Once upon a time, it was not uncommon to see a batter’s walk rate sitting higher than his strikeout rate. In the early 90s, more than a quarter of qualified batters had a walk rate higher than their strikeout rate. That number has slowly dwindled as strikeout rates have skyrocketed. This season, just two qualified batters have taken a stroll to first more often than a stroll back to the dugout: Alex Bregman and Carlos Santana. If we lower the plate appearance threshold, another batter joins this interesting group of players: Luis Arraez.

Arráez doesn’t hit for power like Bregman and Santana, he simply makes a ton of contact. His 91.9% contact rate leads the majors, just ahead of contact maestro David Fletcher. There’s nothing inherently more valuable about running a walk rate higher than your strikeout rate — there are plenty of players who thrive with a walk-to-strikeout ratio much lower than one — but Arráez’s batting style is a rare sight in today’s era of three true outcomes. His ability to draw a walk does make him stand out against some of the other batters with an aggressive, high-contact approach like Fletcher or Willians Astudillo. The combination of elite bat control with a discerning eye has helped him post the fifth-highest OBP among all batters with at least 200 plate appearances.

Arráez was signed out of Venezuela as a 16-year-old international free agent back in 2013. His ability to consistently put wood on the ball helped him rise quickly through the Twins organization. He peaked as the No. 12 prospect in their system this past offseason, but his lack of power limited his potential ceiling. Still, that didn’t hold him back from posting a minor league slash line of .331/.385/.414. His hit tool is equal parts natural ability and dedication to his craft. Back in June, he spoke with Mariana Guzman of Twins Daily about his pre-game routine: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a rough time to be a catcher. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen catcher offensive production drop to extreme lows. Last year, major league backstops compiled 49.9 WAR, the lowest total since 2004, and their collective wRC+ was just 84, the lowest mark since 2002. In this day and age, it’s not uncommon to see teams select their starting backstops based on their defensive prowess and ability to handle a pitching staff rather than their ability to contribute offensively. That’s the only explanation for why Jeff Mathis continues to receive plate appearances despite a running a wRC+ that’s in the single digits.

For most teams, the backup catcher is an afterthought on the roster, selected for his ability to competently go about his duties without hurting the team too much. Most backup catchers see the field once or twice a week, three times if they’re lucky, so their effect on the overall production of the lineup is rather minimal. But there are a few squads this year who have been blessed with an abundance of catching riches.

Five teams have received more than three wins from their catching corps in 2019:

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On Thursday, Jay Jaffe examined the terrible injury luck the Yankees have suffered through this season. Twenty-five players have been sent to the injured list—with 17 active stints—for a combined 1,748 days lost to injuries. Still, despite being so banged up, the Yankees are a virtual lock to make the playoffs as the American League East champion. A big reason why they’ve posted the best record in baseball is the unexpected contributions from their replacement players. The most impressive breakout has been from Gio Urshela. The 2.4 WAR he’s accumulated this year is the third highest mark on the Yankees. For a player who was seen as a glove-first utility man at one point, it’s been a remarkable transformation.

Yesterday, Urshela launched two home runs against the Blue Jays, his fourth and fifth in his last three games. That gives him nine home runs since the All-Star break, almost tripling his season total. Since the midseason break, few hitters have been as hot as Urshela. He’s posted a .380/.402/.848 slash line in the month since the All-Star game, a 221 wRC+ that ranks second in the majors. This current hot streak surpasses the good run he had to start the year.

Through the end of May, Urshela had posted a .338/.390/.482 slash line and a 131 wRC+, both excellent marks. But he accumulated just 14 extra-base hits in 154 plate appearances during that early season bender. Since the All-Star break, he has 19 extra-base hits in a little more than half the plate appearances. His isolated power has ballooned to a ridiculous .468! In the minors, the highest ISO he had ever posted was .267 in fewer than 100 plate appearances in Double-A back in 2014. He had never hit for much power until this season — and only just recently. Read the rest of this entry »

