Tonight is a big night for Zach Eflin. When he takes the mound, he’ll be making his 19th start, and when he earns his second out of the evening, he’ll have retired his 318th batter, good for 106 innings on the year. Those aren’t records or nice round numbers, but they’re meaningful for this particular pitcher; he hasn’t surpassed those totals since 2019, his first and only qualified season. The Rays took a gamble on the righty this winter (by their own standards, at least), signing the oft-injured starter to the largest free-agent deal in franchise history. When Drew Rasmussen and Jeffrey Springs each went down with season-ending injuries, the stakes for Eflin grew higher. But with each subsequent start he makes, his contract looks less like a gamble and more like highway robbery. When Eflin records his second out tonight, he’ll have given the Rays more than he gave the Phillies in a single season since the pre-pandemic days.

Eflin nearly reached 106 innings his last time out, but the fates weren’t on his side. An hour-long rain delay messed with his preparation right before first pitch, and the hapless Royals chose that particular day to score five unanswered runs in the first two innings of play. Eflin was pulled shortly thereafter, and he would have to wait another five days to celebrate his achievement. Barring disaster, he’ll get there before 7:00 PM ET this evening, and all things considered, the timing actually works out quite well. His 106th inning will coincide with his 19th start, and his outing today will mark the latest date on the calendar that he’s started a game since 2020.

What makes tonight all the more special is the possibility of what’s to come. Eflin is on pace to make 30 starts and throw about 170 innings, both of which would be new career highs. When he qualified for the ERA title in 2019, he did so by the skin of his teeth, tossing 163.1 frames. He briefly lost his rotation spot after a disastrous performance that July (indeed, this season marks the first successful July of his career), and if the Phillies had optioned him to Triple-A instead of putting him in the bullpen, he’d have fallen 13 outs short of qualification. Thus, he’s looking to finish the season as a fully qualified starting pitcher for the very first time. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve watched The Brady Bunch, Family Ties, Community, or pretty much any other sitcom, I’m sure you’re familiar with the “two dates to the dance” trope. The premise is exactly what it sounds like, and antics are guaranteed to ensue. It almost always ends in disaster, and the wannabe Lothario learns their lesson. If they had only picked a single date, they might have had a lovely evening. Instead, as Confucius says, “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

It’s not just TV characters who try to pull this off; some of the most prevalent baseball statistics are guilty of double dating, too. In particular, I’m talking about the stats that try to court the analytics crowd and more traditionally-minded fans at the same time. This is an admirable endeavor (unlike two-timing your prom date), but that doesn’t make it any less of a fool’s errand.

OPS+ is the perfect example. It takes a widely understood statistic and revamps it for the modern age, but as a result, it combines all the inaccuracies of OPS with all the complexities of park and league adjustments. It’s too much for most casual fans to wrap their heads around, yet it still undervalues on-base percentage and overvalues extra-base hits — cardinal sins for the hardcore sabermetricians among us. I’ve long thought that isolated power falls in the same category. It’s missing the simplicity and storytelling quality of batting average and total bases, but it also lacks the precision of advanced numbers like wOBA and wRC+. Thus, I’ve never fully understood who the target audience for ISO really is. Read the rest of this entry »

Lance Lynn was phenomenal in his final start before the All-Star break, going seven innings, striking out 11 batters, and allowing just three baserunners. By game score, his outing against Toronto was among the top 20 starts of the year. But if you prefer to focus on factors solely within a pitcher’s control — strikeouts, walks, and home runs — it wasn’t even the best of Lynn’s season. By FIP, his most dominant performance was a 16-strikeout gem against the Mariners a few weeks prior. Over seven frames, he walked only two and kept everything in the ballpark. Even more impressive, all but one of his strikeouts came on a swing and miss, as Lynn collected 33 whiffs on the evening, the most by any pitcher in a single outing this season. His 16 strikeouts were also the most in a single game this year; no other pitcher has topped 13.

