On Saturday, Taylor Clarke was in quite the pickle. The Royals had tasked him with pitching the eighth inning of a tied ballgame against the Giants and it wasn’t going very well. Clarke allowed three consecutive singles to J.D. Davis, Joc Pederson, and Mike Yastrzemski, with each hit 104 mph or harder. The bases were loaded with no outs. The Giants were reading Clarke’s pitches incredibly well and he needed a solution, fast. Clearly, he found one. Clarke struck out the next three hitters in order, earning seven called or swinging strikes. Kansas City’s offense took the lead in the ninth and went on to complete the comeback victory. So what was special about the way Clarke got out of his jam? Of the 13 pitches he threw, not a single one was a fastball.

While there are many relievers who barely throw any fastballs, like Alex Colomé and Matt Wisler, Clarke isn’t one of them. He came up as a starter with Arizona throwing heaters about half the time. After being converted to the bullpen and experiencing a two-tick velocity spike, he kept up that fastball usage. Had Clarke randomly chosen pitches in line with his career averages (48.8% fastballs) during this three-batter stretch, the odds of him choosing secondaries 13 times in a row would be just .017%, or 1-in-6,000. But on Saturday, he turned to his best stuff and ended up with the best possible results.

The first hitter up with the bases loaded was infielder Thairo Estrada. Estrada likes to put balls in play, and with three ducks on the pond, balls in play often mean runs. In 2022, he combined to strike out and walk just 22.6% of the time, considerably below the league average of 30.6%. Clarke started off the at-bat with one of his two slider variants. This variant, which sits 87-90 mph with a few inches of horizontal break, has a hybrid cutter/slider shape, though he often throws it glove side just like his other, sweepier slider in the low-to-mid-80s. Clarke missed his spot and the pitch drifted over the plate, but Estrada watched it for a called strike. Read the rest of this entry »

Amazingly, in an Opening Day game where Shohei Ohtani struck out double-digit batters in six shutout innings, the most memorable highlight of the night didn’t come from him, or even Mike Trout. In the bottom of the fifth, Oakland third baseman Jace Peterson sent a fly ball to right field. Hunter Renfroe gave chase, but it appeared to be going over his head — until he leapt up, stuck out his glove to the left while facing right, and somehow made an incredible no-look catch to the delight of Ohtani and the Angels. Even Peterson had to smile.

WHAT A CATCH BY HUNTER RENFROE ?

pic.twitter.com/j6zxJytYaO

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) March 31, 2023

Baseball Savant has recently released outfield catch probabilities for individual plays, and we can learn a lot from analyzing the differences between the perceived difficulty of a play from watching it on a broadcast compared to its actual catch probability. Renfroe’s circus catch in Oakland offers a perfect example: While his acrobatics were necessary to make the catch, that was only because of a poor jump. He backpedaled for the first few steps, then ran at less-than-full speed while having to crane his head around to keep track of the ball. Renfroe ended up making the catch 39 feet from his initial position in an opportunity time of 4.2 seconds — a play that has a catch probability of 99%, and that’s even when accounting for the difficulty of running backwards (which is included in calculating the odds).

For comparison, here’s a play with a near-identical distance and opportunity time made by Renfroe’s backup, Brett Phillips.

Phillips didn’t need luck or heroics to make the out here; in fact, he was able to camp out for a bit before the ball fell into his glove. A good chunk of his route was completed before the broadcast had switched to the outfield camera.

In other words, Renfroe’s play is made with little fanfare almost every time. That includes him: He was perfect on fly balls with 99% catch probability in 2022, though he did let a few in the 90–95% range drop for hits. Much of the focus that observers put on the quality of a outfielder’s defense naturally comes from what can be seen on TV – but the data indicates that what we can’t see is what truly separates the great fielders from the poor ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Opening Day is finally upon us. The weather is getting warmer, the smell of spring is in the air, and regular season baseball is back. Enjoying games around the league on Opening Day is a ritual for many baseball fans including myself, and these games are particularly exciting because teams always bring the best they have to offer. The long slog of the season sometimes leads to rest days for star hitters, and a string of injuries can ruin a lineup come June or July. But Opening Day is the only day where everyone is on display, particularly on the mound, as each team hands the ball to its no. 1 starter to start the season, health permitting, to produce some of the best matchups we’ll see all year.