You knew it was coming. When Houston acquired Aaron Sanchez from the Blue Jays, changes to his repertoire were bound to follow. By now, the pitching preferences of the Astros organization are well known: throw your best pitch more often and ditch your worst. It’s not as simple as telling pitchers to throw more breaking balls or throw fewer fastballs, though. It’s an individualized pitching strategy based on the strengths and weaknesses of the particular pitcher. Erstwhile FanGraphs author Travis Sawchik describes how these individualized development plans are presented to new Astros in his new book, The MVP Machine, co-authored with Ben Lindbergh:

We may have expected some tweaks, but I’m not sure anyone could have expected the adjustments to have such an immediate impact for Sanchez. With the Blue Jays, he had posted a league worst 6.07 ERA with a 5.03 FIP across 23 starts. In his first start with his new team, he held the Mariners hitless over six innings, allowing just three base runners and striking out six. Will Harris, Joe Biagini (who came over from the Blue Jays in the same trade), and Chris Devenski completed the combined no-hitter after Sanchez was lifted after the sixth.

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After a surprise first-place finish in the National League East last year, the Atlanta Braves entered this offseason searching for an offensive threat to bolster their lineup. After being shutout twice in their Division Series matchup against the Dodgers, they probably had good reason to be on the lookout for a new bat to add to their roster. They quickly struck a one-year deal with Josh Donaldson worth $23 million in the hopes that he would rekindle some of the magic that made him the second-most valuable player in baseball from 2013-2017.

Through the first two months of the season, it seemed like a worst-case scenario was playing out for the Braves’ biggest offseason acquisition. Through May 31, Donaldson had posted a 118 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR in 217 plate appearances. Above average, yes, but a far cry from his 148 wRC+ he averaged annually in the five years prior to 2018. With a lengthy injury history since at least 2016, you had to wonder if all that wear and tear had caught up with his 33-year-old body.

A shoulder injury sapped him of his power last year, so it was a little worrisome that his ISO was just .186 through the first two months of the season. That would have been his lowest power output since 2012, the year before he broke out with the Athletics. But more concerning was the 28.1% strikeout rate, higher than any other season in his career except for the brief cup of coffee he received way back in 2010. In his prime, he had always been able to combine reasonable strikeout rates with his massive power.

Since June 1, however, Donaldson has put together a vintage performance. He’s matched his previous offensive output exactly, posting a 148 wRC+ and 1.8 WAR across 198 plate appearances. He’s tied for the National League lead in home runs during this period with 16. That puts him on pace to launch more than 30 home runs for the fourth time in five years. So what happened to his power early this season and why has it come on so strong recently? Read the rest of this entry »

Since June 1, the Oakland A’s have been one of the best teams in baseball, pushing themselves into the middle of the American League Wild Card race. But across the Bay, there’s been a team that’s been even better recently.

Since July 1, the Giants have posted the best record in baseball. They’ve lost just three games this month and have managed to claw their way back to .500 with an extra-innings, walk-off win over the Mets yesterday afternoon. That win clinched a four-game series that included two other extra-innings, walk-off wins. Sixteen games ago, the Giants were 10 games below .500 and possessed the second-worst record in the National League. They’re now tied for second in the NL West — though 16 games behind the Dodgers — and just 2 and 1/2 games out in the Wild Card race.

It’s been a remarkable turnaround for a club that looked like it was going nowhere less than a month ago. With a week and a half left until the trade deadline, the Giants suddenly face a tough decision about their mindset for the rest of the season. Madison Bumgarner and Will Smith have been continuously connected to trade rumors since this past offseason, but now that the team finds itself on the cusp of contention, they might not be as available as previously thought. This is how president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi put it in an interview with Giants beat writer Henry Schulman on July 21:

“It’s just very difficult at this point to speak in black-and-white terms. We’re really in a period of transition in this organization. When you can manage a transition and continue to compete, and continue to keep a fan base as loyal as this one energized and excited about the team, that’s obviously the perfect scenario.”

The expectations were understandably low heading into this season. After a couple of ugly seasons in 2017 and 2018, the Giants were clearly looking to reset when they hired Zaidi this winter. In February, longtime manager Bruce Bochy announced that he would be retiring following this season. Just a handful of players remain from the teams that won three World Series in five years earlier this decade, and many of their contracts are expiring soon. Despite that, over the last several weeks, they’ve managed to stumble into the perfect scenario Zaidi laid out above. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wainwright wasn’t supposed to be pitching this season. After a 13-year run that had become increasingly injury-plagued since 2015, he was contemplating retiring at the end of 2018. His five-year contract extension, which had been paying him almost $20 million annually, was expiring at the end of the year and he had spent the majority of the season on the injured list with elbow inflammation. At 37 years old with a very successful and storied career under his belt, no one would have questioned him if he had hung up his spikes.