Lynn has two more double-digit strikeout games this year, one each against the Rays and the Twins. Only eight other pitchers have four or more double-digit strikeout games, and only four have multiple starts of seven-plus innings, double-digit strikeouts, two or fewer walks, and zero home runs: Kevin Gausman, Zac Gallen, Logan Webb, and Pablo López. (The White Sox, being the 2023 White Sox, went on to lose all four contests, but that’s hardly a reflection of Lynn’s efforts on the mound.) Read the rest of this entry »

No one can deny that baseball’s new rules are having the intended effects. BAPIP is up, game times are down, and stolen bases are back. Attendance is growing too, and while we can’t give the rule changes all the credit for that one, they’ve certainly done their part. Even better, the new rules aren’t leading to the adverse side effects some of us feared. The pitch clock isn’t causing widespread injury, pitch timer violations have been steadily decreasing as players adapt, and bigger bases haven’t led to any reports of Ty Cobb rolling over in his grave.

As efficacious as all the new rules have been, one stands above the rest. In my humble opinion, the disengagement limit has proven to be the gold standard of rule changes. Let me explain.

I like the pitch clock. Imaginary audience applauds. I like the shift restrictions. Imaginary audience begins to turn on me. I even like the automatic runner on second in extra innings. Imaginary audience starts throwing rotten fruit. But as much as I appreciate those new rules, I understand they all came at the expense of something else, something fans once cherished. The pitch timer offends purists who believe baseball shouldn’t have a clock. The shift restrictions limit smart defensive positioning in service of hitters who can’t adjust. The automatic runner warps each team’s priorities in the 10th inning onward. But the disengagement limit? It’s been a roaring success, and it hasn’t cost us anything at all. Read the rest of this entry »

I like to think I’m pretty tuned in to what’s going on in baseball each day. I check the news and the standings regularly, and my morning wouldn’t be complete without a quick scan of the leaderboards in all the major statistical categories. That being so, it’s rare that I’ll be caught off guard by a player’s ERA, or batting average, or WAR. That doesn’t mean it never happens, though, and when it does, I often feel compelled to share my surprise.

With that introduction as a clue, would you care to guess who leads the Rays in home runs? You know, the Rays who have more homers than any team in the American League. The Rays who rank second in baseball in runs scored and first in wRC+. The Rays who do all that despite playing in one of the least hitter-friendly home ballparks in the game. Yeah, those Rays.

It’s not All-Star first baseman Yandy Díaz or rookie sensation Luke Raley. It’s not Wander Franco, or Isaac Paredes, or anyone with the last name Lowe.

I’ll give you another hint: Two players are actually tied for the team lead in long balls, and one of them isn’t so hard to guess. Randy Arozarena hit his 16th homer of the season on Sunday, pulling even with the mystery player for first place, and only kind of ruining the guessing game I had planned. Then again, the title and featured image already gave it away, so it’s time I pull back the facade of this rhetorical device. No team in the American League has more home runs than the Rays, and no one on the Rays has more home runs than Jose Siri. Read the rest of this entry »

The image you just scrolled past is a photograph of professional baseball player Bryce Harper. You might remember him from home runs like this 2019 walk-off grand slam or his rain-soaked, NLCS-clinching blast. Indeed, Harper has hit 288 regular-season home runs and another 11 in the playoffs since making his big league debut. Only nine players have hit more in that time. His career .519 slugging percentage ranks 12th among active qualified batters, and his .239 isolated power ranks 15th. His maximum exit velocity has been in the top 10% of the league for seven years straight. Long story short, this Harper guy is one of the most fearsome power hitters of his generation.

So why am I talking about a two-time MVP as if there’s any chance you aren’t familiar with his accomplishments? Well, as hard as it is to believe for an old-timer like me, millions of people around the world hadn’t even been born the last time Harper hit a home run. Granted, I doubt many of those babies between zero and 34 days old have found their way to FanGraphs just yet, but the point remains: 34 days is a long time. It’s the longest home run drought of Harper’s career. The last time he hit a home run, the Reds had the worst record in the National League and Shohei Ohtani ranked 21st on the combined WAR leaderboards. Five weeks later, the Reds sit on top of the NL Central and Ohtani is lapping the competition in WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, my colleague Ben Clemens wrote about Marcus Semien and his impressive durability. As Ben pointed out, Semien leads the majors in plate appearances over the last five seasons, which has helped him to be one of the most valuable players in the game despite his relative shortage of standout skills.

