2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today’s chat! It’s a crisp fall day in Brooklyn, appropriate for the September stretch run.

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I’ve got a piece today on Kevin Gausman https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fip-or-flop-why-kevin-gausman-isnt-part-of…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: yesterday I wrote about Trayce Thompson https://blogs.fangraphs.com/trayce-thompson-makes-a-splash-as-the-dodg…, and the day before that the very slumping Juan Soto https://blogs.fangraphs.com/juan-soto-isnt-having-a-juan-soto-year/

2:04	Jay Jaffe: This really is a bit of an unintended consequence of the way MLB came up with the new format. Zach Crizer wrote about it at Yahoo just the other day https://sports.yahoo.com/race-for-last-how-the-new-mlb-playoff-format-…

2:07	Jay Jaffe: My instinct tells me the odds are better by facing a weaker Cleveland team even if I’m on the road, but I worry about getting too cute by trying to steer myself to one opponent rather than another, and my gut tells me that keeping the home games might be better.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Gausman entered Thursday leading the American League in both FIP and WAR, but any shred of hope that he had of winning this year’s AL Cy Young award flew out the window faster than the ball left the bat on Yandy Díaz’s three-run homer on Thursday afternoon in Toronto. For the second outing in a row, Gausman served up two homers and was touched for five runs en route to an 11–0 trouncing by Tampa, leaving him with numbers likely to be overlooked by awards voters.

In recent weeks, while writing about a few AL Cy Young contenders, I quickly dismissed Gausman’s candidacy. But even before the Rays knocked the 31-year-old righty around, I resolved that at some point I’d dig deeper into his campaign — which, to be clear, has been a very good one — to explore the reasons why.

Gausman entered the season surrounded by high expectations and, for the first time in his career, long-term security. The fourth pick of the 2012 draft by the Orioles hasn’t always lived up to expectations; some years he’s pitched well enough to lead a rotation, and in others he’s been trade fodder and even waiver bait. On the heels of a solid (if abbreviated) 2020 campaign with the Giants, last year he fully broke out, earning his first All-Star selection and placing sixth in the NL Cy Young voting following a 14–6 season with a 2.81 ERA, 3.00 FIP, 227 strikeouts, and 4.8 WAR with the 107-win Nl West champions. That set him up for a huge payday, and just a few days before the lockout began, the Blue Jays opted for Gausman via a five-year, $110 million deal.

Thanks in part to the fact that he didn’t allow a walk or a homer in any of his first five starts — he actually didn’t serve up his first homer until his seventh start and his 50th inning — Gausman has led the league in FIP and WAR since mid-April and still does, with marks of 2.41 and 5.2 despite his recent bumpy ride. Among qualifiers, he additionally owns the league’s lowest walk rate (3.8%), third-highest strikeout-walk differential (24.3%), and fourth-highest strikeout rate (28.1%). That’s impressive stuff, and it certainly suggests a viable Cy Young candidate. Read the rest of this entry »

Trayce Thompson may not be the most accomplished professional athlete in his family — not when father Mychal Thompson and older brother Klay Thompson have six NBA titles and five All-Star selections between them — but for the first time in six years, he’s making significant noise of his own at the major league level. Now on his second stint with the Dodgers, the 31-year-old Thompson is in the midst of a modest breakout, one that could have ramifications for Los Angeles’ roster in October and beyond.

A night after the Dodgers clinched their ninth NL West title in 10 years, Thompson started in right field in place of Mookie Betts and followed a solo homer by Will Smith with one of his own, a 445-foot shot off Zach Davies. That tied the game at 2–2, though Los Angeles eventually lost in extra innings.

The homer was Thompson’s 10th of the season in just 205 plate appearances; he’s the eighth Dodger to reach double digits. Even with a September slump, the well-traveled outfielder has the highest wRC+ of any Dodger since the All-Star break and is tied for third in WAR, behind or alongside three players who are going to wind up somewhere on MVP ballots:

That’s pretty lofty company for a player who’s on his third organization and fourth team (including affiliates) this season. Thompson is yet another reminder of the Dodgers’ ability to find diamonds in the rough and turn them into championship-caliber cogs, a facet of their organization that’s been as essential as their player development pipeline. Turner was in his age-29 season when he became a mainstay in 2014, Taylor in his age-26 season in ’17, and Muncy in his age-27 season in ’18. Despite their staggered starts, they’re three of the Dodgers’ five most valuable position players since Dave Roberts took over as manager in 2016. Read the rest of this entry »

The Josh Hader trade isn’t the only deadline deal that has yielded less-than-rewarding results thus far for the Padres. Juan Soto hasn’t been as bad as Hader at his worst (the closer has lately righted the ship), but after a good start for his new team, he’s fallen into a deep slump. As the Padres battle to hold onto the third NL Wild Card spot, his struggles are worth a closer look.