Wainwright returned to the mound for four starts in September and rediscovered his feel for pitching, even if his results didn’t exactly match. He allowed 12 runs in just over 22 innings in the final month of the season despite posting a 3.21 FIP during that stretch. Instead of a last-minute retirement tour, those four games became the building blocks for his resurgence this year.

It turns out the Cardinals weren’t ready to part with Wainwright either. They re-signed him to a one-year, incentive-laden contract with a $2 million base salary. With Carlos Martinez injured and then sent to the bullpen, Michael Wacha ineffective and also relegated to relief, and Alex Reyes not yet ready for prime time, the Cardinals have had to rely on Wainwright a little more than they were supposed to. Read the rest of this entry »

Through the first month of the season, it looked like James Paxton was going to build on his breakout 2018 season and elevate himself into the upper echelons of the pitching ranks. Through May 3, he had posted a 3.11 ERA backed by a 2.59 FIP and a ridiculous 33.6% strikeout rate. On May 3, Paxton exited his start with a knee injury and wound up missing four weeks of play, and since his return from the injured list, he just hasn’t been the same.

In his eight starts since May 29, his FIP has shot up to 4.65 and his strikeout rate has fallen to 24.7%. A vintage 11-strikeout performance in his last start on July 7 is propping up that strikeout rate, too; he struck out just three batters in each of his two previous starts before that. The league average strikeout rate for a starter is 22% so complaining about Paxton’s dip in results feels a little like picking nits. It would be easy to chalk up his post-IL results to the lingering effects of the knee injury or just a string of bad luck. But a deeper look into his pitch repertoire reveals some concerning trends.

Back in early May, Sung Min Kim wrote an article detailing the changes Paxton had made to his pitch mix. In short, Paxton “basically swapped the usage rates of his cut fastball and curveball.” And why wouldn’t he want to throw his cutter more often? He generated a ridiculous number of whiffs with the pitch last year (37.2% whiff rate) and batters simply could not square it up when they did make contact with it (6.5% barrel rate). But the effectiveness of the pitch has waned with greater exposure.

In the past, it’s been a put-away pitch Paxton turned to when he was ahead in the count. He would use his fastball and curveball to get ahead and then earn a strikeout with a well placed cutter. Because he’s throwing his cutter more often this season, he’s had to use it earlier in at-bats. There are only so many two-strike counts to throw it in, so some of those extra cutters have come when the count is in the batter’s favor. Here’s what Paxton’s cutter usage has looked like by count over the last four seasons:

Not only is he throwing it more often earlier in the count, he’s also throwing it less often when he does get ahead. Trying to steal a strike with his cutter early in an at-bat isn’t necessarily a bad thing — he used his curveball to do exactly that last year — but it becomes a problem when he can’t locate his cutter in the zone:

Paxton’s cutter is at it’s very best if he can locate it down and in against a right-handed batter, right over their back foot. That location takes the pitch out of the strike zone to get a swinging strike. But he’s actually spotted his cutter in the zone more often than you might expect. In years past, he’s thrown his cutter in the zone around 47% of the time, a touch below the league average zone rate for a cutter. Even though it feels high for a put-away pitch, it never really affected his ability to earn a swinging strike. This year, he’s locating his cutter in the zone around 35% of the time, the lowest zone rate of any cutter thrown more than 100 times:

He’s locating the pitch as though he was ahead in the count and looking for a whiff, but those pitch locations aren’t exactly ideal earlier in the count. Batters are content to just take a cutter when they hold the advantage, knowing that they’re likely to either whiff or it’ll end up out of the zone as a ball. So even though Paxton’s whiff per swing rate on his cutter is just as good as it has been in the past, because his overall swing rate on the pitch is down almost 10 points, his raw number of swinging strikes is down.

