Few major leaguers can claim as exciting a debut week as Akil Baddoo had. On the first pitch he saw in the majors, he launched a 372 foot home run to the opposite field. The next day, he blasted a grand slam in the ninth inning of a blowout loss. The good vibes continued in his third major league game. After entering the game as a pinch runner in the eighth inning, Baddoo knocked in the game-winning run in the bottom of the 10th.

I often wonder what happens to rookies like Baddoo who make such a big splash in their debuts. How do they handle the inevitable failures they encounter in the big leagues? Baddoo’s first couple of steps in the majors were fantastic, but it’s the third, fourth, and fifth steps that so often trip up players trying to establish themselves at the highest level.

The tough reality of playing in the majors quickly brought Baddoo back down to earth. He launched another pair of home runs in back-to-back games a week after his extra-inning heroics, but soon began to struggle to handle big league pitching. Those struggles shouldn’t be all that surprising. After all, Baddoo had played just 29 games above Single-A during his short minor league career. Tommy John surgery wiped out most of his 2019 season in High-A and the pandemic prevented him from getting on the field in any professional capacity last year. Nonetheless, the Tigers selected him from the Minnesota Twins in the Rule 5 draft based on his toolset and potential alone.

But as you might expect for any 22-year-old with just over 1,000 professional plate appearances under his belt, Baddoo soon found himself flailing against the best the sport has to offer. On May 18, he reached 100 plate appearances on the season. On that date, his season slash line sat at .222/.287/.478 with an ugly strikeout rate touching nearly 40%. After the first two weeks of the season, when he slugged seven extra base hits in nine games, he collected just 10 total hits across the next 23 games, only five of which went for extra bases.

Baddoo has always shown an excellent understanding of the strike zone. His minor league walk rate was 13.7%, and in his only other full season as a professional (2018), he walked 14.3% of the time in Single-A. While that keen batting eye resulted in plenty of walks, it didn’t necessarily prevent him from developing significant holes in his swing. His minor league strikeout rate was 22.7% but much of that overall rate is pulled down by his excellent showing in rookie ball in 2017. During the last two seasons of his minor league career, his strikeout rate rose — to 24.0% in 2018 and 29.8% in ’19.

Making the adjustment to major league pitching is a tough task for any prospect, and most are making the transition from Triple-A with far more experience under their belts. Baddoo made the jump from High-A, with more than a year and a half between professional appearances complicating matters even further. These struggles were expected, but the true measure of his resilience is how Baddoo has adjusted. Over the 20 games and 58 plate appearances since May 18, Baddoo has compiled a .333/.448/.521 slash line and his strikeout rate has fallen to just 20.7%.

Here’s how he described how he approached his adjustments to Chris McCosky of The Detroit News:

“Really, it’s just having a game plan and sticking to what got you here. It’s just about staying mentally strong throughout the whole process. There’s been a lot of ups and downs, but I just took what the coaches and the veteran players were giving me and I made my own routine, my own plan on how to attack the game of baseball.”

Here’s a look at his 10-game rolling strikeout and walk rates this season:

After about a month of exposure to major league pitching, Baddoo made some significant changes to his approach that resulted in a dramatic decrease in his strikeout rate and an increase in his walk rate.

If we use May 18 as a breakpoint in his season, giving us 100 plate appearances in the first period and just under 60 in the second, we see some significant improvements in all of Baddoo’s plate discipline metrics.

He’s cut his chase rate and improved his contact rate, thereby reducing his rate of swinging strikes. His contact rate is still something to worry about; even in its improved state, it sits below league average. That was a big concern while he was a prospect in the Twins organization. A bit of swing-and-miss will always be a part of his game, but if he’s making enough solid contact and getting on base often enough, he might be able to mitigate that part of his offensive profile.

The walks have certainly come as the season has progressed but the results on contact have been a bit more mixed.