When he was acquired from the Nationals in an eight-player blockbuster on August 2, Soto was in the midst of a solid-but-not-great season by his own high standards. While his 151 wRC+ was only four points off his career mark, his .246/.408/.485 line was far below his typical slash stats (.291/.427/.538) — not enough to be a dealbreaker or to rate as a significant long-term concern, but notable nonetheless. That said, the Padres’ right field mess made my Replacement Level Killers list, and an on-base percentage above .400 will cover a multitude of sins.

Soto debuted with the Padres on August 3, going 1-for-3 with a pair of walks in a 9–1 rout of the Rockies. He continued to hit well (.286/.438/.460 from August 3 to 21), but on August 23, he was scratched from the lineup with what the Padres called “left mid-back tightness.” Via MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell, “His back flared up while he was swinging in the batting cage shortly before first pitch. During the game, Soto took further swings in the cage, hoping he might get a chance to pinch-hit, but he wasn’t able to.”

Soto didn’t play again until August 27, though he missed just three games thanks to a schedule that bracketed a two-game series against the Guardians with off days on either side. Upon returning, he collected hits in his first two plate appearances against the Royals’ Daniel Lynch, and the next night homered off Anthony Misiewicz. But in the 13 games since then, he’s gone 3-for-42, all singles, and didn’t collect an RBI until Tuesday night. He’s walked 12 times during that stretch and was hit by a pitch — causing him to leave a September 7 game with a right shoulder contusion, which may be a contributing factor here — en route to a .120/.313/.180 post-injury performance. In all, his six hits over a 15-game span is the second-lowest total of his major league career; he had five hits in 15 games in two overlapping stretches in September 2019.

Is the slump as bad as it looks? My assumption going into this investigation was “probably not,” given that even with his return against the Royals, we’re talking about a total of 64 plate appearances and even fewer batted ball events. With the caveat that this is some small sample spelunking, it’s worth noting that since his absence, Soto has pretty much matched his Statcast stats for the first four and a half months of the season, which is to say that he’s hit the ball as hard, more or less:

Soto has produced a similar average exit velo and hard-hit rate and a slightly lower barrel rate (the difference in the smaller sample amounts to falling about two barrels short), but very different expected and actual outcomes. Note the difference in average launch angle; Soto generally ranks among the game’s top power hitters despite the fact that he hits the ball on the ground about half the time (career 48.6% groundball rate) and has an average launch angle below 10 degrees. In fact, since his debut in 2018, he’s one of four players with a slugging percentage above .500 (.528) and an average launch angle below 10 degrees (8.4); the other three — Eloy Jiménez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Christian Yelich — all have SLGs in the .507–.510 range with angles in the 5.9–8.3 degree range. If Soto is averaging 16.4 degrees even for a stretch of time, something is probably off. Read the rest of this entry »

Though he’s not the only reason that the Orioles are above .500 and still have a non-zero chance of claiming an AL Wild Card spot, Adley Rutschman has been at the center of Baltimore’s return to relevance. The top pick in the 2019 draft and the top prospect in the game entering this season has been nothing less than the Orioles’ best player. He’s already staked his claim as one of the game’s top catchers and put himself among notable historical company.

After splitting last season between Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk, the 24-year-old Rutschman began this season at High-A Aberdeen, not for performance reasons but because he was rehabbing a right triceps strain that he suffered in mid-March. He played five games there, starting on April 26, then three games at Bowie and 12 at Norfolk before being called up to the majors on May 21.

At the time, the Orioles were just 16–24 for the AL’s third-worst record. They were already 13 games behind the Yankees in the AL East race and 5.5 games out of the third Wild Card spot; their Playoff Odds registered at zero. Since then, they’ve gone 57–43 for the AL’s fourth-best record behind the Astros (65–35), Mariners (62–38), and Blue Jays (58–43), and ahead of the Yankees (57–46), Guardians (57–46), and Rays (55–45) — right in the middle of the six teams that would qualify for the playoffs if they began today.

The Orioles have improved markedly on both sides of the ball since Rutschman’s debut. Not all of that can be attributed to him, but when it comes to the team’s catching situation, the bar for upgrades was particularly low. Consider that Robinson Chirinos and Anthony Bemboom combined to “hit” .125/.233/.211 for a 32 wRC+ through May 20; Rutschman has replaced that by hitting a robust .251/.358/.442 for a 131 wRC+. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the change in catchers alone (which includes Chirinos’ continued work as a backup) was worth about 0.44 runs per game on the offensive side: Chirinos and Bemboom combined to produce all of five Weighted Runs Created in 40 games (0.13 per game) where Rutschman and Chirinos have produced 51 in 90 games (0.57 per game). That’ll turn your season around.

