Despite last week’s home run heroics by Bryce Harper, the Phillies’ playoff hopes have faded in recent weeks, and it doesn’t appear as though things will get easier going forward. On Saturday, the team revealed that Jake Arrieta, who had landed on the injured list with a bone spur in his right elbow earlier in the week, will undergo season-ending surgery later this month, and that reliever David Robertson had undergone Tommy John surgery earlier in the week. While neither situation was entirely unexpected, together the injuries highlight the mix of misfortune and underperformance that have placed the Phillies — who at 64-60 are nine games out in the NL East, and 1 1/2 back in the Wild Card race — in this position.

The 33-year-old Arrieta hadn’t missed a single start before landing on the IL, but had been increasingly ineffective as the season worn on. Following a pretty good April (3.46 ERA, 4.32 FIP, 6.5 innings per start), he had pitched to a 5.12 ERA and 5.12 FIP the rest of the way while averaging just 5.37 innings per start; he hadn’t completed the sixth inning since June 30. On July 7, after an outing in which he’d been touched for 11 hits and hit three batters in 4.1 innings against the Mets, a team source told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Matt Gelb that he was pitching through a bone spur. The spur, which is the size of a marble, has apparently bothered Arrieta for the past two seasons, and is the recurrence of a spur he had removed eight years ago, while a member of the Orioles.

The Phillies were aware of the bone spur — which raises the question of why they settled for Jason Vargas as their lone rotation addition at the July 31 deadline — and had monitored Arrieta, who had worked to find different grips to help alleviate the pain that particularly hampered him when throwing his curve and changeup. He had become much more reliant upon the latter pitch in recent years, and was using the former much more often as this season went on:

Per Pitch Info, Arrieta had thrown the changeup 18.3% of the time this year, up from 10.4% last year and 7.4% in 2017. The change has been fairly effective for him this year, with a 46.2% O-Swing rate, a 15.2% swinging strike rate, and a 64 wRC+ on plate appearances ending with the pitch. His swinging strike rate on the curve had dropped by half relative to last year, from 13.0% to 6.5%, even as his wRC+ on PAs ending with the pitch dropped from 141 to 51.

Arrieta’s final numbers — 4.64 ERA, 4.89 FIP, 9.9 K-BB%, and 1.0 WAR in 135.2 innings — mark the fourth straight season in which he’s declined in all of those categories, while his 18.5% strikeout rate marked his fifth straight season of decline. That’s an ominous trend for any pitcher, and it’s one likely to carry significant financial ramifications for Arrieta, who has one more year and $20 million remaining on a three-year, $75 million deal signed in March 2018. Arrieta could opt out of his contract this winter, but would hit the market on the heels of his worst season since breaking through with the Cubs in 2014. If he does opt out, the Phillies can override that by restoring his $20 million 2020 salary and exercising a two-year, $40 million option for 2021-22, one whose annual salaries would have escalated to $25 million or higher based on starts (beginning at 25 starts; he had 24 this year) and top-three Cy Young award finishes.

While the Phillies entered the season with a rotation that placed 12th in our Positional Power Rankings, the unit as a whole entered Sunday ranked 16th in the majors in ERA- (103, via a 4.57 ERA), 26th in FIP- (110, via a 4.98 FIP), and 24th in home run rate (1.64 per nine). Aaron Nola is the only starter who has been better than average in both ERA and FIP:

Arrieta’s loss for the remainder of the season returns Eflin to the starting five; he was ousted when Vargas was acquired. Velazquez and Smyly, the latter of whom was picked up after being released by the Rangers earlier this year, round out the unit right now, with Pivetta having been relegated to the bullpen.

Speaking of which… the 34-year-old Robertson, whom the Phillies signed to a two-year, $23-million deal in January, arrived from the Bronx with a reputation as one of the most durable and reliable relievers in the game — “about as steady as it gets,” as Jeff Sullivan illustrated at the time of the signing. He was one of only two pitchers to throw at least 60 major league innings every year from 2010 (his first full season in the majors) through 2018; Tyler Clippard was the other. During that span, only the well-traveled Clippard and the Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen threw more innings out of the bullpen than his 589.2, and only Aroldis Chapman, Jansen, and Craig Kimbrel delivered more value than his 13.4 WAR. He had evolved somewhat as a pitcher in that span, as Sullivan pointed out, using his breaking stuff with increasing frequency relative to his cut fastball with no loss of effectiveness. He had also shown a welcome flexibility, working as a closer, a setup man, and a fireman who might show up in the fifth or six inning  — or even the third — if the occasion merited it, all without complaint, making him an ideal addition for any aspiring contender.