In total, 19 of the top 30 pitchers by our Depth Charts projections will take the hill today, from no. 1 Jacob deGrom to no. 29 Hunter Greene. A few top pitchers lost Opening Day nods to a superior teammate — for example, the pocket aces at the top of Philadelphia’s rotation will force Zack Wheeler to wait his turn to start until Saturday. In other cases, a team’s Opening Day starter isn’t its best by our projections; Brady Singer, the no. 30 pitcher by Depth Charts with a projected WAR of 2.9, was supplanted by Zack Greinke and his 1.1 WAR projection. But overall, the combined skill of today’s starters outclasses that of any other day in the season. With these great matchups in mind, let’s plan out a full day of baseball watching that will maximize the amount of elite starting pitching on the screen. Read the rest of this entry »

After wrapping up our position player rankings with the league’s designated hitters, we turn our attention to the pitchers, starting with the bullpens in the bottom half of the reliever rankings.

Relievers are really, really tough to project. From the tiny sample sizes of previous seasons’ work to uncertainty over a pitcher’s role and the wide variety of offseason mechanical and pitch mix adjustments they make in search of a big breakout, it’s uniquely difficult to accurately forecast the future effectiveness of individual relievers. Still, some relievers are clearly a cut above the rest, and a commonality among the teams in the bottom half of there rankings is that they don’t have many of them. Less than two wins separate teams no. 16 and 30, and in order to exceed their projections, they’ll be looking for their up/down or replacement-level arms to hit their high-percentile upside and factor as high-leverage options on their respective squads. Read the rest of this entry »

Japan has a long history of baseball in its popular culture. From the organized cheers for NPB players and teams to the summer Koshien high school tournament, baseball serves as not just a spectator sport but a way of life for many people. As a result, Japanese players put great emphasis on their national team’s success in international competitions to showcase the country’s best. In recent memory, Samurai Japan has dominated on the international stage, winning each of the first two World Baseball Classics in 2006 and 2009. Daisuke Matsuzaka claimed MVP in both tournaments, winning all six of his decisions, while hitters like Ichiro Suzuki and Kosuke Fukudome led the way offensively. In 2013 and 2017, they reached the semifinals before ultimately being eliminated, but they remain the only team to place in the top four in each iteration of the WBC. More recently, Japan claimed the gold medal at the 2020 Olympics, shutting out the United States in the championship game. Samurai Japan hopes to continue this run of international success, fielding a largely similar group of players from their Olympic title squad.

Much of Japan’s on-base skill comes from the outfield, led by current Red Sox outfielder Masataka Yoshida. Previously a member of the Orix Buffaloes, Yoshida has one of the best combinations of contact skills and plate discipline in recent memory. A two-time batting champion, Yoshida walked twice as much as he struck out over the past three years and just finished his best season to date with a 201 wRC+. While he doesn’t have monster exit velocities, he puts so many balls in play that eventually a good number go over the fence; he has averaged 23 homers over the past five seasons. Yoshida is a bit defensively limited in left field, but he won’t be able to spend time at DH in the WBC like he did with the Buffaloes because a little-known player on the Angels already has claim to that spot.

Another member of Samurai Japan who wears a red MLB uniform is Lars Nootbaar (who might have the coolest middle name of all time). A batted ball data darling, Nootbaar had a great rookie year with the Cardinals, producing plus exit velocities, a refined plate approach, and 2.7 WAR in just 347 plate appearances. Nootbaar will likely play center field for Japan despite being a corner guy in MLB, but his above-average speed and arm strength should make the transition to center relatively smooth. Nootbaar and Yoshida are joined by Kensuke Kondoh (whose Fukuoka Softbank Hawks don’t wear red, unfortunately). While he doesn’t have much thump in his bat, maxing out at 11 homers in a season, his plate discipline makes him one of the most talented offensive players in Japan. He’s consistently run chase rates in the 18-19% range (second best among NPB hitters), and just finished his sixth consecutive season with an OBP of .400 or higher. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s talk about free agent outfielders. Nearly every team could use one, either to serve in a starting role or to provide an upgrade over the players who are currently fourth or fifth on the depth chart. Unsurprisingly, reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge took home the largest contract of any outfielder this winter, but 11 inked average annual values of at least $10 million. Along with a variety of part-time and platoon players signed for smaller sums, nearly every big league-caliber outfielder has found a home for the season. Most of the remaining free agents, like Alex Dickerson and Jackie Bradley Jr., project to be around replacement level for 2023. But there’s an outlier, someone who just posted a career-best 2.5 WAR and was projected by our readers for a three-year, $30 million contract – Jurickson Profar. No other unsigned player is projected to earn even a third of that, but as teams start to finalize their rosters during spring training, Profar still doesn’t know what uniform he’ll be playing in come Opening Day.

