2:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks and welcome to a special edition of my Tuesday chat. I’m a few days into the annual family trip to Wellfleet  — this is the seventh year in a row that my wife, my daughter, and my mother-in-law have rented this house — and the wi-fi is a bit dodgier than back in Brooklyn, but I always like to do a chat from here if I can.

2:04	Jay Jaffe: As it’s a two-week trip, it’s something of a working vacation, with the work front-loaded. Today I did a piece on Nick Castellanos’ rebound from a dismal 2022 https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nick-castellanos-is-mashing-again

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at the impact of Pete Alonso’s hand injury https://blogs.fangraphs.com/skidding-mets-lose-pete-alonso-when-they-c…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: Yes, we’re planning to get down to at least one Orleans Firebirds games. I think we have four to choose from in terms of their home games. Haven’t looked at rosters or fully sketched out a calendar yet.

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When I last checked in on Nick Castellanos, he was not in a good place. Though he was playing in a World Series with the Phillies, the team with which he signed a five-year, $100 million contract after the lockout ended in March, his season had been a disappointment, and aside from the occasional big hit here and highlight-reel catch there — the latter class of which had seemed particularly unlikely given his defensive metrics — his postseason had been bleak as well, right down to his making the final out in Games 5 and 6 of the World Series as the Phillies fell to the Astros. Fortunately, after turning the page on 2022, Castellanos has reemerged as one of the Phillies’ most productive hitters.

When the Phillies signed Castellanos, he was coming off the best season of his career, having made his first All-Star team while setting across-the-board career highs with a .309/.362/.576 line, 34 homers, a 139 wRC+, and 3.6 WAR. He had opted out following the second year of a four-year, $64 million deal with the Reds, but despite notable interest from multiple teams including the Padres and Marlins, he didn’t secure a deal before the lockout began in early December. Once he did finally agree to terms with the Phillies, eight days after the lockout ended, he felt as though he had to rush into the season, adjusting to a new team, new city, new fanbase, and new media… and with a new child on the way. Soon, Bryce Harper’s elbow injury forced Castellanos to play right field on a regular basis instead of DHing a significant amount of the time as initially planned.

Things did not go well. Castellanos matched his career-worst 94 wRC+ via a .263/.305/.389 line, set career lows with a 5.2% walk rate and 6.6% barrel rate, and homered just 13 times. He was dreadful afield (-10 RAA, -8 DRS, -7.3 UZR) as well, and while his -0.8 WAR didn’t make him the majors’ least valuable position player, none of the 31 others with WARs that low or lower — including future Hall of Famers Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto — had just set sail on a $100 million contract. Adding further insult, in the postseason, Castellanos hit .185/.232/.246 in 69 plate appearances. Not even a few memorable diving catches could offset that. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a bad week for the Mets, to say the least. In the midst of a seven-game losing streak that began with a sweep at home by the Blue Jays and continued with a trio of excruciating losses to the Braves in Atlanta, they lost Pete Alonso, likely for at least the remainder of the month, after he was hit on the left wrist. First and foremost, the injury knocked the Mets’ most productive hitter out of the lineup. It also ended whatever hopes Alonso — the major league leader in home runs with 22 — had to reach 60 for the season.

In the second pitch of his first plate appearance on Wednesday night, the 28-year-year old Alonso took a 97-mph fastball from Charlie Morton off his left wrist. He crumpled to the ground and immediately left the game, clearly in pain despite having protective padding on his left hand. An x-ray taken that evening showed that he hadn’t sustained a fracture, leading Alonso to tell reporters, “I feel like I dodged a bullet,” but subsequent CT and MRI scans revealed that he’d suffered a bone bruise and a wrist sprain. On Friday, the Mets placed him on the injured list retroactive to June 8, with the team announcing, “A typical return to play for this type of injury is approximately 3–4 weeks.” That timetable leaves the door open for Alonso to return right at the end of June in a best-case scenario, with early July more likely.

