Every baseball player has bad days — it’s an inevitability in a sport so deeply tied to failure. For the most part, these failures are quickly dismissed and/or forgotten. A rough seven-run outing for a pitcher is a day when he just didn’t have “it” or batted balls had eyes. An 0-for-4 game at the plate is barely a hiccup in the span of a 162-game season. But, on occasion, there are days so bad that they elicit sympathy from even the most hardened baseball fans. You know the ones I’m talking about, the games that make you cringe when you check a box score. The games like the one Andrew McCutchen had on Sunday.

It wasn’t all McCutchen’s fault. Eighteen-inning games are freaks of nature which result from a convergence of a great many (un)lucky coincidences. If Mark Melancon had thrown a different pitch to Daniel Murphy in the ninth inning, McCutchen’s day may have ended up much differently. If any hitter for either the Pirates or Nationals had executed just one more quality swing earlier in the game, McCutchen could have been spared. But none of those things happened and, instead, McCutchen stepped to the plate eight times on Sunday and failed to reach base even once.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a maddening midseason tradition of realizing April performances have subconsciously impacted our perceptions of players in foolish ways. No matter how many times we tell ourselves that the baseball season is long and small sample sizes are fickle tricksters, we inevitably look up in July to find out that a player written off for dead in April is actually doing quite well, thank you very much. It’s an unavoidable reality that first impressions matter and affect the way we view those around us. The perils of first impressions may have had no bigger victim this season than Ken Giles.

When a team gives up five players to acquire you (and a rookie-ball lottery-ticket-type prospect), expectations are inescapably large. Of course, this is the situation Giles found himself in when the Astros dealt a package of players highlighted by Vincent Velasquez and former #1 overall pick Mark Appel to Philadelphia in order to acquire the flame-throwing relief pitcher. The reason for the steep price Houston paid is that Giles was under team control for another five seasons. Intellectually, the first month of his Astros tenure shouldn’t matter any more or less than the ensuing five years but, realistically, it was inevitable that he’d be under a microscope for that first month.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m of the belief that, if you look close enough, you can find at least one moment of beauty in every baseball game. But, as someone with a ton of firsthand experience watching Phillies games over the past five seasons, I can confirm that sometimes you have to look really hard to find that beauty. In reflecting on the first half of the season, I wanted to identify games in which baseball’s innate beauty and excitement had shown through most brightly. Using Win Probability Added (WPA) as an objective, if imperfect, means of identifying the amount of drama in a game, I isolated two contests which make a strong case for the title of Most Exciting Game of the First Half.

My methodology was simple. First, I looked at team WPA accrued by a team’s pitching staff in a game. I added the pitching WPA for both teams and found the game with the highest combined WPA. Next, I repeated the process with WPA recorded by both teams’ offenses. The result is the game in which pitchers did the most to impact their teams’ win expectancy and the game in which position players did the most to impact their teams’ win expectancy. Let’s take a look at both of them and see if either game stands out as the most exciting game in 2016.

Read the rest of this entry »

Playing shortstop is a young man’s game. The list of top-tier shortstops age 25 and under in the game right now is so extensive that it’s impossible to pare down to a quick three- or four-name list without leaving off a potential future MVP. If you’re interested in fawning over those names and debating who among them is the most valuable, I’d recommend keeping an eye on Dave Cameron’s trade-value series this week. But right now, I want to talk about a guy who suddenly looks like a grizzled veteran next to the new wave of shortstop talent: 26-year-old Didi Gregorius.

Over the past month, Gregorius has been the most productive shortstop at the plate. Go back a bit further and you’ll find that, after struggling in the first month of the season, he’s posted an impressive 131 wRC+ since May 8th. On the season as a whole, though, his 109 wRC+ ranks a respectable, if uninspiring, 11th among shortstops behind eight (!) members of that 25-and-under age bracket. There’s no argument to be made that Gregorius is anything like the best shortstop in the game right now, but he is in the midst both of a remarkable stretch and also his finest overall season at the plate. He also has three more years of team control remaining, which makes it worth investigating to what extent this Gregorius breakout is for real.

The most obvious and, perhaps, the most fun part of Gregorius’ breakout has been his power surge. He’s recorded five home runs in his last 11 games, which has helped boost his ISO to a career high .169. He’s hardly the only shortstop to grow into power after a few seasons in the majors: Brandon Crawford and Zack Cozart followed a similar trajectory. Gregorius’ power is aided by the fact that he’s a left-handed hitter who gets to play half his games in Yankee Stadium. Unsurprisingly, his home/road power split is rather stark:.210 ISO at home, .132 on the road. If I were a team interested in acquiring Gregorius, this would be a concern, but unless the Yankees are planning to move anytime soon, they should feel comfortable accepting that Gregorius possesses the ability to make the most of his home ball park.

