Author Archive: Kiri Oler

The Orioles finally got tired of being poked with a stick to choruses of “Do something!” and signed Charlie Morton to a one-year deal worth $15 million. Will this move silence those voices? Probably not! But as Baltimore’s GM, Mike Elias seems impervious to external feedback, so those still crowing may as well be talking to a wall. Then again, maybe a wall would have a better understanding of the importance of balance when it comes to construction, making it better equipped to construct a big league roster. But more on that in a minute.

In a vacuum, signing Morton to an affordable, short-term deal is a positive addition. Though 2025 will be his age-41 season, Morton has logged at least 160 innings in each of the last four years and put up league average (or better) numbers. Given the scarcity of healthy, quality pitching over the last few years, pitchers who post are extremely valuable. And if one didn’t know Morton had already crested 40, scanning his production wouldn’t yield any obvious giveaways. He has become more of a finesse pitcher, relying on command and weak contact over strikeouts, but the shift has been subtle. Over the last four seasons, he’s thrown his curveball more than his four-seamer and his groundball rate has gradually grown, while his strikeout rate has slowly dwindled. Morton’s curve is easily his best pitch by Stuff+ at 122, and that’s what he uses to induce whiffs and groundballs. His other offerings have Stuff+ scores ranging from 72 to 86, but he locates them well and they mirror the spin of his curveball to keep hitters off balance.

As a pitcher relying on his ability to keep the ball on the ground, it would make Morton’s life easier to take the mound in front of a strong infield defense. In 2024, the Orioles infielders logged -20 OAA and -14.3 defensive runs, but there is reason to think they’ll do better moving forward. Last season’s numbers include a lot of Jordan Westburg playing second base instead of third, where he’s a much stronger defender, and Ramón Urías looking at times overcooked while covering the hot corner after Westburg went down with a fractured hand. Meanwhile, this is a young team that still has room for growth. Ryan Mountcastle’s defense at first has seen small year-over-year improvements since 2022, when he made the move from the outfield permanent. Ideally, Jackson Holliday will get settled in at second, and though Gunnar Henderson’s play at shortstop is the least of anyone’s concern, given that he’s still only 23, there’s no reason to think he’s done leveling up his game. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time since the Eisenhower Administration, women dreaming of playing baseball professionally in the United States will have the opportunity to see that dream realized with a league of their own.

Last October, the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) issued its first press release to announce the founding of the country’s only professional women’s baseball league, which is set to launch in the summer of 2026. The league is co-founded by Justine Siegal — who is best known for founding Baseball For All, “[A] girls baseball nonprofit that builds gender equity by creating opportunities for girls to play, coach, and lead in the sport” — and Keith Stein, a businessman, lawyer, and member of the ownership group for a semiprofessional men’s baseball team in Toronto. The league has also brought in former Toronto Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston and Team Japan’s two-time Women’s Baseball World Cup MVP Ayami Sato as special advisors.

Women’s baseball has a long, but unfortunately sparse, history dating back to the late 1800s, when colleges in the Northeast, such as Vassar, fielded teams. Since then, women have largely accrued playing time by representing their country’s national team at the Olympics, playing on barnstorming teams – from the Dolly Vardens in the 1870s to the Colorado Silver Bullets in the 1990s – or by earning roles in leagues primarily created for men, from the amateur ranks to the pros (see Mo’ne Davis, Toni Stone, Lizzie Arlington, and more recently, Kelsie Whitmore, among many others). Aside from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, formed during WWII to fill a void left by the male ballplayers fighting overseas, women in the United States have not had a dedicated professional league.

