The Rangers have been sputtering, losing 15 of their last 19 since August 15 to turn a 3.5-game AL West lead into a three-game deficit, with the Astros, who just swept a three-game series from them at Globe Life Field, and Mariners both above them. Yet even as the team’s offense has dried up, Corey Seager has been on a tear. Since returning from a sprained right thumb at the beginning of August, the Rangers shortstop has homered 13 times in 30 games; this past week, he finally accumulated enough plate appearances to take over the AL leads in both batting average and wRC+. If not for Shohei Ohtani, Seager would have a pretty decent case for an MVP award, even with his absences.

Seager only missed nine games due to his thumb sprain, which he suffered on July 21 sliding into second base in a game against the Dodgers. That was his second trip to the injured list this year, as he also missed 31 games from April 12–May 17 due to a left hamstring strain. Yet the interruptions haven’t hindered him at all. Read the rest of this entry »

We haven’t seen much of Royce Lewis at the major league level yet, thanks in large part to a twice-torn anterior cruciate ligament. But what we have seen of the first pick of the 2017 draft has been impressive and, lately, otherworldly. On Monday against the Guardians, the Twins’ third baseman clubbed his third grand slam in an eight-game span, part of a longer hot streak that includes seven homers in his past 14 games.

Lewis’ latest slam came at the expense of Lucas Giolito, who was making his debut for the Guardians after being claimed off waivers from the Angels on September 1. Already down 2–0 in the second inning, Giolito was one strike away from a 1-2-3 inning when he lost the plot, issuing three walks, throwing a wild pitch, and allowing a single. That left the bases loaded for Lewis, who had already singled in the first inning. Giolito fell behind 2–0, then left Lewis a 92-mph belt-high fastball on the inner third of the plate. He hit a towering shot to left field; its 107.6-mph exit velocity was garden variety, but that 41-degree launch angle was majestic:

The slam broke the game open. Lewis would later add a two-run single off David Fry — the Guardians’ utilityman threw four innings of thankless relief — in what turned out to be a 20–6 romp. Those six RBIs gave Lewis 10 in a two-game span, as he went 3-for-5 with a three-run homer (off Jon Gray) and four runs driven in in the Twins’ 6–5 loss to the Rangers on Sunday. Only one player, the Orioles’ Ryan Mountcastle, has collected more RBIs in a two-game span this season (11 on April 10–11).

Lewis’ previous grand slams came at the expense of the Rangers’ Chris Stratton on August 27 and the Guardians’ Xzavion Curry on August 28:

The trio of salamis ties Lewis for this year’s lead alongside the Dodgers’ Max Muncy, the Astros’ Alex Bregman, and the Rangers’ Adolis García. Via the Elias Bureau and MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, he’s the first rookie with three grand slams in a span of eight games or fewer, and just the fourth player to bunch three such hits so closely, joining the Yankees’ Lou Gehrig (five games in 1931), the Tigers’ Jim Northrup (four games in 1968), and the Rangers’ Larry Parrish (eight games in 1982).

Including homers on August 23 (off the Brewers’ Corbin Burnes), August 24 (also off Stratton), and August 29 (off the Guardians’ Hunter Gaddis), Lewis is hitting .321/.400/.736 with seven homers and 22 RBI in 60 plate appearances over his last 14 games, all against the Brewers, Guardians, and Rangers. It’s a remarkable surge even from a player who has wielded a potent bat when available… but has unfortunately been rather scarce in recent years.

Recall that after reaching Double-A in 2019 and spending the following season at the Twins’ alternate training site, Lewis first tore his right ACL in February ’21 and missed the entire season. He was ready to go for the start of 2022 and bounced up and down between Triple-A St. Paul and the majors for the season’s first two months, making his major league debut on May 6 but playing just 11 games before returning to Triple-A. After another 10 games down on the farm, he returned to the majors on May 29, but three innings into what was his first major league appearance in center field, he re-tore his ACL — partially this time, not fully as in the first time — making a leaping catch at the wall and missed the rest of the season. For his time with the Twins, he hit a tantalizing .300/.317/.550 in 41 PA.

