For over two decades, Baseball Reference has served as the most direct conduit to the game’s statistical history, going beyond Major League Baseball’s gatekeeping to provide access to a fuller swath of leagues and teams dating back to the inception of the National Association in 1871. On Tuesday, the site officially launched its expanded coverage of the Negro Leagues and historical Black major league players, a monumental effort incorporating data previously available only via the Seamheads Negro League Database and accompanying it with commissioned articles by experts on Negro Leagues baseball to help place that data in perspective.

“With this change, we now present these Black major leagues as the equals of the American and National Leagues,” said Sports Reference President Sean Forman via Zoom press conference on Monday. “We have had Negro Leagues baseball stats on Baseball Reference for at least 10 years now, but we treated them as less than the statistics of the white major leagues. We will now treat them as the major leagues that they are.”

“Our decision to fix this omission is just a tiny part of the story,” continued Forman. “The main story here is the work of hundreds of researchers, activists, players, and families who did the research, made their arguments, and would not let the memories of these players and leagues fade away.”

For Monday’s event, Forman was joined by both Sean Gibson and Larry Lester as representatives of “the groups most central to this story, the players and their families and the researchers who told their stories.” Gibson is the great-grandson of Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson and the executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, which provides athletic, academic, and mentoring programs for children in the Pittsburgh area. Lester is an award-winning researcher who co-founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum; who has worked extensively with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in its research into Black baseball; who helped compile the Seamheads database; and who for over 25 years has chaired SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani produced another tour de force on Friday night against the Diamondbacks, throwing five strong innings and collecting a pair of doubles — lighting up Statcast along the way — and even making a defensive cameo in the Angels’ 6–5 win, though he departed before the matter was settled in extra innings. None of what the 26-year-old phenom did on Friday was anything we haven’t seen from him before, but that’s part of the point. He’s making this double duty stuff seem routine, combining pitching and hitting responsibilities in a way that hasn’t been pulled off in over a century, performing at a very high level in both roles with specific elements that are elite, and positioning himself as a legitimate MVP candidate.

Othani was facing a downtrodden club that had lost 21 of their previous 23 games, but the Diamondbacks were at least playing at Chase Field rather than threatening to extend their 19-game road losing streak. On the mound, he allowed just two runs over five innings, striking out eight. Both runs came in a messy fifth inning that included hitting Tim Locastro with a pitch, back-to-back balks (the second of which scored Josh Rojas), and a wild pitch on which Eduardo Escobar struck out but reached first safely as Ketel Marte scored from third. Surprisingly, nobody had that particular combination on their Bad Inning Bingo cards.

Shohei Ohtani did not agree with this balk call pic.twitter.com/fRmOS0La5K

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) June 12, 2021

That inning aside, Ohtani was impressive, generating 14 whiffs, just one shy of his season high (which he’s reached three times); seven of those were via his four-seamer and another five with his splitter. The latter has a claim as the most unhittable pitch in baseball. Among offerings that have concluded at least 50 plate appearances, Ohtani’s splitter has held batters to the majors’ lowest wOBA:

Meanwhile, Ohtani’s splitter has also produced the majors’ highest whiffs per swing rate:

I’ve included Ohtani’s majors-leading putaway percentage on the offering (per two-strike pitch ending with a strikeout) and his second-ranked strikeout percentage (per plate appearance ending with the pitch). Glasnow’s curveball is the only pitch that has a higher rate in the latter category.

As for Ohtani’s fastball, which averaged 95.2 mph on Friday — and 95.5 for the season, 1.2 mph lower than his 2018 rookie campaign — he threw one to Asdrúbal Cabrera in the third inning that was clocked at 99.6 mph. That’s his fastest since a 98.8 mph heater on May 5; he hasn’t topped 100.0 since April 4, but both of those round up to 100 if you’re counting that way. Velocity aside, the most distinctive thing about his heater — which batters have hit for a .270 AVG, .444 SLG, and .400 wOBA — is his 30.2% PutAway%, which ranks eighth in the majors.

In 47.1 innings (4.1 shy of his rookie total), Ohtani has posted a 2.85 ERA, 3.41 FIP, and 3.61 xERA. Those numbers won’t thrust him into the AL Cy Young race, particularly give his workload constraints; he’s on pace to throw 118 innings after two years of almost nothing. Still, they’re significantly better than average — his ERA- is 69, his FIP- is 82 — and they testify to a convincing recovery after so much time lost to blisters, a UCL sprain that resulted in Tommy John surgery, and a flexor pronator sprain that shut him down after two brutal appearances last year.