Though Alonso had homered in each of his previous two games, first off the Blue Jays’ Nate Pearson on June 4 and then off the Braves’ Bryce Elder on June 6, and though he trash-talked Elder after what was estimated to be a 448-foot shot, the hit-by-pitch didn’t appear to be intentional and wasn’t interpreted as such by its victim. Alonso had called out, “Throw it again! Throw it again, please!” but the Braves’ rookie didn’t take issue with the taunt, telling reporters, “I mean, if I hit one on the concourse, I might holler, too.” Read the rest of this entry »

Officially, Noah Syndergaard went on the injured list on Thursday due to a blister on his right index finger. Unofficially, it might be said that he’s been blistered by opposing hitters, and sidelined by a wounded psyche. The once-mighty 30-year-old righty doesn’t have the velocity, stuff, or confidence of his early heyday, and he’s been frank about the mental toll of his struggles, which have turned him into one of the majors’ least effective starting pitchers. It’s time for a reset.

Signed to a one-year, $13 million deal under the expectation that with another year of distance from his 2020 Tommy John surgery, he could reclaim some of his lost velocity and stabilize the back of the Dodgers rotation, Syndergaard has been a shadow of his former self. In 12 starts totaling 55.1 innings, he’s been hit for a 7.16 ERA, which ranks as the highest among the 63 NL starters with at least 40 innings. His 5.54 FIP is the fifth-worst out of that group, and his 5.55 xERA is tied for seventh-worst. Both his 15.4% strikeout rate and 1.95 homers per nine are among the league’s seven worst as well. Read the rest of this entry »

If he never played another game, Mike Trout would waltz into the Hall of Fame. With three MVP awards, 10 All-Star appearances, and the number five ranking among center fielders in JAWS — all complied in fewer than 1,500 games spread across 13 seasons — he’s already accomplished more than most enshrinees. Hell, he recently surpassed Ken Griffey Jr.’s 83.8 career bWAR, in over 1,200 fewer games (he did so in fWAR early last year). So far this season, however, Trout is off to one of the worst starts of his career, and it’s fair to wonder if we’re seeing the tail end of his time as one of the game’s elite players.

Trout, who’s two months shy of his 32nd birthday, had a big night in Anaheim on Wednesday against the Cubs. In the top of the fourth, he robbed Ian Happ of a home run, then followed up by homering off Jameson Taillon in the bottom of the frame, his 14th dinger of the season. He added to his highlight reel via back-to-back pitches in the seventh inning, making impressive running catches on flies off the bats of Miguel Amaya and Matt Mervis.

Mike Trout is still pretty damn good at baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Across a career in baseball that spanned over 40 years, Roger Craig was at various points a hotshot rookie who helped the Dodgers win their only championship in Brooklyn, the first and best pitcher on an historically awful Mets team, the answer to a trivia question linking the Dodgers and Mets, a well-traveled pitching coach who shaped a championship-winning Tigers staff, and a culture-changing, pennant-winning manager of the Giants. He was particularly beloved within the Giants family for his positive demeanor and the way he shook the franchise out of the doldrums, though it was via his role as a teacher and evangelist of the split-fingered fastball — the pitch of the 1980s, as Sports Illustrated and others often called it — that he left his greatest mark on the game.

Craig didn’t invent the splitter, which owed its lineage to the forkball, a pitch that was popular in the 1940s and ’50s, but he proved exceptionally adept at teaching it to anyone eager to learn, regardless of team. For the pitch, a pitcher splits his index and middle fingers parallel to the seams, as in a forkball grip, but holds the ball further away from the palm, and throws with the arm action of a fastball. The resulting pitch “drops down in front of the batter so fast he don’t know where it’s goin’,” Craig told Playboy in 1988. “To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a fastball that’s also got the extra spin of a curveball.”