Lewis made his 2023 debut with Double-A Wichita on May 11 and, after two games, returned to St. Paul. After homering four times in eight games, he was back in Minnesota. Exactly one year after his last ACL tear, and one week before his 24th birthday, he homered off the Astros’ J.P. France in his second plate appearance, then added a game-tying single in the ninth. He played regularly at third base throughout June but strained an oblique on July 1, which sidelined him until August 15. He was hitting well before the injury, and he’s hit even better since coming back:

As you can see from those improved strikeout and walk rates, Lewis has taken a more disciplined approach since returning. He’s lowered his chase rate from 38.6% to 32.2% and his swing rate from 50.8% to 46.2%; meanwhile, his swinging-strike rate has dropped from 13.3% to 9.7%. He’s done a much better job upon reaching two strikes than before, improving from .220/.264/.280 (51 wRC+) with a 52.8% strikeout rate to .231/.333/.333 (91 wRC+) with a 33.3% strikeout rate. In late June, he spoke of adjusting his two-strike approach to a more aggressive, contact-oriented one. Via The Athletic’s Dan Hayes:

“It’s who I am,” Lewis said. “It’s just me being able to put the bat on the ball and make contact and make people do things. You’ve just got to play the game and when you strike out, no one is doing anything except for the pitcher. Honestly, I get frustrated after a while and I just go back to being like — what I said to (hitting coach David Popkins) is, ‘I’m going to turn into (Luis) Arraez today, just touch the ball. There’s a lot of grass out there.’”

…“It’s a mindset,” Lewis said. “Not waiting for a pitch you can drive because these guys are going to execute. If they dot one up on the outer third, that’s 0-1. Then they do it again, 0-2. ‘OK, great, now you’re 0-2.’ Now you’re battling and you’re looking for a pitch to drive at the same time, that doesn’t work. I looked at where some of our plans were going and how the pitchers were pitching us and they weren’t attacking us with our plan of getting a mistake. I was like, ‘Why don’t I just start being aggressive, putting the ball in play? I know I can at least touch it and go to right field.’”

Since returning, Lewis is hitting the ball in the air far more often, and harder in general:

Note that Lewis is also pulling the ball more frequently and, as that last column illustrates, has more than doubled the frequency with which he hits fly balls in the air. Five of his 11 homers have come via pulled flies, one before the injury and four since returning.

For all of that, it’s worth noting that Lewis is riding a .368 BABIP, which is higher than any batting title qualifier save for Freddie Freeman (.375). That said, 15 other players with between 150–425 PA (around enough to qualify) have higher marks, including three of Lewis’ teammates and another former number one pick whom I checked in on about six weeks ago:

When I wrote about Moniak, who’s in the midst of a breakout year with the Angels (despite a 2.8% walk rate and 34.8% strikeout rate), he had a .427 BABIP through 165 PA. Since then, through his next 151 PA, he’s produced a .365 BABIP — still incredibly high, just a bit behind Lewis, yet 72 points lower than that first stretch. That said, Julien, Solano, and Jeffers all have higher BABIPs than Lewis in at least 96 more PA, with Solano having more than twice as many PA.

It’s rare but not unheard of for so many teammates to sustain such numbers. Four other expansion-era teams have had four players with at least a .360 BABIP in 150 PA; in fact, the Twins entry in that group sustained those BABIPs through at least 350 PA for all four:

Moving beyond BABIP, Lewis is actually further ahead of his Statcast expected numbers than just about any player at the 150 PA cutoff:

Lewis has the highest wOBA-xwOBA differential by a seven-point margin, the third-largest differential in batting average, and the fourth-largest in slugging percentage. Note that the top six players in that table are all short of qualifying for the batting title; those gaps tend to shrink as the sample sizes increase.