Among AL pitchers with at least 40 innings, Ohtani’s 34% strikeout rate ranks fifth and his 0.76 homers per nine 11th. While his 14% walk rate is the league’s second-highest, he’s gotten the situation under control; after walking 19 batters in his first four starts (18.2 IP), he’s walked just nine over his last five (28.2 IP), with just one start with more than two. On a per-plate appearance basis, his walk rate has dropped from 22.6% over those first four starts to 7.6% over the last five. That’ll do.

As for Ohtani’s hitting, he went 2-for-4 with a pair of doubles. The first one, off Merrill Kelly, came in the third inning after he fouled an 0–2 cutter off his right knee, producing a scary moment (think Christian Yelich suffering a season-ending kneecap fracture in 2019). Uncomfortable but undaunted, Ohtani arose and, four pitches later, ripped a sinker into the right-center field gap, driving in Justin Upton; the drive’s 114.9-mph exit velocity was the game’s highest.

Moments later, Ohtani came around to score on an Anthony Rendon single. That hit was sandwiched around a pair of groundouts, but in the seventh inning, after moving from the mound to right field, he doubled off Taylor Clarke to send Upton to third, who later scored on a wild pitch to break a 4–4 tie, though Ohtani was stranded at third. He departed the game after the inning, with Taylor Ward moving from center to right and Juan Lagares taking over in center.

This was the third time this season that Ohtani has moved from the mound to the outfield in the same game, and the first in a contest the Angels won; they lost 5–1 to Houston on May 11 despite his season-high seven-inning, one-run effort, and 3–2 to Cleveland on May 19, when he pitched just 4.2 innings and allowed two runs. He’s played the outfield on two other occasions — once after shifting from designated hitter, once after pinch-hitting — and while he’s yet to record a putout or assist in 6.1 total innings in the pasture, he’s now gone 2-for-4 in those extra plate appearances.

Including his pinch-hitting appearances on Saturday and Sunday, Ohtani is hitting .269/.353/.608 and ranks second in the AL in slugging percentage and homers (17) behind only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (.688 SLG, 21 HR). Ohtani’s 159 wRC+, meanwhile, is third behind Guerrero (204) and Matt Olson (169). Again, it’s a convincing turnaround given last year’s dismal .190/.291/.366 (82 wRC+) line. The offseason work he did to strengthen his lower body and rebuild his swing is paying off; he’s absolutely crushing the ball. Through Saturday, his 23.8% barrel rate leads the majors; his .418 xwOBA places him in the 97th percentile; and his 55.2% barrel rate and 93.5 mph average exit velocity are both in the 96th percentile. All of those are career highs, and his 34 barrels are just three short of his career high, set in 2018, albeit on 72 fewer batted ball events (143 to 225).

Owning the major’s top barrel rate as well as its most unhittable pitch (or one of them, at least) is incredibly cool, but one of Ohtani’s most impressive stats is perhaps his most basic one: He’s played in 60 of the team’s 65 games, starting 55 times and pinch-hitting in five. He’s made his two-way play routine to an extent that he wasn’t allowed to do in 2018, when the Angels generally kept him out of the lineup both the day before and the day after his starts and didn’t let him hit on the days he pitched, lest they lose the DH upon his departure. Even given the caveat that he’s not playing the field, this is a huge deal — the closest analogue we’ve seen to Babe Ruth’s 1918 and ’19 seasons. In ’18, Ruth, still a member of the Red Sox, made 19 starts plus one relief appearance, totaling 166.1 innings, and added another 57 starts in the outfield (including 11 in center!) and 13 at first base, plus five pinch-hitting appearances. His 11 homers and .555 slugging percentage led the AL and his 2.22 ERA ranked ninth, and his 6.7 combined WAR ranked second in the majors. In ’19, Ruth made 15 starts plus two relief appearances, tossing 133.1 innings, and 106 starts in the outfield plus another five at first base, as well as one pinch-hitting appearance. He set a single-season home run record that year with 29 and ran away with the major league leads in OBP (.456), SLG (657) and combined WAR (9.8).

While I’m not suggesting that Ohtani is revolutionizing the game the way Ruth did, his 2.1 WAR as a hitter (tied for ninth in the league entering Sunday) and 1.1 WAR as a pitcher combined rank second only to Guerrero’s 3.9, and it projects to 8.0 WAR over the course of the season, about halfway between Ruth’s 1918 and ’19 seasons. With Vladito currently leading all three Triple Crown categories (he has 55 RBI and a .344 batting average to go with his 21 homers), this could be a very interesting MVP race, and any fears that it will boil down to a repeat of the 2012 AL battle between Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout, with its old school/new school fault lines, ought to be at least somewhat assuaged by Guerrero’s high WAR.