Alas, Robertson struggled out of the gate for the Phillies, and after making seven appearances totaling 6.2 innings, hit the injured list in mid-April with a Grade 1 flexor strain. He began ramping up towards a return in late June, but his progress was slow, and he suffered setbacks. By the end of July, it appeared that he would need season-ending surgery for the flexor, with Tommy John surgery a possibility. After a consultation with Dr. James Andrews, he underwent the surgery last Thursday, which could cost him all of next season as well as the remainder of this one. The Phillies do hold a $12 million club option with a $2 million buyout for his services in 2021.

If Robertson’s injury were an isolated problem within the Phillies’ bullpen, they probably could have overcome it, but the unit that placed fourth in our preseason Positional Power Rankings has lost five of its six top forecast relievers to injuries, and all of them are still sidelined:

Thus, the Phillies’ relief corps — which entered Sunday ranked ninth in the NL in bullpen ERA (4.65) and 12th in FIP (4.93) and WAR (0.0) — has lost more player-days and dollars to the injured list than that of any other team. Excluding position players, they’ve used 26 relievers. Via Spotrac:

Note that on the rankings page, the Mariners show up with a higher dollar figure than the Phillies; for some reason, the site has classified Félix Hernández as a reliever, though all eight of his appearances before hitting the IL with a shoulder strain were as a starter. I’ve removed his data from the above table, and likewise other misclassified pitches including Velazquez and the Nationals’ Jeremy Hellickson.

Dominguez, who received a platelet-rich plasma injection on June 14, began a throwing program in early August, and there’s still hope he can return this year. Neshek received a PRP injection for his Grade 2 hamstring strain in July and is hopeful for a September return. Morgan is set to be re-examined on Wednesday, at which point his timeline will be clarified.

While those returns would be helpful — particularly that of Dominguez — they’re not likely to change the trajectory of the team’s season. The Phillies held at least a share of first place in the NL East for nearly the entire season up through June 11, but they’ve gone just 27-30 since then as the injuries have caught up, and the Mets’ recent surge has left Philadelphia scrambling to hold on to third place in the division. This graph of their division playoff odds tells the sad story:

The Phillies aren’t out of contention yet, but if they do come up short, it won’t all be on Harper and the lineup’s other newcomers for their comparatively lukewarm performances. That hasn’t helped, but in the end, it will be the slew of pitching injuries that does them in.

Last week, Mike Trout celebrated his 28th birthday, and here at FanGraphs, Craig Edwards baked a cake, so to speak, by using some yardsticks to measure Trout’s career to date without considering Wins Above Replacement. As Craig noted here, and as Ben Lindbergh said similarly at The Ringer, WAR and Trout have become rather inextricably linked during the span of his career. The metric’s ability to estimate value in the field and on the bases as well as at the plate has helped us appreciate the completeness of Trout’s game and accelerated our understanding of the breakneck pace at which he has carved out a spot among the very best in history.

With roughly six weeks to go in his age-27 season, Trout already has the highest WAR of any player at that stage. By FanGraphs’ version, his 72.9 WAR is 4.1 ahead of Ty Cobb, while by Baseball-Reference’s version, his 72.1 WAR is 3.1 ahead. Trout has done this despite having reached 120 games played in just six seasons thus far, though by this time next week, he’ll have reached that modest plateau a seventh time.

Less than 15 months ago, before Trout had even turned 27, I noted that he had matched the bWAR-based JAWS standard among center fielders — the average of the Hall of Famers at the position — moving into eighth place in those rankings. Since then, he’s climbed up to sixth, with a clear shot to surpass Ken Griffey Jr. for fifth before the month ends. Perhaps more impressively, this week he climbed past Mickey Mantle — Extra! Extra! Millville Meteor Overtakes Commerce Comet! — to take over sole possession of third place in seven-year peak (65.2), with Thursday night’s 4-for-4 showing against the White Sox, featuring his 40th homer of the season (one short of his career high, set in 2015) breaking what had been a tie that had lingered for a few days. Here, have a dinger:

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As we’re reminded every time they face the Yankees and give up homers by the half-dozen, the Orioles are a very bad baseball team. At 39-82, they’re 41 1/2 games out of first place, and on pace for 52 wins, which means they could lose more than two-thirds of their games for the second season in a row. They’re just nine homers away from breaking the single-season record for dingers allowed (258). And yet they’re not even the majors’ worst team. Neither are the Marlins, who through the first 41 games of the season slipped below the Throneberry Line by losing 31 games.