While it’s tempting to chalk up some of the differentials to Lewis’ 76th-percentile speed, his eight hits on grounders and line drives that have stayed in the infield don’t move the needle that much, and none of his five doubles are the result of hustling to stretch singles. On the contrary, a 398-footer that he hit off the Rangers’ Andrew Heaney at Target Field on August 24 would have been a home run in 24 of the other 29 ballparks.

Even if his production is a bit beyond the bounds of sustainability, Lewis’ return has helped to shore up the Twins’ third base situation. The team made the Replacement Level Killers list ahead of the trade deadline, with Jose Miranda, Kyle Farmer, Willi Castro, and Solano combining with Lewis’ first stint to hit a meek .247/.317/.353 for a 90 wRC+ and 0.5 WAR. With Lewis making 14 of the team’s last 18 starts at third (plus four more at DH) and Jorge Polanco, Castro, and Farmer seeing time in the period between that article’s publication and Lewis’ return, the group is up to .260/.333/.388 (101 wRC+) with 1.8 WAR. The Twins have widened their AL Central lead from three games to seven since that list ran and from 4.5 games to seven since Lewis’ return. He’s just been part of the parade, as the Twins as a team have hit .275/.362/.489 since August 15, good for a 134 wRC+ (fourth in the majors) and 6.42 runs per game (third).

On a team whose biggest stars, namely Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton, have disappointed, Lewis has helped pick up the slack, and if what he’s done isn’t as sustainable as it is flashy, his in-season evolution is certainly encouraging. After three mostly lost seasons, the Twins can’t ask for much more than that.

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon folks, and welcome to my first chat of this sweltering (in Brooklyn where it’s 92 degrees) September!

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Hope you all had nice long weekends. Just before the weekend I did this about Tony Gonsolin’s Tommy John surgery, a now-outdated snapshot of the Dodgers’ rotation (ugh) and a look at TJS trends in general https://blogs.fangraphs.com/tony-gonsolin-and-recent-tommy-john-surger… I’m working on something on Royce Lewis for tomorrow.

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Baddoo is a name that seems seems straight out of Phantom Menace, though I’d also believe that Quantrill flew alongside Luke Skywalker in A New Hope and/or Empire Strikes Back.

2:06

Jay Jaffe: I’d say more likely to be applied to postseason play BUT I very, very much doubt that will happen. The move to do so in regular season just makes life simpler for teams (and players), and they tend to like it because it gets them home earlier, but I don’t see anybody hungering to have a playoff game decided that way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Between Shohei Ohtani, Félix Bautista, and now Tony Gonsolin, the fragility of ulnar collateral ligaments has been an all-too-frequent topic of conversation within the past week. Gonsolin, in case you haven’t heard, is headed for Tommy John surgery on Friday, while we’re still waiting to hear whether the UCL injuries of Ohtani and Bautista are significant enough to merit going under the knife. Between that trio and the Rays’ Shane McClanahan going down earlier this month — and the fact that neither Gonsolin nor McClanahan are the first members of their teams’ rotations this year to need such surgery — it certainly feels as though we’re dealing with a lot of Tommy Johns lately, so it’s worth cutting through the numbers.

First, however, let’s spare a few paragraphs for Gonsolin and the Dodgers. The 29-year-old righty was coming off an All-Star season in which he posted a 2.14 ERA and 3.28 FIP in 130.1 innings, and owned similarly impressive career marks (2.51 ERA, 3.45 FIP) despite his intermittent availability due to injuries, which included a six-week absence near the end of last season due to a forearm strain, and just two appearances totaling 3.1 innings afterwards, one of them a four-out start in the 2022 Division Series. After spraining his left ankle during fielding drills in early March, he was playing catch-up and never seemed to find a comfort zone. He began the regular season on the injured list, finally debuting on April 26, and while his run prevention numbers looked good in the early going, his peripherals told another story, and his average fastball velocity was down. On June 11, manager Dave Roberts alluded to some health issues with Gonsolin, noting that his between-starts recovery “hasn’t been great,” and wondering if he was having trouble getting loose or pacing himself. In his next start two days later, Gonsolin threw six shutout innings but averaged just 91.1 mph with his four-seamer, two full ticks below last year.