Rutschman has been a boon on the defensive side as well. The framing-inclusive version of Defensive Runs Saved, which Baseball Reference publishes but does not use in its WAR calculations, credits the new guy with being 16 runs above average, second in the majors behind only Jose Trevino; Chirinos, at 10 runs below average, is third-worst (Bemboom is right at average). By Baseball Prospectus’ measure of catcher defense, Rutschman (7.3 runs) ranks 12th in the majors, and Chirinos (-15.0) is second-to-last, with Bemboom (0.1) right at average. FanGraphs’ measure of framing runs echos those two estimates: Rutschman fourth overall at 6.3 runs, Bemboom at 0.1, and Chirinos second-to-last at -12.8. Again using a back-of-the-envelope estimate, and assuming Chirinos has been uniformly subpar across the season (we don’t have defensive splits), the upgrade in catcher defense has been worth another 0.17 runs per game. That takes us to a swing of about a 0.61 runs per game by my admittedly rough estimate — and we haven’t even begun to discuss all of those Orioles pitchers outperforming their projections. That’s a story for another day.

Though he collected a triple in his major league debut and a single the next night, Rutschman started rather slowly, hitting just .143/.226/.196 (23 wRC+) though his first 15 games. He’s ramped up to .274/.384/.494 (152 wRC+) over the past three months, good enough to place in the majors’ top 20 in that admittedly arbitrary stretch of time.

Beyond his first few weeks in the majors, only twice has Rutschman failed to produce a 100 wRC+ over a 15-game span, and even then he wasn’t far off, with a 95 wRC+ around the 45-game mark and a 98 wRC+ at the 86-game mark. In an offense that can use all the help it can get, he’s been the team’s best hitter. Having said that, it’s worth noting that the 6-foot-2 switch-hitter has struggled mightily against lefties, hitting just .164/.303/.233 (64 wRC+) without a homer in 89 PA. Against righties, he’s raked at a .276/.375/.504 (152 wRC+) clip, with 10 homers in 288 PA. His platoon splits largely went unremarked upon as a prospect, probably because he hit .350/.439/.621 in 165 PA against lefties last year, though he fell to .169/.306/.225 in 108 PA this year before being called up. If there’s an area where he needs work, it’s this.

I’ll get back to the splits, but what stands out most on the offensive side is Rutschman’s exceptional command of the strike zone, with a 24.8% chase rate and 91.2% zone contact rate; those are in the 89th and 88th percentiles, respectively. His 6.4% swinging-strike rate, meanwhile, is in the 90th percentile. Overall, he’s walking 13.5% of the time and striking out just 17.8% of the time. On the other hand, Rutschman’s contact stats are less impressive, and rather anemic when he’s hitting righty:

Percentile-wise, only Rutschman’s barrel rate and xwOBA are above average, the latter thanks mainly to his plate discipline. One factor in those splits is that he pulls the ball quite a lot (46.3% overall) and has faced the shift on about 95% of his balls in play. He’s less pull-happy as a lefty, less prone to hitting the ball on the ground, and handles the shift pretty well. As a righty, that’s not the case:

Given the coming rule change regarding defensive positioning, it will be interesting to see how much this affects Rutschman’s production; I don’t think he’ll bemoan the prohibition of infield shifts, to say the least.

With the caveat that the sample sizes for the bookend months are about half the size as the full ones even if I don’t split them by handedness, you can get an idea of Rutschman’s improvement against various pitch groups:

Rutschman struggled against fastballs initially but soon was managing an xwOBA in the neighborhood of .400 against them and lately has been even better. In all, he’s seven runs above average against four-seamers according to Statcast, and two above against sinkers. As he’s settled in, he’s improved considerably against offspeed stuff, though he’s been three runs below average against changeups overall. He’s had trouble with the curve (three runs below average) but not the slider (three above).