Then again, these days one can’t get much more old school than invoking the Bambino himself. That Ohtani’s performance is inviting that comparison is a wonder to behold.

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, good afternoon and welcome to my first chat of June! I’m on something of a working vacation with my family’s annual trip to Cape Cod. Got a bit of sand between my toes, a bit of fried seafood in my stomach, and some local craft beers as well.

2:02	Jay Jaffe: (not yet today, last night that is)

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Thanks. Missed last week due to festivities for the end of my daughter’s school year and thus her preschool experience. It was pretty emotional but in a positive way

2:04	Jay Jaffe: The MLB Network screenshot was incredibly inane MLB Network @MLBNetwork Who’s your AL MVP frontrunner and why? 10 Jun 2021

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Back in February, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced that after postponing last year’s Induction Weekend festivities due to the coronavirus pandemic, it would host an Induction Ceremony this year, albeit with a catch. The July 25 festivities to honor 2020 electees Derek Jeter, Marvin Miller, Ted Simmons, and Larry Walker wouldn’t be open to the public, due to “the continuing uncertainties created by COVID-19,” and likewise for its Awards Presentation, with most other festivities associated with the Hall’s signature weekend cancelled entirely. With significant progress made in combatting the pandemic — falling infection rates, more than half of U.S. adults fully vaccinated, and many restrictions for large outdoor gatherings lifted — on Wednesday the Hall changed course, announcing that it will hold an outdoor ceremony at 1:30 pm ET on September 8, as a ticketed event with limited crowds.

The Induction Ceremony will be held on the lawn of the Clark Sports Center, the site of all inductions since 1992, but while lawn seating will be free, tickets will be required. The reconfigured ceremony is designed to comply with heath and safety guidelines set out by the state of New York and the Centers for Disease Control. It’s all but guaranteed to curb attendance well below the pre-pandemic expectations for a crowd of at least 50,000 (a level surpassed five times from 2014-19) that perhaps would exceed even the 55,000 who showed up to see Mariano Rivera and his classmates inducted in 2019. That was the second-largest induction day crowd ever, after the 82,000 who attended in 2007, when Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. were inducted. Holding the ceremony on a Wednesday, and decoupling it from the Awards Presentation usually held the day before inductions, will further reduce the crowd.

An undisclosed number of tickets will be available via the Hall’s web site beginning at 11 am ET on Monday, July 12, with seating areas designated for vaccinated and unvaccinated ticket holders. The Hall has not offered specifics regarding the latter group, but according to current New York State health guidelines, for outdoor gatherings of more than 500 without social distancing, proof of vaccination status will be required. Unvaccinated individuals do not have to present proof of recent negative COVID-19 test results but masks are required and can only be removed “while maintaining social distancing of six feet and, if in an event or gathering setting, seated.” That’s still a less restrictive set of requirements than is currently in effect at Yankee Stadium, for example, where all fans must pass a temperature check, and those three years and older who aren’t fully vaccinated must wear face masks except while actively eating or drinking at their ticketed seats.

[Update: On June 21, 11 days after this article was published, the Hall announced that in the wake of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lifting of significant COVID-19 restrictions, tickets would no longer be required.]

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On Friday night in San Diego, the Padres got an all-too rare glimpse of the version of Blake Snell that they hoped they had traded for in December. Facing the Mets — admittedly, an injury-weakened version of the team, but one that has nonetheless led the NL East for the past four weeks — Snell made his longest start in over two years and threw seven innings of one-hit shutout ball while striking out 10, that after being battered for 12 runs in 6.2 innings over his previous two starts.

Facing a lineup that was without Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Jeff McNeil, and Brandon Nimmo due to injuries, and that contained just two regulars with a wRC+ of 100 or better (this qualifier should sound familiar), Snell retired the first 14 Mets he faced before walking Billy McKinney, one of the lineup’s two lefties. He didn’t yield a hit until Francisco Lindor led off the seventh with a single to left field that bounced past Tommy Pham and went to the wall as Lindor took third, a two-base error that put the tying run 90 feet from home. Undaunted, Snell struck out James McCann, retired Alonso on a pop foul, and then struck out Brandon Drury on three pitches to complete a stellar night’s work. The Padres held on to win, 2-0.

