Things haven’t been going the Mariners’ way lately. With Tuesday’s loss to the Yankees, they fell to 19-19, thereby setting a record for the fastest plunge to .500 for a team that started the season 13-2. In the third inning of Thursday night’s contest, second baseman Dee Gordon departed the game after being hit on the right wrist by a J.A. Happ fastball, and after manager Scott Servais pinch-hit for fill-in Dylan Moore in the top of the eighth, he resorted to calling upon first baseman Edwin Encarnacion to shift to second base, a position he’d never played before during his 20-year professional career. When the Yankees’ DJ Lemahieu led off the bottom of the eighth with a 100-mph grounder towards second, the 36-year-old Encarnacion gamely dove for the ball, not only coming up empty but rolling the wrist of his left (glove) hand.

Encarnacion was able to continue, but Gordon is still being evaluated. So much for one wag’s theory that the move would improve the Mariners’ defense, which has been downright dreadful, as I noted in passing during my look at the Nationals’ porous defense and disappointing start. Read the rest of this entry »

Even after losing Bryce Harper to free agency, the Nationals were projected to win the NL East, but for the second year in a row, things are going awry. At 14-22, they’re actually five games worse than they were last year at this point; they currently own the worst record in the NL this side of the Marlins, who at least have the excuse of being bad by design (not that they haven’t been designed badly). With Wednesday’s sweep-culminating loss to Milwaukee, Washington has lost four games in a row, and 14 out of 19; they’ve dropped six straight series. They’re underperforming in virtually every phase of their game, and while injuries have been a part of the story, they’re hardly alone in that regard. Everybody hurts.

When the season began, the Nationals were projected for a .555 winning percentage, a 53.2% chance of winning the division, and a 25.9% chance at claiming a Wild Card spot, resulting in a 79.1% chance at a playoff spot overall. Through Wednesday, they’re down to 28.6% for the division, 16.8% for the Wild Card, and 45.4% for any playoff spot.

Those are still better odds than recent history suggests. While a sub-.500 start through 36 games isn’t fatal to a team’s playoff hopes, in the era of two Wild Card teams per league (since 2012), no team has dug itself out of a hole this deep at this particular point. Of the 70 playoff teams in that span, only seven were even below .500 at this point before recovering to claim a spot: the 2013 Dodgers (15-21); 2014 Pirates (16-20) and Royals (17-19); 2015 Rangers (15-21), Blue Jays (17-19), and Pirates (17-19); and 2018 Dodgers (16-20). It’s been 10 years since a playoff-bound team started 14-22, namely the 2009 Rockies.

Relative to our preseason projections as of March 21, the Nationals are the majors’ top underachievers by a wide margin: Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Hi folks, welcome to another edition of my weekly chat. I ducked out last week to see Noah Syndergaard have himself a day, and just got a piece about the Nationals’ annual dumpster fire off my plate, hence my tardiness. Give me a couple minutes to order some lunch and we’ll light this candle.

12:05

Jay Jaffe: OK, I’m back.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: While I eventually turn my attention to the recent firing of the pitching coach and the vultures circling Martinez, the gist of what I wrote is that their problems have been driven by a dreadful defensive performance; they’re either last in the NL or last in the majors in several advanced defensive metrics. Injuries — particularly to Trea Turner and Anthony Rendon — have been part of that, but the bullpen has been a festering sore for years. I think Mike Rizzo and Tigers-era Dave Dombrowski might actually be the same person when it comes to skimping on bullpen budgeting.

12:10

Jay Jaffe: Via our Steamer and ZiPS projections  — which in general are pretty good as those things go — the Nats have been projected to win the NL East in each of the past two seasons, but injuries, some of them completely unforeseeable (Victor Robles’ elbow, Trea Turner’s finger) have had a major impact, and have exposed their lack of depth. At the same time, the bullpen woes are a repeated and foreseeable problem, which, when combined with the revolving door at manager, points to Rizzo as the culprit.

Read the rest of this entry »

As beef goes, the Chris Paddack–Pete Alonso back-and-forth wouldn’t make the grade for even the sketchiest ballpark hot dog; Monday night’s Petco Park matchup between Paddack and Jacob deGrom was of a choicer cut. In just his seventh big league start, the 23-year-old rookie dominated a flailing Mets lineup and out-dueled the reigning NL Cy Young winner, continuing a run that has produced some eye-opening numbers.