There is something about Gergorius’ newfound power, however, which necessitates pouring a bit of cold water on the idea that he’s tapped into a new ability which will help elevate him to a new level. Check out his season-by-season ISO:

Yes, Gregorius is hitting for more power and that’s a great thing, but he’s not alone. Power is up across the league and, rather than pulling ahead of the pack, Gregorius is merely keeping pace with league average. (Gregorius recorded only 21 plate appearances in that 2012 season, so the relevant start date for his ISO comparisons begins in 2013.) The power increase among shortstops is even more stark than the league-wide trend. Since 2014, the average ISO for shortstops across the league has risen from .113 to .151 — nearly forty points! So, yes, the new power is fun to watch, but it’s not going to alter substantially Gregorius’ standing in the league.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday afternoon, Dylan Floro made his major-league debut. Anyone who has ever pitched has pictured what it would be like to stand on a major-league mound for the first time. The dream of striking out the first batter you face. The fear of giving up a home run on your first pitch. There are countless different ways to envision that first trip to the mound playing out, but I somehow doubt Floro ever pictured this happening on the ninth pitch of his major-league career:

That’s a lead-footed future Hall of Famer attempting a steal of second to draw a throw and set up the current greatest position player for a steal of home. That really happened. Albert Pujols stole second and Mike Trout stole home, because in baseball anything is possible. But part of what stood out about this play, beyond the fact that Mike Freaking Trout stole home, is that it served as a reminder that Trout has re-emerged as one of the best base-stealers in the game.

Yesterday, Jeff Sullivan outlined adjustments Trout is making at the plate which have enabled him to sustain his mind-boggling consistent run of greatness — a run which is now in its fifth (!) season. The fact that he’s continually evolving, adjusting, and growing as a player is just one part of what has made Trout such a joy to watch. One of those well-documented changes for Trout came when he lost a bit of speed after swiping 82 bags across his first two full seasons, 2012 and 2013. During the next two years, he didn’t steal nearly as many bases, but the loss in base-running value was offset by the fact that he simultaneously grew into a significant increase in power. 

Slowing down while adding power in his 20s — even his early 20s — was a logical enough progression that we came to accept Trout’s new norm. But now something strange is happening.

Base-stealing Mike Trout is back? Fifteen stolen bases through 86 games puts him on pace for a 28-stolen-base season — more stolen bases than he’s recorded in the past two seasons combined. That’s still not quite the rapid pace of his early seasons, but it’s a remarkably surprising development, nonetheless.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, I was driving down I-95 just north of Philadelphia when my timing belt broke. I had been happily cruising along in the far left lane of a four-lane road when all of a sudden my dashboard lit up with icons I’d never seen before and, even more alarmingly, my gas pedal refused to tell my car to “Go.” Without any means of acceleration, I somehow navigated my way across four lanes of traffic to the shoulder where my suddenly useless car came to a final stop. It was confusing, frustrating, and a little bit scary. Although I’ve never pitched professionally, I’m struck by a sense that right now Aaron Nola might feel a bit like I did that evening on the side of the road.

Aaron Nola was absolutely cruising. Through his first twelve starts he had a 2.65 ERA which was backed up by peripherals so strong that his FIP (2.77) and xFIP (2.74) provided an extra boost of confidence that, yes, Nola was for real. Then, without any real warning whatsoever, it all fell apart.

For the sake of convenience, let’s call those first 12 starts Nola’s Good Stretch and the most recent five starts his Bad Stretch. Nola has given up more earned runs (27 ER) in his 18-inning Bad Stretch than he did in the entire 78 innings of his Good Stretch (23 ER). That is an intense decline in results and, as a result, the Phillies announced that Nola will skip his final start before the All-Star Break in an effort to give him time to right a path that’s gone horribly awry. But look at a few more numbers across his splits and you’ll notice something a bit curious:

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball fans’ brains are littered with obscure names and trivia. We all know names like Wally Pipp, Fred Merkle, and Johnny Vander Meer for their rather absurd places in baseball history. Five of those baseball names that may or may not be stuck in your brain for trivial reasons are: Freddy Garcia, Jamie Moyer, Gil Meche, Joel Pineiro, and Ryan Franklin. If that quintet is meaningful to you, it’s because every single game of the 2003 Mariners season was started by one of those pitchers.

In the modern era of five-man rotations, that team was the only one ever to get through an entire season without once turning to a sixth starter. It’s a trivial feat, but one that I find myself wondering year after year whether it will ever be repeated. Now that we’re halfway through the 2016 season, it’s time to assess the situation and determine whether or not this will be year of the second immaculate five-man rotation.