Entering the offseason, we had Profar pegged as the 36th-best free agent in the class after his $10 million mutual option with the Padres was declined. Neighboring hitters on that list include Michael Brantley, Brandon Drury, and Josh Bell; all three have signed and will earn a combined $37 million in 2023. So what makes teams hesitant to add Profar to their roster?

Let’s compare him to the aforementioned trio of Brantley, Drury, and Bell. In fact, Profar is quite comparable to Brantley and Bell, who both play a position down the defensive spectrum. Both are also considerably better hitters than Profar. Brantley’s wRC+ hasn’t sat below 120 in five years, while Bell’s mark sits at 121 since the beginning of 2021. On the other hand, Profar’s 110 wRC+ last year was his highest in a full season, and his career mark of 94 is substantially worse than that of Brantley or Bell. Other outfielders like J.D. Martinez and Michael Conforto also signed in that price range. In other words, if a team was looking for an everyday left fielder who wouldn’t break the bank, Profar probably wouldn’t have been their first call. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the story of two games that both took place on the evening of April 27, 2022. In an inland Los Angeles suburb, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes and Visalia Rawhide took part in an early-season battle under the shadow of the San Bernadino Mountains. The Quakes, a Dodgers affiliate, were on their A-game that night. 2021 fifth-round pick Ben Casparius and 21-year old lefty Benony Robles were dominant in a tandem start, combining to strike out a dozen batters while allowing just three to reach base. Tommy Kahnle faced one batter in a rehab appearance, and the Quakes shut out their opposition. Meanwhile, the Rawhide, a Diamondbacks affiliate, didn’t have the evening they wanted. Their four arms combined to walk nine hitters and the defense behind them didn’t help, committing three errors (including one each by highly ranked prospects Jordan Lawlar and Deyvison De Los Santos). In total, 21 Quakes reached base, and Rancho Cucamonga cruised to an 8-0 victory.

A few hundred miles north at Oracle Park, the A’s and Giants played a crosstown matchup. Fresh off the IL, Chad Pinder took a 2-2 changeup from Sam Long into the left field seats for a homer to lead things off. Then neither team scored for the rest of the game. The Giants’ pitching quickly stabilized, with piggyback man Jakob Junis contributing five scoreless on an efficient 64 pitches, while Paul Blackburn and his bullpen combined to blank San Francisco’s bats. But while this low-scoring affair took three hours to complete (just shy of the nine-inning average of 3:03), Visalia’s comedy of errors and walks was over in just 2:15. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball season is almost upon us. Spring training competition has begun and the hot stove of free agency has cooled off a bit, though not entirely. Many players, especially on the relief market, have yet to be signed. But over the past week, two former starters with a recent track record of excellent relief performance have taken their talents to Southern California – one finding a new home in Anaheim while the other returns to the big city.

Angels sign Matt Moore to a one-year, $7.55 million deal

Moore’s path through professional baseball has been as interesting as any. A highly touted high school draftee, Moore was once ranked as the top prospect in the game by MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus, ahead of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. He established himself in the majors at the age of 23, making the AL All-Star team in his second full season. He then missed almost all of 2014 and ’15 with a torn UCL. After returning, his performance quickly dipped from solid to disastrous. He bounced from team to team and posted a 5.99 ERA in 2017-18 while splitting time between the rotation and bullpen. He appeared in just two games in 2019 before a knee injury prematurely ended his season. With his track record of injuries and poor performance now six years long, Moore took a new path to rejuvenate his career, signing with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of NPB for the 2020 season. There he ultimately excelled, with a 2.65 ERA and 3.21 FIP in 13 starts. Moore’s performance impressed the Phillies, who brought him on in a hybrid starter/reliever role where his struggles continued, allowing almost two homers per nine innings and a walk every other frame. However, one team still saw something in him – the Texas Rangers. They signed him to pitch out of the bullpen, and he was excellent: His 1.95 ERA and 2.98 FIP in 74 innings were career bests, as was his 10.1 K/9. Read the rest of this entry »

The offseason is beginning to wrap up, but there are still plenty of names still available to help boost the fringes of teams’ rosters, especially in depth relievers. Last week, Michael Fulmer became the latest of these signings, inking a one-year deal with the Cubs.

