their grip on both first place in the NL West and the best record in baseball. Getting Kris Bryant was a critical response to Los Angeles adding Trea Turner and Max Scherzer, and Bryant has had no problems settling in. He’s already played three different positions and has collected 10 hits in his first eight games as a Giant. They’ve won four straight series against the likes of the Dodgers, Astros, and Brewers.

Scherzer and Turner made their Dodger debuts this last week, giving the injury-wracked club a huge boost. The Dodgers lineup has gotten a lot healthier with the recent return of Corey Seager but the team still has 14 pitchers currently on the Injured List. The latest bad news was a setback in Clayton Kershaw’s rehab, pushing his timeline into September. They won’t have to worry about missing out on a playoff berth, but if they want to push the Giants for the NL West lead, they’ll need some help on the pitching front. They signed Cole Hamels last week but their most impactful reinforcements will be coming off the IL sometime in the next two months. Read the rest of this entry »

When you pull up the position player leaderboards since May 22, you’ll see a pair of likely MVP candidates sitting on top of the list. Shohei Ohtani leads all batters with 3.1 WAR during this period and that’s ignoring the additional 1.3 WAR the two-way star has accumulated on the mound over his last nine starts. Fernando Tatis Jr. sits behind Ohtani with Cedric Mullins rounding out the top trio (perhaps this article should have been about what Mullins has done this year). But nestled behind those three is Willy Adames with 3.1 WAR in 64 games. Why is May 22 the arbitrary time frame placed on this query? That was the day Adames made his debut for the Brewers after being traded to Milwaukee from the Rays.

On May 22, the Brewers were 22-23 and sitting behind the Cubs and Cardinals in the NL Central. Since then, they’ve had the best record in the National League at 42-21 and have built a sizable cushion in the standings ahead of their division rivals. That turnaround is due in no small part to Adames’ fantastic performance over these last two-plus months. He’s hit .295/.379/.553 for the Brewers, good for a 148 wRC+, and has played excellent defense at shortstop. With Christian Yelich still struggling to reproduce his MVP-quality production from 2018 and ‘19, Adames has taken the reins as the leading run producer in the Brewers lineup.

When you compare what Adames has accomplished in Milwaukee with what he did in Tampa Bay, it certainly appears as though the change of scenery has made the difference:

Adames has shown flashes of production like this in the past, but he’s been held back by an aggressive approach that’s led to some untenable strikeout rates. He’s taken his ability to hit for power to new levels with the Brewers, and his strikeout and walk rates have both greatly improved. We’re talking about just 268 plate appearances, but there are enough positive signs in his underlying numbers that we could be witnessing a huge breakout from Adames.

Part of that might be attributable to a literal change in his scenery. Last year, Adames tested out wearing non-prescription glasses while playing at home at Tropicana Field. He was having a really difficult time seeing the ball while playing under the lights of the domed field. “I was good on the road; I just couldn’t hit at the Trop,” Adames told Tyler Kepner of the New York Times in an interview from early July.

“After they changed the lights in ’19, it was tough for me to see the ball there. Everybody thought it was mental, but it wasn’t. I was just guessing all the time there because I couldn’t pick up the ball when I was hitting.”

His issues hitting at Tropicana Field are born out in his home/road splits while playing for the Rays.

What he was able to accomplish on the road while with Tampa looks remarkably similar to what he’s done in Milwaukee. But if he was able to see the ball better on the road, and now while he’s a member of the Brewers, that should show up in some of his underlying plate discipline metrics.

I’ve broken Adames’ career down into three buckets: his home/away splits with the Rays and these last few months with the Brewers. Four of the five metrics above stay astonishingly consistent no matter where Adames is playing. But the one that has some significant differences may be the most important. While batting at Tropicana Field, Adames’ chase rate was a touch above league average; on the road as a Ray and as a Brewer, his chase rate falls well below league average.

That tracks with the way Adames described the effect of the lighting at Tropicana Field in this interview with MLB.com:

“Whenever I was out of the Trop, I feel like I was able to recognize the spin of the ball. You could see if it was a breaking ball, changeup or whatever. At The Trop, I couldn’t pick it up.”

In other interviews, he essentially said his approach while playing in Tampa Bay was just guessing at pitches and hoping to guess correctly. Everything about his approach stayed consistent, except for his ability to recognize pitches and lay off the ones that were traveling out of the strike zone.

These issues also affected the quality of contact he made at home as a Ray. Because he was guessing at which pitches were being thrown to him, when he did make contact with a pitch, he was more prone to mishit it, resulting in poor contact quality.

All of his significant batted ball peripherals were considerably weaker while hitting at Tropicana Field. He wasn’t hitting them as hard and struggled to tap into the power he’s displayed throughout his career.