One-in-five teams have already used 10 or more starters this season and only two teams are left standing in my personal race to a perfect five-starter season: the Cubs and the Cardinals. Can either team match the 2003 Mariners?

Read the rest of this entry »

Who is the best hitter in the National League? The easy and “right” answer, insomuch as one exists, is Bryce Harper, as we’re mere months removed from watching him put up the best season at the plate by a 22-year-old since Ted Williams. But with Harper currently producing at the plate at a rate more comparable to guys like Odubel Herrera and Stephen Piscotty, it’s natural to ponder the question: “If not Harper, then whom?”

There are a few viable candidates but two who stick out are the only two National League players other than Harper to post a wRC+ above 150 since 2014: Paul Goldschmidt, who has been consistently elite with the bat for four seasons now and, the subject at hand, 26-year-old superstar, Anthony Rizzo.

In the previous sentence, you could argue I threw around the word “superstar” a bit cavalierly. It’s a word from which I tend to shy away because it’s so incredibly subjective as to be functionally meaningless. I don’t know that there are more than two players in the game right now – Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw – who are labeled “superstars” with anything resembling universal agreement. Anthony Rizzo certainly wouldn’t receive universal billing as a “superstar.” I don’t know if he’s a superstar by your definition – shoot, I just paired him with that term and I’m not completely convinced he’s a superstar by my own subjective definition – but I do know this: Anthony Rizzo is an extraordinarily talented baseball player and, so far this year, he’s putting up what looks like the best season of his major-league career.

He has set or matched his career high in most key offensive rate stats from on-base percentage to wOBA to strikeout and walk rates. But not only is he putting together a strong season by his own standards, his stats stand out in comparison to his competition in the National League:

There are a variety of different ways to go about building a prototype for an ideal hitter, but a great starting point would be a guy doing exactly what Rizzo is doing right now: exhibiting plate discipline, getting on base, and hitting for power. That’s an impressive trifecta — and, at the core of that offensive profile, lies the key improvements Rizzo has made.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, there was a little event you may have heard about called the “summer solstice.” Both calendars and my elementary-school science classes tell me that means summer just officially began. There are a few basic truths about summer’s infancy: children in your community may currently be in a state of euphoria; it’s time to plan July 4th barbeques; and, most relevant to our shared interests here at FanGraphs, there is still a lot of major-league baseball left to be played this year. As a result, the standings are largely inconsequential at the moment and still subject to massive changes before the postseason rolls around. And, yet, I’m struck by this meaningless triviality: if the season were to end today, the Miami Marlins would be a Wild Card team.

It’s not the most shocking scenario imaginable. The Marlins weren’t among the handful of rebuilding National League teams whose playoff aspirations were written off before the season even began. After all, the team boasted popular preseason picks for MVP and Cy Young in Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Fernandez, respectively. But this is also a team which last finished above .500 when Bryce Harper was a high-school sophomore… It wasn’t hard to have doubts that the Marlins would finally capitalize on their talent and actually field a winning team this summer, but the club is currently doing its part to help people forget those doubts. This past weekend, the Marlins took three out of four from the suddenly mortal Cubs to bring their record up to 41-35 and put them into a second place tie in the National League East with the scuffling Mets.

Due to the unpredictable nature of injuries and on-field performance, no team is able to perfectly execute a preseason plan — players get hurt, stars underperform and role players have breakout years — and the Marlins are no exception. One of those unexpected developments for the Marlins is that they’ve fielded one of the best outfields in the league due much less to the contributions of Stanton (currently in the midst of a career-worst season) and much more to Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich. It’s been a well–covered storyline for the Marlins.

There’s another key way in which the Marlins have had to deviate from their preseason plan, too — namely, who they’ve played at second base.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball never lacks for intriguing story lines. There is always a player breaking out and there is always a player declining. There are Cinderella teams and disappointing collapses. In this sport, you can always find something new and exciting to watch. But this post isn’t about those expectation defying feats. On the contrary, this post is about the predictable and reliable greatness of a guy named Miguel Cabrera and the absurdity dwelling beneath it.

Prior to the start of the season, our Depth Chart projections spit out a 2016 projected slash line of .310/.393/.524 for Cabrera, which amounted to a .387 wOBA. After a disappointing 0-for-5 game yesterday, Cabrera currently sits at .301/.379/.538 with a .383 wOBA. It’s not a perfect match for his projected line, but it’s damn close. His overall production is down from when he was a Triple Crown and MVP winner, but that’s to be expected for a 33-year-old. He’s still a stellar hitter putting up impressive numbers that are well in-line with what we expect to see from the future Hall of Famer. But underneath his cumulative numbers are a couple of jarring splits.

Read the rest of this entry »