Snell’s 101 pitches were the most he’d thrown in a single start this season; he’d gone 95 twice and 97 once, but hadn’t reached 100 since he threw 108 last September 22 against the Mets, one of three times he reached 100 pitches. In terms of innings, Friday’s outing was Snell’s longest since April 2, 2019, when he threw seven shutout innings against the Rockies while allowing just two hits. He didn’t complete six innings in any of his 11 starts last year, and had done so just once this year, on May 18 against an even more moribund version of the Rockies. Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Longoria has been as critical to the Giants’ success this season as any of their grizzled veterans, but the NL West leaders (!) could be without the 35-year-old third baseman until after the All-Star break. Longoria suffered a sternoclavicular dislocation of his left shoulder in a collision on Saturday, and landed on the 10-day Injured List. Ouch!

The injury occurred during the top of the ninth inning of the Giants’ game against the Cubs. Shifted towards second base with lefty Anthony Rizzo at the plate, Longoria ranged to his left to field a soft chopper, where he ran into shortstop Brandon Crawford and got the worst of it, and not only because Rizzo was safe at first as Kris Bryant scored. Longoria remained on the ground for several minutes and left the field accompanied by the team’s head athletic trainer, Anthony Reyes:

Crawford was uninjured, but Longoria was placed on the IL on Sunday with what was initially termed a left shoulder sprain, and initial indications that he would miss four to six weeks. Sunday brought a bit more specificity, via The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly:

Evan Longoria said he was diagnosed with a dislocated SC joint, which links the clavicle to the sternum. So the pain isn't in his shoulder. It's a weird injury and he isn't sure what to expect timetable wise. He's had X-rays but not an MRI yet.

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) June 6, 2021

Sternoclavicular joint dislocations aren’t often seen in baseball; they’re more often associated with motor vehicle accidents or collision sports such as football and rugby. Anterior dislocations such as the one Longoria apparently suffered, are one matter, but posterior dislocations can be life-threatening, as they can affect a person’s esophagus, airway, or vital arteries. Read the rest of this entry »

Though the 13-game losing streak that left them with the NL’s worst record came to an end on Sunday, the Diamondbacks’ season has taken another turn for the worse, with Madison Bumgarner leaving Wednesday’s start against the Mets after just two innings due to discomfort in his left shoulder. Fortunately, an MRI revealed nothing more than inflammation, though he landed on the injured list anyway, joining three other members of the team’s starting five. That’s hardly the only issue holding down the rebuilding Diamondbacks, who at 20–38 are on pace to lose 106 games.

Even before he took the mound on Wednesday at Chase Field, Bumgarner’s performance this season had veered all over the map. He allowed 17 runs in 13.2 innings over his first three starts, then went on a five-start run during which he allowed just three runs in 30 innings. On April 25, he spun a seven-inning no-hitter — a feat not officially recognized by Major League Baseball, but the high point of the 31-year-old southpaw’s season — in the nightcap of a doubleheader against the Braves. Bumgarner’s performance has deteriorated since then, however, with 16 runs and eight walks in 14 innings over three starts from May 17 to 28.

Even that couldn’t have prepared anyone for what took place on Wednesday. Facing a makeshift Mets lineup that included James McCann in the third spot and just two regulars (leadoff hitter Jonathan Villar and cleanup hitter Pete Alonso) who entered the game with a wRC+ of 100 or better, Bumgarner began by allowing six straight hits, including a three-run homer by McCann, and four runs. The Diamondbacks countered by piling up five runs against Mets starter David Peterson and reliever Robert Gsellman, with Bumgarner’s own two-out RBI single giving his team a 5–4 lead. But he couldn’t hold it in the second inning, yielding a one-out single to Villar and then a two-out RBI double to McCann.

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In Tuesday’s otherwise lopsided rout by the Phillies, Nick Castellanos collected a pair of hits off Aaron Nola. With that, he extended his hitting streak to 18 games, thus surpassing his personal best and breaking a tie with Jose Altuve for the majors’ longest streak of this season. The Reds’ right fielder isn’t just hot all of a sudden, however. He’s been raking since Opening Day, and entered Thursday with his .361 batting average, .644 slugging percentage, 185 wRC+, and 2.9 WAR all sitting atop the NL leaderboards, a big step up from last year’s disappointing campaign.