Back in March, I wrote about how Adames quietly enjoyed a power breakout last year despite some major red flags in his approach. All the gains he made in terms of contact quality last year have taken another step forward this year. His barrel rate, hard hit rate, and average exit velocity are all at career highs — and that’s even including his miserable two months to start the season. All of his batted ball peripherals are even better as a Brewer. Even more encouraging, his batted ball profile isn’t as pull heavy as it was last year. He’s spreading the ball around the field again while still hitting for tons of power. He’s still hitting the ball to left field more often than he was in 2018 and ‘19, but his pull rate has come down more than 10 points from where it was last year.

Based on his struggles in Tampa Bay to start this year, it appears as though the pressure to keep his job on the Rays, particularly with Wander Franco looming, may have affected his performance on the field. That pressure, coupled with the visual issues he’s been dealing with over the last few years, really cratered his production. Now that Adames is in Milwaukee, he’s better recognizing pitches and has adjusted his approach accordingly while continuing to build on the improved contact quality he worked on last year. We’ve seen the best version of Adames over the last two months. The Brewers have to be thrilled they’ve found their long-term solution at shortstop.

Over the last few days, the Yankees addressed their surprisingly punchless and right-handed heavy lineup by adding Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo. In the waning minutes before the trade deadline, they struck a deal with the Angels to bring in another southpaw: left-handed pitcher Andrew Heaney. In exchange, New York will send a pair of pitching prospects to Los Angeles: Janson Junk and Elvis Peguero.

Heaney is playing out the last year of team control before he hits free agency this offseason. Over the last four years, he’s posted a strikeout-to-walk ratio a touch under four, the 26th best mark among the 100 qualified starters during that period. Unfortunately, he’s struggled with a gigantic home run problem that has led to some ugly ERAs that far outpace his peripherals.

This year, all those strengths and weaknesses are in full effect. He’s posting fantastic strikeout (28.2%) and walk (7.7%) rates but he’s allowed 16 home runs in 94 innings. Because his batted ball profile skews so heavily towards elevated contact, his home-run-per-fly-ball rate is around league average, but his HR/9 is the 15th highest among all starters with a similar number of innings pitched. That doesn’t bode well for a move to Yankee Stadium, which has boosted home run totals by 7% over the last four years.

Heaney’s pitch repertoire is rather odd. His four-seam fastball was classified as a sinker for much of his career because it moves horizontally like a sinker does but it doesn’t have the telltale vertical movement. He gets that horizontal action on his heater because he throws from an extremely low arm angle. With an odd release point and an uncommon movement profile, his fastball has been a whiff-generating machine. Opposing batters swing and miss nearly 30% of the time against his heater. Read the rest of this entry »

After addressing their offensive needs with their acquisition of Eduardo Escobar earlier this week, the Brewers turned their focus to their pitching staff. Their starting rotation has been the best in the majors but their bullpen has been merely good. They added some depth to their relief corps on Friday by trading for Daniel Norris, sending RHP Reese Olson to the Detroit Tigers in return.

Norris had worked out of the rotation for much of his career but recently made the transition to full-time relief work in 2020. Across 51 relief appearances over the last two seasons, he’s posted a solid 3.39 FIP that’s been somewhat hidden by an ugly 5.89 ERA this year. Like you would expect with any starter transitioning to shorter outings in relief, Norris’s fastball velocity has really benefited. He’s averaged 92.7 mph on his four-seam fastball during these last two campaigns, the highest velocity he’s seen on his heater since 2017. He’s also simplified his pitch mix, entirely cutting out his curveball and focusing on his slider and changeup as his two secondary options. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers have built a commanding lead in the NL Central, with a 7 1/2-game advantage over second-place Cincinnati. The team is being carried by the best starting rotation in baseball and a solid bullpen, the second-best run prevention unit in baseball behind the Giants. The offense is far less impressive, having scored just 4.4 runs per game this year with a wRC+ of 90 that ranks 22nd in the majors. Milwaukee’s pitching staff is more than good enough to carry it into the playoffs, so the front office has been focused on bringing in reinforcements to help the lineup. The team had already acquired Willy Adames and Rowdy Tellez in separate trades earlier this season. On Wednesday, it added another infielder to the mix, agreeing to a trade for Eduardo Escobar and sending two prospects, catcher/infielder Cooper Hummel and infielder Alberto Ciprian, to Arizona in exchange.

Escobar is in the last season of a three-year deal he signed back in 2019, and with the Diamondbacks’ 2021 a total loss, he was an obvious candidate to be moved; the only question was where. The White Sox had been connected to him a little earlier this month, but a finalized deal never materialized. Instead, the Brewers swooped in and added the versatile infielder to their roster.