Even given his late arrival and the fact that there are still about three weeks to go in the season, Rutschman is third in WAR among catchers, behind only J.T. Realmuto (5.6 WAR) and Sean Murphy (4.6 WAR), and both of them have at least 100 more plate appearances. Meanwhile, he’s put together one of the great rookie seasons for a catcher:

I’ve highlighted the WARs of catchers for whom we have pitch-framing data (2008 onward), making it easier if you want to limit the comparison to more contemporary catchers. It’s worth noting that Baseball Prospectus’ framing data, which goes back further than ours using Max Marchi’s retroframing methodology, credits Mauer with an additional 13.2 framing runs in 2005 and Piazza with an additional 8.9 runs in 1993 — about an extra 1.3 WAR for the former and 0.9 for the latter. Rutschman isn’t in Piazza’s league as a rookie, but he’s dead even with Posey in less playing time and not that far behind the framing-inclusive measure of Mauer, who had about 47% more playing time. Piazza is already in Cooperstown, and the other two should be once they become eligible. I’m not suggesting that Rutschman — who’s about the same age as the rookie Piazza was (both were in their age-24 seasons), about a year older than Posey, and about two years older than Mauer — is headed to the Hall of Fame just yet, but as points of comparison go, he could hardly do better.

As for whether Rutschman will take home this year’s AL Rookie of the Year honors, he trails Julio Rodríguez in WAR (4.5 to 4.0), but the Mariners’ center fielder has about a 40% advantage in playing time and is going to wind up with more impressive offensive numbers; he already has 25 homers, 24 steals, and a 141 wRC+. I suspect he’ll take home the hardware, but given Rutschman’s impact on the Orioles’ season, they ought to be quite pleased with the way their top draft pick from three years ago is panning out.

It’s been a strange season for Mike Trout, one that’s featured a hot start, an epic slump that accompanied the worst losing streak in franchise history, and a diagnosis of a long-term back injury followed by an absence of 30 games. The good news is that since returning to activity on August 19, he’s gradually recovered his form, and this past week he set a career best by homering in six straight games.

Trout began his streak on September 4 with an eighth-inning homer off the Astros’ Brandon Bielak — the only run the Angel scored in a 9-1 loss — but his next three came against the Tigers (Tyler Alexander, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Will Vest), all in wins. He continued the streak with a homer off the Astros’ Lance McCullers Jr. in a loss on Friday night, but his three-run second-inning shot off José Urquidy on Saturday helped power the Halos to a victory.

In the annals of Halos history, that last home run lifted Trout past Bobby Bonds, who homered in five straight games for the Angels from August 2–7, 1977. The streak additionally pushed Trout past the Rangers’ Corey Seager (July 8-12) for the longest of this year. Trout had already surpassed his personal best of homers in four straight games, set in 2017 (May 12–15) and matched in ’19 (April 4–7). Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another Friday chat!

2:01	Jay Jaffe: I’ve got a piece up today about the Rays’ surge into the top AL Wild Card spot https://blogs.fangraphs.com/amid-a-slew-of-injuries-the-rays-have-surg…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: And yesterday I wrote about the Mets losing Max Scherzer and (briefly, for now) first place in the NL East https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mets-lose-scherzer-and-momentarily-their-n…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Also, I bantered with Dan Szymborski about Ohtani, Judge, and the AL MVP race as well as Zac Gallen chasing Orel Hershiser’s scoreless streak on this week’s FanGraphs Audio https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-catching-coordinator-bobby…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Bear with me for a moment as my lunch just arrived…

Read the rest of this entry »

You could be forgiven for having given up on the Rays. Four weeks ago, they lost to the Orioles at Tropicana Field, knocking their record to 58–53 and sending them down to fourth place in the AL East, half a game behind the O’s, two games behind the Blue Jays, and 12 games behind the Yankees. Injuries had gutted their lineup. Yet since that point, they’ve been as hot as any team in baseball, even the Braves. What’s more, Wander Franco is slated to return from a two-month absence on Friday, just in time for the surging squad to face the Yankees — now leading the division by just 4.5 games — in the Bronx.

The 21-year-old Franco topped our Top 100 Prospects lists in both 2020 and ‘21 before putting together a stellar rookie season last year but has played just 58 games this season, hitting a modest .260/.308/.396 for a 104 wRC+. He landed on the injured list on May 31 due to a right quad strain and missed most of June, then played just 13 games before returning to the IL on July 10 due to a fractured hamate in his right hand, which required surgery.

Franco began a rehab stint with Triple-A Durham on August 16 but made just two plate appearances before discomfort in his right wrist forced him from the game; later that week, the Rays pulled him from the assignment due to lingering soreness. He finally returned to action on September 4 and went 6-for-11 with a double over a three-game span. Tampa planned for him to stay with Durham through Saturday, but his 3-for-5 performance while playing nine innings at shortstop on Wednesday led the team to accelerate his timetable.