Even though Baddoo’s overall offensive contributions have been far more valuable over his last 60 plate appearances, the quality of contact he’s made has been decidedly worse. His hard hit rate has fallen precipitously though his expected wOBA on contact has stayed steady. Instead of making solid contact and driving the ball, he’s been thriving on weakly hit flares and groundballs finding holes. During his surge over the last month, his BABIP has been .429 despite all of the weaker contact.

We’re working with a total sample of just 159 plate appearances and trying to glean some evidence of improvement over the last 60 PAs. It’s not much to work with and it may amount to nothing at all. Opponents will inevitably adjust their approach and Baddoo will face a new challenge when they do. But it is encouraging to see some of the tools he featured as a prospect materialize in the majors after they were largely absent during the first month of the season.

The Tigers have also diligently protected him on the strong side of an outfield platoon. He’s compiled all of 27 plate appearances against left-handed pitching so far and has been completely neutralized. That was the profile scouts had envisioned for him as a prospect, and Detroit’s outfield is in a state where they have little to loose to see if Baddoo can reach or exceed that ceiling.

The changes Baddoo has made to his approach bring his excellent pitch discernment to bear and have paid dividends, but he’s far from a finished product. He needs to find a way to reincorporate that penchant for solid contact he displayed during the first two weeks of his major league career. His confidence and drive were big reasons why the Tigers felt comfortable taking such a raw player in the Rule 5 draft. He’s learning on the fly how to overcome failure without the option to return to the minor leagues to work on things in a low pressure environment. That kind of resiliency isn’t easy to maintain, but Baddoo hasn’t let the big stage get to him yet.

“Once I stop smiling, we’ve got a problem,” he said to McCosky. “When I’m smiling, we’re good to go.”

After last week’s games, we’re around 40% of the way through the season. The halfway mark is quickly approaching, with the All-Star game soon after that. The form of the playoff races is slowly taking shape. And with few exceptions, too many of the teams on the bubble of contention just aren’t making any headway in the standings. There’s still plenty of season left to play, but the trade deadline decision-making point for many of these teams is coming sooner rather than later.

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.

Despite neither team moving at all in the rankings, this tier saw the biggest changes this week. Both the White Sox and the Rays continued to pull away from the rest of the field in the American League, with each team losing just once last week. These two powerhouses are set to play three games in Chicago, which should be a fantastic preview of a potential AL Championship Series.

Chicago and Tampa Bay have scored the exact same number of runs this season but the White Sox have a decided advantage when it comes to their starting rotation. If the season ended today, their starters would have the third lowest park- and league-adjusted ERA of any team since the mound was lowered in 1969. And all this despite some significant struggles on the part of their staff ace, Lucas Giolito. They’ve thrived despite some extremely unfortunate injuries — Nick Madrigal is the latest victim — because they’ve built the best run prevention unit in the American League. Read the rest of this entry »

This past offseason, the Toronto Blue Jays spent a ton of money to upgrade their lineup, bringing in George Springer and Marcus Semien for a combined total of $168 million. Of course, $150 million of that total is owed to Springer over the next six seasons; Semien signed a one-year deal after finding the market for his services to be rather slow and cold. Two months into the season, it’s been Semien who has been the more valuable acquisition for the Jays, however. Springer has been sidelined for all but four games with a nagging quad issue that has yet to be resolved. Meanwhile, Semien leads all qualified second basemen with 2.6 WAR, a mark that places him seventh overall among all qualified batters.

For Semien, his success this year has been a huge payoff on the risk he took by signing that one-year offer. After a breakout 2019, he struggled to maintain that new level of production the year after. With real questions about his true talent level at the plate lingering over him, he decided to take a one-year offer to rebuild his value in 2021.