The switch-hitter is in the midst of a resurgent season. From 2017 to ‘19, Escobar hit 79 home runs, posted a wRC+ of 108, and accumulated 8.8 WAR for the Twins and Diamondbacks. Things fell apart last year, though, as his power dried up and his wRC+ fell to 56. He’s gone back to normal this year, with 22 home runs, a wRC+ back up to 105, and the Diamondbacks’ lone All-Star roster spot a few weeks ago. Under the hood, his batted ball peripherals look like they’re intact from or improved on his peak.

All that power that had escaped last season is back this year, and he’s increased his hard-hit rate and barrel rate, which has helped him offset a slight uptick in strikeout rate. On top of that, Escobar’s fly ball rate is pushing 50% for the first time in his career, and he’s pulling the ball more often than ever — and that batted ball profile stays consistent no matter which side he’s hitting from.

Read the rest of this entry »

The July 30 trade deadline is just days away, making this week the last opportunity for teams in the middle of the postseason hunt to improve their roster. Most of the true contenders are simply looking to solidify their rosters for the playoffs but there are a handful of surprising clubs that are still on the bubble between buying and selling.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking. All of the below stats are through July 25.

The Giants have had an up-and-down start to the second half. They lost a pair of series to the Pirates and Cardinals but won three of four against their biggest rivals, the Dodgers. They still hold the best record in baseball and are the only team on pace to win more than 100 games this year. They face a stiff challenge this week as they host the Dodgers and the Astros.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles is powering through a bunch of bad injury luck. They were fortunate to face the Rockies six times in the past two weeks, with four wins against Colorado helping offset the three losses they suffered against the Giants. On Saturday, they rolled out a lineup that looked more like a spring training split squad than the team that’s scored the most runs per game in the National League — Albert Pujols was slotted in at cleanup, followed by light-hitting catcher Austin Barnes, with a handful of other depth pieces getting starts too. Gavin Lux has been sidelined since the All-Star break and Mookie Betts hit the Injured List Sunday, though Corey Seager could be making his return soon. Luckily, Chris Taylor has nearly single-handedly powered their offense, blasting five home runs last week. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020 Oakland Athletics won 36 games on their way to winning the AL West for the first time since 2013. They did this despite rather lackluster offensive contributions from their core quintet of Matt Olson (103 wRC+), Matt Chapman (117), Ramón Laureano (103), and Marcus Semien (92). Those four players combined for 4.5 WAR, mostly driven by their stellar defensive performances. Instead, breakout seasons from Mark Canha and Robbie Grossman helped the A’s reach the postseason for the third consecutive season.

With Semien now out of the picture, Oakland needed bounce back seasons in 2021 from the two Matts and Laureano to continue their run of success. Thus far, the A’s are still waiting on two of those three to really get it going. Chapman has taken an even bigger step back; the strikeout issues that plagued him last year have stuck around and now his power has all but disappeared, too. Laureano has had an up-and-down season; he had a strong start to the year with a 138 wRC+ through June 22, but he’s fallen into a deep slump over the past month with a 54 wRC+ since then. Thankfully, Olson has been good enough for both of them.

Last year, Olson saw his strikeout rate jump up to 31.4%, contributing to a batting average that fell below the Mendoza line. A high strikeout rate had been the big concern since he burst onto the scene in 2017 with 24 home runs in 59 games. He’s always had some swing-and-miss in his profile, but a strikeout rate over 30% was definitely a big red flag, no matter how many home runs he launched over the fence. Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels and Braves have both suffered through largely disappointing seasons and through some serious woes in the outfield. In Los Angeles, a calf injury to Mike Trout and Justin Upton’s back issues have kept the two off the field for a significant amount of time. In Atlanta, things are even more dire. Marcell Ozuna dislocated two of his fingers back in May, but a pending domestic violence charge means he likely won’t see the field again this season. Then, on the Saturday before the All-Star break, Ronald Acuña Jr. tore the ACL in his right knee, ending his season.

Both teams are within shouting distance of a playoff spot; the Braves are four games behind the Mets in the NL East, and the Angels are five and a half back in the AL Wild Card. But to have any hope of making noise down the stretch, they needed to bring in reinforcements for their outfield depth. That’s exactly what both teams did during the break. On Wednesday, the Angels signed Adam Eaton after he was released by the White Sox on Monday. On Thursday, the Braves traded for Joc Pederson, sending prospect Bryce Ball back to the Cubs in return. Trying to replace the production of Acuña or Trout is a fool’s errand, but finding someone who’s above replacement level (even if barely in both cases) goes a long way toward filling the holes in these two lineups.

In their final game before the All-Star break, the Braves ran out two converted infielders in the corner outfield spots, playing Ehire Adrianza in right and Orlando Arcia in left. In Pederson, they’re getting a capable outfielder who can play anywhere — he has plenty of experience in center field and covered left regularly in Chicago — and who’s an offensive boost to their lineup. With Guillermo Heredia already in center, Pederson will probably shift over to right, with Atlanta likely to use a rotating cast of players in left for now.

Read the rest of this entry »