That so much attention has been paid to those bad ballclubs might be chalked up to yet another instance of East Coast Bias, because tucked away in the more wholesome Midwest are the Detroit Tigers, who are doing things (and not doing things) to rekindle memories of their 2003 squad, which gave Throneberry’s 1962 Mets a run for their money by losing 119 games. At 36-81, these Tigers are on pace to go 50-112, but a slight slippage could send them past last year’s 115-loss Orioles. In the words of James Brown, “People, it’s bad.”

This — what’s the opposite of web gem? — might be the 2019 squad’s signature play (h/t @suss2hyphens):

The Tigers were a competitive concern as recently as 2016, when they went 86-75 but slid out of a Wild Card spot in late September. That was the last gasp of the core that won four straight AL Central titles from 2011-14, and one that probably should have begun scattering to the four winds earlier. As it was, general manager Al Avila — who replaced Dave Dombrowski in late 2015 — traded Alex Avila (his own son!), J.D. Martinez, Justin Upton, Justin Verlander, and Justin Wilson in a six-week span in mid-2017, as the team was en route to 98 losses.

The Tigers are rebuilding, but their rebuild has been hampered by a farm system weakened by years of bad drafts and repeated mining to keep their competitive window open. One has to dial back to 2011 to find a year in which the Tigers’ top draft pick (James McCann, who was a second-rounder) ever suited up for the team in the regular season, and 2012 (Jake Thompson) for one who even played in the majors. Baseball America’s annual organizational rankings placed their system between 26th and 30th annually from 2014-17. That’s a lousy platform from which to launch a rebuild, and it’s shown. Last year’s Tigers lost 98 games under new manager Ron Gardenhire, and this year’s crop is worse. Much, much worse.

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12:04

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon and welcome to my “Ides of August” chat! Today is the third anniversary of my daughter’s due date; she put off her arrival for another 11 days while we tore our hair out, in marked contrast to the way her two writer-parents approach deadlines. Anyhoo, my piece staring into the heart of darkness that is the 2019 Tigers just went live https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-tigers-might-be-historically-bad/ And in honor of getting to use the phrase “heart of darkness” into my work, I’m spinning the Peter Laughner box set this afternoon. Laughner was the original guitar player for Pere Ubu when they did their first two singles (“30 Seconds over Tokyo” b/w “Heart of Darkness” came first) and left behind an incredible legacy for somebody who died young at age 24.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Anyway… on with the show.

12:05

Jay Jaffe: This is quite likely my next article, so look for it either tomorrow or early next week at FG.

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Unless you’re a die-hard Reds fan, you probably hadn’t heard of Aristides Aquino before this month. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound right fielder been part of Cincinnati’s system since being signed out of the Dominican Republic in January 2011, but his overly aggressive approach at the plate offset his considerable raw power and limited his attractiveness as a prospect, particularly as he aged. He entered this season, his age-25 campaign, with one major league plate appearance to his name, but the combination of an overhauled swing, a 28-homer showing at Triple-A Louisville, and the July 31 trade of Yasiel Puig led to his promotion to the majors, and since then, “The Punisher” has clubbed his way into the record books.

Aquino joined the Reds for a four-game series in Atlanta at the start of August, and after going 0-for-6 with three strikeouts in his first two games, went 2-for-2 with a walk against former Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel on August 3. After singling off Keuchel in the second inning for his first hit, he walked in the fifth and then hit a game-tying three-run homer in the seventh, though the Reds lost 5-4. He then reeled off a nine-game hitting streak, keeping it alive with a pinch-single on August 4. He homered off the the Angels’ Jose Suarez on August 6 in Cincinnati as part of his first three-hit game, then went yard in each of the first three games of a four-game series against the Cubs, dinging Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish in back-to-back contests. On August 10, he launched three homers, two off Kyle Hendricks and one off Dillon Maples, then added yet another homer on Monday night against the Nationals’ Tanner Rainey. His hitting streak came to an end with an 0-for-4 showing on Tuesday, though he did make some contact. Through 42 plate appearances, he’s put up video game numbers: .385/.429/1.026 for a 267 wRC+.