So after all these years without a league, why now? “The past was the right time,” Stein says in a recent interview with FanGraphs. “Thirty years ago was the right time. Four years ago was the right time. Definitely, definitely, now is the right time.” As evidence, he notes, “There’s now a professional women’s hockey league that’s thriving, a professional women’s soccer league, a professional women’s basketball league. They’re all thriving because of the appetite, the incredible appetite, for women’s sport.” Read the rest of this entry »

Every year when the postseason rolls around, we enjoyers of baseball try our best to make sure we’re properly appreciating the history unfolding on the field before us. We want to acknowledge when we’ve just watched a game so magical that it will be spoken of in tones of awe and disbelief for years to come. Downstream of that, we like to evaluate whether a game, a series, or even an entire postseason was a good one, mentally sorting them into tiers with other postseasons we’ve watched. Some measures of “good” are subjective, coming down to our personal preferences for certain strategies, styles of play, narratives, teams, or players. Other measures are more universally agreed upon and objectively quantifiable. In particular, most neutral observers value a close, exciting game, one that features both tension and action to keep observers engaged.

Win Probability Added (WPA) provides a reasonable proxy for measuring both tension and excitement. At the plate appearance level, it uses the score, inning, and base-out state (i.e. runner on second, two outs) to calculate a team’s win expectancy based on historical outcomes. The difference in a team’s win expectancy after a plate appearance relative to what it was before it represents the WPA during the plate appearance in question. WPA will be negative for the team whose odds of winning decreased while being positive for their opponent, but in this context, we’re going to focus on the magnitude of the change in win expectancy. Without a rooting interest, it’s less about which team wins and more about seeing big plays that impact the outcome of the game. Games with a large quantity of WPA have a lot of high-impact plays and lead changes that allow teams to pass win probability back and forth between one another.

Using WPA, we can evaluate the quality of the action in a given game by both looking at the average WPA per plate appearance and by adding up the game’s total WPA. Both methods provide useful insight. Average WPA per plate appearance controls for the variable number of plate appearances in a game, since games with more plate appearances have more opportunities to accumulate WPA. Sometimes that accumulation constitutes empty calories; other times it’s more substantial. Ultimately, we want the games that top the charts from both perspectives. Read the rest of this entry »

Ice Cube opened Game 2 of the World Series in Los Angeles by manifesting a “Good Day” for the Dodgers. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Dodgers bullpen put the Yankees offense in a freezer, while the Los Angeles bats got to Carlos Rodón. But in the seventh inning the sun set on the good day when Shohei Ohtani injured his shoulder on a stolen base attempt. After the game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani suffered a subluxation of the shoulder and that further testing would be required, but his strength and range of motion were good. With the severity of the injury still unclear, a 4-2 win and 2-0 series lead for now is clouded by uncertainty.

Prior to the vibe shift, the game began with Yamamoto on the mound for his fourth start of the postseason. His performance in his prior starts was shaky – allowing five runs in three innings in his first meeting with the Padres, zero runs in five innings in a second face off with San Diego, and two runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Mets. The Dodgers have been managing Yamamoto’s workload since his return from a right rotator cuff strain on September 10, and he hadn’t pitched more than five innings in a start since June 7, when he silenced the Yankees in the Bronx for seven scoreless innings. In Game 2, Yamamoto’s second start against the Yankees, he was nearly as effective as he was in that first outing: He one-hit New York over 6 1/3 innings, allowing just one earned run on a Juan Soto home run. Soto, who scored both Yankees runs in Game 2, was their only player whose bat avoided the deep freeze.

For Yamamoto to reach the level of effectiveness he showcased on Saturday night, he relies on a variety of offspeed pitches to keep hitters from sitting on his four-seamer, which is his worst pitch by Stuff+ with a grade of 84. He kept the Yankees off balance by disregarding standard sequencing practices. Instead he deployed his curveball, splitter, slider, and cutter to trap the Yankees offense in a web of sequencing chaos. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s likely not too many people have heard of or seen the movie Wolfs, even though it features Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a crowd-pleaser action movie, throwing witty banter at each other for two hours. However, the film dropped three weeks ago on Apple TV+. No wide release, little marketing power behind it, and available only on a streaming service that lags behind Netflix, Hulu, and other platforms. Likewise, the MLB playoff picture began to take shape around the same time, and casual fans of the sport probably hadn’t heard or seen much of the Detroit Tigers or the Cleveland Guardians, who play in the AL Central and don’t receive much national media attention.