To that point, Gonsolin had a 1.93 ERA but a 4.25 FIP, and soon he began to get roughed up on a routine basis. Over his next seven starts, he allowed four or more runs six times, producing a 7.25 ERA. Following a 3.1-inning, five-homer, 10-run stinker on August 18, Gonsolin’s second bad start out of three, Roberts told reporters that Gonsolin had been pitching through an unspecified “arm issue” for four to six weeks and would likely head to the injured list. On Sunday, the Dodgers acknowledged that surgery was an option, and on Monday it was revealed he’d undergo Tommy John on September 1. Read the rest of this entry »

While Bryce Harper made the quickest return from Tommy John surgery of any position player on record, it came with a cost. Not surprisingly, he didn’t hit the ball as hard as usual in the early months of his return, or do as much damage because he wasn’t elevating it with consistency. At one point, he went 166 plate appearances without a home run, the longest drought of his career, but even then, he remained a reasonably productive hitter. Lately he’s been heating up, crushing the ball while helping the Phillies climb to the top of the NL Wild Card race.

In the fourth inning of Monday night’s game against the Angels in Philadelphia, Harper demolished a Lucas Giolito fastball that was playing in the middle of the road:

The homer — a 111.9-mph scorcher with a projected distance of 429 feet — was Harper’s fourth in a seven-game rampage, during which he’s hit .500/.613/1.037. It was his eighth homer of the month, his highest total since he hit nine in September/October 2021 (and 10 in August of the same season) en route to his second MVP award. He maxed out at seven homers in May of last season, the month he was diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Read the rest of this entry »

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon folks, and welcome to the last August edition of my chat for 2023!

2:03	Jay Jaffe: I’m a bit giddy because as of 20 minutes ago, we have accepted offers on our current and future homes in Brooklyn

2:04	Jay Jaffe: it’s been a journey, folks

2:05

Jay Jaffe: anyway, yesterday I ran a piece on Félix Bautista’s UCL injury https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-great-summer-ends-with-a-bummer-as-the-o…. Still no word on the severity of it, but I wouldn’t really read into that as good news. The Orioles aren’t the most transparent bunch when it comes to injuries or… other matters

2:06	Jay Jaffe: I’ve got a piece on Bryce Harper’s resurgence that’s about to go live

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Anyway, let’s get to this one…

Read the rest of this entry »

Félix Bautista has been as emblematic of and as crucial to the Orioles’ sudden breakthrough as any player. In his second major league season, the imposing 28-year-old closer — nicknamed “The Mountain” for his 6-foot-8, 285-pound physique — has emerged as one of the game’s most dominant and valuable relievers, the biggest cog in a bullpen that’s helped to prop up a wobbly rotation. Unfortunately, Bautista’s season is at the very least on hold after he left Friday night’s game with what the Orioles have called “some degree of injury” to his ulnar collateral ligament.

Facing the Rockies at Camden Yards, Bautista entered a 5-4 game in the ninth inning in search of his 34th save and his second in as many nights. He battled Jurickson Profar for six pitches before striking him out on a 101.7-mph fastball, then induced Harold Castro to ground out on a 1-0 pitch. He was one strike away from finishing off Michael Toglia when he stumbled off the mound while uncorking a 102.3-mph fastball that missed up and outside. After he called for time to recover, the sight of him flexing and squeezing his right hand prompted manager Brandon Hyde, head athletic trainer Brian Ebel, and coach José Hernández to check on him and ultimately pull him from the game.