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Remember when the Twins were running away with the AL Central? On June 2, they were a major league-best 40-18, a season-high 11 1/2 games ahead of the Indians (29-30). Ten weeks later, after a wild final two innings of Sunday’s game to cap a series in which the Indians took three out of four, the two teams were tied atop the AL Central at 71-47, and after Cleveland’s walk-off win against the Red Sox on Monday night, the idle Twins find themselves a half-game back.

With Cleveland beating Minnesota in the first two games of their series on Thursday night (7-5) and Friday night (6-2), the two teams actually entered Saturday sharing the division lead as well, that for the first time since April 26, when the Indians were 15-10 and the Twins 14-9. With Jake Odorizzi and friends holding Cleveland to one run on Saturday, Minnesota had edged ahead again, but on Sunday, the Indians touched up José Berríos for two first-inning runs, and carried a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth. An Eddie Rosario double and two singles, all off of Indians closer Brad Hand, trimmed the lead to 3-2. With one out, Marwin Gonzalez bashed a ball off the base of the left-center wall. Luis Arraez scored easily from second base to tie the game, but Tyler Naquin made a perfect barehanded grab of the ball after it caromed, then relayed to Francisco Lindor, whose peg to Kevin Plawecki cut down pinch-runner Ehire Adrianza, the potential winning run, at the plate:

The Twins challenged the call on the grounds that Plawecki blocked the plate without the ball, but the call on the field stood; the play was kosher. Carlos Santana’s grand slam off Taylor Rogers in the top of the 10th inning provided the margin of victory in the 7-3 win. It was a Santana homer in the bottom of the ninth that lifted the Indians over the Red Sox on Monday as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday night against the Padres in Los Angeles, five days past his 25th birthday, Walker Buehler authored the most dominant start of his young career. With a fastball that touched 99 mph and a slider and cutter that continually befuddled hitters, the Dodgers righty faced 31 batters, struck out 15 of them, walked none, and yielded just five hits. Only one of those hits was of consequence, namely Manuel Margot’s eighth-inning pinch-homer, which kept Buehler from throwing a complete-game shutout; he and the Dodgers had to settle for a 4-1 win. Even allowing for the fact that the Padres own the majors’ highest strikeout rate (26.0%) and weren’t fielding a modern day Murderer’s Row, Buehler’s performance was a thing to behold.

So, behold!

While the major league strikeout rate is again at an all-time high (22.8%), Buehler’s start was just the sixth of the season in which a pitcher struck out 15 batters. He’s the only pitcher with multiple 15-K games, as he whiffed 16 but allowed two solo homers (from among just three hits) against the Rockies on June 21; he didn’t need more than 111 pitches in either start. Here’s the complete set: Read the rest of this entry »

It looked as though Gleyber Torres’ number was up. One by one, from late March onward, the Yankees had sent every member of their expected 2019 starting lineup to the injured list at some point except Torres. From Didi Gregorius’ ulnar collateral ligament and Aaron Hicks’ back on March 28, through Miguel Andújar’s labrum, Giancarlo Stanton’s biceps, Gary Sánchez’s calf, Aaron Judge’s oblique, Luke Voit’s abdominal muscle, and Brett Gardner’s knee, injuries caused all of them to drop like flies. Multiple waves of reinforcements, the likes of Troy Tulowitzki, Clint Frazier, Kendrys Morales, Cameron Maybin, and Edwin Encarnación, met similar fates. When Torres left Tuesday night’s game against the Orioles in the middle of the third inning due to what was described as “core pain” — his second early departure in three nights — and returned to New York for testing, an IL stint appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

The Yankees had even gone so far as to summon infielder Thairo Estrada from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to Baltimore while Torres received an MRI, but he wasn’t needed. Via manager Aaron Boone, “[Torres] went through a battery of tests today and everything checked out OK. MRIs, testing again for a sports hernia, any strains, and everything turned out to be negative. Looking at him as day to day. I think he’s upbeat, he feels good, so he’s on his way back now, and he’ll travel with us to Toronto.”

The 22-year-old Torres has built upon a strong 2018 rookie campaign that itself included a 20-day stint on the disabled list for a right hip strain. His numbers — .281/.347/.505 with 23 homers, a 120 wRC+, and 2.3 WAR — are a near carbon copy of last year’s; he’s one homer shy of his total and his wRC+ is identical, while his WAR is already higher in 18 fewer games. He made the AL All-Star team for the second straight season, and even with a modest slump to start the second half, his line conceals slight improvements in his strikeout and walk rates as well as his defense. In the time between Tulowitzki’s calf strain and Gregorious’ return from Tommy John surgery, he more than held his own in a 64-game stint covering shortstop.