Nevertheless, the two teams met in an ALDS that spanned the full five games. The Guardians outlasted the Tigers 7-3 in Game 5 on Saturday to earn a trip to the ALCS, where they’ll meet the New York Yankees in a best-of-seven series with a World Series berth on the line.

In Wolfs, Pitt and Clooney play fixers who are sent in to clean up messy situations created by people with enough money and power to avoid facing consequences for their actions. The two are assigned to the same job despite this being the type of work better suited to a lone wolf. The dual fixer scenario highlights how the two men who have never worked together still generally follow the same playbook. They ask the same questions, follow the same procedures, and tap into the same network of resources. Both fancy themselves not only the best at what they do, but Clooney declares, “No one can do what I do,” mere moments before another character proclaims, “No one can do what he does,” in reference to Pitt. Read the rest of this entry »

After Jazz Chisholm Jr. told reporters, “They just got lucky,” in reference to the Royals’ 4-2 win over the Yankees in Game 2 of the ALDS on Monday night, some teams might have pinned that quote to their figurative bulletin boards and set out to earn a decisive win in front of their home crowd in Game 3. In its full context, Chisholm Jr.’s quote focused more on the Yankees’ missing opportunities to positively impact the game than actually discrediting the play of the Royals, but along with their elite athlete genes, pro ballplayers carry a special gene that allows them to get 27 varieties of riled up over even the smallest perceived slight.

Aaron Boone, former player and current manager of the Yankees, knows this as well as anyone and tried to throw water on his third baseman’s incendiary comments during his own session with the media, saying: “I don’t think they got lucky. I think they did a lot of really good things, and came in here and beat us.” Boone went on to reframe the issue as the Yankees’ getting unlucky on some hard-hit batted balls, which sounds better in theory but still attributes some randomness to the Royals’ win.

Wednesday night opened in Kansas City with a sea of fans adorned in royal blue booing their lungs out as Chisholm Jr. was introduced to the crowd at Kauffman Stadium. He soaked in the moment with a wide smile and seemed to mouth, “I love it” multiple times as the vengeful cries rained down around him. However, by evening’s end the masses fell silent. The Yankees emerged victorious with a 3-2 win over the Royals to carry a 2-1 series lead into Game 4 on Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »

In your most prim and proper ballet teacher voice, repeat after me, “Demi-plié and stretch. Demi-plié and stretch.” The demi-plié is the first foundational move taught to new ballerinas. Its name translates from French to “small bend.” When pitching from the windup, Michael King comes set, gently bends at the knees, then stands tall for a moment before delivering the pitch. Setting aside his lack of turnout and hinge at the hip, King went about his business on Tuesday with the precision and artistry of a dancer.

Ballerinas value efficiency of movement above all else, and King needed just 89 pitches to complete seven shutout innings, while allowing just five hits, walking absolutely no one, and striking out 12. His performance earned a standing ovation from the Petco Park crowd, which went home happy after the Padres orchestrated a 4-0 win over the Braves in Game 1 of the best-of-three NL Wild Card series.

King stole the show with a well-choreographed approach that has served him well all year, and he executed every step at a high level. And lest we forget, this is King’s first season in a full-time starting role, his first year strategically piecing together his complement of pitches into the rhythm and flow of a start. Knowing that his goals now include facing batters of both handedness multiple times and throwing six or more innings each time out, King has evolved the three-pitch arsenal he debuted with to a five-pitch ensemble that he deploys with specific intent. Read the rest of this entry »

Andie Anderson wants to do serious journalism, but instead she’s stuck writing how-to columns for a women’s lifestyle magazine. The 2003 feature film, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, follows Andie (played by Kate Hudson) as she attempts to demonstrate that even a conventionally attractive straight woman will find herself single in a hot minute if she commits all the common faux pas known to drive straight men away. The subject of her journalistic experiment is Benjamin Barry (played by Matthew McConaughey), who coincidentally is running an experiment of his own. He claims to have a foolproof formula to make any woman fall in love with him in 10 days flat. The premises of both endeavors rely heavily on traditional gender stereotypes, but eventually the pair realize their situation is more nuanced, both in terms of the circumstances and the individuals involved (or at least as nuanced as a movie that came out in 2003 can muster).