Given its sudden drop, the pitch was often mistaken for a spitball, so much so that it was sometimes referred to as “a dry spitter.” It baffled hitters and helped turn journeymen into stars, and stars into superstars. After pioneering reliever Bruce Sutter rode the pitch to the NL Cy Young Award in 1979, pitchers such as Mike Scott, Mark Davis, Orel Hershiser, and Bob Welch either learned the pitch directly from Craig, or from someone Craig taught, and themselves took home Cy Youngs in the 1980s. Jack Morris, Ron Darling, and Dave Stewart won championships with the pitch, as did Hershiser. Years later, the likes of Roger Clemens, David Cone, Curt Schilling, and John Smoltz would find similar success with the pitch, though it eventually fell out of vogue due to a belief that it caused arm problems, an allegation that Craig hotly refuted.

Not that Craig was a hothead. Indeed, he was even-keeled, revered within the game for his positivity. Such traits were reflected in the tributes paid to him after he died on Sunday at the age of 93, after what his family said was a short illness. “We have lost a legendary member of our Giants family.” Giants CEO Larry Baer said in a statement. “Roger was beloved by players, coaches, front-office staff and fans. He was a father figure to many and his optimism and wisdom resulted in some of the most memorable seasons in our history.” Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of June and my last one before embarking upon the annual family trip to Cape Cod

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I am battling my way through back spasms that began when I was warming up my daughter for her last Little League game (of the season for sure, of her “career” possibly)

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at Fernando Tatis Jr’s return from his injuries and suspension https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-s-uneven-return-from-a-l…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow I’ll have a tribute to Roger Craig, whose greatest contribution to baseball was in teaching the split-fingered fastball to a generation of pitchers, to such an extent that it became “The Pitch of the ’80s”

2:05	Jay Jaffe: he’s got minor league options, time to shuffle off to Buffalo.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres continue to sputter along, below .500 (27-32) and outside the playoff picture. While Juan Soto has heated up, Manny Machado has extended the slump that he was in before landing on the injured list with a fractured metacarpal, and Xander Bogaerts has underperformed while playing through a lingering wrist issue for the past month. As for Fernando Tatis Jr., he’s returned from a lost season that included a wrist fracture and an 80-game suspension for using a banned substance, and while he’s been one of the Padres’ most productive hitters, his performance has been uneven, well short of his superstar-level showings from 2019-21.

The circumstances surrounding Tatis’ left wrist fracture have yet to be clarified fully, in part because he could not communicate with the Padres during the lockout, but he’s believed to have suffered the injury during one of the multiple (!) motorcycle accidents he was involved in while in the Dominican Republic during the 2021-22 offseason. He apparently did not start feeling the effects of the injury until he began taking swings in mid-February in preparation for spring training, but only after the lockout ended did the team discover the injury. He underwent surgery to repair his scaphoid bone on March 16, and his recovery took longer than expected. Four games into his rehab stint, Major League Baseball announced that he had incurred an 80-game suspension for testing positive for Clostebol, an anabolic steroid prohibited under the league’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, a shock and disappointment given both his growing stature within the game and the tantalizing possibility of him joining a revamped Padres lineup.

Tatis’ suspension ran through the Padres’ final 48 regular season games, their 12-game postseason run (during which they reached the National League Championship Series after upsetting both the 101-win Mets and 111-win Dodgers), and their first 20 games of this season. When he took the field on April 20, in the Padres’ 21st game, he was 18 1/2 months removed from his last regular season major league game. That’s a substantial slice of time in a 24-year-old player’s life. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — It would be an understatement to say that the Mets have had catching issues in recent years as they’ve cycled through aging free agents, but they finally have a homegrown solution at hand in Francisco Álvarez. The 21-year-old Venezuela native entered the season as the game’s top catching prospect, and while he lacked a clear path to playing time, a double whammy of injuries cleared the way. So far Álvarez has impressed while gaining the trust of the pitching staff’s veterans, including Max Scherzer. On Thursday afternoon, the three-time Cy Young winner and the rookie clicked for the former’s best start of the season. 