As Mike Petriello recently notes, the offensive downturn Semien suffered through in 2020 may be a bit misleading. Through the first 14 games of the 2020 season, he posted a 45 wRC+, but because of the truncated season, those 14 games represented around a quarter of the total games played last year, giving them an outsized effect on his overall line. Read the rest of this entry »

After a week hiatus, the FanGraphs Power Rankings return. We’re two months into the season and the best teams in the rankings have started to pull away from the pack while a large group of teams have congregated in the middle. These teams are on the bubble between viewing themselves as contenders and deciding to retool for next year by selling at the trade deadline.

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.

The top tier stays big, as the top three teams from each league have put some distance between themselves and their competition.

In the National League, the top trio happens to all be battling for the NL West division crown, too. After getting swept by the Dodgers at home two weeks ago, the Giants have won nine of their last 11 games, including taking revenge against the Dodgers a week ago and recording a big series win over the Cubs. They’ve “pulled away” from the Padres by opening up a two-game lead in the division, though the loss of Evan Longoria won’t help their cause. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night, the Dodgers and Cardinals began a three-game series in Chavez Ravine. Los Angeles had just been soundly defeated in a four-game set against the Giants over the weekend and had fallen to third in the NL West. Meanwhile, the Cardinals were barely hanging on to the division lead in the NL Central and were entering the tail end of a long, 10-game road trip.

In the top of the sixth inning, St. Louis scored three runs on two home runs off of Trevor Bauer to take a 3-2 lead. The Dodgers came right back in the bottom half of the inning, loading the bases and scoring the tying run off a bases loaded walk to Will Smith. Génesis Cabrera then struck out Gavin Lux for the second out, bringing up Chris Taylor. Taylor wound up battling Cabrera in a 14-pitch at-bat that ended with a bases-clearing double. The play was the second biggest swing in win probability in the game — Dylan Carlson’s two-run home run in the top half of the inning was the biggest — and it gave the Dodgers a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

This epic at-bat was the turning point in the game but it also serves as a perfect example of how Taylor has adjusted his approach at the plate. Back in 2017, Taylor broke out after languishing in the Mariners farm system as a slap-hitting, glove-first middle infield prospect. After compiling a not-very-nice 69 wRC+ across three partial seasons and just over 300 plate appearances, he posted a 126 wRC+ that year with a huge spike in power output. A swing change to generate more contact in the air was the catalyst for that first breakout.

Taylor struggled to replicate that same level of success over the next two seasons; his wRC+ dropped to 111 over the next two years, though he continued to be an extremely valuable piece of the Dodgers roster due to his positional flexibility. Last year, he increased his walk rate by more than three points and had his most productive season at the plate, pushing his wRC+ up to 132. He’s been even better this year; his 149 wRC+ is 18th among all 144 qualified batters. Read the rest of this entry »

Injuries continue to wreak havoc on nearly every team in baseball. With the shortened season still close in the rear-view mirror and the realignment and delayed start to the minor leagues, teams have had to scramble to fill their major league rosters. Some teams have been able to weather these issues with extraordinary depth while others have been forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find replacements for their injured regulars.

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.

The top tier got a lot bigger this week. The Red Sox continued to play well last week but the White Sox stumbled a bit. They were swept in New York over the weekend and won just two of their six games. The real reason this tier has grown so large is because the other three teams are playing out of their minds right now. The Rays, Padres, and Dodgers have won 10, nine, and six games straight, respectively. Read the rest of this entry »

Harrison Bader is legitimately one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball. By whichever advanced defensive metric you prefer, he ranks in the top 10 among all outfielders since his debut in 2017. But while his elite ability with the glove is clear, the value of his bat has been a bigger question mark. Entering this season, in just over 1,000 career plate appearances, he had posted a league- and park-adjusted offensive line five percent below league average, which isn’t too bad considering his reputation as a glove-first center fielder. This year, though, his wRC+ is up to 108 in 70 plate appearances, and his approach at the plate is completely different.