Here in 2024, Kevin Brown recently noted on a MASN broadcast that Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson had grounded into only two double plays all season. That felt startlingly low for a roughly 150-game sample, but I’ll admit to not habitually tracking the GIDP leaderboard. What is a “good” number of GIDP for a full season? Has anyone ever posted a perfect, no-GIDP season? What makes players particularly good or bad at avoiding GIDP?

These questions have intuitive answers, but this is FanGraphs; we like to test our assumptions around here. Andie Anderson thought she knew all the obvious ways to get dumped, but in practice it wasn’t as easy as she thought. It turns out two is a good number of GIDP. Only Masyn Winn, with one, has fewer than Henderson this season, who is tied for second place with Daulton Varsho, Riley Greene, and Jackson Merrill. Going back to 1949 (the earliest season with GIDP data), and omitting 2020, there have been nine players with GIDP-free seasons, most recently TJ Friedl in 2023. Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into the year, everyone thought this would be the season that Shohei Ohtani, rehabbing from elbow surgery and DHing only, stepped aside and yielded MVP to someone else before resuming his place as the de facto favorite for the award in 2025. Instead, Ohtani decided to make a run at the first ever 50-homer, 50-steal season. The other primary competitor for NL MVP is Francisco Lindor, who isn’t chasing any statistical milestones and plays for a team whose most interesting narratives involve an amorphous fast food mascot, the musical endeavors of a part-time utility infielder, and the failure to extend Pete Alonso. And yet, Lindor’s position atop the NL WAR leaderboard demands consideration.

The marginal difference between Lindor and Ohtani’s WAR totals (7.4 and 7.0, respectively, at the time of this writing) creates a virtual tie to be broken based on the personal convictions of voters and anyone else with an opinion and an internet connection. For most, the choice between the two distills down to whether Ohtani’s 50/50 chase overrides his DH-only status. I’m not here to disparage Ohtani for not playing defense, but if you find that disqualifying for MVP recognition, I feel that. Then again, WAR includes a positional adjustment that does ding Ohtani with a significant deduction for not taking the field, and he’s still been keeping pace with Lindor on the value front anyway, so there’s not much more analysis to do there.

Instead, I want to explore how Ohtani’s one-dimensional role interacts with the value of a roster spot and the limitations that it places on how Los Angeles constructs and deploys the rest of its roster. In a two-way Ohtani season, he brings tremendous value to an individual roster spot as a frontline starter and an elite hitter who takes 600 or so plate appearances. But this year he contributes only as an offensive player. Read the rest of this entry »

In the pre-PitchCom era, major league teams had more rigorous protocols for protecting their signs than your bank has for securing your account. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some teams’ custom PitchCom audio clips are read in a modified pig latin created by a pitching strategy staffer. That the hitter doesn’t know what pitch is coming is considered a huge advantage for the pitcher. And it’s not only pitchers who think so — just ask the 2017 Astros.

Sign-stealing aside, hitters stand in the box pondering which pitch might come hurtling their way mere seconds later. What that pondering looks like depends on the hitter. There’s Nick Castellanos and his “glorified batting practice” approach, in which he looks for the ball and hits it as hard as he can. But there’s also Carlos Correa, who starts his day studying pitcher tendencies in the video room.

For their part, pitchers set the difficulty level on the hitter’s guessing game. That terms like “fastball count” and “pitching backwards” exist tell us that pitchers follow (and, at times, purposefully upend) conventional tactics to sequence their pitches, and believe that certain pitch types are optimal in certain counts. Strategies become standard practices because they’re effective, but an over-reliance on one or two strategies can lead to predictability. Become too predictable and a pitcher effectively sets their opponents’ guessing game on “easy” mode. But does making it easy for the hitter to sit on a certain pitch automatically make the overall task of hitting easier? Does keeping a hitter guessing always ensure effective pitching? Read the rest of this entry »