Paddack and deGrom matched zeroes until the bottom of the fifth inning, with the former, consistently attacking high in the zone, having struck out eight to that point while allowing just a pair of singles, and the latter punching out four while allowing just one single. In the bottom of the fifth, Hunter Renfroe — still basking in the glow of Sunday’s walk-off grand slam against the Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen — hit a solo homer. The Mets put two on base in the top of the sixth to no avail, and the slim margin continued until the bottom of the seventh when the Padres scored again on an Eric Hosmer single, a Renfroe double, and a Ty France sacrifice fly. That was deGrom’s last inning, while Paddack continued until yielding a two-out single to Jeff McNeil in the eighth. He departed having struck out a career-high 11 while allowing just four hits and a walk; he went to a three-ball count just twice. The Padres cruised to a 4-0 win. Read the rest of this entry »

Aside from the cool 1911 denim throwback uniforms worn by the home team, Sunday’s Giants-Reds game was a relatively conventional affair. The Reds ran up a 4-0 first inning lead thanks in part to a three-pitch, three-homer sequence, Luis Castillo threw some devastating changeups but also gave up a game-tying three-run homer to Buster Posey, and the Giants won, 6-5. Zzzzz, right? Monday’s game, on the other hand, featured several different flavors of wild, all of them worth savoring. Twenty years from now, somebody will do an oral history of this game, and ESPN will air a 30 for 30 feature.

Let’s start with the bees. More bzzzz than zzzzz…

You thought I was kidding? A swarm of ’em delayed the start of the game by 18 minutes, perhaps a message from above about those weird wraparound series, where teams play Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday just to mess with peoples’ circadian rhythms. Or something.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday was a rollecoaster for Reds righty Luis Castillo. At Great American Ballpark, he needed just 32 pitches to set the Giants’ starting nine down in order for the first time, faced the minimum number of hitters through five innings, and didn’t allow his first hit until he’d gotten one out into the sixth — all while staked to a four-run lead. Before he could escape the frame, however, he allowed a walk and two other hits, including a game-tying three-run homer by Buster Posey. Given that he’d thrown just 81 pitches to that point, manager David Bell sent him back out for the seventh. He put up a zero, and left with the game tied, but the Reds lost, 6-5. Bummer.

The outing cost Castillo his lead atop an NL ERA leaderboard that at first blush appears to be drunk, with guys like Kyle Freeland (5.90 ERA),Yu Darvish (5.79), Aaron Nola (5.06), and Noah Syndergaard (5.02, even after Thursday’s heroics) stumbling along while Zach Davies (1.56), Castillo (1.97, up from 1.45 after his previous start), Caleb Smith (2.00) and Jordan Lyles (2.20) shine.

A closer look at the 26-year-old Dominican’s numbers shows that his spot there is no fluke. Castillo has shaken off last year’s sophomore slump with a performance reminiscent of his tantalizing 15-start rookie season from 2017, asserting his spot among the majors’ upper echelon of starters. Prior to Sunday, he hadn’t allowed more than two runs in any start this season, a performance that earned him NL Pitcher of the Month honors for April. In 50.1 innings though Sunday, he’s second in ERA, strikeouts (59), groundball rate (57.8%), and WAR (1.4), fourth in strikeout rate (30.3%), fifth in home run rate (0.54 per nine), and sixth in FIP (2.89).

Recall that Castillo, who was originally signed out of the Dominican Republic by the Giants in 2011, and traded to the Marlins in 2014 and the Reds in 2016, was effectively treated as a lottery ticket in deals that respectively sent Casey McGehee and Dan Straily the other way. He was also dealt to the Padres and back again in a mid-2016 pair of trades that centered around whether San Diego had been forthcoming regarding Colin Rea’s elbow issues.

Though renowned for a fastball that could reach 101 mph, he cracked only one major prospect list, placing 94th on that of ESPN’s Keith Law in the spring of 2017. Law graded his changeup as plus but noted that his third pitch was a fringy slider. Baseball America, which placed him second on its Marlins list that same spring but still shy of its Top 100, praised his easy velocity, projected his slider as above-average, and noted that “he has a feel for a power changeup, but he’s still finding the right grip. It has the potential to be an average pitch as well.” Our own Eric Longenhagen, who had Castillo 10th on Cincinnati’s 2017 list, described the slider as flashing plus and the changeup as ” below average but there’s good arm speed here (that should be obvious, this guy bumps 100) and it could get to average with reps.”

Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — “It’s probably more rare than a perfect game, I’d guess,” said Mets manager Mickey Callaway on Thursday afternoon. “To hit a homer and win 1-0 with a shutout, that’s got to be one of the rarest things in baseball.”

Callaway was speaking of Noah Syndergaard’s two-way tour de force against the Reds at Citi Field, and he was correct. Dating back to the 19th century, major league pitchers have thrown 23 perfect games, the most recent on August 15, 2012, by the Mariners’ Felix Hernandez against the Rays. By the most generous count, just nine other pitchers have accomplished what Syndergaard did, the last of them the Dodgers’ Bob Welch on June 17, 1983, also against the Reds.

You don’t see that every day.