Torres has played a team-high 105 of the Yankees’ 114 games. He survived a couple of smaller injury scares, missing four games in May due to a bruised right elbow after being hit by a pitch and a couple in early June due to a sore left shoulder, the origin of which was unclear. He left Sunday night’s win over the Red Sox in the eighth inning due to the onset of this “core issue.” Via Yahoo Sports’ Mike Mazzeo, earlier in the game he had appeared to be running to first base with some amount of discomfort. He went to the hospital for tests, but according to the New York Daily News’ Kristie Ackert, Torres said that doctors had ruled out a sports hernia via ultrasound. He played all nine innings of Monday’s game against the Orioles in Baltimore, but he departed mid-game on Tuesday night, just after striking out in his 11th straight plate appearance without a hit. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Hello, sports fans! Welcome to another edition of my Thursday chat. In 24 hours, I’ll be arriving in Boston for this week’s Saberseminar along with several of my colleagues, and if you’re in the area tomorrow night, we’d like you to join us for some snacks, adult beverages, and baseball chatter https://blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/fangraphs-saberseminar-boston-…

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Now, on with the show…

12:04

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think one has to go strictly by a WAR leaderboard to choose an MVP. First off, we have multiple versions of WAR that have different inputs, both with regards to pitching models and defensive metrics, and each of them can help illuminate different aspects of what we’re trying to reward.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Second, we can certainly bring some other stats and context there. WPA and clutch metrics can be part of the discussion. Absences due to injury (that player may have missed some games but been better on a prorated basis as far as WAR is concerned, or he may have come up big while a key teammate was injured), changes in role, particularly strong performances against a division rival or down the stretch… The bottom line is that we don’t need to be slaves to the decimals. The WAR leader is still gonna be the WAR leader whether or not he gets the hardware.

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On the heels of a 95-loss season, the Rangers’ 2019 campaign has been a pleasant surprise. The team is 58-54, and if they don’t exactly look like Wild Card contenders — their playoff odds are just 0.2% — then at least the stellar performances of Mike Minor, Lance Lynn, and Joey Gallo have offset disappointments like Nomar Mazara, Rougned Odor, and, well, Joey Gallo’s oblique muscle and hamate bone. But one of the most unlikely breakouts has come from a player who spent the better part of the past four seasons burrowing below replacement level when he wasn’t shuttling between Triple-A, the majors, and the disabled list. If you didn’t know that Danny Santana was back in the bigs and thriving as a super-utilityman, you do now.

Since the start of July, the 28-year-old switch-hitting Santana has been red hot, batting .380/.394/.740 with 14 multi-hit games in 22 starts. Overall, he’s hitting .321/.349/.589 with a career-high 17 homers, 12 steals, a 133 wRC+, and 2.0 WAR. His slugging percentage is high enough that he cracks the AL top 10 even with the addition of 28 phantom at-bats (he’s got 319 PA and needs 347 to qualify), and among AL players with at least 300 PA, his un-adjusted slugging percentage is in a virtual tie for third, his batting average in a virtual tie for second, and his wRC+ 16th. He’s done this while playing all over the diamond: 20 starts at first base, 16 in center field, 15 at second base, eight in left field, five at shortstop, and four in right field. Eleven times, he’s switched positions mid-game, and he’s taken four different positions after entering as a pinch-hitter. Lately, he’s been working out at third base, and playing time there appears inevitable given the recent release of Asdrúbal Cabrera and the fact that he’s played the hot corner six times in his major league career.

If you can’t quite place Santana on the space-time continuum, you’re forgiven, as it’s been awhile since he was relevant. In May 2014, as the Twins were busily beating a path to their fourth straight season with at least 92 losses, they were receiving very little production from both shortstop Pedro Florimón and center fielder Aaron Hicks. In early May, they recalled the 23-year-old Santana, whom they’d signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2007, and initially used him at shortstop, but when Hicks continued to struggle after suffering a concussion induced by his crashing into an outfield wall, they gave Santana a shot at center, a position he’d played all of 23 times in seven minor league seasons. Thanks to his natural athleticism, he held his own in the middle pasture, and just kept hitting. By the time the season ended, he owned a .319/.353/.472 line with seven homers, 20 steals, a 132 wRC+, and 3.9 WAR, that while making 62 starts in center field and 31 at shortstop. He got a bit of down-ballot consideration in the AL Rookie of the Year voting, finishing seventh while Jose Abreu won unanimously. Read the rest of this entry »