While Danny Coulombe struck out Toglia on his first and only pitch of the night to finish the game, the sequence understandably put a damper on the Orioles’ comeback win. On Saturday, general manager Mike Elias announced that Bautista had injured his UCL and would be placed on the 15-day injured list. It’s unclear yet whether the injury — likely a sprain of the ligament, meaning some kind of tear — is severe enough to require Tommy John surgery. Read the rest of this entry »

The news last night out of Anaheim landed like a punch to the gut of every reasonable baseball fan: Shohei Ohtani has a torn ulnar collateral ligament and at the very least is done pitching for the season, thus ending perhaps the greatest campaign we’ve ever seen. And in a double whammy that shouldn’t be dismissed, the team announced that Mike Trout is heading back to the injured list after playing just one game following a seven-week absence due to a fractured left hamate that required surgery.

Set aside the money for a moment; obviously this carries ramifications for Ohtani’s upcoming payday, which I’ll get to below. And forget the playoffs. The Angels went all-in in advance of the August 1 trade deadline but have gone an unfathomable 5-16 this month, plummeting out of the AL Wild Card race like an anvil without a parachute. Their Playoff Odds were already down to 0.3% before they were swept by the Reds in a bleak doubleheader on Wednesday. Even if Ohtani and Trout had both played at their peaks over the season’s final 34 games, the team’s fate was sealed. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tigers’ season hasn’t been much to write home about, particularly on the offensive side, but one encouraging sign has been the play of Spencer Torkelson. The top pick of the 2020 draft was utterly overwhelmed by major league pitching as a rookie last year, to the point that he was demoted to Triple-A for a spell. He started this season slowly as well, but has shown significant signs of progress and has been red-hot this month.

Even while going hitless in his last two games — can’t win ’em all when it comes to timing these articles — the 23-year-old Torkelson entered Wednesday hitting .237/.320/.449 with 23 homers and a 112 wRC+. Those numbers may not jump off the page, but that represents significant advancement over last year’s dismal line (.203/.285/.319, 76 wRC+), not to mention a strong effort to overcome this year’s early-season struggles. After hitting just .206/.266/.309 (55 wRC+) through April, he’s at .243/.331/.480 (124 wRC+) since, including .267/.375/.653 with eight home runs and a 179 wRC+ in August, with a pair of four-hit games and a quartet of two-hit games. And he’s done this month’s damage against the Pirates, Rays, Twins, Red Sox, Guardians, and Cubs — mostly contending teams, if not necessarily powerhouses.

A hot month or six weeks may just be that, and while it’s too early to suggest that Torkelson is a finished product, there’s a lot to like about the evolution of his performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Because I was raised on Saturday morning cartoons of a certain vintage — some of which I’ve recently shared with my going-on-seven-year-old daughter — I have Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner zooming through my brain with alarming frequency. In nearly every episode, there’s a moment when the coyote runs off a cliff and then, improbably, hangs in midair for several seconds before plummeting several hundred feet to the desert ground. Welcome to the 2023 Giants.

At 65-60, the Giants entered Tuesday occupying the NL’s third Wild Card spot, half a game behind the Cubs (65-59) for the second spot, and half a game ahead of the Diamondbacks (65-61), a game ahead of the Reds (64-61), and a game and a half ahead of the Marlins (64-62). Somehow, they’ve hung on this long despite playing sub-.500 ball for nearly the last two months with an offense so comically inept you’d think it came out of an ACME crate.

Dial back to June 10, when the Giants were a middling 32-32, seven games out of first place in the NL West and a game and a half back in the Wild Card race, with an offense that had hit for a 101 wRC+ (.246/.321/.413) while averaging 4.52 runs per game to that point. Two days and two wins later, they moved into a tie for the third Wild Card spot with the Brewers, and save for a brief span from July 6–8, they’ve remained in the playoff picture ever since; as recently as August 8, they were 62-52 and had a claim on the top NL Wild Card spot. Read the rest of this entry »