Last year’s Royals caused us to fall in love with stolen bases all over again. The AL Wild Card Game put their utility on display, and it was around that game the whole nation turned its attention to Jon Lester’s refusal to attempt any pickoffs. I probably don’t need to review this for you, so I’ll skip ahead. When Lester began this year with the Cubs, plenty of people were wondering whether he’d attempt more pickoffs than the zero he tried in 2014. He seemed like a pitcher who could be taken advantage of.
Flash back to the first month of the season. Lester threw over, all right. Twice. Sort of.
I watched Hisashi Iwakuma’s no-hitter, and I wrote about it, and in writing about it, I included the following screenshot:
That’s Jesus Sucre, setting up for a high fastball to Manny Machado. The pitch was executed well, and Iwakuma got his out. Now, writing about the no-hitter didn’t leave me much space to analyze individual matchups, but something I noticed was that Sucre set up high against Machado pretty often. Really, he just set up high pretty often, more often than in the average Iwakuma start, but it was the pitches to Machado that caught my eye, and it made me curious. Does Machado have a vulnerability upstairs, like last year’s version of Mike Trout? After finishing the no-hitter post, I turned my attention to Machado’s breakout year. Allow me to spoil the rest of this post: no. There is no high-pitch vulnerability. In fact, quite the opposite!
Say what you will about the Mariners over the years, but at least they’ve thrown the American League’s last three no-hitters. And, say what you will about the significance of a no-hitter, but they’re undeniably exciting and cool, sometimes little oases of elation in a year that’s otherwise lost. You don’t need to overthink it. People like no-hitters. People like them because they’re neat. Hisashi Iwakuma just threw one, Wednesday afternoon in Seattle against the Orioles. The Orioles can hit pretty well!
It wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world, because Iwakuma has a history of being pretty good. It still qualified as a legitimate surprise, because Iwakuma had never before completed a major-league game, and this year he hasn’t entirely been himself. Much like Robinson Cano, it appears that Iwakuma has only righted himself too late to save the Mariners’ season. The best to hope for now is the occasional cool moment, and Iwakuma delivered as much as he could.
There are three reasons to be interested in Chase Utley as a baseball player. One, there’s his whole history. Utley’s track record of being one of the best second basemen in baseball. If his career ended today, he’d be a borderline Hall-of-Famer. Two, he’s available. The Giants are reportedly in negotiations, with the Phillies looking to keep getting younger. If you want Utley, you can have him, provided you give a little something, and provided Utley is open to the chance. Three, this:
Good news on Utley: Per source, he not only is feeling better, but also has figured out a flaw in his swing that was caused by ankle injury.
Utley’s numbers this year are very bad. He’s not one to typically offer excuses, but Utley injured his right ankle over the winter, and it never really got quite right. Lousy on-field performance followed, and then Utley went to the disabled list for a while. There’s no positive evaluation of what Utley’s been. The Giants are presumably thinking about what Utley might be now. They’d only be interested if they thought that Utley was better. His numbers since returning from the DL the other day are better. Small-sample numbers mean only so much, though. The numbers aren’t the encouraging thing. The swing is the encouraging thing.
Last week, I asked you a question that took me something like 900 words. Here, I’ll summarize in a sentence: As a baseball fan, would you prefer your team have a stretch of success without a championship, or a championship surrounded by a few years of disappointment? This is the post, with the poll at the end. As my stand-in teams, I used the recent Detroit Tigers and the recent Boston Red Sox. More than 3,500 of you responded. The results were interesting; no matter what, the results were always going to be interesting. Roughly 2,000 of you took the Red Sox. Roughly 1,500 of you took the Tigers. Things weren’t split right down the middle, but they were in the vicinity, with people showing a slight preference for the trophy.
I figured I’d write a short post outlining my thoughts. Because this is based on opinion and emotion, this is necessarily self-centered, and you can consider yourself invited to close this window if you don’t give a hoot what I think. I don’t know why you would. But I started it, so I might as well weigh in at some point. And a number of people asked where I stood in last Friday’s chat.
I’ve thought about it — I’ve thought about it for years — and I know where I am. Before I proceed, though, I want to embed two more polls. These are polls I wish I would’ve initially included. The polls are the same as before, but they’re selective: One is just for fans who’ve witnessed a championship. The other is for the others. I can’t make you vote honestly, but I don’t know what the point would be of trying to troll this. Vote if you’d like! My own thoughts are below.