Since 2017, Paxton has added more than two inches of horizontal movement to his cutter. It’s possible that additional movement has affected his command of the pitch:

If he’s throwing his cutter the same way he did last year, aiming at a target that would locate the pitch in the zone, that extra horizontal movement could be carrying the pitch out of the zone despite his intent.

It’s also possible that batters are able to identify his cutter more easily this year. Paxton took a big step forward last year when he started to tunnel his high four-seam fastball with his curveball. But his cutter also benefited from that pitch tunnel as well:

Last year, Paxton’s fastball-cutter pitch tunnel was excellent. The perceived distance between the two pitches in sequence (PreMax) was well above average and they separated in flight (PreMax Time) just a few milliseconds before the tunnel point. Both measures have deteriorated a bit this year and it’s likely due to the location of these pitches in sequence. Paxton’s pitch tunnel works best when his cutter is located right at the bottom of the zone but not too low. THe average location of his cutter this year has given opposing batters a few extra milliseconds to identify whether a pitch is worth swinging at.

I can’t explain why Paxton has swapped the number of curveballs and cutters he throws this year. Maybe he’s lost the feel for his curveball. But the effectiveness of his secondary pitches has waned with the altered usage pattern. The solution is likely a little more complicated than just swapping back. He’s going to have to figure how to locate his cutter a little better, especially if he needs to use it earlier in counts to keep batters off his fastball.

The past year has been a whirlwind for Liam Hendriks. A little over a year ago, he was designated for assignment by the Oakland Athletics. At that point in the 2018 season, he was sporting a 7.36 ERA with an ugly 6.43 FIP while also missing more than a month with a groin strain. No one claimed him on waivers and he was sent outright to Triple-A. He worked hard to regain his confidence while also honing his repertoire. He was recalled in September and pitched well enough as an opener to get the start in the Wild Card game against the Yankees. However, that game didn’t go to plan after an Aaron Judge two-run homer got the home team on the board early.

Even after all those setbacks, Hendriks has flourished as a critical piece in the A’s bullpen this year. He started the year in a familiar role, making a couple of opener starts and coming out of the pen as a middle reliever. But as the back-end of the Oakland bullpen began to struggle, Hendriks found his way into higher leverage situations. The climax of his year-long turnaround came when he was named to the American League All-Star team as a replacement for Charlie Morton.

Here’s how Hendriks stacks up against his fellow All-Star relievers and a few other top candidates.

Any of the other candidates listed above could have been chosen and no one would have batted an eye (ok, maybe not Ian Kennedy). But Hendriks leads the AL in WAR as well as park- and league-adjusted ERA. He’s been terrific, and the adjustments he’s made since last September are driving his newfound success. Read the rest of this entry »

Luke Jackson has blown six saves this season, tied for the major league lead. His struggles as the Braves closer have given rise to a play on the chorus from OutKast’s “Ms. Jackson”: Back in mid-May, after blowing two save opportunities in a row, fans on the Atlanta airwaves and Twitter started singing “I’m sorry Luke Jackson (oooh).” His problems — and the singing — only got worse in early June after he allowed runs in five of his first seven appearances in the month. But if you look at Jackson’s peripherals outside of their game context, the next line in OutKast’s song becomes a lot more appropriate: “I am for real.”

A first-round draft pick by the Texas Rangers in 2010, Jackson never really lived up to his pedigree with his original organization. By 2015, he had transitioned to the bullpen full-time, though he did make his major league debut that year. He was traded to the Braves in an unheralded, change-of-scenery move in December 2016 for Brady Feigl (no, the other one) and Tyrell Jenkins. He was just as unremarkable in Atlanta, getting designated for assignment three separate times, each time going unclaimed on waivers. He made the Opening Day roster this year as a fall back option after injuries decimated the team’s bullpen during spring training.

In his first appearance of the season, he gave up a grand slam to Rhys Hoskins. Luckily it was a low-leverage situation since the Braves were already three runs behind. With Arodys Vizcaino injured and A.J. Minter and Dan Winkler ineffective, Jackson found himself thrust into high-leverage situations by mid-April. But despite the aforementioned struggles, he’s been the best reliever in the Braves bullpen this year. If you compare what he’s doing this year to what he was doing before, he looks like a completely different pitcher:

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