While Franco’s slash stats don’t measure up to last year’s numbers, his Statcast data in several key categories is practically the same:

Franco’s average exit velo and hard-hit and barrel rates are almost identical from year to year, but this year he’s hitting more grounders and fewer fly balls (note the lower average launch angle and the increase in his groundball/fly ball ratio from 1.32 to 1.66). What’s more, he’s hit just .188 and slugged .229 on grounders this year, compared to .252 and .306 last year. Where hitting the ball in the air helped him to outperform his expected stats last time, that hasn’t been the case this year, though he’s still produced a wRC+ nine points above that of the major league mark for shortstops (95). It’s also 39 points above that of fill-in Taylor Walls, who has “hit” an anemic .176/.267/.282 (65 wRC+) in 408 PA accompanied by a wide divergence in his defensive metrics at shortstop (-0.3 UZR, -4 RAA, and 12 DRS). By our measure, he’s been 0.4 wins below replacement, but via Baseball Reference, he’s been worth 2.3 WAR. Go figure.

While the truth of Walls’ value probably lies somewhere in between, the larger truth is that the Rays are a better team with Franco, and they’re getting him back at a critical time. The team entered Friday having gone 19–5 (.792) since August 12, tied with the Braves for the majors’ best record, and with the best Pythagorean record (.793) in that span as well. In that time, they’ve overtaken the Orioles (which took just a day) and the Blue Jays, cut the slumping Yankees’ AL East advantage to 4.5 games, and taken over the top spot in the AL Wild Card race. Here’s a snapshot of their odds change:

The Rays began that 19–5 run by taking the next two games form the Orioles and then two of three from the Yankees, though they have benefited by playing a fairly soft schedule thereafter: four games apiece against the Royals and Angels, six against the Red Sox, two against the Marlins, and three more against the second-half edition of the Yankees, who have gone just 19–27 as everybody not named Aaron Judge has either stopped hitting, gotten hurt, or both. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Mets flexed their muscles by taking two out of three from the Dodgers — the majors’ top team by won-loss record, run differential, and most other measures — at Citi Field. On Wednesday morning they awoke to a new reality. Not only were they tied for first place in the National League East with the Braves, but they had to place Max Scherzer on the injured list due to an oblique injury on his left side for the second time this season; later that day, they announced that Starling Marte had suffered a non-displaced fracture of his right middle finger as well. The confluence may not rate as a crisis in Queens, but playoff races have certainly turned on less.

The Braves’ claim on a share of first place marked the first time since April 11 — and just the second time all season — that the Mets did not have sole possession of the division lead. By the day’s end, however, the Mets again had the top spot to themselves thanks to 5-1 and 10-0 poundings of the Pirates in Pittsburgh, running their record to 87-51, while the Braves beat the A’s to improve to 86-51.

As for Scherzer, with a chance to notch his 200th career win, the 38-year-old righty left Saturday’s start against the Nationals after just five innings, 67 pitches, and one run allowed. Following the final out of the inning — during which he got an assist on a routine groundout by Ildemaro Vargas — Scherzer motioned to pitching coach Jeremy Hefner to follow him into the dugout tunnel, then gave way to reliever Tommy Hunter to start the sixth. Read the rest of this entry »

While Dylan Cease was chasing a no-hitter and Aaron Judge was homering in three straight games, Shohei Ohtani enhanced his own cases for the AL Cy Young and MVP awards. On Saturday, he threw eight innings of one-run ball against the Astros in a game that the Angels won in 12 innings, continuing his dominance of the AL West leaders. On Monday, he homered twice and drove in three runs in a 10–0 rout of Detroit, running his totals to five homers, 10 RBIs, and a .414/.469/1.000 line in a seven-game span against the Blue Jays, Yankees, Astros, and Tigers (oh my!). Much to Tungsten Arm O’Doyle’s chagrin, the Angels even went 5–2 in those games.

A year after winning the AL MVP award for his unprecedented wire-to-wire excellence both as a pitcher and a designated hitter, Ohtani has continued to thrive in both contexts. But where he didn’t get any attention when it came to the 2021 Cy Young race, this season, he’s pitched his way into the picture.

Saturday’s start was Ohtani’s 23rd of the season, matching last year’s total, and he’s now at 136 innings, topping the 130.1 he threw in ’21. His three true outcome peripherals have improved markedly, to the point that he’s shaved nearly a full run off his FIP relative to last season:

At this writing, with 136 innings in the Angels’ 136 games, Ohtani is officially qualified for the ERA title, though that won’t be the case after Wednesday night, at least until his number comes up again. In any event, it’s worth pointing out that he has the AL’s highest strikeout rate and is one-tenth of a percentage point behind Shane McClanahan for the K-BB% lead. Meanwhile, he also has the league’s second-lowest FIP, behind only Kevin Gausman’s 2.13. Read the rest of this entry »