Bader had shown some promise with the bat in the minors and in his previous four seasons in the majors, peaking as the No. 8 prospect in the Cardinals’ organization back in 2018 with a tantalizing power/speed profile. But the concern for him, as he quickly worked through the minor leagues, was a propensity to swing and miss that led to high strikeout rates. That inability to make consistent contact didn’t get resolved once he got to the majors: Prior to this year, his career strikeout rate was 29.1%, and last year, he struck out a career-high 32.0% of the time.

Bader missed all of April after suffering a forearm injury during spring training. But since getting back on the field at the beginning of this month, he’s provided some surprising production for the Cardinals as their everyday centerfielder, already matching his home run total from last year in almost half the plate appearances. The biggest change has come in his approach at the plate. His strikeout rate has tumbled from that career-worst 32.0% last year all the way down to 12.9%; among batters with at least 100 plate appearances in 2020 and at least 70 plate appearances in ’21, his huge decrease in strikeout rate is by far the largest in baseball. He’s also struck out in exactly as many plate appearances as he’s drawn a walk so far this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now a quarter of the way through the season and the biggest storyline has been the remarkable parity throughout baseball. A few pre-season favorites have continued to disappoint and some early season surprises have proven they’re for real, but with the standings so bunched up, anything could still happen. No team is on pace to win more than 100 games right now, and there are a gaggle of teams sitting just below or just above .500. With more teams sitting on the bubble between holding fast and selling, it should make for a dramatic summer.

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.

These two teams barely budged in the rankings this week. The White Sox crushed the Twins in a three-game series and then split a four-game set with the Royals that ended with a wild, walk-off win on Sunday. They now possess the best record in baseball backed by the best run differential in baseball. The concerns about how their offense and defense will perform without Luis Robert are still present — Billy Hamilton has been nearly as good in the field though definitely not with the bat. They’ll need to lean on their fantastic pitching staff even more to carry them through the season. Read the rest of this entry »

When Robbie Ray walked Freddie Freeman in the first inning of his start on Tuesday evening, it was the first time he had walked a batter since April 18, ending a 20.2-inning stretch without allowing a free pass. That’s quite an accomplishment for someone who has always been known for his elite strikeout abilities and a serious lack of control. Ray’s career walk rate sits at 10.9%, a touch above league average, but over the last four years, it’s ballooned to 12.3% and reached a career worst 17.9% last year. But across six starts this season, his walk rate has fallen to 7.2%, easily a career best.

As you’d expect with such a drastic change in his control, Ray has started pounding the zone this year.

In 2020, he was tied with Shane Bieber for the lowest Zone% among all pitchers with at least 50 innings pitches at 42.6%. This season, he’s among the league leaders in Zone%, at 56.7%. During the pitch tracking era, that’s the largest increase in Zone% from one season to the next by a wide margin.

Read the rest of this entry »

After three weeks of these rankings and plenty of feedback — both positive and constructive — I’ve decided to change the way pitching factors into overall team quality. I had been using FIP to assess pitching performance, but using only peripherals undervalued some teams who were actually quite good at preventing runs and overvalued other teams who couldn’t keep runs off the board despite good pitching fundamentals. So instead of using straight park- and league-adjusted FIP as the pitching metric, I’ll be using a straight 50/50 split of FIP and RA9- beginning this week. This gives us a way to evaluate a team’s pitching staff with a blend of actual run prevention (including teams who may or may not benefit from good defense) and pitching talent. This 50/50 composite is shown below as SP- and RP-. The rest of the factors remain the same — offense is represented by wRC+ and combined with the two pitching factors to create an overall team quality metric. Then a team’s expected win-loss record (“luck”) is factored in to produce a power ranking.

There’s a new team on top of the rankings this week. Despite losing Luis Robert for months on Sunday, the White Sox rose to the highest spot in the rankings after allowing just five total runs to score last week. Their starting rotation has been the best in baseball by a wide margin — the runs allowed by Lucas Giolito on Sunday were the first a White Sox starter had allowed in a week. There are certainly some concerns about their outfield, with two of their young stars now out for extended periods of time. Read the rest of this entry »