Scherzer completed seven innings for the second start in a row, and struck out a season-high nine hitters. The effort helped secure a 4-2 win that completed a three-game sweep of the Phillies and pulled the Mets (30-27) to within 3.5 games of the NL East-leading Braves (33-23), the closest they’ve been since May 1.

Leaning on his four-seam fastball more than usual, particularly with two strikes, Scherzer set season highs for whiffs (22) and CSW% (called strikes plus whiffs as a percentage of total pitches, 36%) as well as strikeouts. Fifteen of those whiffs came via his fastball, which generated a 49% CSW%. Afterwards, Scherzer cited his catcher’s game-calling as the key to his performance:

“I thought today, the most important thing was sequencing, I thought we were mixing up what we want to do, he’s great with it. He’s understanding how I think and pitch. 

“When you catch that rhythm, you kind of know how to keep turning through a lineup and how you’re going to face them the first time, the second time, the third time. I had good stuff, but I thought the sequencing was even better.”

Scherzer credited Álvarez with helping him get more comfortable with the PitchCom system, of which he was critical last year while adopting it with reservations. “I want Alvy to call the game, I don’t want to have to override him, I don’t want to have to call a pitch unless I really know it,” he said. “We’re not using any fingers. And that’s a big change for me, it’s so foreign just being on PitchCom. But working with him, we’re in a good rhythm.”

It took the better part of the first inning to establish that rhythm on Thursday, as one of Álvarez’s weaknesses was spotlighted. After yielding a one-out single to Trea Turner, Scherzer walked Bryce Harper, and when he threw a low-and-away fastball to Nick Castellanos on 1-2, Turner led the way on a double steal attempt. Álvarez’s throw sailed to the left of third baseman Brett Baty and into left field as Turner scored on the error; Harper took third, then came home on Castellanos’ sacrifice fly, putting the Mets in a 2-0 hole.

The steals were Álvarez’s 35th and 36th allowed this season, the NL’s third-highest total; he’s thrown out just five baserunners, for a success rate of 12%. By Statcast’s catcher throwing metrics, which control for the distance of the leadoff, runner speed, pitch location, pitcher and batter handedness, and more, Álvarez’s -2 Catcher Stealing Runs is tied for the major’s third-lowest mark. His average pop time of 1.94 seconds places him in the 67th percentile but is notably higher than the occasional sub-1.80 times noted in his prospect report, neutralizing his plus arm at least somewhat.

(So long as we’re peeking at defensive data, it’s worth noting that Álvarez’s blocking and framing have both scored well in the early going via Statcast; he’s one run above average in the former category, and three runs above in the latter. By FanGraphs’ framing data, he’s 4.9 runs above average, good for fourth in the majors, and by the framing-inclusive version of Defensive Runs Saved — which is not used in the calculation of bWAR — his six runs above average is tied for the major league lead.)

Beyond the throwing mishap, Álvarez didn’t have any further troubles behind the plate. Facing old friend Taijuan Walker, the Mets scratched out a run in the third inning on two walks and a Jeff McNeil single, then took the lead in the fourth on Mark Canha’s two-run homer, and added an insurance run in the sixth via Mark Vientos‘ sacrifice fly. Scherzer scattered four additional hits but didn’t walk another batter or allow another run after the first, and the bullpen — Jeff Brigham, Brooks Raley, and Drew Smith — preserved the lead and wrapped up the win.

Álvarez has caught three of Scherzer’s last four starts, a span during which he’s allowed just four runs (three earned) in 25 innings while looking like a future Hall of Famer who’s still got plenty of good innings remaining. That’s a big change from a few weeks ago, after physical woes and an ejection for using a foreign substance limited Scherzer to 6.1 innings in a 33-day span: 

Álvarez has started 32 of the Mets’ first 57 games due to the injuries of Omar Narváez and Tomás Nido, which wasn’t what the team initially planned for the no. 13 prospect on our preseason Top 100 list. He was initially assigned to Triple-A Syracuse, where he played 45 games last year after a 67-game stint at Double-A Binghamton. Álvarez hit a combined .260/.374/.511 between the two stops last year, earning a five-game cup of coffee with the Mets as well as a spot on the postseason roster.