“Awesome,” said the 26-year-old Syndergaard when informed that he’d accomplished something that hadn’t been done in 36 years.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 season, already something less than a banner one for Corey Kluber, went from bad to worse on Wednesday night in Miami. A 102-mph comebacker off the bat of the Marlins’ Brian Anderson struck the 33-year-old righty on his right forearm — OUCH! — reportedly causing a non-displaced fracture of his right ulna. It’s the second major injury to hit Cleveland’s rotation, at a moment when the team already finds itself looking up at the Twins in the AL Central standings.

Trailing 3-1 with two outs and nobody on in the fifth inning, Kluber couldn’t get out of the way fast enough on Anderson’s line drive. He had the presence of mind to attempt glove-shoveling the ball to first base after being struck, and while he didn’t show signs of being in significant pain when the Indians’ training staff examined him after the play, he departed immediately nonetheless:

X-rays taken at Marlins Park revealed the fracture. Kluber will be reexamined in Cleveland on Thursday, at which point a timetable for his return will be determined. Since he’ll be shut down from throwing while the fracture heals, he figures to miss at least a month. His streak of five straight 200-inning seasons, the majors’ second-longest behind Max Scherzer, is probably over. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night in Arizona, CC Sabathia claimed a little slice of baseball history. With his strikeout of the Diamondbacks’ John Ryan Murphy, the 38-year-old Yankee became just the 17th pitcher to reach 3,000 for his career, the first since John Smoltz on April 22, 2008, and just the third southpaw ever, after Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson. It’s a milestone worthy of celebration, a testament to longevity, dominance, and tenacity. It’s also inextricably a product of this high-strikeout era, a point worth considering when placing Sabathia’s accomplishment in context.

But first, to savor the moment. Sabathia, who entered the night three strikeouts short of 3,000, collected all three in the second inning, first freezing David Peralta looking at a sinker, then whiffing Christian Walker on a high cutter. After yielding a solo homer to Wilmer Flores and an infield single to Nick Ahmed — the latter on an 0-2 changeup well outside the strike zone — he induced Murphy (who caught Sabathia’s 2,500th strikeout in 2015) to chase an 84.2 mph changeup:

Alas, while Diamondbacks starter Zack Greinke — himself a potential 3,000 strikeout club member, more on which below — held the banged-up Yankee lineup to a single run over 7.2 innings, Flores also added a fourth-inning RBI double off Sabathia. The big lefty departed on the short end of a 2-1 score, and the Yankees ultimately lost, 3-1, putting a mild damper on the celebration.

Of the major traditional milestones among pitchers and hitters, 3,000 strikeouts is the least common. Thirty-two players have notched at least 3,000 hits, and 27 have swatted 500 home runs. On the pitching side, 24 pitchers have collected 300 wins. Nearly all of the players who have reached any of those round numbers have been elected to the Hall of Fame, with the exceptions generally related to performance-enhancing drugs and other bad behavior. Among the members of the 3,000 strikeout club who have preceded Sabathia, only Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling remain outside, for reasons besides on-field performance. This could very well be the big man’s ticket to Cooperstown. Read the rest of this entry »

When I last checked in on Marcell Ozuna, the Cardinals’ left fielder had just etched himself into blooper reels for an eternity with his epic misplay of a Kiké Hernandez fly ball. Since then, however, Ozuna has atoned for his mistakes with some of the hottest hitting this side of Cody Bellinger. After a disappointing debut season in St. Louis, he’s become a centerpiece of a revamped Cardinals’ lineup that has powered the team to the best record (18-10) in the National League.

The Cardinals acquired Ozuna from the Marlins in exchange for a quartet of prospects on December 14, 2017, just days after their attempt to trade for Ozuna’s teammate, Giancarlo Stanton, fell through. Though he had earned All-Star honors for the first time a year before, Ozuna was coming off a breakout 2017 in which he’d set across-the-board career highs with 37 homers, a .312/.376/.548 line, a 144 wRC+, and 5.1 WAR. He had not only made his second All-Star team, he’d won his first Gold Glove. He looked to be a significant addition to the Cardinals’ lineup, but hit just .260/.308/.337 with three home runs and a 76 wRC+ through the end of May. Ozuna eventually heated up, hitting .290/.334/.482 (120 wRC+) with 20 homers over the remainder of the season, with a wRC+ of 133 or better in three of the final four months. Still, his overall 106 wRC+ and 2.7 WAR represented significant drops from 2017, ones that stuck out like sore thumbs on a team that fell three games short of a Wild Card spot.

To be fair, Ozuna spent much if not all of 2018 battling tendinitis and an impingement in his right shoulder, more or less maintaining his uptick in production in either side of a 10-day stint on the disabled list at the end of August. The injury eroded his arm strength to the point that his outfield throwing speed ranked last according to Statcast, and, by his own account, he struggled to hit pitches on the inside part of the plate. Read the rest of this entry »