The most productive catcher during that same time period has been J.T. Realmuto, who leads his fellow backstops by more than 5 WAR. He’s also way ahead of the pack with 2,147 plate appearances; Willson Contreras ranks second with 1,879. On the defensive side, the Phillies catcher is similarly outpacing his peers. He has played 4,084 innings behind the dish, 397.2 more than Martín Maldonado in second place. That’s the equivalent of 44 full games, or Austin Hedges‘ 2023 season to date. Much like Semien, Realmuto encapsulates the popular aphorism “availability is the best ability.” He isn’t the best defender or the best offensive catcher, but he’s good at everything he does, and he does it more often than anyone else. Read the rest of this entry »

Jorge Soler has always had big power potential. His power was his carrying tool as a prospect, and he homered in his first big league plate appearance. Unfortunately, he’s had trouble making the most of his strength throughout his career. For years, Soler was an “if he can put it all together” kind of player. His raw power was enticing, but injuries and inconsistency kept getting in the way. From 2014 to ’18, he hit just 38 home runs in 307 games, a pace of 20 per 162.

Finally, in 2019, everything clicked. The 6-foot-4 slugger played all 162 games, walloping an AL-leading 48 home runs. He finished fifth in the league in slugging, third in isolated power, and 13th in wRC+. His wRC+ went up every month, and no player in baseball hit for more power over the final two months of the season. He lost the Silver Slugger at DH to an ageless Nelson Cruz, but all the same, Soler was finally living up to the hype. There was even talk of the Royals signing him to a long-term deal.

But that extension never came, and Soler’s performance over the rest of his Royals tenure dashed any dreams he might have had of a lucrative long-term contract. In 2020, his old problems came back to haunt him. He didn’t make the most of his power, hitting only eight home runs in 43 games, and injuries kept him off the field for several weeks in September. The following season started out even worse; in 95 games with Kansas City, he hit 13 home runs and posted a feeble 77 wRC+. At the trade deadline, the former home run king was sent to Atlanta for pennies on the dollar. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two predominant fastball types in the majors these days: the four-seamer and the sinker. The cutter usually gets categorized as a fastball too, and for some pitchers, like Corbin Burnes and Kenley Jansen, it certainly is one. Then again, most pitchers use their cutter as a secondary or tertiary offering, and the average cutter comes in at 89 mph; that’s closer to the average changeup than the average four-seamer. The cutter defies simple classification. Then there’s the split-finger fastball, which is nothing more than a misnomer. It’s an offspeed pitch, no doubt about it, and therefore “splitter” is the more widely accepted label nowadays.

So, back to those two fastballs. The four-seamer is essentially the “throw it as hard as you can” ball; if you hear someone use the generic term “fastball” to describe a particular pitch, this is the one they’re talking about. In terms of grip, a four-seamer isn’t all that different from the way any other fielder throws the baseball. The sinker, on the other hand, is a more specialized weapon. As the name suggests, it has more movement than a four-seam fastball, and it’s more useful for inducing weak contact than blowing the ball past the opposing batter. Yet, modern pitchers have been taking that “throw it as hard as you can” approach with their sinkers as well. Over the past four seasons, the average sinker is only 0.6 mph slower than the average four-seamer.

Thus far in 2023, 52 starting pitchers have crossed the 50-inning threshold while using both a four-seam fastball and a sinker at least 3% of the time. Of those 52, 83% throw both pitches within 1 mph of one another. All but two throw both pitches within 2 mph of one another. As you might have guessed, I’m here to write about the two exceptions, the two starting pitchers who throw their four-seamer and sinker nearly 3 mph apart: Shohei Ohtani and Dean Kremer. Read the rest of this entry »

A straw man, per the Cambridge Dictionary, is “an argument, claim, or opponent that is invented in order to win or create an argument.” The term can also refer to “someone, often an imaginary person, who is used to hide an illegal or secret activity.” The Strawman, without the space, is a nickname I like to use for Guardians center fielder Myles Straw, a man whose spectacular outfield defense is the stuff of imagination; his elite speed and flying leaps would have you believe he’s a comic book hero invented in order to win ballgames.