Given the abysmal .217/.264/.306 performance the Mets got from their catchers (mainly Nido and James McCann), and the lack of offense they received from righty designated hitter Darin Ruf, fans clamored for Álvarez to arrive in Queens even sooner than he did. It’s not hard to imagine that heeding those calls could have made the difference in a division race where the 101-win Mets and Braves were separated only by a head-to-head tiebreaker that forced New York to play a Wild Card Series (which it lost) while Atlanta received a first-round bye.

The Mets signed the 31-year-old Narváez to a two-year, $15 million deal this past winter, hoping he could mentor Álvarez while upgrading a perennial weak spot. Since 2018 — when Travis d’Arnaud tore his ulnar collateral ligament early in April — through the end of last season, the team’s catchers hit for just a 76 wRC+, tied for 23rd in the majors, and produced a meager 2.8 WAR, which ranked 25th. Wilson Ramos, whom the team signed to a two-year, $19 million free agent deal in December 2018, accounted for more than half of that WAR (1.5) in ’19 while hitting for a 106 wRC+, the only average-or-better performance by a Mets catcher with at least 120 PA in that five-season span.

Ramos’ 2020 decline prompted the ill-advised signing of McCann to a four-year, $40.6 million deal in December of that year. He netted just 0.9 WAR in the first two seasons of that contract before being traded to the Orioles for a player to be named later (Luis De La Cruz) in December, with the Mets eating $19 million of the $24 million remaining on his deal. McCann was limited to 53 games last year due to a fractured hamate and an oblique strain. That’s how Nido, whose only previous full season on a major league roster since 2017 was in the pandemic-shortened ’20 season, made a career-high 86 starts. He hit a meager .239/.276/.324 (74 wRC+) but was good for 7.2 framing runs by our metric, and six by that of Statcast, with an additional three runs above average in blocking and one in stolen base prevention via the latter source.

Narváez, who hit for just a 71 wRC+ last year but owns a career 101 mark and was worth 2.8 WAR as recently as 2021, was slated to start ahead of Nido, but he played just five games before suffering a medium-to-high-grade strain of his left calf and landing on the 60-day injured list, which led the Mets to summon Álvarez from Syracuse. While team officials had insisted during the spring that if Álvarez was in the majors, he would catch regularly, manager Buck Showalter didn’t seem to be in a hurry to write him into the lineup, telling reporters that the rookie would receive “some” playing time but making clear he was the understudy by saying, “It’s kind of like a backup quarterback that gets drafted out of college. Everybody knows he’s going to be a really good player, but the time he spends as a backup is very valuable too.” 

Álvarez started just two of the first seven games for which he was on the active roster; the Mets lost both while winning the other five, all started by Nido. But whether or not Showalter needed a nudge from above, Álvarez soon began getting more reps. From April 15 to the end of the month, he started nine games to Nido’s seven, though he hit just .194/.216/.278 in 51 plate appearances for April. Nido was even less productive at the plate, however, and after getting just one more start on May 5, he went on the IL with “dry eye syndrome” and an eye-watering .118/.148/.118 (-25) batting line in 55 PA himself. 

Since the beginning of May, Álvarez has started 22 of the team’s 30 games, with Michael Perez and Gary Sánchez each starting two games apiece to give him a breather; both have since departed, with the former back in Syracuse and the latter in San Diego. Nido, who made a late-inning cameo after being activated on May 25, only made his first start since returning on Wednesday night. The repetitions allowed Álvarez to settle in, and it paid off handsomely, as he hit .292/.363/.667 with seven homers in May, including five in an eight-game span from May 17–26. For the month, he led the team’s regulars in slugging percentage and placed second in homers behind Pete Alonso. Even with an 0-for-3 on Thursday, he’s batting .252/.308/.523 for a 129 wRC+, third on the team behind Alonso (141 wRC+) and Brandon Nimmo (131 wRC+). His total of eight homers is already the most by any 21-or-under catcher since Ivan Rodriguez in 1993.