The 29-year-old Castellanos, who signed a four-year, $64 million deal with the Reds in January 2020, hit just .225/.298/.486 in his first season in Cincinnati. He did play every game and bopped 14 homers while helping the Reds to their first playoff appearance since 2013, but his hot start (.340/.411/.840 through 14 games) quickly faded. His final 102 wRC+ was his lowest mark since 2015, his 28.5% strikeout rate represented a career high, and all told, his 0.4 WAR made it a pretty forgettable season.

Castellanos turned the page on 2020 by homering and doubling off the Cardinals’ Jack Flaherty on Opening Day and adding three more homers (plus two doubles and a triple) in the Reds’ next five games; he didn’t strike out for the first time until the team’s fifth game of the season. That week was a particularly colorful one, as his hop-skip-bat-flip sequence on Opening Day led to a retaliatory hit-by-pitch the next day, followed by an in-your-face flexing gesture after he came around to score, and then a bench-clearing brawl and a two-game suspension that made the powers that be look like stick-in-the-muds.

As silly as the suspension was, it halted Castellanos’ brief slump; he resumed raking upon returning, collecting 10 hits (including two homers) over his next six games. On May 2, he went 5-for-6 against the Cubs, with two homers as well as a walk-off RBI single in the 10th inning. On May 12, he began his hitting streak by going 2-for-4 with a walk against the Pirates. Over his 18-game jag, he’s hit .464/.532/.710 with three homers in 79 plate appearance, and overall he’s at .361/.416/.644 with 12 homers. Read the rest of this entry »

In a rotation already stretched thin by injury, the last thing the Cardinals needed was to lose their top starter for an extended period. But that’s what happened on Monday night in Los Angeles as Jack Flaherty left his start against the Dodgers after five innings due to tightness in his left side and was placed on the injured list on Tuesday with an oblique strain that will likely sideline him for several weeks.

Matched up against Trevor Bauer, Flaherty allowed only two hits — back-to-back solo homers by Gavin Lux and Chris Taylor — while striking out nine and walking one over the course of five innings and 83 pitches. He reportedly felt some discomfort on his final pitches and then appeared to aggravate the injury while swinging the bat in the top of the sixth inning. Ain’t this single-season return of pitchers hitting great?

Flaherty didn’t take the bat off his shoulder after that 0–1 foul ball, striking out looking. He gave way to reliever Ryan Helsley in the bottom of the frame even as his teammates scored three runs off Bauer to take a 3–2 lead, but the Dodgers got their licks against Helsley and the rest of the Cardinals’ shaky bullpen and won 9–4.

Regarding Flaherty’s injury, manager Mike Shildt told reporters on Tuesday, “It’s not a minimal situation. It’s a real strain, tear, I don’t know which grade (they) want to call it. It’s significant that Jack is going to miss some time. And it’s going to be awhile. We’re still in the exploratory stage to determine how long.”

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With disastrous free agent signing after disastrous free agent signing, and then the trade of Nolan Arenado, the Rockies have already fallen into irrelevance, even if their 20-34 record isn’t actually the NL West’s worst. As if they needed more problems, star shortstop Trevor Story has been sidelined by inflammation in his right elbow. At a time when his production has already fallen short of expectations, the 28-year-old shortstop’s injury — which recalls a late-2018 scare — could have a significant impact upon his trade value.

According to manager Bud Black, Story began experiencing tightness and pain in his elbow and forearm following a play against the Mets in the second game of a doubleheader last Thursday. Fielding a grounder off the bat of Cameron Maybin in the third inning, he ranged to his left, spun, and threw a one-hopper to first base in time for the out.

Story left the game in the middle of the fourth inning, without fielding another ball or coming to bat. He did not play on Friday, and was placed on the 10-day Injured List on Saturday. With the Rockies in the midst of a week-long road trip to New York and Pittsburgh, the team planned for him to undergo an MRI on Monday, once he returned to Denver, to determine if the injury is more severe. At this writing, the Rockies have yet to share the results with the public, but the early indications are that this isn’t a worst-case scenario; Black characterized Story’s injury as “not as bad” as one he suffered in late 2018 (more on which momentarily). Via MLB.com’s Manny Randhawa:

“Trev and I and [head trainer] Keith [Dugger] spoke this morning, and we decided the best thing for Trev was to go on the injured list,” Black said. “There’s still some residual soreness and general tightness around the joint of the elbow. He wasn’t gonna play today, probably wasn’t gonna play tomorrow, and then the off-day. And then the three of us also thought there’s gonna be a couple days to test this, to go out in Denver and throw and hit at some level of intensity as opposed to just picking up and playing.”

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