Perhaps the whole superhero nickname thing for great ballplayers has been done to death at this point, but then again, so has the whole superhero thing in general. If Marvel can keep pumping out movies, then I can keep pumping out nicknames. Besides, this comparison feels especially apt; Straw plays for the Guardians, after all.

From 2021 to ’22, Straw racked up 22 OAA, tied with Michael A. Taylor for most in the American League. He posted 5.1 WAR in 310 games, 14th among center fielders despite single-digit home run totals and an 81 wRC+. All the defensive metrics agreed that Straw was one of the best in the game; his 22 UZR ranked second among outfielders, and his 21 DRS ranked third. Baseball Prospectus rated him as the most valuable defensive player in baseball by DRP.

Then came 2023. If Straw were a superhero, this would be the point in his narrative arc when his powers come into question. Through 59 games in center field, he has a shocking -2 OAA. That puts him in the 21st percentile league-wide, just a year after he finished in the 98th. His -0.2 WAR ranks last among qualified outfielders, and somehow, his defense has been an even bigger liability than his offense so far. Suffice it to say, that’s a problem for a center fielder with a 71 wRC+.

This isn’t just an OAA issue, either. By UZR, Straw ranks among the bottom five outfielders in the majors, just ahead of Kyle Schwarber, arguably the worst defensive outfielder in the game. Straw’s -0.5 DRP is better than his UZR, and his +1 DRS is better still, but the overall point remains: His defense seems to have taken a big step back. None of the metrics see him as an elite defender this season, and only one has him above league average. The small sample size warning applies, but even so, this is a strange turn of events for a young player who has been the definition of consistency since joining the Guardians at the 2021 trade deadline:

My immediate assumption was that Straw must have gotten slower; perhaps he was playing through an unrevealed injury. But it doesn’t seem like his physical skills have taken a hit. Straw has been healthy and durable throughout his time in Cleveland, and at 28 years old, he still has years of youth ahead of him. His sprint speed and time to first base remain the same, and he’s tied for eighth in the AL with 14 bolts (any run above 30 ft/sec). Thanks to the handy racing tool at Baseball Savant, we can even watch Straw race his past self down the line. Here’s 2022 Straw compared to 2023… or maybe it’s the other way around. It’s hard to keep track when the difference is so inconsequential:

But while Straw is running as fast as ever, his outfielder jump, as measured by Statcast, is noticeably worse. It sat in the 67th percentile in 2021 and the 58th in ’22, and this year it’s fallen from the reds to the blues. To be fair, he has never had terrific jump numbers, and that hasn’t been a problem. Nearly all of his defensive stats were better in 2022 than ’21, despite his jump numbers worsening. Moreover, an outfielder doesn’t necessarily need great jumps if he can run as fast as Straw can. In some cases, it might even help a fielder to get a slightly slower start, as long as he takes advantage of that extra time to plan his route and uses his footspeed to compensate for the delayed reaction. Nevertheless, Straw’s declining outfielder jump in conjunction with his negative OAA is a worrisome combination:

What’s most upsetting of all is that we haven’t seen nearly as many highlight-reel catches from a man typically capable of filling SportsCenter’s Top Ten all on his own. A quick search of MLB Film Room turned up only three of Straw’s catches this year that warranted highlights. One is an Anthony Volpe flyout, which required Straw to cover a tremendous amount of ground from his initial position in shallow right-center to the warning track at the deepest part of Yankee Stadium. Still, Straw had plenty of time to get there — he’s practically jogging in the clip — and his little leap at the end was more for show than anything else:

The other two catches are almost identical to one another. A couple of liners from Jonathan Schoop and Avisaíl García allowed Straw to show off his wheels, and he makes a nice grab each time. Still, you’re not winning any Gold Gloves if this is the pièce de résistance of your highlight reel:

I’ve been reading FanGraphs long enough to know that good defense is about more than web gems, but in this case, Straw’s dearth of incredible catches is one of the major reasons his fielding metrics are so poor. In 2022, he made eight four- or five-star catches (those with a Statcast catch probability of 50% or lower). The year before, he made seven. So far in 2023, he has yet to make a single one. Furthermore, he only has one three-star catch (probability between 51–75%), which is even more surprising, given that he cleaned up on three-star catches last season, making 21 in 26 chances.