“I can’t say enough good things about him,” said Justin Verlander of Álvarez recently. “I think we all know the bat is going to be there. But the work he’s done behind the plate, and the work he’s done to get to know the pitchers, and the improvements he’s made already, it’s just a great sign for him as a future major leaguer.” Grizzled veterans such as Carlos Carrasco and David Robertson have sung his praises for his preparation and handling of the staff, while hitting coach Jeremy Barnes has commended his willingness to make adjustments to what had too often been an all-or-nothing approach. Notably, where Álvarez struck out 35.1% of the time in April, he’s trimmed that to 19.3% since, and where he didn’t have a single barrel in April, he’s barreled 13.6% of his batted balls since.

With Nido now back and Narváez in Syracuse on his rehab assignment, the Mets will soon face a catching crunch. Showalter said back in April that he would consider DHing Álvarez when he’s not catching, “if he shows he’s an offensive force up here,” which he has. That could be bad news for Vientos, who has hit just .192/.214/.308 in 28 PA while serving mainly as a platoon partner for lefty DH Daniel Vogelbach.

Showalter didn’t mention DH duty on Thursday when asked about the potential crowd of catchers, sounding as though he expected to carry all three. “I’m gonna make use of all of ’em,” he said. “Tomás had a good game last night behind the plate, got a base hit, I think we won’t forget he’s been a good catcher for us. Omar’s around the corner, but I kind of like where Francisco is. I’m not gonna box anybody out.”

All of which suggests that at the very least, the kid stays in the picture. While Álvarez is far from a finished product, he’s clearly a special one.

“He just has instincts. You can never teach instincts, you either have it or you don’t. He’s kind of got that it factor to him,” said Scherzer. “He just needs to continue to learn and continue to get experience, and he’ll continue to get better… As long as he has that attitude, and wants to get better every single day, he’s gonna be a great player.”

Aaron Judge is at it again. On Tuesday night in Seattle, the reigning AL MVP and home run king clubbed a towering solo shot off Darren McCaughan to aid the Yankees’ 10–2 win over the Mariners and to continue his latest rampage. It was his fourth homer in three days, his 12th in his past 16 games, and his AL-leading 18th overall. With that, he’s matched his total through the end of May last year, doing so in 46 games, one fewer than in 2022, though the Yankees have played 57 games, leaving him still behind the full-season pace he set en route to an AL-record 62 homers.

Even with this binge, Judge doesn’t lead the majors in homers. Hell, he doesn’t even lead New York City in homers. That honor belongs to Pete Alonso, who’s hit 20. Though he hasn’t homered since Saturday against the Rockies, the Mets first baseman has hit 14 since May 9, the day Judge came off the injured list after missing 10 games due to a minor hip problem. Here’s Saturday’s homer, which came at the expense of Chase Anderson:

Now that we’ve enjoyed some dingers, it’s only fair to mention that this article isn’t really about either of the Empire State’s sluggers so much as it is the conditions under which they’re positioning themselves for runs at 50-homer seasons — again. Recall that Judge set a rookie record with 52 in 2017, only to be topped by Alonso with 53 two years later. Balls aren’t flying out of the yard at the pace they did in either of those seasons, which happen to be the two highest full seasons on record; in 2017, teams bashed 1.26 homers per game, and in 2019, they upped that rate to a stratospheric 1.39 per game. This year, teams are averaging 1.15 homers per game, the seventh-highest rate on record (or sixth-highest, if you exclude the pandemic-shortened 2020 season). You have to carry the calculations out to a third decimal to place it properly:

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