Pardon me; I don’t mean to interrupt your afternoon. If you’re here, though, you might well be a bit curious about Adam Eaton. Which is good, because I am, too! To get started, you know those player caps we have on most pages? The profiles and quick opinions, I mean, written by various FanGraphs authors. They’re written during the winter, providing brief player analysis, and here’s a link to Adam Eaton’s page. I’m going to pull a little excerpt. This isn’t intended to pick on Chris Cwik. Anyone would’ve written the following.
Since Eaton isn’t going to add any pop, his performance will likely be based on the guys behind him.
Made total sense at the time. Eaton is a little dude, with an extended track record of hitting groundballs. Last year, as an everyday player, Eaton was literally out-homered by Ben Revere. He went deep just the once, and so he was seemingly easy to project. Speed and contact. Decent number of walks. We all knew what Adam Eaton was, up until we didn’t. This season, Eaton’s already knocked nine dingers. Put another way, he’s tied with Adrian Beltre. Chase Headley and Jason Heyward, too. Adam Eaton wasn’t going to add any pop. Adam Eaton added a lot of pop.
As a counter to the idea that baseball is complicated and unpredictable: sometimes, baseball can seem ever so easy to understand. Not long ago, the Blue Jays traded for Troy Tulowitzki, perhaps or probably the very best shortstop. Shortly thereafter, the Jays also traded for David Price, easily one of the very best starting pitchers. Since Tulowitzki joined the lineup, the Jays have gone 11-1, and the one loss was a Tulowitzki day off. Over the weekend, the Jays pulled closer to the Yankees by sweeping them in their own stadium. Why wouldn’t that happen? Two superstars were added to what was already a pretty good club. Pretty good + superstars = even better! We’ve figured this game out.
The Jays have eaten up ground faster than anyone could’ve reasonably imagined. Sometimes there are concerns that adding pieces at the deadline can disrupt a clubhouse atmosphere, but all the lights are green in Toronto, and the probabilities that encouraged Alex Anthopoulos to act aggressively have only gotten significantly more positive, validating the moves that were made. The Jays are built to bludgeon, but they’ve also meaningfully improved the pitching staff, with everything clicking about perfectly at the moment. The question now needs to be asked: how good is this team? When a team’s on a winning streak, it’s almost impossible to imagine it losing. The Jays will lose, and they’ll do it several times. But is any other team positioned to lose less?
Last week, I wrote a post asking whether Carlos Correa might already be the best shortstop in baseball. There is no consensus opinion on that one — a big group of people think he just might be, and another big group of people don’t think he’s proven enough. That’s all totally fine; it wouldn’t be an interesting question if we absolutely knew the answer. The main point is there’s a chance; Correa has been that outstanding. Since the All-Star break, for example, he’s tied for sixth among all position players in WAR. The guy he’s tied with is sometimes-shortstop Jung-ho Kang.
I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that Kang might be the best shortstop in baseball. He hasn’t performed at the level for long enough, nor does he quite have the defensive profile. Increasingly, however, it’s becoming clear that Kang was a hell of a find. His second-half offense has been about on par with Josh Donaldson and Chris Davis. Kang, in his rookie season, has shown several signs of promising development. The easiest possible explanation for each? It’s noise. Total randomness, devoid of any meaning. But I’m going to offer an easy alternate explanation. Kang seemingly keeps getting better. Maybe it’s obvious why.
When the Padres decided to sell nothing at all at the trade deadline, one of the public explanations was that the team didn’t want to give up on the playoffs. And one of the explanations for that line of thinking was that the schedule looked pretty soft, so the Padres would have a chance to rack up some much-needed wins against lesser competition. At the time, it seemed more like a fantasy. And now the Padres’ odds are somehow even longer. Their season, for all intents and purposes, is finished. For, this past weekend, they were swept at home by the Phillies.
The Phillies, who are having trouble losing. I don’t know how to gauge public awareness, but just in case you haven’t noticed, the Phillies are playing some really good baseball. I imagine a lot of people tuned out entirely once Cole Hamels went away, and the season started so poorly it wasn’t even worth acknowledging the Phillies’ record, but, as hot as the Blue Jays are at the moment, the Phillies might be no cooler. It’s the Phillies who have baseball’s best record since the All-Star break, at 16-5. You’ll recall it was the Phillies who had baseball’s worst record at the All-Star break, at 29-62. A 52-win pace became a 123-win pace, and while we can still say with a high degree of certainty that the Phillies as presently built are not good, this is the sort of run that has to be talked about. Three or so weeks of the Phillies winning more than anyone else. For those three weeks, I can offer three thoughts.