Let’s start by looking at the lack of five-star catches, because that’s the easiest to explain. As the name implies, these plays are few and far between. Only 16 players made more than one last season, and only 10 made more than two. It isn’t a cause for concern that Straw doesn’t have one yet; only a quarter of qualified outfielders do. He had two last season and another two the year before, and all four came after the All-Star break. In 2021, both of them came within two weeks of one another. If Straw doesn’t have any five-star catches by September, then it might be time to reassess, but for now, it’s nothing to worry about. I wouldn’t be all that shocked if he made two in the next week, shooting his OAA up into positive territory.

As for the three- and four-star catches, Straw simply hasn’t had enough chances to make them. The charts below show his three- and four-star catch opportunities in 2022 and ’23 (via Baseball Savant):

His lone three-star catch in 2023 (the orange dot on the upper-right chart) was his running grab against García. The ball had a 70% catch probability, thereby earning him 0.3 of an out above average. The three-star opportunity he missed (circled in green) had a 65% catch probability, so missing it cost him 0.65 of an out. Statcast, however, clearly doesn’t have a perfect grasp of the intricacies of the Green Monster. This might have been a catchable ball in most stadiums, but there’s no way to blame Straw for missing this one:

Just as Straw will presumably make a five-star grab or two at some point down the line, he should also see more three- and four-star opportunities. The ones he catches will hopefully make up for the ones he’s missed so far.

Straw has also bumbled a few cans of corn this year, something he didn’t do at all in 2022. These misplays have had a sizeable impact on his OAA since their catch probabilities were so high, but only one was truly an indictment of his defensive skills. Two were high fly balls with a 99% catch probability that he lost amid a miscommunication with his infielders. They were bad plays to be sure, but not in a way that makes me worry about his defense going forward. Then there was this liner from Kris Bryant. It’s clear that Straw misread the ball, as he has to change his route last minute to get behind it. With a better read, it’s easily the second out of the inning:

It’s not a smart play, but the outcome was hardly disastrous. That was also the first and only ball with a catch probability between 90–95% that Straw has missed in his Guardians career. Slip-ups happen, even to the best defenders, and as the year goes on, those rare mistakes will be weighted less heavily in his overall numbers.

The catch opportunities (or lack thereof) that Straw has had so far might also explain his poor outfielder jump numbers. Outfielder jump measures a player’s initial movement on two-, three-, four-, and five-star catch opportunities. So far in 2023, Straw’s opportunities have skewed to the extremes. In particular, he has had significantly more five-star chances, and of those, 82% have had a catch probability of 5% or below:

That’s a high percentage of balls that are nearly uncatchable. On those plays, it stands to reason that a good outfielder might take the time he needs to get behind the ball and field it on a hop rather than going all out on the off chance he can make a diving grab. I watched all nine of Straw’s 5% catch opportunities this year, and lo and behold, I wouldn’t say he was actively trying to make the catch on any of them. But he also didn’t let a single one go past him, either. Only two of those balls went for more than a single: a double off the wall by Francisco Lindor, and a double to right-center by Triston Casas that could have been a triple if Straw weren’t there to cut it off:

More than almost any other player in baseball, Straw needs to be an elite defender to stick on a major league roster; his offense certainly isn’t keeping him employed. The Guardians, more than any other team in baseball, need Gold Glove defense from their center fielder; their league-worst offense certainly isn’t getting them to the playoffs. Thankfully, Straw’s poor metrics don’t portend a major defensive fall-off; he simply hasn’t the right chances to make his mark. The Strawman still has all the necessary tools in his fielding utility belt, and as the sample size increases, he should be just fine.