The bulk of Fulmer’s big league career has been spent in Detroit, where he won the AL Rookie of the Year award in 2016. With a 3.06 ERA and 3.76 FIP in 159 innings, he looked to be the future ace of a Tigers rotation that had lost Rick Porcello and Max Scherzer a couple years earlier and would lose Justin Verlander the next season. But after two more seasons where he performed around league average and a 2019 campaign completely lost to Tommy John surgery, Fulmer went through a catastrophic 2020, with an ERA near nine and less than three innings per start. It seemed like his time as a productive big leaguer was over, and it was — as a starter. But he’s performed quite well over the past two years in the bullpen, posting career bests in ERA and strikeouts.

While Fulmer had above-average seasons as a starter, he had neither big-time swing-and-miss stuff nor pinpoint command, succeeding despite pedestrian numbers in the strikeout and walk departments. Instead, his best years were characterized by a solid ability to suppress hard contact and home runs, possibly aided by his cavernous home ballpark. He throws two fastball variants but has shown a slight preference for the sinker, which has allowed him to run a groundball rate that’s consistently a few points above the league average. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m gonna start this one with a hot take: superstars can be boring. Before the pitchforks come out, let me explain myself. I love it just as much as everyone else when Aaron Judge obliterates second-deck homers, Jacob deGrom throws triple digits with ease, or Shohei Ohtani, well, does both. But the way star players contribute to their teams is quite predictable. Provided he’s healthy, Mike Trout’s name will be somewhere on the top third of the lineup card with a little number eight on the position column 155 times a year. Manager Phil Nevin doesn’t have to make any difficult decisions about when or where to start him.

But for most fans, the base unit of their baseball viewing experience is a team, rather than an individual player. The average Hennepin County resident would probably say they’re a Twins fan rather than characterize themselves as a Carlos Correa or Byron Buxton supporter. Often times, the same principle is true of baseball analysis. Sure, we write a lot about single players, but individuals don’t play in a vacuum. My favorite part of every free-agent signing to write is about how a new player fits into the roster they’ve just joined, and WAR, possibly the most referenced metric on this site, is literally an estimation of how much a team victories a given player adds. Heck, we had 58 people comment on a piece about projected team standings even before the majority of free agents had signed.

So, back to my original thesis. The game’s best players are incredibly awe-inspiring in what they can do on the field, but we don’t get to think about the role in which they’re best used, because that role is just “all the time”. Earlier this week, I wrote about Dylan Moore, who signed a three-year extension with Seattle. He’s not the most exciting player to write about as an individual; he doesn’t have monster exit velocities or dominate the contact leaderboards. What he does do, though, is patch about ten holes the Mariners have or may have in the future due to platoon issues, defensive limitations, or injuries. Seattle’s front office realized that a single non-starting player could be the solution to many team-specific problems and gave Moore a small pile of money to remain in the Pacific Northwest for the foreseeable future. Moore was fun to write and think about because of the specific ways in which he complements the team around him, and I like this type of analysis because it’s much more unique to each individual player and their team.

It’s time we get to the subject of this piece. In my Moore article, I found that nearly half of his plate appearances came against left-handed pitching, which placed fourth among righty hitters. The man who ranked first? Austin Slater of the Giants. An up/down bench outfielder for his first three years in the league, he earned a full-time roster spot in 2020 and has made the most of it despite his non-starting role, amassing 4.6 WAR in 735 plate appearances (3.8 WAR/600 PA). While he’s appeared in at least 125 games in each of the last two seasons, he’s only made 116 starts. But starting the game on the bench hasn’t seemed to affect his performance, with a 118 wRC+ during that time. Read the rest of this entry »